In an exclusive interview, John Oates revealed that he's been stockpiling song ideas and musical fragments should he and Daryl Hall ever decide to record again. Oates, who's been busy focusing on his Americana-based music over the past few years, is gearing up for the first new Hall & Oates album since the duo's 2006 holiday collection, Home For Christmas.
Hall & Oates' last all original set was 2003's Do It For Love. The duo is heading back on the road with Squeeze and special guest KT Tunstall.
Although Oates' recent musical focus has been far more roots oriented than the pop-soul of his work with Hall, we asked him if he thinks the material he's been collecting will fit comfortably under the Hall & Oates moniker: “I do. I've got some things kinda put away, put off to the side. Things I've written with other people. I have ideas. I have half-finished, quarter-finished things, y'know, snatches of stuff. And now, it's really more about me shifting mental gears musically, and digging back in to some of that stuff and seeing what I've got — and getting together with Daryl and seeing what he's got. That's what we always used to do. We'd, kind of, bring all of these ideas together, and all of a sudden, a theme would emerge. Something that was coherent would emerge from these various ideas.”