Tesla guitarist Dave Rude has explained why the band is unlikely to release another full-length album of original material, pointing to the practical realities of a catalog-heavy setlist and the diminishing returns of studio albums for a band at Tesla’s career stage.
Speaking with Scott Itter of Dr. Music (transcribed by Blabbermouth), Rude described the setlist constraints that make new material a hard sell: “There’s 85% of that set — they’re all songs that we can’t play. We kind of have to do a lot of the set. So when we look at the set now, there’s kind of two or three spots, maybe four, [where] we can swap out songs. And even just one change is, like, ‘Whoo, it was so different tonight. That three and a half minutes where we did something a little different was cool.’”
Rude went further, arguing that the quality of a new record is almost beside the point: “We could make the next Black Album [Metallica] right now, the best album of all time — you can make the next Appetite For Destruction [Guns N’ Roses], it doesn’t matter. People aren’t gonna wanna hear the new songs — they wanna hear the stuff they grew up with, which I totally get. I’m the same way. So more than one or two songs in the set that are new is kind of overkill. And then it’s not really worth all the time and effort of making a full 12-song album. You’re gonna get fewer Tesla shows. We’re gonna earn less money. Our crew won’t be working. And at the end of the day, people wanna hear those old songs anyway, so why not just keep touring?”
Rude said the single-by-single model has proven a more sustainable alternative: “Doing one song, a single, whether it’s a cover or an original, that’s pretty doable. We can find the time to write one song. We can find the time to record it, and then we press it up on vinyl, maybe make a video, make some new T-shirts. It kind of makes it fun. It refreshes it for us, refreshes it for the fans enough.”
He added that the inability to release full records as a band has fueled each member’s solo output: “There’s just no money, and it’s very difficult — on paper, it’s pointless to put out new music, but it’s not for us. It’s just because we need to. When I was doing those shows on the [2026 Monsters Of Rock] cruise a couple months ago, it was the funnest thing. It had been so long since I’d done any solo shows, and it was so reinvigorating, and it felt so good.”
Rude’s comments echo those of his bandmate, guitarist Frank Hannon, who told the Talk Louder podcast last month: “We have gotten into doing the one-song-at-a-time thing. And at our age now and where we are, it seems to be working for us better to just not put the pressure of trying to fabricate 10 or 12 songs all at once.”
Bassist Brian Wheat offered a related thought to Radio Bypass in February 2025, centering the question of Tesla’s future on vocalist Jeff Keith: “When Jeff can’t sing to the level he does now, there won’t be Tesla. I’m not up for getting an Arnel [Pineda]-style soundalike or somebody else to sing with Tesla. Jeff’s voice is Tesla. When he can’t sing anymore, we owe it to ourselves and to the fans to call it a day.”
Tesla’s forthcoming release, Homage — a covers album honoring timeless rock hits associated with Elvis Presley, Freddie Mercury, Sam Cooke, Etta James, James Brown, and others — is due July 17, 2026, via Frontiers Music Srl. Previously released singles from the project include the band’s cover of Climax Blues Band’s “I Love You” and Queen’s 1977 classic “Spread Your Wings.”
Tesla is Jeff Keith on vocals, Frank Hannon on guitar, Dave Rude on guitar, Brian Wheat on bass, and Steve Brown on drums.
