Rick Springfield Explores His Blues Side on New Album 'The Snake King': Exclusive

Maybe he's still pining for "Jessie's Girl," but Rick Springfield has got the blues -- at least on record. The Grammy-winning rocker is releasing The Snake King, his first blues-oriented album, Jan. 26 via Frontiers Music SRL. 

“All my first bands that I played in as a kid in Australia were blues bands, trying desperately to copy as best we could the amazing music we were hearing coming out of the Chicago blues scene and the older stuff from the deep South,,” said Springfield in a statement. “My guitar playing was always influenced by the same guys who influenced all the English players I grew up with, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, etc. Everyone was playing their version of what they heard from the Southern Blues and the Chicago scene.”

Springfield, who has scored 17 top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, has incorporated a handful of his original blues tunes on the road the past two years on his “Stripped Down” tour, and that led to the full collection. “The blues songs are so much fun to play, and they got such a reaction from the audience that I started thinking about including some of that vibe in my next album,” he said. "And with the shape of humanity’s struggle against this amazing planet, I wanted the album to be more lyric driven, so, for better or for worse, it produced The Snake King.”

As track “Little Demon” shows, the album gives Springfield a chance to show off a grittier side that he has often displayed in concert and, at more than five minutes, the song lets him stretch out on the bluesy guitar breaks.

There will be a limited-edition vinyl version of The Snake King available exclusively through Frontier Records’ website. It marks Springfield’s first vinyl issue since 1988’s Rock of Life.  

Fans can pre-order the album, Springfield’s 19th studio set, at http://radi.al/TheSnakeKing.

Springfield, who appeared in Dave Grohl’s Sound City documentary and has penned two New York Times best-selling books, has logged considerable time on big and little screens lately. He played opposite Meryl Streep in the late Jonathan Demme’s Ricki & The Flash, plus a multi episode arc in HBO’s True Detective. Springfield also played the devil in the CW’s  Supernatural and recently was seen in an episode of American Horror Story. 

The Snake King track list:
1. In The Land Of The Blind
2. The Devil That You Know
3. Little Demon
4. Judas Tree
5. Jesus Was An Atheist
6. The Snake King
7. God Don’t Care
8. The Voodoo House
9. Suicide Manifesto
10. Blues For The Disillusioned
11. Santa Is An Anagram
12. Orpheus In The Underworld