Kimball wizard

Toto singer Bobby Kimball is belting out the hits behind his Roland RD300. ‘Africa’ soars, ‘Rosanna’ enthralls, ‘I’ll Be Over You’ beguiles and ‘Hold The Line’ nearly provokes a mini-riot.

It is not 1985.
It is a balmy May evening in 2010 and Bobby is in town to launch the i-Tab, an Irish invention designed to make picking up songs much easier for guitar players. Backed by a group of stellar session players, including Anto Drennan, Gerry Forde (of Session Music) and Rock ‘n’ Roll Kid Paul Harrington, Kimball is treating the assembled throng in the Mantra Garden, Maynooth to a greatest hits extravaganza. And they just can’t get enough.
Chatting to Hot Press earlier that evening, Bobby was keen to stress his enthusiasm for the i-Tab.
“From the very moment I witnessed the i-Tab I thought, ‘Whoa, here comes a revolution for music',” he says.
For the uninitiated, the i-Tab is a small device that clips on to the neck of a guitar. The screen scrolls lyrics and chords while you get on with the business of rocking like a mother or indeed noodling like a virtuoso.
Landing the Toto legend to launch the product was quite a coup for the brand. The band were one of the biggest selling acts of the ‘80s and have released over 17 albums and sold 30 million records. Toto contained some of the most experienced session musicans of the era and were held in high esteem by peers.
“I remember the early days like it was yesterday,” Bobby recalls. “Everyone in the band was playing on so many different albums by different artists. Jeff Porcaro had been the drummer with Steely Dan, and David Paich had just finished doing the Silk Degrees album with Boz Scaggs. I was so honoured to be asked to sing with such talented musicians.
“Everyone in the band was constantly doing recordings, backing the best in the business,” he continues. “As soon as we formed Toto I started doing the same. I was doing background vocals for lots of different artists.”
Already a respected and much in-demand vocalist, Bobby’s first job was working with uber-diva
Diana Ross.
“She was great!” Bobby enthuses. “She had no problem saying exactly what she wanted and she was very knowledgeable. The producer’s job was very easy because she was a seasoned pro.”
Another famous diva Bobby backed was Barbara Streisand.
“I was so nervous because I overslept and was late for that session – I had just been in the studio for 36 hours straight,” he says. “Everyone had said that Barbara is very hard to work with and she’s going to be a real drag. When I got there she came over and gave me a big hug. I apologised profusely and I told her she was one of my heroes. She said, ‘I love you too darling’. She was sooo sweet.”
Bobby’s famous voice remains as powerful as it was in his ‘80s heyday. How does he keep it in shape?
“I practice a technique called Speech Level Singing. I also don’t force my voice like I used to. I sing from my diaphragm and I always warm up. All of these things are very important. I have a beer every now and then. I don’t take things to the extreme and I get plenty of rest. Every chance I get I rest my voice. Normally I wouldn’t be doing this interview,”
he chuckles.
Bobby has been singing since the age of four and cites Ray Charles as his biggest influence.
“I had the honour of singing with him once,” he says. “I was doing background vocals with this guy named Charles Veale and the producer asked Ray Charles to do a part. He came in the day I was singing my very last piece and sat and listened for about 20 minutes. When I finished I walked into the control room and he faced me and said, “Yeeaaahhh’. All of a sudden my life was validated. I was thinking: 'I can die now, it will be okay'.”
Like Ray, Bobby also has played piano from an
early age.
“I never took a piano lesson in my life,” he laughs. “I had the piano that was a birthday gift to my mother when she was eight years old. I played that instrument for many years and then when I had beaten it almost completely to death I bought her a new one! Actually it was a Kimball piano!”
The love affair has continued and Bobby still writes all his songs on the piano.
“I have a Mason Hamlin Grand at home. I got it about 25 years ago. They don’t make the model I have any more. It is the epitome of a grand piano.”
Over the years Toto released many albums, but they will always be remembered for Toto IV which spawned ‘Rosanna’ and ‘Africa’.
“When we were recording the third album, Turn Back, there was a huge change in CBS records,” Bobby states. “It became more or less a brand new company and we didn’t get the same push on the album. So we knew coming in to make the fourth album that we were going to have to come up with something very unique and very strong. We wrote the best material we possibly could. We worked on the album harder than we had ever done before. It was an eight-month venture. I do remember we spent three weeks alone on the percussion for ‘Africa’.”
Consequently, the Toto IV album was nominated
for nine Grammys and won seven, a hugely
impressive feat.
“For one award we were up against the Nightfly album by Donald Fagen,” remembers Bobby. “We were such huge fans of his. Donald was seated right next to me during the show and it was almost sacrilegious to me that we were getting all these awards and he was just sitting there!”
In addition to a wealth of original material, Toto also released a covers album, Through The Looking Glass, in 2002.
“‘House Of The Rising Sun’ is my favourite on that record,” says Bobby. “I did about six lead vocal versions in total. Then Simon Philips, a fantastic engineer, took them and edited all the different parts to make an entirely new piece. It took me almost two weeks to learn my own vocal!”
Toto collaborated with a host of luminaries over the years, including Jon Anderson of Yes, who contributed backing vocals to ‘Stop Loving You’ on The Seventh One album. Fast forward 22 years and Bobby has joined forces with some of his former bandmates to form supergroup Yoso. Their debut album Elements is due in July.
“The bass player Billy Sherwood and myself wrote the whole record,” he states. “Billy is a multi-instrumentalist. He would put down a basic track and then I would spend a day or two writing lyrics and putting a vocal down. It was great fun and a really good way to approach writing an album.”
Bobby also plays an active role in maintaining his website, which contains a unique feature for vocalists called Singers Corner.
“When I was putting my site together I really wanted to provide singers with a useful resource, something I didn’t have when I was starting out,” he explains. “People coming to my webpage can hear some really talented voices or post their own audio files. I get lots of nice emails thanking me and some say, ‘I just scored a record deal because of your webpage!’”