“MY HOUSE, MAN, it’s a music church,” Richie Sambora exclaims over Facetime from his Los Angeles home. “I’m used to paying two thousand dollars a day to go to the studio, but welcome to Kitchen Studios! It’s just off the kitchen here — where I keep my guys fed, because I work them hard!”
Sambora chuckles, but the reality is that all four of his new songs were cut in the comfort of his home, and why not? After all, he had its architecture tweaked for maximum sonic value. “I recessed every ceiling, all at different levels,” he notes, explaining the effort made to reduce reflections that can ruin a recording. “And every room sounds great.” Here, Sambora walks us through his writing and recording comeback effort, song by song. And, he adds, “I’ve got a few more tracks in the can that I plan to release.”
“I PRAY”
“I wrote ‘I Pray’ because there’s a lot of messed-up crap in the world. But I also realize that I’ve had a chance to tour around the world and impact people’s lives in so many ways. So ‘I Pray’ is about hoping that, despite the world’s troubled state, we can find a way to ease the pain.
“I’ve been known to use a talk box over the years, and I pulled it out for this track. It’s an effect that I just love. I remember performing in a bowling alley in New Jersey when I was a kid, and even then I had a talk box — it was one of the originals. For this track, I paired it with the [Electro-Harmonix] POG octave pedal and an original Klon. I used so many guitars on these songs, but this one features my original Bon Jovi Slippery When Wet guitar, which is just a slab of wood with a Floyd Rose and a [Seymour Duncan SH-4] Jeff Beck humbucker.”
“BELIEVE (IN MIRACLES)”
“Writing this song gave me fits. There were several versions of it before I found the finished one. I I believe in miracles? The theme is similar to ‘I Pray,’ only it’s about thinking miracles can happen, even though the world is going to hell.
