John Oates on 'Reunion' and Life After Hall & Oates
Business aside, he’s much more interested in focusing on the latest chapter in his life, one that finds him free to pursue the kind of music that, to some degree, he tabled as one-half of Hall & Oates.
“(The music I was making prior to meeting Daryl) was roots music, acoustic, acoustic-oriented, some early R&B, but mostly folky and bluesy,” he says.
“When Daryl and I got together, we combined our two individual influences together to create something totally unique and new, that was unique to us as a duo,” Oates says.
It was those unique influences that led the pair to history-making success, spawning hit after hit in the ‘70s and ‘80s including “Sara Smile,” “Rich Girl,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “Kiss On My List” and “You Make My Dreams,” among countless others.
By the ‘90s, however, their collaboration began to wane. Oates says that in the absence of making music with Hall, he began looking for other outlets, drawing him to Nashville, a place he would eventually call home.
“Very early on, I realized that there could be a musical home for me there, but I wasn’t quite ready to make the move,” he says.
But the idea of it stuck with him, and when the time came for Oates to find his “solo music identity,” one where he could see himself “being identified outside of the work I did with Daryl,” it was the Nashville music community and influence that brought him back to stay.
A result of that figurative homecoming is “Reunion,” an album Oates says is his most personal.
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