GUNS N' ROSES Bassist DUFF MCKAGAN Putting Finishing Touches On New Solo Album

GUNS N’ ROSES bassist Duff McKagan is putting the finishing touches on a solo album that’s coming in 2019.

McKagan began recording the album back in March with producer Shooter Jennings. The two worked out of Station House studios, located in Echo Park, California, writing and recording in-between McKagan‘s tour with seminal rock band GUNS N’ ROSES and the release of Jennings‘s eponymous album, “Shooter”.

The album will be McKagan‘s musical follow-up to 2015’s best-selling book, “How To Be A Man (And Other Illusions)”.

“I wrote a couple of articles about historical places I passed through on this last tour and people kept asking if that was going to be the focus of my next book,” says McKagan. “But an unseen and irrepressible force guided me to write little vignettes of reflective prose…little instant reactions.

“The heartbreak, anger, fear, confusion and divide I have experienced over the last two and a half years of traveling this globe of ours coerced these words into songs that tell my truth, and one that I hope will spread and help us all. I do this for my daughters…I do this for my love of where I grew up…I do this, because I truly feel it must be done and said right now.”

Adds Jennings: “From the first night we sat together at my piano hashing out arrangements of his songs, before going into the studio to record them, I felt it was a really important record that had to be heard. The songs have so much heart and are so musical that I could just hear all the arrangements immediately and I could really feel them.”

About his connection to McKagan, Jennings says: “I met Duff right after I moved to Los Angeles nearly twenty years ago. I was such a massive GUNS N’ ROSES fan when I was younger. I’d say that they had a lot to do with me even moving to L.A. But there was some kind of magnetic force I guess that kept us orbiting each other over the years. When the idea of collaborating with him on this album came up, I was very eager to get the job as producer. I felt like the music this man made was part of the fabric of my own musical identity and that I would really love building a record with him. Once we sat down and started going over the songs he had, I instantly knew that the two of us were going to be a great fit together.”

Three-fifths of the classic GUNS lineup reunited in 2016 after last performing together more than two decades earlier. The “Not In This Lifetime” tour, which is now one of the highest-grossing in music history, launched in April of that year with a nightclub gig in Los Angeles.

Joining McKagan, singer Axl Rose and guitarist Slash on the “Not In This Lifetime” trek are drummer Frank Ferrer, keyboardist Dizzy Reed, guitarist Richard Fortus and second keyboardist Melissa Reese.

Top photo credit: Katarina Benzova