Jeff Scott Soto

by Alexandra Mrozowska
— Senior Columnist —

You can always see a glass half empty or half full, and no one seems to know it better than songwriters. The task they face is, after all, not only expressing their personal feelings and viewpoints in song lyrics but also communicating on the emotional level with their respective audiences. Upon a drastic turn of events happening in the world – be it 9/11 or 2020 pandemic – some contemporary songs tend to focus on reflecting the fear and grimness of the times. Others offer their listeners a chance to escape the reality by creating a safe parallel world and sharing the message of hope.

The Swedish-American Melodic Rock ensemble W.E.T. definitely sees a glass half full in that sense on their upcoming album Retransmission, the band’s main songwriter Erik Mårtensson confirming it as he checked in with Hardrock Haven in late 2020. But W.E.T.’s lead singer Jeff Scott Soto claims it’s always been the case with them. “We always try to be a positive, uplifting entity,” says Soto, a view many of the song lyrics on W.E.T.’s albums echo indeed. With Retransmission scheduled to be released on January the 22^nd, 2021 via Frontiers Music SRL, we caught up with Jeff Scott Soto again to talk about the album and the creative process behind it. But as the last few months were nothing but dynamic for this singer extraordinaire, we also went to discuss other recent endeavors he was a part of, from his own project Revision to the Prog Metal ensemble Octavision to Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s livestream – and more…

Hardrock Haven: In our previous interview in October, you mentioned the new W.E.T. album. Now that it’s coming out in less than two weeks, what do you think it is that makes you and the rest of the guys keep on coming back to W.E.T. again and again for what’s more than a decade now?

Jeff Scott Soto: Well, I have a serious answer and a funny answer (laughs). The funny answer is that we have a contract with Frontiers Records, so that’s what keeps us coming back (laughs). But the serious answer is that if we didn’t enjoy doing what we’re doing together and if we didn’t enjoy making this music together, of course there would be no interest in doing it any further. And every time it is time to do a new W.E.T. album, it’s just a natural process on how we create the music and how everything comes together. The biggest component for W.E.T. is Erik Mårtensson. He’s become such an incredible engineer and producer that a lot of what you’re hearing is because of him in terms of how the album sounds, in terms of how the overall production comes together… Erik is a huge component – major component – in this. As far as I’m concerned, I’m just a singer for W.E.T. I’m not necessarily a creative force as much as Erik is. And then we – Robert [Säll] and I – add our contributions, but overall it’s Erik in everything. The recordings, the mixes, the performances… everything. So, again, as long as Erik is interested in doing this, we love making music together and we love working together, so this is why we continue doing these records.

Hardrock Haven: In the beginning, did you actually expect W.E.T. to continue for so long as it does now?

Jeff Scott Soto: Well, it’s the same with anything I do or anything we do. We always go to every single detail we do musically with hopes that it’s gonna be successful enough that people will allow us and want us to continue doing that. So it’s the same as any of my bands – SOTO or JSS or Talisman. We always have the intention of hoping that our music is resonating with people, that there’s interest to keep us doing this. And that’s exactly the same thing with W.E.T. It’s the fact that people continue to like what we’re doing and that they allow us to grow without changing the sound – we’re never trying to change the chemistry and the foundation of what people expect from these albums. But we also need to show growth, because then it just starts sounding like the same stuff, over and over and over. So, we find that there’s enough interest for us to continue going, and from there we find the interest to find new ways to make this music.

Hardrock Haven: You’ve just mentioned Talisman, and after the first single off the new W.E.T. album, “Big Boys Don’t Cry”, was out, many listeners pointed out to it having a Talisman-esque riff, or being somewhat a reference to Talisman musically. Do you think they’re right in a sense that the three components – the bands you came from – are still present in W.E.T’s music?

Jeff Scott Soto: Absolutely! And when Erik presents me something that I think sounds or feels too much like Talisman, I take it as a compliment. Number one, because I realize that he was very much influenced by this music and by my band. But also – because Talisman doesn’t exist at the moment – it’s also a great thing to be able to do music that follows the same path, the same kind of sound and general direction, and also takes it to another place… For me, I’m proud to be able to do that with W.E.T. because Talisman is not existing at the moment – it’s not creating any music. So, it’s a kind of a way to create a Talisman sound without Talisman, and for me it’s a beautiful tribute to the body of work that I have done with this amazing band.

Hardrock Haven: Do you think after a few albums W.E.T. is more of a band for fans of Talisman, Eclipse and Work Of Art or can it also serve as an introduction to your respective catalogs for people who discover Melodic Rock right now?

Jeff Scott Soto: I think a little bit of both. It’s naturally a little bit of both, because of the influence, because of the fact that you have a member from Talisman in the band, because of the fact you have a member of Work Of Art or Eclipse [in the band]. Of course we’re gonna have these natural influences – especially with the drummer [Robban Bäck] who’s a former drummer of Eclipse, and Eclipse’s current lead guitar player [Magnus Henriksson]. You have all these elements that you can hear where each individual one comes from – these separate bands. But I think at this point we have absolutely developed our own sound with our own fans and we don’t have to worry about trying to just get the fans of the other bands that we’re in. W.E.T. has finally its own legs to stand on and we continue to keep building that audience and that following because we happen to share the same audiences – of Eclipse, Work Of Art and Talisman. So, it’s kind of a double answer that yes, we do have the same fans and the same following – but no, we don’t necessarily have to go for the fans of these bands and the fans of Melodic Rock music because we are creating our own fanbase.

Hardrock Haven: As I talked with Erik in November, he mentioned that the pandemic made it obviously less possible to write the new W.E.T. album together. How does this fact reflect on Retransmission if you compare it with Rise Up and Earthrage?

Jeff Scott Soto: Yeah, again – we all know where our contributions lie and we let Erik run with the majority of things… It’s like you take the ball and you roll with it. We let him roll with the ball, because we trust his overall vision on this. It has nothing to do with us not having enough creative process. I mean, I’m not co-writing all my lyrics and melodies on the album – on all the albums. A lot of that is pre-written and comes to me and I just basically have to put my voice on it. And I’m fine with that, because the W.E.T. sound was developed without me and all I’m doing is adding to the W.E.T. sound. My contributions lie on how I deliver the vocals. And if you get another singer doing these amazing songs, they won’t sound the way they sound with me singing them. They wouldn’t sound the same way if somebody else produced them as well… So, it’s a chemistry and a formula that works and we don’t really need to go in there and say, “Well, I’m not writing enough…” or “I’m not creating my own things…” I don’t wanna do that just for the sake of my own ego. I have enough things on my plate and enough things in my life that I get to do these kinds of things with. And I’m happy to kind of step back a little and give somebody else that role to make these decisions and make the call of how and what we’re gonna be doing and when we do it. Of course, I have my say – if Erik sends me a song where the lyrics and the melodies are already completed, of course I’m not singing it like him. I’m not the same singer and he’s not the same singer. But this is where our characteristics come into the situation – if somebody else writes the song, you put your own stamp on it and this is how this band sounds like this band.

As for the current situation, I think Erik answered that question based on the fact that he’s the primary songwriter in this and he does work with a lot of other co-writers. He works with a lot of outside writers and people that he does many things with. So the process for the W.E.T. album might have been a little different in terms of the way he’s used to [work], but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve always been doing it this way with him, with Talisman and anybody else that I’m in a band with that’s overseas. Because we have the technology and the tools to create from afar, it’s not like the old days when you had to sit in the same room to write a song together and then you start recording it. I don’t live down the street from the guys in Sweden and they don’t live down the street from me in Los Angeles, so we’ve utilized technology and the tools that we have today to be able to do this anyway. Regarding the songwriting, if Erik is writing with a songwriting partner in Sweden, of course that’s was difficult for him to get together with these guys where he normally does. But again, we know how to adapt to this. It’s not something that’s anything different or new to us. We’re used to recording and creating from afar and we discuss things as you and I are discussing now – either Skype or messages or e-mails or texting – and we’re able to get everything done in a professional way without having to always be in the same room together.

Hardrock Haven: Still, Erik’s mentioned you’ve been involved in writing some of the lyrics on Retransmission.

Jeff Scott Soto: Yeah, of course. For every album I am – for some albums, I’m more involved and for some albums, I’m less and again this has nothing to do with, “Jeff is not a good enough writer…” or “Robert doesn’t write the riffs the right way…” It has nothing to do with that. When Erik is looking at the overall map of putting an album together, maybe he’s been working with other writers and they came up with songs that don’t work for other artists. And then he’d say, “Hey, I remember that song I wrote with this guy or that guy” and all of a sudden he’s presenting us with a song that we didn’t write together but I think would absolutely work for us. And yeah, that’s a process that we utilize as much as possible if there’s a song that he – or somebody else – feels would be a great song for us to do.

Hardrock Haven: Erik has also mentioned that there’s this uplifting vibe to this album even more than it was with the previous ones – he called it a “party rock” album at one point. Do you agree and would you say that such an album is what we need in the current situation?

Jeff Scott Soto: I think more so this album, but I also think in overall we always try to be a positive, uplifting entity. There’s enough of things like I’m doing with Sons Of Apollo and SOTO that kind of emphasize on the darker side of things that are going on in our world and our lives. Of course, that’s necessary as well because I need to emphasize on some of the negative that I could possibly either use as a therapy or somebody else can use it as a therapy to find a positive. But a thing about W.E.T. is that we’re always going into it and trying to make sure that we’re conveying a message of hope and positivity and even sometimes humor. We feel it’s important that W.E.T. is looked upon as something that’s not gonna remind you of the negative that’s going in the world. We’re just gonna try and give you the positive and put a smile on your face – but also in the meantime give you songs that are easy to sing along to and that you want to sing along to.

Hardrock Haven: Definitely. As we talked back in October, you’ve shared your idea of reworking some songs from your career with us here at Hardrock Haven. The material ended up being released digitally under the moniker of SOTO as Revision in December. Did you find reworking any of these songs particularly challenging in any way?

Jeff Scott Soto: Not at all. The only thing that was challenging for me was trying to find the way to reinvent the songs – but give them an emphasis as strongly as I did on the original versions. I didn’t wanna do them in a different way just to do them in a different way. I wanted to hear them in a way that it could still work as strongly as the original – and sometimes some of these actually came out stronger than the originals as far as I’m concerned. Because when you strip it down and there’s less going on and less ear candy, you can truly focus on the lyrics and you can truly focus on the singing and the melodies. And this was the most important part of redoing these songs, because as far as I’m concerned, a lot of those songs have some beautiful melodies and some beautiful lyrics and messages. A song like “Friend” [originally included on Jeff Scott Soto’s first solo album Love Parade released in 1994], for instance, that I wrote for my son when he was six years old. I moved away from California then and we were separated for six months, but then I realized I can’t be without him so I moved back to Los Angeles because I needed to watch my son grow up. That lyric is so powerful to me as a tribute to my son when he was six, and now he’s only thirty two (laughs). And when I sing this song, I can remember every emotion of how I felt when I wrote it, so I put all these emotions into the new version. So it’s something that gave me the chance to reflect – or re-reflect – on the things that I’ve done on these original versions of those songs.

Hardrock Haven: Were there any other songs you previously considered for the album but dropped the idea for whatever reason?

Jeff Scott Soto: Not really. I mean, there are still a lot of songs that I wrote as the idea of this release was that every song on it had to be something I wrote a hundred percent of, whether it’s music or lyrics – everything had to be a hundred percent JSS composition. I could’ve easily done a Talisman song or other songs from my life and my career, but the idea of this was that I wanted to take something that’s a hundred percent me where I didn’t have to share the emotion of somebody else in the actual songs, whether it’s the writing or the melodies or whatever. And there were other songs that I could’ve done but these were the ones I really wanted to do. I just wanted to do it – I had the extra time and I was sitting around the studio and the first one I did was “If This Is The End” [originally included on Jeff Scott Soto’s solo album Lost In The Translation released in 2004]. And I just loved the way it’s just came across so beautifully without having to have all the other layers of instruments and drums and all those things. So that’s basically where it started and I continued from there. And when I looked at the list of songs that qualified for this album, these [were] the ones I chose – especially the a capellas [“Somebody To Love”, a hidden track on the Eyes’ debut album released in 1990 and “My Love, My Friend” originally released on the 2005 album World Play by Soul SirkUS] that were like maybe one and a half minute or two-minute songs originally and then I actually turned them into songs. That to me was the most rewarding and the most challenging because there was no music – no reference of music – before when I wrote these songs. They were built and created as a capellas. And now to actually reveal them as full-bodied songs – it was amazing.

Hardrock Haven: Absolutely. Do you think you’ll continue this project and revisiting your catalog in the future?

Jeff Scott Soto: I don’t have any plans regarding it right now. If it’s something I do, it’ll be something later down the line because I have the time or maybe I’m bored or maybe when I retire from touring completely and I’m just sitting at home recording until I take my last breath – I don’t know. At this point I have no plans of doing something like this further. It is something I wanted to do while I could. And I’m hoping that the world gets back to normal again so we can get back to the things that we’re normally doing – in which I won’t really have time to do something like that later.

Hardrock Haven: Another album that you were involved in recently is Coexist by a Progressive Metal project Octavision, also released towards the end of December. What do you think is so special about this project that actually encouraged you to contribute to it?

Jeff Scott Soto: Well, it was that Billy Sheehan was already a part of this and he basically reached out to me, saying that this guy would possibly like to have me collaborate with him on this album because there’s only two songs that have lyrics – two songs that will have singing. And it was only because Billy is a dear friend and a colleague that I accepted the offer. It’s because I thought that if Billy’s doing it, then I have to do it; if Billy’s doing it, then it must be that good that I have to do it. But once I met Hovak [Alaverdyan, Octavision’s mastermind] and once I got to discuss the whole project and the premise behind how long he’s been doing this project and how much passion he had behind it, I absolutely wanted to do it because I love what he does musically. It’s Prog music, but in a different way – it’s different world influences. He’s Armenian, so he’s doing music and he’s using modes and things that I’m not familiar with. He’s doing things that come from another world – another land – and I always pride myself in being involved with other influences and other traditional sounds and things that I don’t already normally have in my arsenal. So as far as I’m concerned, it only does me good to add these extra influences… to add these things that I normally don’t have in my life already. It’s only gonna help me later in channeling other things that will make my sound a little more elaborate – a little more international and worldly itself.

Hardrock Haven: And in general, how do you think all those side projects and guest appearances – which in your case have always been plenty, to say the least – contribute to your overall career?

Jeff Scott Soto: From starting my career with Yngwie Malmsteen, again – not only he’s from Sweden, but also he’s had a huge background in Classical music. I had no knowledge whatsoever of the Swedish music scene outside of ABBA, which you can’t compare that to, and I had no influence whatsoever in Classical music. So starting my career with Yngwie Malmsteen was the first shot in the arm that gave me a new channel and something new to try to contribute to – and understand that you can’t just do the normal Rock’n’Roll and the whole ‘80s Hair Metal scene in L.A. That would not fit into what Yngwie was doing. So I had to find my own way – a way based on the music that was presented to me – and make sure that I fit in, because I was a guy from Los Angeles and I was just an eighteen-year-old guy at that time with no experience and no influence of that world. And so that was the beginning of learning how to channel other aspects of music and other music worlds and start adapting to them. And then I would start working with Italian guys, Japanese guys and all these different cultures that added to my arsenal. And I’d even add something like Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which is also very strongly on the musical theater side – Broadway side. I don’t have that world in me, but now I have all these different worlds that I can channel from in the different things that I do. And throwing Hovak and Octavision into that is yet another [proof] that even at my age, even in my fifties I’m able to channel something new that I’ve never done in my life.

Hardrock Haven: And speaking of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, there was a TSO livestream in December. What kind of experience was that, especially with the scale of the performance being understandably much smaller and no audience involved in it?

Jeff Scott Soto: Yeah, we knew exactly how to pull that off – I mean, with Trans-Siberian Orchestra every year we go into the production two to three weeks before the tours begin. And this is for the past, I’m gonna say, fourteen years now that I’ve been doing this. When you go into a two- or three-week rehearsal and every time you get onto the microphone you’re expected to perform like you’re performing in front of the audience, you have to get that comfort zone… You can practice and practice and practice, just sing the songs and read the lyrics. But when you get in front of an audience, if you’re not believing it – if you’re not showing that you believe every word you’re singing or every note you’re playing… It’s a very visual thing, it’s like a musical theater Broadway thing – so you have to perform at rehearsals the same way as there are people in the audience. That’s the only way to channel every nuance of those vocals and that story. So, as far as we’re concerned, we’re used to that. We’re used to performing every single detail without an audience before we get to an audience, so it was no difference for us as far as just having cameras and having to look around and see cameras and staff people around you. As far as I’m concerned, that was our audience.

Hardrock Haven: You’ve mentioned TSO stories again, and when discussing this aspect in our previous interview, you’ve stated they’re what keeps people interested in the TSO experience year after year. These stories obviously involve different characters. As your experience with TSO characters is really diverse, have you ever found it challenging to adopt emotionally to the character to get into it and become convincing when singing a specific part?

Jeff Scott Soto: Absolutely. It’s one of the things Paul O’Neill [the founder of Trans-Siberian Orchestra] taught me. Again, I didn’t have this coming into TSO. I didn’t have any musical theater experience – or even interest. And one of the things Paul O’Neill taught me is how to emote and how to find that emotion… what to think about and what to put yourself – your mind and your placement – to before you sing those songs. So of course, when you’re doing it, in the general sense of doing it – you’re singing the song and emoting those emotions. You’re finding a place to actually bring those songs so they sound believable, so you sound and you look like the character of the songs that you’re singing. But sometimes – and it’s happened to all of us on those tours – things happen in life, emotional things, personal things… and they can happen during the tour. There were times when I’ve lost somebody close to me, or a family member – there are certain parts and certain lyrics that actually do make you feel what you’re actually feeling outside of singing those songs. So you go onstage and all of a sudden a new emotion comes out. I’ve seen somebody going through an emotional, personal time and they go onstage and not only do they sing the hell out of the song but you see tears in their face. That’s when you know that means as much to you at that moment as it means to somebody else in the audience who’s hearing those songs and reflecting that to their own lives. So again, that’s something I had to learn how to do, how to channel that. But now life is imitating art and art is imitating life when you get out there and you’re dealing with a personal loss, and that lyric comes out in a different way that you’ve ever sung it before. That’s when you know you’ve knocked it out of the ballpark.

Hardrock Haven: And how did the same process look like with a TSO character that was probably the most detached one from your life experiences – I mean, Mephistopheles in the live rendition of Beethoven’s Last Night?

Jeff Scott Soto: Yeah, that was fun. Jon Oliva and I had a lot of conversations about this, because Jon sang the original versions on the album and he has a very sinister, menacing voice. And we talked a lot about how to dig into that character, because I’m basically the devil. So it was a lot of fun. Everybody loves playing the bad guy. If I had to play a good guy – “Ahh, that’s so boring, I wanna be the bad guy”. And I was able to really throw myself into channeling myself as I was the devil and singing those songs. It was a lot of fun doing that one.

Hardrock Haven: In the past, artists were seen as distant figures so to speak. Do you think it’s better these days that fans have almost direct contact with their favorite artists via social media, chats and so on, or is it more like in SOTO’s song “Cyber Masquerade”?

Jeff Scott Soto: Yeah, it’s a necessary evil, unfortunately. I do enjoy certain parts of the direct contact and social media and things, but then there’s [the fact] that I grew up in the world when there still was mystique. When we did interviews such as this, they would be done on a phone and they wouldn’t come up for two or three months later because by the time they’re transcribed, by the time they go to print with everything being done on magazines… you know. So there was a mystique with the audience that’s completely gone now. You know everything right away. An interview you do today comes out maybe an hour or two hours later. And there was a certain level of trying to guess more about the artist, what they do and how they do it, and I miss that. You can’t have that anymore, because everything’s so immediate now. But on the other hand, there’s other parts to that which are great, because if you have something you wanna say, you know you can get it out there immediately and it’s not old news by the time people hear and see it.

Hardrock Haven: Speaking of this immediacy, it’s become a norm these days for music fans to suggest different ideas to their idols, and one of such ideas from the fans was, for instance, for you to record a duet album with Joe Lynn Turner. If you were to consider a duet album sometime in the future, who would you like to share the microphone with?

Jeff Scott Soto: Oh boy, there’s a huge list of people that I would wanna do that with. And to be honest with you, there are talks – there have been talks – for many years about doing something like that. One of my dearest friends who I love like a brother is Johnny Gioeli [Hardline, Axel Rudi Pell, Crush 40], and we’ve been toying around with the idea of doing kind of like the Three Tenors kind of thing – finding the third singer we both mutually respect and love, and do something like that. And I think I would love to do that with Johnny and another [singer]. I have a list of personal favorites, of singers that I would like to use, but it would have to be someone we both agreed on. And I think this will eventually happen because I love Johnny’s voice and I think we could come up with something that we agree on musically. It would be so much fun, but it would also be very good. So that’s an easy answer. I would love to do something with Joe Lynn Turner too; he’s another dear friend that I absolutely love and respect, so I never know. But I’m just keeping all these options open and I’m just blessed that I have a career where people wanna see me continue singing and they wanna see me dueting with other people that I love and respect. So I couldn’t be happier than I have this side of my life where I just get to continue doing what I do.

Hardrock Haven: And as a honorable mention – a kind of bonus – among all the other things you’ve done in 2020 is your somewhat underrated involvement in True Rockstars Don’t Hate and the song “Before Too Late” written and recorded together with the keyboard player Todd Waites, Bill Leverty of FireHouse on guitar, Wagner Gracciano on bass and Guillermo Santana on drums…

Jeff Scott Soto: I met Todd in 2006 when I was in Journey. He was a friend of Rick Allen’s [Def Leppard], because they share the same… I guess, affliction, but I don’t wanna call it affliction, because he’s turned his handicap of only having one arm into something that’s amazing – to be a keyboard player. And I met him there, because obviously he was friends with Rick Allen who’s also a person living and performing as a working musician with one arm. We’ve never worked together until that point, and he brought me onto this thing because I really love the song and he was very influential in the lyric theme. He didn’t have lyrics for me, he’s just said “I want it to be about this [bullying], and I want to be very positive and uplifting” – as well as, you know, what we’ve been talking about with W.E.T. And it was just a pleasure to finally get to work with him and get this done finally after talking for so many years of possibly doing something together. And of course, it’s difficult to get every single thing out there on the level that you wanted to, but you know – baby steps, you get your stuff out there, more people know about you and you start building your repertoire from there.

Hardrock Haven: Exactly. We’re running out of time at this point, so before we wrap it up – what does the future hold in store for you and can your fans expect 2021 to be as active a year for you as 2020 was, regardless of what happened and will happen to live music industry?

Jeff Scott Soto: Yeah, I haven’t really planned anything for 2021, because I was hoping that we would have a little more insight to be able to get back to work. It’s unfortunate that it’s gonna be a little longer, so I will start looking into other projects and things. But on the other hand, I also have to be careful that I don’t give too much Jeff Scott Soto overload, because I need people to be interested in me for a long time to come and I don’t want them to get sick of me (laughs).

Visit Jeff Scott Soto online: http://www.jeffscottsoto.com/