TISDALE — Nick Gilder opened at Rockin’ the Square this year with his rock band, Sweeney Todd.
This incarnation of Sweeney Todd has been together for more than ten years, but it’s not the first.
“I don’t think I thought, even 20 years ago, that I would still be doing this today, but in some ways it’s better than ever,” Gilder said. “I think it keeps you healthy in a way, if you don’t indulge too much, you know? Because it makes me do a regimen of health to be able to do it, just getting some exercise, eating right. It’s actually necessary, really, to do this type of gig.
To prepare for this Gilder uses an elliptical machine, walks around the park, drinks lots of water and is trying to eat salads. He added hard liquor to the end of the list before laughing, “I’m kidding”.
“It’s not 1970 anymore, you know? So you have to kind of make yourself aware of that, those wild days, we couldn’t have been doing this if we stayed like that, that’s for sure.”
While staying healthy is his secret for being able to play today, his band’s secret, according to Gilder is, “it rocks”.
“Everybody really enjoys it, they have a good time, we all get along really well, we drive, we fly, we party, not to great excess but to some types,” Gilder said. “We honestly really enjoy that stage time, really that’s what the motivating thing is, there’s really nothing like playing the hits.”
Still, Gilder has considered retiring.
“It’s a scary thing that I think every artist once in a while thinks. ‘When?’ ‘How much longer can I do this thing?’ I guess I wonder when my voice will give out or something but I’m actually singing better in some ways than I was. Some things get better with age. Eventually it just has to stop, you know? There’s a clock ticking, right?”
In 2006 he planned on doing an album of different genres titled, “A Night on the Town, a Day in the Country” but it was shelved.
“I was putting together some tunes and I thought, ‘I’m going to do this conceptual album,’ but then I thought, ‘no, I can’t.’ You got to get your thing, get your direction. It’s hard enough to just do one thing, without doing all these different genres.”
Growing up he was influenced by Led Zeppelin.
“I really enjoyed them, and still do. Mick Jagger is a superhero, Paul is just unbelievable still, but really it was Whole Lotta Love. I heard it on a Jukebox on a U.S. airbase in England.”
He heard the song and decided, “‘I gotta get involved in that somehow.’ It was just so visceral and physical and emotional and had everything there.”
For aspiring rock artists he suggests not putting all your hope into it.
“Finish school, get that university degree if you can so you have something to fall back on, because it’s really hard. It’s so hard now, because promotion-wise back in the day there was every possible avenue for promotion and they spent bazillions of dollars to promote people. It’s just not there anymore. So it’s like, YouTube, you got to somehow figure out how to get people watching YouTube, that’s what’s left. Sometimes you get radio hits, they still happen, so that could still happen, it can happen, but you got to love it first. You got to do it for its own sake, I think. Especially these days.”
However, he doesn’t believe it’s impossible to become successful.
“There’s a band called Aviator Shades. They proved that it can be done. I cannot believe how they did it, but they did it. They’re playing in Canada, they’re a young band, they really rock hard,” Gilder said. “They built a following, the old style, the old school.”
Gilder believes while rock may have been dead, it’s alive again.
“I think they kicked it [rock] back alive again, I think is what it is,” Gilder said. “See some of the biggest festivals in the world are rock festivals. That’s true if you Google it or look on YouTube, the biggest music festivals are rock festivals, by large. There is of course EDM [electronic dance music], very popular. You just press play, right? It’s not the same thing, it’s a different thing. It’s pre-recorded music. This is all guys playing live and people seem to appreciate that. It’s all good, whatever. I just like to see people having fun, it doesn’t matter, just have fun.”
For him, rock is a universal language.
“People will pay a lot of money for us to play in Europe and they don’t speak a word of English. They understand what’s going on, they understand those words for those rock songs. It’s another reason why you love to do it, because there’s an unspoken bond between everybody involved. It’s neat, it’s special. It holds us all together, it ties us together. It’s great.”
