Psychedelic rock legends Jefferson Starship are about to fly once again. The band has teased the release of a new album called Mother of the Sun, their first full-length release in 12 years.
David Freiberg, the group’s co-founder and longest-tenured member, revealed the news during his recent appearance on Kyle Meredith with… The chat was centered on the 45th anniversary of Jefferson Starship’s sophomore album, Red Octopus, but as things turned to what’s next for the band, Freiberg gave word of what will be their 11th LP. “Actually, we have a new one coming out. I guess it’s actually going to start coming out next month,” he said, hinting that we could hear a first single in July. “But yes, it’s called Mother of the Sun. S-U-N.”
It also sounds as if that first track will feature a writing credit from former member Grace Slick. According to Freiberg, she co-wrote the song “It’s About Time” with guitarist Jude Gold and lead singer Cathy Richardson. “So we have some lyrics from Grace on this,” he explained. “It’s called ‘It’s About Time’, which will probably be our first single. It’s about how it’s time for women to run the world, because look what’s happened!”
While the record was written during the pre-pandemic days, Freiberg said the songs “are very predictive. They’re very with current events.” That includes a track called “What Are We Waiting For?”, which was inspired by a favorite saying of late co-founder Paul Kantner. As Freiberg put it, “So ‘What Are We Waiting For?’ is kind of, ‘Well, here we are supposed to be able to take care of ourselves. What are we waiting for?’ You’ll see… We’ve known all along what to do; therefore, what are we waiting for?”
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Elsewhere, Freiberg explained how the project came about following Kantner’s passing in 2016. The five additional members who were playing around Kantner at the time “completely gelled,” and so Kantner’s family gave the band their blessing to continue on. Slick agreed, and licensed the rights for them to retain the Jefferson Starship name. “Everybody is listening to everybody all the time,” Freiberg said. “And everybody can’t wait to get back together, which is really unusual.”
In fact, the band wants to play together again so badly that they’ve been filming collaborative videos from their separate locations across the country during lockdown. Freiberg didn’t specify whether they were playing new songs or classic ones, but we should find out soon enough, along with more details about Mother of the Sun.
Take a listen to the whole interview below, and stay tuned for more on Mother of the Sun. Listen to Jefferson Starship’s past efforts in stunning high-definition audio by signing up for a 60-day free trial of TIDAL HiFi.
Update: Mother of the Sun will be released on August 21st.
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