10 Minutes With Pat Monahan

TRAIN RETURNS TO TANGLEWOOD’S KOUSSEVITZKY MUSIC SHED

Train’s band members, from left, Pat Monahan, Jerry Becker, Hector Maldonado, Sakai Smith, Nikita Houston, Matt Musty, and Taylor Locke. BROOKE CLARK

OVER THE PAST THREE DECADES, Pat Monahan has delighted fans as the frontman of the chart-topping, three-time Grammy® Award-winning band, Train. This summer, Train will return to Tanglewood on August 24 in the Koussevitzky Music Shed to perform at the celebrated festival for the fifth time. They will be supported by the country music band, Parmalee, and Train’s set list will span the entirety of their eclectic discography. Hits including “Drops of Jupiter,” “Meet Virginia,” “Calling All Angels,” and “Hey, Soul Sister” will be complemented by deep cuts from acclaimed albums such as the self-titled debut LP, Train (1998), Drops of Jupiter (2001), My Private Nation (2003), and their latest, AM Gold (2022). In the weeks leading up to the Tanglewood performance, Monahan spoke with Berkshire Magazine about the inspiration behind Train’s latest album, his newest projects, his creative process, and the lasting power of heartfelt and authentic music.

Your fantastic new album, AM Gold, showcases your vocal chops through a broad range of musical styles, and its songs manage to capture the evocative nostalgia of classic records while maintaining musical relevance. One of our favorite songs on AM Gold, “Amber Light,” has a line about sitting on a blanket on summer nights, and Tanglewood came to mind. What is your favorite thing about performing at Tanglewood, and how do you think its ambience enhances the fan experience? There are a lot of things I love about Tanglewood. One of my favorite parts is that it’s a big stomping ground for James Taylor, whom I love. The area is beautiful, and the weather has been consistently great every time we’ve played there. More than anything else, the music fans in the Berkshires are really lovely. It’s fun to see families come out at Train shows like the ones we’ve done at Tanglewood. The thing that I’m most proud of is that kids can come with their parents, parents can come with grandparents, and multiple generations can come to a Train show. That’s what I look forward to the most.

BEN ZUCKER PHOTOS

We’re looking forward to it, too! Every album brings new opportunity to explore different aspects of live performance. What can fans look forward to in terms of the set list, atmosphere, and experience at the Tanglewood performance? Summer 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of My Private Nation, which has “Calling All Angels” on it, so we wanted to play a bunch of songs from that. You mentioned “Amber Light,” and we’re going to play songs that fit in that musical environment from AM Gold. We also have a new single called “I Know,” and we plan on listening to fans as we go through the tour about what they are longing to hear. We want to play some of our lesser-known tracks. If you’re a Train fan and you dig into the albums, it’s not always the song on the radio that becomes your favorite. I love singing along to other bands and artists’ radio songs, but whenever I see them play live, there’s always a hid- den track in there that I really want to hear. We want to listen to feedback and play those songs for our fans.

In past interviews, you’ve said that AM Gold serves as a reflection of where you are now. What were your inspirations behind AM Gold, and what does the album mean to you? At the time that I started writing songs for AM Gold, I had been turned on to a new artist named King George. I listened to his music, and it sounded like a 24-year-old guy doing music from the ’60s, and that really inspired me. When I wrote AM Gold, I want- ed to write today’s version of the sound from the ’70s and ‘80s. In terms of lyrics, I said to someone yesterday that when you get older, you know yourself better. You write differently. Sometimes, when you’re a younger artist and you’re searching for who you are, you get a bunch of young people listening to your music who are in a similar place in their lives and able to relate. Now that I’m older and I don’t have the same questions about who I am, I think that many people who have been listening to what I have been writing for 30 years are in the same position. We don’t think about those same things anymore. We think about things like, “Who will I continue to be and who will the people after me be?” The questions change, and so I try to change what I write about through the feelings that I’m having.

BEN ZUCKER PHOTOS

You’ve also said that staying grounded while remaining musically relevant is more important than ever in the age of social media. That seems like a tough juggling act, but you’ve managed to pull it off. You’ve always written and recorded music that simultaneously evokes feelings of true love and connection while maintaining artistic relevance and commercial success. What is the secret to bringing authenticity and integrity to your music and making sure it resonates for both new and old fans? It’s interesting to me that I don’t always feel like an artist. I feel like a dad, but the artist in me is always longing to learn and be better. Authenticity has never really been difficult for me. I’ve always just wanted to be who I am, hoping that someone would be attracted to it—not just through music, but in my life, my friendships, and my marriage. I don’t want to pretend to be something that you fall in love with when I can’t hold up my part of the bargain. Being authentic is not difficult. The difficult thing is being authentic and trying to be creative enough in that authenticity so people actually want to listen. And then trying to be competitive, where the music sounds like it’s not dated or boring. That’s a little bit more of a challenge.

I think it’s fair to say that Train has faced those challenges gracefully over the years, and a large part of that continued success comes from your artistic tenacity and courage. You touch on that theme in one of AM Gold’s most memorable tracks, “Bettin’ On Me.” You’ve described the song as semi-autobiographical in terms of feeling like you’re the one placing the biggest wagers on yourself in personal and professional matters. What is one of the big- gest artistic bets or risks that you’ve ever taken? Years ago, when we came out with Drops of Jupiter, it was on the front page of USA Today, and they said, “Drops of Jupiter derails Train.” It was a very panned review of the album. The other members of the band at the time came to me, and they were so upset. They wanted revenge. I said, “Guys, the only revenge is to bet on you and just keep going.” Six months later, the same writer contacted us because she wanted to do an article about the five Grammys that Drops of Jupiter was up for. And that was pretty cool to have bet on us and bet on that album. Somebody panned it, but we stuck with it, and that was the result. It was the best revenge we could have had.

One album by another band that clearly resonated with you is Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin II. You released phenomenal renditions of the classic Zeppelin tunes on the album Train Does Led Zeppelin II (2016). It’s a beautiful coincidence that you’re returning to Tanglewood at the end of a season where Led Zeppelin’s frontman, Robert Plant, performed with Alison Krauss on July 2. Every musician has their own style, but you’re certainly an avid listener and student of the Led Zeppelin catalog. How have Plant’s vocal stylings and Led Zeppelin’s music influenced you artistically? I was the last of seven kids. My parents liked certain music, and each of my siblings who were older than me fell into different categories in terms of the music that they loved. My sisters loved James Taylor and Kris Kristofferson. My brothers loved the Beatles, and I loved all of those artists. But when Led Zeppelin came into my life, it felt like the music that was mine. I just want- ed to be every member of that band, but I only had the ability to try to be one guy, and that was Robert Plant. He influenced me a lot, and I still have yet to meet him, but I would love to. It’s too bad that I won’t be at Tanglewood to watch his performance with Alison Krauss. I’ve only seen him perform live once, and it was pretty incredible.

I can certainly hear his influence in your rich and powerful vocal stylings, but you’ve developed a sound that is your own and continues to evolve through new projects. You just released.” Do you have any projects that you’re working on, to share with your fans? We released a lyric video for “I Know,” but there is no album around it. It’s just a single. I am almost done with a musical called Begin Again, an adaptation of the 2013 film of the same name starring Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo. I’m hoping that we’ll start to really hone it in in October. Maybe in April, or even March of next year, it could be in New England or somewhere off Broadway where we can work through it for a few months.

The Berkshire region is world-famous for its renowned cultural institutions, many of which serve as theatrical incubators for future Broadway productions. It would be amazing if the musical premiered here. That’d be really cool.

It sure would! What inspired you to branch into musical theater? I was asked to be a part of it. My advice to them was that they should pick at least four people who you would want to do this, we should all write a song, and whoever’s song makes the most sense should decide who the writer is. I don’t know if they took my advice, but I wrote a song and they said, “You’re our guy!”

Was it difficult to transition into a new artistic role? It’s been really fun and really hard. After 30 years of being in the music business and being told “not good enough” over and over, it gets pretty frustrating. But it’s been fun when I listen and then go do better work. It’s harder when you’re older to have the courage to keep working, instead of saying “this is good enough, take it or leave it.” That’s not the right attitude for musical theater. I think you’ve got to get it right or you pay later for not doing the work.

—Benjamin Lerner

Train with Very Special Guest Parmalee will be at Tanglewood on Thursday, August 24, at 7 p.m. Tickets at bso.org/events/train.