4 star

From Garage, to Stadiums, to Re-Birth.

Cinematographer Joseph Rubinstein (Taleen Kali: Only Lovers Left Alive (Music Video), 9 Lives of Mara) has been tasked with putting together the thirty-year story of the nine-year struggle for overnight success, of the rock band ‘Collective Souls’. With archive footage of the early 1990s-to-the-present-day, that will herald the new chapter in the band’s story, as they embark on their first tour in seventeen years. With candid interviews with the various band members and other music gods, we get a very personal view of what it takes to break into the music industry, and the tricky journey of record labels, band managers, drugs and rock-and-roll, personal tragedies and family break-ups.

In 2023, Collective Soul was given 30 days to record an album at Graceland West, Elvis’s second home.

This would be the first music recorded here since Elvis died.

1993 Stockbridge, Georgia, and Ed Roland has been working on his music at Real 2 Reel Studios, since leaving music college. He would send in demo tapes to the local college radio station ‘Album 88’, they played his songs, and they became locally popular and one song in particular was request often ‘Shine’. Ed was forced into forming the band Collective Soul with his brother Dean, bassist David Neal, guitarist Ross Childress, and drummer Shane Evans.

This all happened when the music station MTV took off and suddenly Shine and Collective Soul hit the big time, as within five months they went from total obscurity to supporting headline bands like Aerosmith and Van Halen.

This meteoric rise to fame led to hit albums and number one songs in the charts once they were signed to a record label, which is another story explained in this in-depth look into the lifespan of a much admired rock group.

It’s all in this one-hundred and six minute rockumentary, plus the enormity of being in the King’s house to make their new music with the much transformed band.

Give Me A Word: The Collective Soul Story is an eye-opening view into what it takes to keep a group together for thirty years, and still have the lust for the music to move on to create new music and take it out on the road for the first time in seventeen years.

This show will have you searching for Collective Soul music as they blast out their hits and make new music, a foot tapping and headbanging rockumentary.

I hate reminiscing, that sh*t sucks.

Give Me A Word: The Collective Soul Story is available to Stream and Download.