It won’t be long until Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers — the SK6ERS to aficionados — will go into a Massachusetts studio and record a new album.
Of course it’ll be the classic SK6ERS sound that fans love, but Kellogg said he plans to nudge it in just a bit of a different direction, too. Credit the influences Kellogg and his bandmates soaked up after playing many shows before military audiences. The shows were so well-received, the group was presented the 2010 Armed Forces Entertainers of the Year award.
“What I can say is that we are definitely going to be going toward a new sound,” he said. “The biggest influence on this record is not musical, it’s from doing those military tours and really thinking about what it means to be an American in America in 2010. It’s rock and roll and it won’t be drastically different melodically, but it will [center on] those themes.”
One of the highlights of SK6ERS music is that it always keeps it signature flare without remaining stagnant. Anyone who’s seen the band’s show or even listened to its just-released live album, “Live From the Heart” — recorded at the group’s 1,000th show last April in New York — knows it’s little wonder that many critics compare Kellogg to Tom Petty, Ryan Adams and other household-name musicians.
Yet the SK6ERS aren’t anyone’s imitators, jamming and mixing up their sets constantly, using guest musicians and vocalists, adding such classic songs as “Little Old Wine Drinker, Me,” and even playing their own rendition of the songs on Pearl Jam’s classic album “Ten” — and completely making it their own.
“The tour is just going great,” Kellogg said. “I don’t even remember a better musical experience. … Our way has always been to include a lot of variety and change the whole set every night. … I had a real arc in my mind with this tour that I wanted to give folks a real SK6ERS experience.”
On the West Coast, that included touring with opening artist Audra May, who joined the band for a rendition of the classic “Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”
“It’s a great song, and as a dad, it’s kind of funny to think about your kids and some of the positions you can get yourself into,” he said. “It’s a charming song and just fun for people to hear.”
Kellogg said the new batch of songs that have been written for the upcoming album will definitely up that fun quotient, too.
“You get to a point where you want to reach more people … and feel like you have the best job in the world,” he said. “We all are at the point where we’re saying, ‘Let’s do it and make proper music that’s a major milestone, a turning point.’ ”
