Paul Stanley’s Soul Station band premiers September 11 at the Roxy

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Daniel Kohn | LA Weekly

paul-stanley-soul-station-cropFor the better part of the past 40-plus years, Paul Stanley has been known as the lead singer of KISS. But there’s more to being a rock icon than painting your face and putting on a dynamic live show. In his autobiography, Face the Music, Stanley mentions early on how he got into the Motown and Philly soul, and that played as much of a role as British rock did in shaping his career.

To honor those influences, Stanley, along with nine other musicians, formed Paul Stanley’s Soul Station. The group has honed a repertoire of 17 songs so far, which the singer says is enough without being too much. Playing only soul and R&B covers from that golden era of Motown, Stax/Volt and Philadelphia International, Stanley’s new band is a lot different from the band that made his career. For starters, squeezing the band onto the Roxy stage on Sept. 11 may be a challenge; the KISS guitarist/singer jokes that “maybe we’ll have to be on each other’s shoulders.”

Ahead of that show, we caught up with the Soul Station impresario to hear about the project’s origins, how important of a role this music played in his own songwriting, and what fans can expect from the band’s live show.

Why at this point in your career did you decide to form this group?
A lot of people have asked me similar questions. But before I saw Led Zeppelin, I saw Otis Redding, I saw Solomon Burke and I saw The Temptations. I grew up as much on real blues, R&B, Motown and Philly soul as British rock.

I just find myself thinking that people go to live shows paying for Kobe beef and getting dog food. You get computerized music with fake vocals, and it had me thinking about all of the great Motown and Philly soul acts that did these great songs and delivered the goods. I thought it was a great thing to celebrate, so I called some of the top people who I knew and when I told them what I wanted to do, [and] everybody without hesitation said they were in.