KNAC.com recently hooked up with TESLA guitarist Frank Hannon to discuss the band's new album, Real To Reel. Th efollowing is a brief excerpt from the interview:

KNAC.com: Tell us about Real To Reel. What prompted Tesla to do an entire album of cover tunes and how did you go about selecting the material?

Hannon: "We were thinking about doing a covers album and we thought it was just going to be real simple to do quickly. But we wanted it to be the best covers album to come out, so we allowed it the time to develop. We started off having each guy in the band bring in their favorite songs and going through them, but then we realized that some songs just weren’t going to work. We were trying everything from GOO GOO DOLLS, NIRVANA to current music. We were trying to be clever, because usually when bands do covers they try to be clever. So that’s when the idea for Real To Reel came in. We wanted to keep it as real and honest as possible, and in order to do that, we had to do songs that are from our roots—songs from the ’70s that we grew up on. So we experimented with songs that are more guitar-driven, more ’70s-rock oriented and real to us, and we filtered out all the baloney."

KNAC.com: Of course, this isn’t the first time Tesla has recorded covers.

Hannon: "We’ve always done covers, like on Five Man Acoustical Jam, and in our shows we’ve always done BEATLES tunes, Frampton tunes, and we’ve always experimented with covers. For this record, we spent almost two years trying out songs. At first, when Tommy Skeoch was still in the band, we recorded some covers over at Brian’s studio that are eventually going to end up on a box set. We recorded them digitally in Pro Tools at Brian’s studio, and then we decided that for this album we wanted to go full on analog and keep it as real to the ’70s sound as we could. We decided to record in a fully analog studio down in Texas—a place called Sonic Ranch. The owner, Tony Rancich, has a ton of vintage guitars, amps and pedals, and all kinds of really cool ’70s gear that we used on the album."

KNAC.com: Do you have a favorite song or solo from this album?

Hannon: "On this one, it would have to be 'Rock Bottom'.”

KNAC.com: Which recordings from Tesla’s catalog would you put on an essential listening list?

Hannon: "I would say Five Man Acoustical Jam and this album, Real To Reel, because it was done in the same sense—it’s live and it’s real. These aren’t our songs, but we played them as if they were. We put as much integrity and time into making this album as we do on all of our records. This new record is definitely prime material for Tesla because it’s 25 songs and we put as much energy into making it as we would our own music. I think that some of the best original songs are 'What U Give', which is just a very heartfelt, soulful kind of song with acoustic guitar to 'Modern Day Cowboy', which is the quintessential political anthem side of Tesla that has as many fast guitar riffs in it as we could play, and killer lyrics. That’s what we’re about—killer guitar licks and killer lyrics."

Go to this location to read the entire interview.