Billboard - Bob Seger hasn't made an album for 11 years, but reacquainting him with audiences shouldn't be tough:
Truth is, he never went away. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's 1994 "Greatest Hits" with the Silver Bullet
Band has been camped out on Billboard's Top Pop Catalog chart for 616 weeks; according to SoundScan, it has sold
7.7 million copies, and counting. And now there's "Face the Promise," which hit shelves September 12.
Parts of the new album, Seger says, are inspired by his two kids, who just started a new year of middle school in
suburban Oakland County, Mich. "I always end up slipping a little advice to the kids like Mike Brady." Seger says.
They'll join him on weekends if he hits the road. And he sounds eager to do just that -- by November, he hopes.
Fans who never heard Seger's early music on the Detroit scene and are more familiar with his ballad-heavy '80s and
'90s albums may well be surprised by "Face the Promise." Seger says the new set might rock as hard as any album he's
made "probably ever, if I really look at it."
Most of the set was self-produced, a Seger first, in Nashville with session musicians. Seger says he likes the relative
proximity to Michigan -- he can fly down in the morning, be back to his family at night and never switch time zones.
Nashville also reminds him of Ann Arbor, where he grew up. Plus, "a lot of guys I used to play with are down there."
One Michigan native who shows up on the record is Seger's friend and fellow longtime-local-star-turned-national-success
Kid Rock. Patty Loveless, who Seger calls "my favorite country singer of all time," makes an appearance, too. And Seger
says he even "made friends with the Nashville string community," which led to the string-section solo in the IRAQ War
protest track "No More".
The new album's first single, "Wait for Me," has chalked up some country radio play. The crossover embrace is nothing new
-- Seger's version of Rodney Crowell's
"Shame On the Moon," for instance, peaked at No. 15 on the country chart in
1983. But Seger's primary constituency remains tuned to classic-rock radio. WCSX Detroit even spun the new album in its
entirety.
Seger says he doesn't have an iPod himself, but he's entering the world of iTunes sales. "Wait for Me" is the first Seger
song available via download, and as of September 5, fans can buy tracks from 1976's "Night Moves" as well.
Seger's camp was a longtime holdout download-wise "because of a contractual thing they put in 1910," Seger jokes.
Meanwhile, Seger practices with his band up to six days a week, warming up his voice daily, which he says is necessary when
one's 61. Joni Mitchell told me my voice is just gonna keep getting lower and lower," he says. When you get older,
he points out, "everything sinks a little bit."
Reuters/Billboard
Detroit Free Press Review
Oakland Press Review
