If Collective Soul were a startup, Ed Roland would be the founder still showing up every morning in his band’s original T-shirt, 30 years later, because he actually believes the mission statement. Which, if you’ve been paying attention, goes something like this: make rock music, make it loud, make it honest, and make it now.
That philosophy carries through on their latest album Vibrate, a record Roland wrote entirely on piano—his long-standing bucket list item—before taking it to the band. “I just wanted to get it out of my system,” he shrugs. “But they came in and were like, ‘Yes, we’re doing this.’”
The result is one of the most introspective and musically unexpected albums in the band’s discography, which—if you’re counting—now includes 11 studio albums, three more in the can, and another one scheduled for early next year. Yes, another. Collective Soul is the only ‘90s rock band operating on a five-year content plan like it’s a Marvel Phase.
“It’s just where I was in that time and space,” Roland says of Vibrate. “Spiritually, musically… all of the above.”
He’s not wrong. This is an album full of searching, written at the end of a four-month tour, during a time when Roland—like the rest of us—was doing a lot of sitting around watching Seinfeld and wondering what the hell happened to the world. “I wrote ‘Reason’ during the pandemic,” he says. “Catching up on TV shows… it was a show about nothing, so I was doing nothing. I thought, well, I’ll write a song about nothing.”
Naturally, it turned out to be devastating.
There’s Where Did I Go, which closes the album with Beatles-meets-ELO ambition, complete with three songs stitched together into one lush finale. “The last track on a record should be a little experimental,” he explains. “Leave you wondering what comes next.”
And what comes next? Apparently a lot. There’s Open, Anniversary, and a still-untitled piano record already finished. Next up: recording a full new album in Elvis Presley’s abandoned Palm Springs house in January. “No one’s recorded there since Elvis,” Roland grins. “We’re gonna be the first.”
You get the sense he can’t help it. While some bands plan tours around legacy anniversaries and royalty checks, Roland keeps demoing new material in his basement. “We just like staying busy,” he says. “We enjoy each other’s company. Always have. That’s rare.”
It shows in Back Again, one of the record’s standouts, written and recorded in a blur of exhaustion during a two-day session meant for something else entirely. “We tracked it in two or three takes. Woke up the next morning like, what the hell did we just do? It was magic.”
Speaking of magic, Roland’s perfectly happy to talk about the Dosage era track “She Said,” a haunting B-side turned cult favorite thanks to the Scream 2 soundtrack. “It was one of the few times I wrote lyrics before music,” he reveals. “It was about my mom and my Pawpaw. He was a recovering alcoholic and a World War II vet. The lyrics just came.”
That song was almost on their second album, then almost on Dosage, then hidden as a secret track because, well… “We were geniuses,” he deadpans. “Geniuses who decided to bury one of our best songs.”
The conversation veers into the band’s courtroom-era third album—Disciplined Breakdown—whose 25th anniversary was quietly marked with a Record Store Day release. It’s the one they recorded in a kitchen, on a cow farm, while being sued by their own manager. “We thought we were making demos,” Roland recalls. “Turns out we were just making a great album.”
He looks back at that time not with regret, but with a kind of raw clarity. “That was the start of me getting comfortable as a lyricist. Realizing it’s okay to write honestly about yourself. Even when it’s forgiveness.”
Especially when it’s forgiveness. “My dad always said, if you can’t forgive, don’t expect to be forgiven,” Roland says. “I try to live by that. I don’t always succeed, but it’s in the back of my mind.”
That’s the thing about Collective Soul in 2023. They’re not just surviving. They’re thriving. Writing. Touring. Booking Elvis’ house. Not chasing trends or nostalgia, just making new music because that’s still what they love doing.
“I mean, we’ve got three albums done and we’re working on a fourth,” Roland shrugs. “We just keep going.”
Of course they do. That’s what Collective Soul has always done—right from the kitchen to the stage, no filter required.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
