Being In A Band With Your Brother
Collective Soul
Cris Cohen: And then, kind of an extension of all this, the history of rock and roll is littered, unfortunately, with siblings who started bands and then ended up hating each other. You know, Oasis, The Kinks, Heart… it goes on and on. I'm very glad that has not happened with this band. And thus, again, I'm wondering what your advice is for making that work.
Dean Roland of Collective Soul: Yeah, we're very fortunate in that light. And not to say that we haven't had issues. I mean, we've been together for 30 years. And Ed and I both have pretty strong opinions about things. A lot of it is the same destination, just different approaches and different paths to get there. So we've had to get to a place where… back to that mutual respect thing. It’s like: I'm hearing you. I'm listening to you. And then you should listen too. You have to come to some degree of compromise at some point. And at some point, you know, he just finally gives up and has to listen to me. He knows I'm right.
Cris Cohen: <Laugh>
Dean Roland: I think it's like that. Really it's almost like America. You have to find that middle ground. And we've been through some of those tough times where it's like, “I don't know if this is worth it,” you know? And you take a little time, you get some perspective, and you go, “Oh yeah. Actually, I love that dude. We're cool.” I might not have liked him for a little bit or vice versa, but it's more fun. Because all of us, individually, can go do our own music and produce it and write it. But I enjoy doing it with him and the other dudes. I think fundamentally it just kind of boils down to that. Not to oversimplify it, but we have a good time. We laugh. We're good buds.