Cleopatra RecordsTodd Rundgren just-released studio album White Knight finds the acclaimed singer/songwriter collaborating with a wide variety of guest stars, including Daryl Hall, Steely Dan‘s Donald Fagen, Joe Walsh, Nine Inch Nails‘ Trent Reznor, guitar whiz Joe Satriani and Swedish dance-pop singer Robyn.
Rundgren tells ABC Radio that because he’s made most of his studio albums during the past 20 years by himself, “I got to a point where I felt I should make a greater effort to collaborate with other artists so that I wasn’t simply in my own echo chamber all the time.”
Rundgren says he hopes working with an array of artists from various genres will “open up new audiences” to his and his collaborators’ music.
According to Todd, nearly all the collaborations on White Knight were done remotely. He explains that his approach to working with the various artists was to let them “either contribute something to me and then I add to it, or I do something and ask them to contribute to it but not really oversee it in a way that I would if I was kind of in the same room.”
Rundgren reveals that Fagen was the only artist he worked with directly in the studio. The song they co-wrote, “Tin Foil Hat,” a hilarious skewering of President Trump that Todd says sounds like “a lost song from a Steely Dan record.”
For his collaboration with Walsh, “Sleep,” Rundgren says he completely rearranged an idea Joe sent him, so “it took him a little while to recognize it. But, in the end, I think he was happy with what we did.”
Rundgren will appear on The Tonight Show this evening, sitting in with house band The Roots. The show airs at 11:35 p.m. ET on NBC.
Copyright © 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
