Jonathan Cain isn’t sure about the prospects of a complete Journey album, but he says the band is nevertheless moving forward with new music.
“It’s so tough out there,” Cain admits, in a new conversation with Classic Rock magazine. “We had hoped for better results with Freedom, even though it was cut-and-paste, a bit of an experiment during COVID.”
Journey was forced to work remotely to complete their most recent LP, with Cain in Florida, Neal Schon and Narada Michael Walden in the Bay Area, Arnel Pineda in his native Philippines and Randy Jackson in Los Angeles. An advance single, “The Way We Used to Be,” arrived in the summer of 2021.
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“The COVID song I wrote with Neal, ‘The Way We Used to Be,’ was tongue-in-cheek all the way,” Cain says. “I heard a lot of bad COVID songs – I mean some really bad ones – so we needed to do something that was really slick. That’s when I had the idea of two lovers not being about to see one another.”
Freedom followed a year later, but the massive 15-song project stalled at No. 88, Journey’s worst showing since 2005’s Generations only reached No. 170 on the Billboard album charts.
Journey has largely avoided the album while building set lists for their ongoing 2024 tour, which just jumped to stadiums with Def Leppard and Steve Miller. “Right now we’re only playing one [‘Let It Rain’],” Cain confirms, “but we are working on a new, new song – and if we can get that up to speed, we may be playing that one too. We’ll see.”
Cain reiterates that this track is “brand new, right out of the box. If it gets accepted then who knows … it might be a single.” He confirms that the title is “‘This Town.’ It’s about the fans – that 50-year relationship we’ve had with them. We wrote it about their loyalty. The hook is: ‘Tonight, it’s all about this town.'”
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