Catching Up With... Solomon Burke

With his last several albums—from 2002’s soulful Don’t Give Up On Me to the rocked-up Make Do With What You Got and 2006’s countrified Nashville—Solomon Burke has helped secure his legend, proving himself as a relevant artist, even into his late 60s. The King of Rock and Soul’s brand-new record, Like A Fire, features the songs and playing of Eric Clapton, Keb’ Mo’, and a pair of Burke’s younger admirers, Ben Harper and Jesse Harris. The laidback, stripped-down record deals with the complex issues the world faces today in the only way former preacher Burke knows how—with thoughtfulness, humor, grace, love and the soulful power of his versatile voice. Paste recently had a chance to speak with this legendary artist, who was at home in L.A.

Solomon Burke: Good morning!

Paste: How you doin’, sir?
Burke: Oh, great, so good to hear your voice. Where are you, Steve?

Paste: I’m at the Paste office in Atlanta, Georgia.
Burke: Atlanta, Georgia. How’s the weather down there this morning? I know it’s crazy in Alabama right now.

Paste: It’s kinda rainy, but there are no storms just yet.
Burke: I was looking at a tornado just a few seconds ago, coming through Mississippi.

Paste: Yeah, they’ve been having a bad time—we’ve had a lot of tornadoes this year.
Burke: You know, God’s tryin’ to tell us something, huh? All the things that are going on in the world, just on top of one another.

Paste: With Myanmar and the earthquake in China, I can’t even really get my head around it all, you know?
Burke: Every day you wake up and you say, ‘Is this the news? Or is this the generations of Revelations?’

Paste: [laughs] That crosses my mind a lot.
Burke: So how’s your family, everybody well?

Paste: Everybody is well, man, how ’bout you?
Burke: Well, I’m blessed. I’m blessed. Great weekend, y’know. Got a lot of calls from kids and grandkids, even had a couple kids say, “Happy Mother’s Day!” [laughs] ... All right, let’s leave it there [laughs]. If they could just remember Father’s Day. [laughs again – Burke loves to laugh, and make others laugh]. Look, I have 89 grandchildren, so...

Paste: You kidding me?
Burke: No, I’m serious. When I get a call from them, half the time I don’t know who I’m talking to.

Paste: Do you actually remember them?
Burke: My problem is, there’s a couple with the same names. So then I say, ‘Now, what state are you in?’ and they say, ‘You know, our grandfather’s so senile, he doesn’t even know what country we’re in!’ [laughs] But it’s wonderful, man, it’s wonderful, it’s like a fire.

Paste: So, speaking of that record you just did...
Burke: Did I throw that in there good?

Paste: Yeah, that was good, man, you’re great at the segue. I can tell you’ve been doing this for a little while.
Burke: I always got the manager coming in here, goin’ ‘Stop telling jokes! They don’t wanna hear your jokes!’ But it’s good to laugh, y’know? You gotta work all day and deal with life every day and all the situations of life on a piece of paper and a computer, you need to stop and laugh for a minute. You need to smile, somebody needs to be happy for a minute. Just going on the daily schedule of life, which we should be grateful for, but we need to have some joy in it sometimes. ... So what are we doing here today? I haven’t been to Atlanta in a long time, which is crazy.

Paste: Are you hitting the road pretty hard these days?
Burke: Are you kidding? I leave Friday to start our tour. I don’t even know where the heck I’m going. Oh, Detroit! And then our European tour begins, and we come back in August, so if you get a chance to look on my website, you will see I’m tryin’ to get air miles. ... See, you have to keep bein’ out there. You gotta get out there and let people see you and hear you to keep it going, I mean, that’s the secret—don’t stop ’til you reach the top. And make sure the top’s a looong way up.

Paste: You’ve been touring and recording for so long; you’ve been doing this for decades—what’s different for you today as opposed to when you started out?
Burke: I been doing this so long the Trailways bus company went out of business and Greyhound no longer puts the dog on the side of the bus ’cause they don’t want people to think it’s a hip-hop bus! [Laughs] Kids think it’s Snoop Doggy Dogg’s bus going down the street! [Laughs again, heartily] So now when you see the buses, it’s all beautiful designs. You know, it’s been since 1954 I started recording and it’s been a beautiful beginning of life, and the adventures of life just revolving and revolving into a great circle, and the idea is to keep making it a journey and not just a trip, and that’s what we try to do. I’m no longer making CDs or DVDs—I put it together as packages and units that we’re doing to combine and make one great message of love and peace and contentment, and some type of signal that sends out the word of love, and you have to have that, you have to have a unit that expresses what it is and what it’s about. You have to have a meaning for it, not just make a record, y’know?