The Coston Chronicles

Bruce Sudano: The Soul Keeps Moving

Interview and introduction by Daniel Coston

The story of Bruce Sudano contains many adventures, and many eras. From early days writing with Tommy James and touring with Alive N Kickin, to finding himself on top again as part of the popular R&B trio, Brooklyn Dreams. Through his work with Brooklyn Dreams, he met Donna Summer, who would become his partner in all aspects until her death in 2012.

Throughout his life, Bruce’s music as both a singer and writer has always been there. Be it writing with Donna Summer, for Brooklyn Dreams, for TV and movies, it was there. It was his outlet for dealing with tragedy, and finding love again. Now remarried and splitting his time between Italy and America, Sudano continues to push forward through his music, and to find what inspires him now.

Daniel Coston: Let’s talk first about your most recent release, and what you are working on now.

Bruce Sudano: I released, Talkin’ Ugly Truth, Tellin’ Pretty Lies, last year. It’s been a year of promoting that, playing a bunch of shows, and doing some videos on the songs. We put a few on youtube, old school “lets make a music video” kind of stuff. I’m always working on new stuff.

I’ve been in the laboratory for the past couple of weeks, just really trying to get in there and create new, what I call sketches.I get into this process of writing a little bit every day, then recording a little bit everyday on some of the songs that I’ve written. Its a different kind of headspace for me, for sure. It’s almost like I have a love hate relationship with recording.

But yeah, I’m back in there, trying to figure out what I’m saying, how I want to say it, and how I want to dress it.

Coston: How did this most recent release come about?

Sudano: Basically, the same process I just described, other than I wrote most of those songs here in Milan. I would go into my studio, make the sketch, send the sketch to my producer, Ken Lewis, who is in Ohio. Then we kind of talk about what it is. He lives with it for a while, and what I like about Ken is that he takes his time. Some things come quickly, but other things you need to let it marinate, and find that special thing. Some things are obvious, but when you want to add something unique, it takes a minute. So Ken will listen until he finds what he can bring to it.

I’ve been doing what I’m doing for a very long time. You can become comfortable with the things that you do, and doing them a certain way, and having a producer who can give you a different look, and something that you hadn’t thought of. That’s how I work with Ken.

We have a rhythm section that’s mostly on the East Coast, and they put their parts down, and I will then re-do my guitar, typically and re-do my vocals. Other than the duet with Valerie Simpson, that was little bit different, only in that Valerie did her piano and vocals in her studio.

Coston: How long have you known Valerie?

Sudano: A long time. Over the years, there might have been eight times over thirty years that we’d be at the same function. Then in the 90s, we lived in Connecticut, not far from Valerie and Nick [Simpson]. There was a couple of times where we’d visit each other’s houses. When I wrote this song “Two Bleeding Hearts”, I felt like it should be a duet. I didn’t know who to duet it with, and all of a sudden, I thought of Valerie. I reached out, and she was gracious, and she’d said that she would love to do it. She’s such a magical songwriter, singer, and a great musician. It was a big treat for me,

Coston: Do you find that you enjoy recording this way now, as opposed to recording in a studio [in the same place]. Obviously, technology now allows us to work this way. Do you find that this current process suits you, or suits you now?

Sudano: I think it suits me now. I enjoyed the other way, as well. The last couple of records, I did in a studio. Cut the rhythm track with everybody there, and that’s a fun experience. It just comes down to what’s the most expedient, at the moment.

Back in the day, you could go in and cut three tracks in a day. Not that it was any shorter in completing the process. You could spend a lot of time back then, as well.

Coston: Do you see any of this new material as something that harkens back to your earlier records, such as Rainy Day Soul, or do you feel that each record reflects you at that time?

Sudano: I view it as an ongoing evolution. I feel like I get better at what I do, I have more fun at what I do, and that’s personal psychology for me.

I did my first solo album in [1981], and I didn’t listen to it for very many years. I don’t even have a copy of it. I went on Youtube and listen to what people had posted. I see it as somebody who has passion, and is searching for themselves. It’s taken me a while to settle into my own voice. I was in bands for much of my early career, and while I was always a principal songwriter, I rarely was the singer. I always surrounded myself with great singers, and it really wasn’t until my late wife left this planet that I picked up the mantle again. It’s a point of challenge, and a point of purpose, and a place to grow. That’s how I approach it.

I hadn’t done [another] solo album until I did Rainy Day Soul [in 2004]. Even then, it was putting my toe back in, and that was because my youngest daughter, Amanda, was off to college, and Donna [Summer] looked at me and said, “You have time to be you again, now.” I started that journey, and its been an ongoing evolution.

With that album, and the next record, Life And The Romantic (2009), they were basically studio productions without any live performance. I wasn’t touring, I didn’t perform live, I just worked in the studio and released records. It wasn’t until Donna got sick, and I started writing an album called With Angels On A Carousel (2014). Once she was gone, I was like, “Okay, I have to get out there on my own,” and it was the one challenge that I never really taken on. It also gave me a sense of purpose in a very difficult time in my life.

Coston: You’ve written a lot with other people, as well as on your own. Is writing on your own a different process, as opposed to writing with someone else?

Sudano: It’s very much a different process. The other aspect of this phase of my career is that almost of my success has been in collaborations. I’ve spent a large part of my career collaborating, but at this point in my career, I want to say things the way I want to say them, and its really just a matter of personal challenge. I’m not in this situation where I’m competing for Top Forty radio. Here, I’m just trying to develop as an artist, and continue to refine how I write, and what I write. Say the things that I want to say, and maintain the purity of that, for now. I wrestle with it now, where I feel like I’ve said so much. What else do I want to say? You can always write a love song, or a spiritual song in a new way. A story song, and all different genres that I typically work in, and find inspiration in.

On the Talk An Ugly Truth album, there’s a few songs where, I’m a guy of a certain age. And in every phase of your life, there are different challenges that you encounter. Being a guy my age, in his 70s, it really makes you say, “Okay, here I am.” There’s a song on the Talk An Ugly Truth album called, “How’d You Get Here?” The first few lines are, “Here’s to the generation of black and white TV, children of the middle class, free to be you or me.” I come from the generation of the youth revolution, and the Summer Of Love. Of disco, and New Wave, and all of these things that I’ve come out of. But now, its about a different phase of life, and writing about that. There’s a spoken piece on that album called, “Navigating The Unforseen”.

Those are personal issues. They are personal to me, in terms of how I’m writing and speaking about it, but I’m sure that there’s many people of my generation who can relate to the concept that I’m speaking of.

I’m a guy that wrote albums about loss, with Angels On A Carousel. But I’m also a guy that at a certain age, fell in love again. What is that about? I wrote through that, and love songs, and being a sixty year old guy feeling like a teenager in love. It’s something that I didn’t anticipate, so that was a source of inspiration.

Coston: Would you say that not having to worry about the charts now is, in a way more freeing? Obvious that was something that was a part of your writing in the past, but is it more liberating s a writer and singer to not worry about the charts?

Sudano: Absolutely. My natural inclination as a writer is to write in a certain way that isn’t the most, quote unquote commercial. When I was a younger man and competing to be successful, it was definitely a different headspace. At the same year, you’re learning and you’re growing, and you’re looking at what’s happening, and you’re saying, “How do I get myself into that?” lot of times, you slip into the game of chasing, as opposed to truly creating. I’ve into that trap a few times in my career, but I’m definitely free of that now, for the most part. I still have to say that, I still have moments where my motives can get conflicted.

I can become frustrated by a certain amount of success, or a certain amount of awareness. I can still have a moment where I slip into that headspace. But it’s certainly not where I live anymore at all. I look at what I do as a calling. I believe that I was called to be a songwriter. It’s what I love to do, its where I am, and so I just realign my motives, and get back into gear of being an artist, trying to do the best job I can in creating something new.

Coston: I want to take this back to your work with Tommy James. What did you get out of working with someone like that in the late 1960s that was having hits on the radio?

Sudano: Working with Tommy opened the door to the music business for me. I was in Alive N Kickin when I met Tommy. We were the house band at the main club in Manhattan called the Cheetah. Coincidentally, it was around the corner from where Tommy was living. He had an apartment there in those days, and he came to the club one night. Me, as an aspiring songwriter at the time, I don’t want to say that I glommed on to him, but we became friends. I would go over to his apartment on breaks. We would do forty minutes on, twenty minutes off, and I would run over there and try to write with him. I made a few trips into the city in my mother’s car, staying in town all night, writing at Tommy’s, or just hanging out, talking or whatever. I’d leave the apartment, and find out that my mother’s car got towed. All this crazy stuff.

Tommy was great. He was the first person to bring me into the recording studio, to show me how a record was made. The Allegro Sound recording studio was in the basement of 1650 Broadway. It was legendary studio, and its in the culture now. I owe Tommy a lot, and I learned so much from him.

He’s always been so gracious to me, and very generous and super-talented. I feel that he’s a very underrated artist. I don’t understand why he’s not in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Back them, there was shadow that would get thrown over an artist. They would call them a bubblegum artist, and I think that a little bit of that brush got painted on to Tommy, but he’s so much more than that. So innovative. “Crystal Blue Persuasion” is like no other record. “Crimson & Clover” is like no other record.

There’s so many options now for creating a new sound. Different ways of recording, or plugins. In those days, to create a new sound you had to reconfigure something and find it. Just the vocal effects on “Crimson & Clover”, or the arrangement of that song. Tommy was amazing.

I’m forever grateful.

Coston: What do you remember most about that time with Alive N Kickin was on the charts with Tighter & Tighter”?

Sudano: It was very exciting. But also, for me, I was young. I was twenty, twenty-one. I had already gotten lucky, having “Ball Of Fire” with Tommy get on the charts. “Tighter” was right after that. We were in the Top ten, and we were touring . I took my first plane ride to LA to be on American Bandstand. We’re touring with Chicago, and Mothers Of Invention, and I became a bit of a jerk, I think. There was a part of me that thought, “Oh, this is easy.” After “Tighter & Tighter”, we released three or four more singles that weren’t successful, and I ended up moving back into the basement of my parents’ house, and in some ways, it became a defining moment in my life. Because it made me realize that this isn’t a game. It’s really about learning how to write better songs, and committing to being a great artist, and listening to other writers, and beginning to find my voice. So I spent a couple of years after leaving Alive N Kickin just writing, trying to improve as a musician.

Then, I moved out to LA, and formed Brooklyn Dreams in 1976. I had some songs for the first Brooklyn Dreams album that I had written back in the basement that were foundations in getting our record deal.

Coston: You ended up playing American Bandstand twice. Once with Alive N Kickin, and once with Brooklyn Dreams. I loved your answer on the second appearance, when Dick Clark asked you what your dream was, and you said, “To play Madison Square Garden.” And I think that you had already played the Garden, by that point.

Yeah, well, my memory can be a little suspect. But in the show now, I like to say that I said that, and then we played the Garden. (laughs)

Coston: How did Brooklyn Dreams come together?

Sudano: Brooklyn Dreams was myself, Joe Esposito and Eddie Hokenson. All three of us were from Brooklyn, and we played in many different bands together. In fact, those years where I was back in my parents basement, and I wasn’t in a band, Joe and Eddie asked me to join their band. We were playing clubs in New York. They knew that I needed to get out of the house and make some money, and they said, “Bruce, come play with us.” Then coincidentally, the three of us wound up in Los Angeles the same year, and formed Brooklyn Dreams.

Coston: What did you enjoy the most out of that Brooklyn Dreams period?

Sudano: Brooklyn Dreams was basically a five year run, full of exciting things. We got to be in a movie called American Hot Wax, where we got to be an vocal group called the Planotones. It was the three of us with Kenny Nance, and it was a great experience. It was three months on a movie set, meeting Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, and made lifelong friends. Our guitarist was Ira Newborn. Brenda Newborn, who was a great singer-songwriter. Jay Leno was in the movie. That was a lot of fun.

Lots of TV shows as Brooklyn Dreams. We did a big tour with Donna, called the Summer Night’s Dream Tour. We toured all over the States. It was a very heady time. I wrote songs for movies. I wrote the theme for the Hollywood Knights movie. I became lifelong friends with the star of that movie, Robert Wuhl. Wrote the theme for the Police Story TV show, on NBC. Just lots of different opportunities like that, not the least of which was writing with Donna, and had four songs with her on the Bad Girls album. Co-writing “Bad Girls” with Joe and Eddie, and Donna.

Brooklyn Dreams did four albums for Casablanca Records in those years. Numerous chart records. Had the good fortune of “Heaven Knows”. It was a magical time. When moments like that happen, its such a chemical reaction of elements that come together to create that kind of combustion. You always try to put the right elements together, but things like that, you really can’t make that happen. It sort of happens, and you just ride the wave and go along for the ride. I had a little bit of that with Alive N Kickin, and a whole bunch of that with Brooklyn Dreams and Donna in the late 70s and early 80s.

Coston: Did you find writing forTV shows challenging? Or did you just say, this is a gig, and I want the opportunity”?

Sudano: Definitely all of the above. I definitely wanted the opportunity. I took it on as a challenge, and when you accomplish it, its very satisfying. It’s just interesting how things happen. You can’t predict things, you just have to show up all the time, do the best that you can do, and hopefully good things happen. But that’s how it went.

Coston: Do you see yourself that could still write for movies and TV?

Sudano: Absolutely. But for me, its really very much about sync, in terms of songs for movies. It’s really more about the music supervisor finding your song, or liking you as an artist, and putting your song in a show. In some ways, its very competitive, because its very coveted. In this era where radio has so much less impact than it used to, the opportunities have become much more valuable for everybody.

Coston: You’ve had a remarkable career. Are you able to look back on your life, and think that you did some good things Or does it all feel like someone else?

Sudano: Definitely all of the above. Sometimes, you listen back, and you think, “That was really great.” It’s like looking at a photo of yourself. You know its you, you know you wore that shirt. You’re connected to it, but at the same time, you’re not. I’ve been really fortunate, I’ve been blessed.

Coston: I’m friends with John Billings, who toured with you and Donna Summer. What is one thing about Donna that people may not know, that you would like people to know about her?

Sudano: Donna was the most extraordinary person that I’ve ever known. She was a unique talent. A beautiful person. Caring, compassionate. Warm, friendly, and funny. I can’t say enough about Donna. I’m sure that John would tell you the same thing. She was a great leader. We had a great band, and had great times on the road. We made lifelong friends in those times. We have great memories from years of touring. We had the same people for many years, and Donna was the focal point. She kept it all together. She treated everybody with grace, and respect. It was a great time with great people.

Coston: If you had the chance to talk to yourself in say, the Alive N Kickin days, would you do it? And if so, what would you say to yourself?

Sudano: I think I would tell myself to calm down a little bit, and maybe be a little more patient. I was a bit impatient when I was younger, but I think that’s normal. But I would tell myself to be a little more patient.

The surprising thing is that, in many ways personality wise, I really haven’t changed so much. Once I got past the lessons I learned, in terms of ego, and I learned that early on with Alive N Kickin. I’ve always been a little headstrong, and chasing the career kind of situation, but I’ve been blessed. Almost everything was great, Many great experiences, and met many great people. Many great environments with many great people. And yeah, patience! (laughs)

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