Joining us for a special Audacy Check In is Guns N' Roses ax man and guitar legend Slash, right here to reveal details and behind-the-scenes insight into his brand new, blues-inspired solo album Orgy Of The Damned.

"I'm a rock guitar player that's firmly rooted in blues," Slash revealed on Monday, March 4, sharing a teaser video for his upcoming project. "Blues guitar is really something that I got turned on to when I was a kid. If you were to listen to anything that I do, you can see how big the blues influence is, and I always thought that I'd wanna record a record of it at some point. And we got together and did it."

Slash is with us today to talk about his forthcoming solo record, Orgy of The Damned, set for release on May 17 -- his nod to some of the great Blues music that influenced his life and musical career.

“When I was a kid, you know, I got turned on to a lot of music, a lot of blues music coming up,” Slash tells Audacy host Steve Migs. “But then as a guitar player, I was turned on by [Jimi] Hendrix and [Led Zeppelin’s] Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and [Eric] Clapton, and all those sort of guys that came out of the U.K. and I quickly found out that their particular styles were all rooted in that music that I grew up listening to previously. So, it was a full circle thing for me.”

“Those original musicians, when you listen to the original tracks... like Eric Clapton and Rory Gallagher, and all these great guitar players and also singers that came out of the English explosion there, British, whatever you call it,” Slash explains, “they're so phenomenal. But when you listen to those original guys, man, it's some serious f***ing s***.”

“The feel and the natural kind of cadence, and just the delivery of those songs from those original artists is something that you really can't touch,” he continues. “Even some of the best Blues guys around can only barely scratch the surface on how great some of that original stuff was.”

Slash employed some big names to help him out with the upcoming release, including Gary Clark Jr., ZZ-Top’s Billy Gibbons, Iggy Pop, Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes, Pop star Demi Lovato, Country favorite Chris Stapleton, AC/DC’s Brian Johnson and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler just to mention a few, with the latter two featured on the album’s first single. “I've known Brian for a pretty long time now and he just has that great kind of grit to his voice,” Slash explains of his involvement. “I called him up and it turns out that he is a huge f***ing Howlin’ Wolf protege. [Brian] had been in cover bands before AC/DC and even before Geordie.”

“That's the key thing that you're looking for,” Slash says when reaching out to work with great artists; whether or not “the song speaks to them, that it has meaning to them too. Not just me. That’s how it was with Brian... and then Steven Tyler came in and, he came to my studio after Brian had already done the vocal and... he came in to do the harmonica or he just happened to have a harmonica with him. I can't remember, but I played it in the track. It's like, ‘This is great.’ It was very spontaneous, very, just sort of inspired in the moment, which is a great thing to be able to capture, especially now because people just by and large don't make records like that.”

While Orgy Of The Damned is set for a full release on May 17, the brand new song “Killing Floor,” originally by Howlin’ Wolf, is available now.

“This record was inspired by something that I used to do way back in the ‘90s -- a couple of the musicians on this record I used to jam with in Blues cover bands a long time ago," Slash explains. "I always wanted to make a record of this stuff, and one of the songs that we used to play was ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone.’ When it came to doing this record, I was like, ‘I really wanna do that song,’ and Demi [Lovato] came to mind mostly because I know her, and I know some of her background, and we've been through some similar stuff and so on -- and she's just really cool. But also the idea of having that sort of young, almost childlike but really killer soulful voice singing."

"That part about their estranged, late father who did all these sort of, you know, just short of diabolical things that they heard about," he continues, "What a great way to deliver that concept with this young girl's voice. So, I called her about it and she was like, ‘Oh my God, that would be such a great song to do because I can relate to it on a lot of different levels.’ She was full-on into it when we went into the studio to do it and you can hear it in the delivery.”

One divergence from Slash’s plans for the new album, he revealed, came from the one and only Iggy Pop, who delivered his own idea to Slash for his recording rather than the other way around as he had with the rest of the tracks.

“That recording was actually very special," he says. "I've found out through the grapevine, actually from our bass player, that he'd read somewhere that Iggy would always want to do a Blues thing, but he's just never done it.” So, Slash picked up the phone and simply asked Iggy if he had a track in mind. “It was Lightnin’ Hopkins’ ‘Awful Dream,’ which is such a left-field obscure track,” Slash says. “When you listen to it, I'm pretty sure it's an outtake that was done between takes or at the end of the session, it's not really, you have to hear it. It's not really put together, it's just sort of like a loose jam. But you know, Iggy is pretty profound and there was a lyrical content in there that he really f***ing related to, anyway... It was something that meant a lot to Iggy.”

Don't miss our full Audacy Check In with Slash above -- and stay tuned for more conversations with your favorite artists on Audacy.com/live.

Words by Joe Cingrana Interview by Steve Migs