After taking a break from touring with The Killers on their recent tour, Dave Keuning is back with his solo project, Keuning.
Lead guitarist in The Killers, Keuning is the first time where Dave has been taking centre stage as frontman and vocalist, and he’s doing a pretty cracking job.
Three singles have already been released from upcoming album ‘Prismism’, including the title track and ‘Restless Legs‘. The album itself is set to be released January 25th 2019.
As well as carrying out an interview available to read now on *Little Indie Blogs, where I ask him about what it’s like to be touring on his own, I reached out to fans of Keuning who sent me the following questions they’d like me to ask him.
Catching him just before his debut UK gig at Night & Day Cafe in Manchester, I spoke to Dave about influences, his material and what ‘Prismism‘ actually means.
Do you have any main influencing artists?
I think The Smashing Pumpkins have influenced me the most. Just the way he plays guitar- also, like me, his music’s got a lot of variety, it’s got a lot of rock stuff, it’s got keyboard stuff too, acoustic stuff. I’m similar in that way, in that I don’t ever wanna be one thing.
What does ‘Prismism’ mean?
If you know what ‘Prism’ means, then it’s like that but like squared. It’s just many ways to look at something.
*Were there any situations that specifically inspired Prismism as an album?
Well a lot of situations but you know, not being on tour with The Killers allowed me the time to be able to do this. Where I’d normally just want to relax between tours because the tours are like a year and a half to two years and I don’t necessarily just wanna go right into recording the second I’m off tour. I wanna just relax and enjoy normal life for a little bit. But this time I had a lot of free time and it was like, long overdue, and I even questioned “should I even do this?”, but I was like “well, I only live once! I got all these ideas!”. It’s really not about ego, or anything like that it really isn’t, it’s just about me having fun putting my songs out there to whoever wants to hear them.
Have you had any special training with your voice?
A little, maybe a couple of voice lessons. I’m still learning a few little tricks on what not to do- I wish I could sing higher. When I first started singing, I didn’t know who I was as a singer. I think I wished I was Freddie Mercury but I’m clearly not Freddie Mercury so I have to learn what my range is and work with that.
What’s your favourite thing about having complete freedom over what you’re creating?
Having complete freedom – that’s my favourite part! I just kinda view it as: some days I’m just messing around and i’ll stumble onto something fun and i’ll just see where it goes until it’s finished and there’s no real pressure of “well we’re trying to do this”, “we’re trying to do that”, “please don’t do this”, you know, I’m just trying to have fun, that’s all. I’m just trying to have fun and whatever sounds good, like if I stumble onto a good chord progression, I see where it goes.
Is all material in the album completely brand new or were any riffs/lyrics previously thought about with The Killers?
Um, I’d say about half and half. Half of it is brand new, and there are some ideas that were brought to the killers either in just a practice or a voice memo. The killers usually have a lot of ideas, between all the band members and Brandon we usually have like 50 ideas, so it’s not a big surprise if they don’t end up on a killers record because it’s hard to get down to the final 10 and they just put whatever fits the album on the album and there’s so much to pick from. There’s so much of my own song to pick from too and sometimes you just don’t get to them, that’s how it is.
What songs do you enjoy playing most so far?
Probably “If You Say So” and “I Ruined You” cause I kinda like the heavier ones
*What are your plans post album release?
I’ll do some touring, I’m planning on coming back to England sometime next year, I don’t know when as of now, and then just keep making more music. I don’t know when that’ll be released cause I gotta promote this one for a while, but I’ve already written a lot of songs for the next record. I’m just excited to be out there playing shows again.
You can listen to Keuning on Spotify and catch Dave on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and his site.
Watch the video for ‘Restless Legs‘ here:
Crossfire 
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