By Jim Barber
Whether you want to call them a supergroup comprised of prodigiously talented, versatile and eminently successful rock musicians, or a creative ‘collective’ which features a rotating band of musical gypsies who come and go, leaving in their wake some killer tracks and badass concert experiences, The Dead Daisies are now a bona fide music biz phenomenon.
Originally a project designed to bring together some musical pals, led by band founder and Australian musician/songwriter/band leader David Lowy, the current lineup of Daisies features former Dio, Whitesnake and Burning Rain (his own band) guitarist Doug Aldrich, who has been in the band since 2016, another former Whitesnake member in bassist Michael Devin, former Motley Crue vocalist John Corabi, who is on his second stint with the band since returning in 2023, along with Ozzy Osbourne/Black Sabbath drummer Tommy Clufetos.
Hot on the heels of their 2024 studio album Light ‘Em Up, the band recently released Lookin’ For Trouble, a novel but incendiary take on 10 classic Blues numbers, composed by the likes of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and the three ‘Kings’ of the Blues – B.B., Freddie and Albert, among others. Their version of Johnson’s ‘Crossroads’ was the first single, released this past spring, followed be a gritty, grinding interpretation of John Lee Hooker’s classic, ‘Boom Boom.’
A lot of the recording for Lookin’ For Trouble took place at one of the most famous, iconic and inspirational studios in the United States – FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It has played host to iconic artists such as Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Etta James, country music legends such as Mac Davis, Bobbie Gentry and The Gatlin Brothers, as well as, surprisingly, Donny Osmond. More recently, Demi Lovato, The Drive By Truckers and Jason Isbell laid down tracks within its walls. FAME is a living, working museum of Americana and popular music, and had the fellas in The Dead Daisies fired up like very few times in their careers.
“As soon as you walk in, it’s like 1959 or 1969. It was really cool, and everything is practically untouched from that time. I love Duane Allman [Allman Brothers, Derek and the Dominos] and it was when he was there with Wilson Pickett recording in 1968 where he really got famous. So, yeah, the walls were dripping with atmosphere and history for sure. I didn’t see any ghosts, but I felt something. I felt, like, this pressure of ‘look kid, don’t screw this up, man. A lot of people here paid their dues way more than you.’ I just had this expectation of myself that needed me to be better than usual,” Aldrich said.
While not an ‘accidental’ album, Lookin’ For Trouble was a delightfully unplanned, serendipitous concoction created by experienced, passionate musicians let loose without any expectations. Producer Marti Frederiksen took a ‘fly on the wall’ approach once he sensed there was some special musical mojo happening.
“We had gone down there to write songs with Marti, We didn’t have our regular drummer with us at the time. Tommy [Clufetos] was busy with some other stuff. So, we brought in Sarah Tomek [Samanth Fish] and our plan was to go into a studio that was somewhere different than we had been before and just record basic tracks [for Light ‘Em Up]. We weren’t worrying about the sounds or anything, so much as basically getting set up so we could write. And it went really well. First of all, the room was crazy. It was so inspiring to work in this studio. Every day they do a tour where they bring in 20 to 60 people and talk about all the music that had gone down within these walls. That was super inspiring and we were just having a blast. So, we got on a roll with the writing and we pretty much got ahead of the game. And I don’t know what it was like back then, you know, and being so close to the actual ‘crossroads’ which is in Mississippi,” he said, referencing the legend where bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at ‘The Crossroads’ in order to gain musical success. Johnson did not find that success in his lifetime, but has since been lionized and mythologized as the ‘founding father’ of blues music, influencing generations of artists from Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker to Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and many generations of rock and blues musicians to this day.
“We just started listening to all this stuff that came from this studio. And we would go out into the studio and just start jamming and having fun and one thing leads to another and Marti would say, ‘guys why don’t you try to do something with that song? Just change it up a little bit.’ So, for example with ‘Crossroads,’ everyone’s heard the amazing version that Cream did. It’s brilliant. We wanted to do something different, and I saw there was a really nice guitar that the studio had there. I think it was a Gibson ES-340 or 335 and I had it set up in the tuning that I was writing in and it was kind of a slide tuning, so I grabbed my slide and started jamming, and Sarah kicked in that beat you hear and it was like wow, and then the other guys joined in,” Aldrich said of the magical moment.
“And Marti jumped in and said, ‘let me record you guys.’ He could have just sat there and let us jam, but he heard something. We went into the booth after and thought it sounded pretty cool so we decided to finish it and came up with a couple of new musical parts for it. Once we were done with that, every day, just for fun, we would just come up with a different song to jam and pretty soon we had about eight songs done. We knocked out a couple really quick – ‘Sweet Home Chicago,’ and ‘Little Red Rooster.’ The whole thing while we were jamming was to try to put our stamp on some old classics that were basically the basis of the rock world. We were influenced by bands like the Rolling Stones and all that stuff, and they were influenced by these American blues artists.”
Aldrich particularly loved re-imagining the B.B. King classic, ‘The Thrill is Gone.’
“I wanted to contribute and throw a couple songs into the process. So, I said, ‘how about ‘The Thrill is Gone?’’ I love that song and everyone was down for it. But then it was, well what should we do with it? We decided to give it a different feel. We took it to a different time signature like six/eight or three/four which made it feel more like ‘Since I’ve Been Lovin’ You’ by Led Zeppelin, which also gave it more of a sadder vibe almost. We worked up an arrangement and then came up with a little musical part at the end that was just something to tag on for fun. We cut the track and the next morning Marti asked if I wanted to hit it again. And I listened back and said, ‘dude, I was in the moment right there and I don’t know if I could ever play it like that again.’ So, we left it as it was,” he said.
“I had the little melody in my head, the ascending melody that B.B. did in his version and I kind of hit that a couple of times. But I did it in a different way because the tempo was different. I just had some nuances in it from that first take that I know there’s no way I could ever play again. When you’re playing, you’re trying to be in the moment. You gotta play from the heart.”
Returning to FAME itself, Aldrich said there are places where you can see actual memorabilia from the legendary artists who recorded there, adding more fuel to everyone’s creative fire who walks through its doors.
“The stores coming from there are incredible. It was a wild, wild time. It must have been something to be here back then. Like I said, you walk in and it’s like you’re back in 1960. The owner had an office that was up above and they had a bunch of these amazing, precious items in there. And this was the actual office where people would come in and say, ‘hey, I got this song.’ And they’d play it for the guy and he might say yes, or he might say no. People kept coming in, trying to record here. It was working here with Wilson Pickett that gave Duane Allman his start and in that office is a handwritten letter, I think it was January 1969, written by him,” he said, adding that the tech used in the studio is also pretty old school, which took a bit of getting used to.
“The monitoring system and the headphones that were part of that system they had when we were recording was a mono system. I mean, everything was mono back then, so the system they still had there was mono, and I was pretty excited about trying it out. But when I got the headphone system, I realized I couldn’t hear shit. But I knew I had to dig deep and figure this out because about a million other people have already done it this way and had great results. I decided to strip down the mix; I just need some drums, a little vocal and a bit of my guitar, and that’s how I was able to do it. At one point the studio owner told us that they had ordered a stereo system years ago but that they never put it in. He actually asked me if I wanted them to put it in and I said, ‘no, I don’t want to be the one to mess up the vibe. I’m just going to roll with what you’ve got.’”
It was also a challenge at times, especially considering so much of the recordings used on Lookin’ For Trouble are inspired, one-take wonders, for vocalist Corabi, who Aldrich said definitely rose to the occasion.
“Like I said, the whole experience was pretty natural and organic, and John’s voice was a huge highlight of the record. His voice is perfect for that stuff, and he’s always got great ideas. He would come up with an amazing idea for how we could twist something about and I would go to work trying to come up with something to fit what he was looking for. I know he had a blast, and it shows on the final record,” he said.
On The Dead Daisies recent tour of Europe, the band played two songs from Lookin’ For Trouble.
“We did ‘Going Down,’ and ‘Boom Boom’ on the last tour, which we wrapped up just a couple of weeks ago. They went down great,” said Aldrich, who said after a tour of the U.K. in August there are no firm plans for any North American dates, at least for the remainder of 2025. Which doesn’t mean the fellas are not busy.
“I’m not sure. David also has a family business back in Australia, so he’s got to allocate some time for that. But I’m always writing, and John’s always writing and, actually, he’s putting together some songs for another solo thing and I am helping him with a couple of those. So, we’re doing that, but we do want to get back out on the road in North America and up into Canada of course, so hopefully we can do that at some point. I actually think it would be cool to do a blues night for each show. Get a couple of other artists like us that are into the blues rock thing and do something where we just stick to stuff like what’s on the album. I think that’d be great.”
Aldrich is also making sure to take care of himself, after navigating his way through a serious and scary bout of cancer, which began with a surprise diagnosis almost exactly one year ago.
He ended up being hit with a form of cancer which began as the virus known as HPV 16. A mysterious lump on his neck prompted him to eventually seek a medical assessment and then treatment.
“It’s something that women get scanned for when they go to the gynecologist but a lot of guys never really get scanned for it. So, by the time I saw it on my neck it had gone from just being cancer on my tonsils, which is where it started, to being in my lymph nodes. So, they had to remove those lymph nodes that were hot and they also took out my tonsils. But I was very lucky,” he said, adding that if there was any advice he could give, especially to other men, is to suck it up and get tested regularly.
“Don’t assume everything is going to be okay. I think it’s important to even get just general check-ups where they do blood work and stuff. It’s a pain in the ass, it’s not something you really look forward to doing, especially if you feel fine. The reason you go is because you never know what’s brewing, or what could brew so you really need to go to the doctor and get things checked out, especially get your blood work done. And my other advice would be is don’t worry about it too much until you have something to worry about. Don’t worry about something you can’t control. In my situation, I didn’t know that it was going to become something serious. When I first met with the doctor, I was concerned he was going to say, like that I had two weeks to live or two years or whatever. But he basically said, ‘you lucked out.’ This is a kind of cancer that can be treated if you catch it early and also it has less chance of recurring. So that part made me feel good. I had to do a full-on treatment and surgery so that part wasn’t so fun. Looking back, people were saying to me, ‘hey man, don’t worry. It’s just a bump in the road.’ And I was thinking, this is a big thing, and there’s no guarantees in life. But in the end it was a bump in the road.
“It messed up about half of my year last year because I was worried about stuff in the middle of treatment dealing with it, but in hindsight, yeah it was a bump. I had the operation last September and then I had about a month off to heal from the operations. I didn’t do chemo. I could have, but they said it was going to be difficult on my hearing and I don’t want to mess around with hat. So, I just went in for six weeks of radiation. And of course, radiation basically sucks your energy. That’s the biggest thing. And it burns your skin wherever they’re doing it. So, it’s not fun, but it is effective.”
Any time someone goes through such a trial, it tests your strength, courage, resiliency and even your ways of thinking about the world, your life and career. It is no different for Aldrich.
“First of all, I’m super blessed to still be here. We all have family to care for and I actually have younger kids at home, so I definitely need to stick around for them, make sure everything’s good for them. As far as the music goes, I’m really inspired to create. And what I mean is I think there’s a vacuum there that I need to fill with music – things I know I can do and I haven’t done yet. That’s kind of where I’m at right now. I’m kind of bouncing between doing a lot of practicing and a lot of recording, writing and stuff, as well as touring,” he said.
“When I was getting treatment, I had an opportunity to take some time off. I actually didn’t feel much like playing guitar during that time, so I did a lot of listening and that really was kind of an interesting thing because when you don’t have the instrument in your hand, you start imagining. ‘What if I played thus? What if tried this? How about I write a song?’ It changed things somehow. You just get inspired and then by the time I started getting back into playing guitar, I realized my chops were down. In January [2025, about four months after surgery] I went to the NAMM [National Association of Music Merchants] trade show. Black Star Amps have put out a signature amp for me and they wanted to know if I could go in and support the company and promote the amp and all that stuff. I went there and I was playing all day and I know my playing was good, but it was not my best. And that was a wake-up call that I really needed to get my playing together again. So, that’s what I’ve been doing.”
While it’s still early days in terms of what his long-term prognosis is, Aldrich said the news thus far has been very positive and very encouraging.
“It’s still an area of improvement every day. There’s some scar tissue where they made the incisions on my neck because there’s all kinds of stuff there. But it’s slowly coming back to life. You know, I can’t really complain because so many other things that were wrong are now better. My taste buds were gone; my ears were messed up. I couldn’t open my jaw. There’s a whole number of things that were difficult. Little by little everything is kind of subsiding. The only thing that’s left is a bit of numbness in my neck where they made the incision. And then the scar tissue because I have a lot of it built up. But, you know I feel good, and I know I’ve got a lot of people praying for me.”
For more information about The Dead Daisies, Lookin’ For Trouble and any future touring plans, visit https://thedeaddaisies.com, or the band’s social media accounts.
For more information on Aldrich, visit https://dougaldrich.burningrain.net, or his socials.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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