Heavy Glow is a power rock trio from San Diego. I talked with their guitarist, lead singer and primary song-writer Jared Mullins this week. As a musician myself – approaching 40 years of age – I’m always impressed and more than a bit jealous when I speak to young turks like Jared who seem to have all their ducks in a row career-wise and are focused driven to succeed in music. My cop out is usually that I have a family to support and can’t force my them to squeak by on Ramen noodles salvation army clothes just so diddle away the hours on my music career. Talking to young guys like Jared occasionally is good antidote to this crappy attitude – it helps jolt my ass out complacency.

Anyway, I really like Heavy Glow’s music – it’s slightly edgy, mainstream enough to not require repeated listens to get into – and has an absolute affinity to early Rush music. In fact, I’d describe the band as Cream crossed with early Rush circa Fly By Night, only with a white-boy baritone blues singer.

We hear two of the bands songs from their last self titled release Heavy Glow: Grinning In The Dark and Trailin’ St. Judas Blues

Ben Sommer: I’m here with Jared the lead guitarist and the singer for the band Heavy Glow and this is www.BandsLikeRush.com.  Jared, why don’t you just say hi, and give us a brief intro to fans who don’t know of your work, and what the band is all about, what you’re up to, et cetera.

Jared Mullins: Yeah, definitely.  Heavy Glow is a new rock band with classic-rock vibes, very similar to bands you hear like Rush and Cream and all those good guys.  We’re based in sunny California.

Ben: In San Diego, right?

Jared: Yeah.

Ben: Cool, so tell us a little bit more about your music, your approach to recording and where you are in your career.  Clue into the people who are listening to this, Jared and I talked last week, and I totally screwed up my computer set up and lost the recording, and so he and I are trying to relive this great conversation we have last week, so that’s why maybe kind of giggling to each other.  I see that I remember you Jared telling me a bit about how you got an interesting new experience you had recording your last album with the famous producer, and then we also talked a lot about your approach to promoting.  So if you want to hit any of those in any kind of order.

Jared: Yeah, definitely.  Well, I’ll just ramble, and if I ramble, you just must let me know, but Heavy Glow is a new band.  We put out to EPs.  The first one we recorded in 2009, and after recording, it was Stevie Salas, who is kind of my mentor.  Stevie is well known for working with basically everybody in the business.  He is first and foremost a guitarist.  When Stevie was 18 or something, he was up working in a record label up in Los Angeles.  They’ll sleep on the couch and George Clinton wakes him up and says, “Hey, I heard you can play funk guitar.”  And that was basically what started him off.  So he played with George Clinton for a while.  He played with Rod Stewart.  When Mick Jagger went on his solo tours, he decided to have Stevie as Keith Richard’s substitute or whatnot.  So we actually worked with him and went up to Velvet Revolver’s studio, and it’s good that we then got a six-song EP in four days, recorded old school the way that I like it.  Everybody is set up in the same room live with guitars, bass, drums, and we did some vocal overdub and all of that kind of stuff.  We just recorded another EP.  I guess I adjusted to it, but it’s about a year ago actually.  When that came out, we did that in one day with the same kind of set up where it’s just the whole band is in one room, and everything from mike the way it’s used to be.  We’re really just going for that very real and authentic vibe from the music, and I think it goes well with the style of music that we have.

Ben: Yeah, definitely.  You guys are a power trouper.  That is just a stupid term, the power trio.  The style, there is no fuzz or frills, and bands, that had nothing to do with you, but like early Rush, before they got into the additions to the synthesizers and other different instruments.  But recent bands like Green Day, well, I don’t know. Maybe there is a bit of similarity between your styles, but I always envy those small-type trio bands or quartets who their music, whether it’s live or recorded is the same, it’s simple.  It’s almost like you guys consciously have to avoid all the neat tricks in sonic gizmos you can bring into the studio to experiment with your sound and you can do something big to keep it simple, I’m sure, and that allows you to go through recording a whole album in one day as you will play it all live, which is the vocal overdub, and then it will also allows you to recreate the exact same experience live.  Is that a conscious thing with you or what?

Jared: Yeah, part of it is forced.  We’re four musicians, so we can’t afford the biggest producer that’s working with cold players or something like that, and I don’t even know that I would want that really.  I’m very really happy with the stuff that we put out.  I think it translates well.  I was even listening to Nirvana last night and even Ryan Adams yesterday, and I think the best music is the kind of music where if you listen to it immediately, you can’t help but feel something.  Even listening to Nirvana, there is not really much changes.  They are three-piece.  The bass isn’t really that good.  The drum is okay.  I never reflected Grohl as awesome a drummer until he played stuff, but the songs are pretty much always the same as the power chord bit, but always it’s something about the way it sounds or whatnot to get me listening to it, though.

Ben: I know what you mean.  I feel the exact same way.  Kurt Cobain is a raunchy guitarist because he’s kind of like an updated version of Neil Young.  But yeah, I agree, there had been music that’s odd Rush-like almost. [00:05:23], but yeah, I like it.  When you said you don’t have a lot of money for a lot of big-time producers, well that doesn’t mean you need to limit yourself in the studio.  I and others, we play a lot of different instruments where we use various creative synthesizing type approaches, so you could do that with the same budget, why don’t you?  Because you’re not just interested in the style?

Jared: I could, but I don’t know what I listened to that has something on it already.  I don’t know that anything I’ve really gotten into has that in it, and I don’t really consider it like an option for me, I guess.  I don’t know.

Ben: Yeah, or with keyboards, it’s something I don’t understand too much, but keyboards or if you play ukulele, or you could even layer the vocals in a thicker way than you do currently.  From my ear, when I was listening to music, I don’t hear too much over the top vocal harmony.

Jared: Yeah, exactly.  And at first if you had it more than the second one, I don’t the second has anything.  But we’re actually midway through recording an album now, and we’re using very tasteful keyboard and Hammond organ and that kind of stuff and doing some vocals and stuff too, so a new crop of vocals and stuff, so it’s a little bit different.  I don’t know, for some reason I get the skids and anybody’s synthesizer.  I just think 80% of it is in.

Ben: Well, it’s funny because back then the synth meant a handful of usually cheesy sounds that was the only sound, that’s what synth meant.  Now, synth means, for instance, I record with both synth, but I use various plug-ins that sound exactly like a vintage Rhodes or a B3 or the really cool old vintage synths like the ARP, et cetera.  Of course, you and I can probably name plenty of great classic rock songs with those instruments in them, but it doesn’t necessarily mean cheesy, although I understand the skidoo feeling you get when the word comes up.

Jared: Definitely, we’re actually using a lot of, I guess, the word is weird, I don’t know.  We’ve got some parts in the new album with [00:07:47 that sound] in it.  We’ve got some parts with kazoos actually.  Before you called me here, I was actually embarrassingly making my kazoo with some of the CDs that we have over here.

Ben: You’re practicing?

Jared: Exactly.

Ben: Why did you have to practice kazoo.

Jared: It got a very small sweet spot on it.  It’s really weird.

Ben: That sounds like a line out of the next final tap, I’m sorry.

Jared: Yeah, it should be, huh?  And we’re going to use some stylophone, too and things like that, so it should be fun.

Ben: Neat, so I already alluded to it, but what I hear in you guys is music, and what I think the fans of Bands Like Rush will like it is the in or the angle with anything Rush-related in Heavy Glow, and when I heard it, I thought, “Well, here is kind of, you know, there is a lot more to it.”  I think those influences you list on your site are probably closer to the truth like Cream and those early 70’s hard rock plus some of the punk influences, but early Rush with the first two albums plus a little bit more prog change up, even in that early Rush but with the baritones, vocalist versus Getty Lee’s wail is how I would characterize this.  It’s very cool, so you mix up the rhythmic and harmonic elements more than other bands who sound like you guys on the surface.  What’s your approach to doing it?  Are you guys that conscious or is that just a music you hear on your head?

Jared: It’s probably a little bit of both.  I have a really good rhythm section.  Dan and Joe are really good at turning the beat up in their head.  Do you know what I mean?  We’ll just turn the whole thing around.  And in some of it, too, it’s just we don’t want to do the same thing over and over.  So I think with the music, there is a very tasteful prog rock element, in the sense that it’s not your typical three-minute verse chorus, verse chorus with immediate bridge kind of song.  It’s straightforward without being…

Ben: Predictable.

Jared: Yeah, it’s not predictable, but at the same time, I don’t want to make music for musicians only, do you know what I mean?

Ben: Yeah.

Jared: We could very easily get off on doing a 10-minute jam, and it would be really cool for us and the musicians in the room would high five us at the end of the night, but I don’t know.  It’s all like instrumental masturbation, I don’t know.  I’m just not…

Ben: Yeah, the funny term I heard though, they call it ‘achievement rock’.

Jared: Yeah, I would much rather just have taste volumes in the music.  It’s something that might throw you a little bit for the sake of subtlety, but it doesn’t throw you so much that it’s distracting.

Ben: Right, cool.

Jared: Yeah, I appreciate the comparison to Rush, too.  The first thing that I think of when I think of Rush is working, man.  I think we probably talked about that the last time too.  But I can’t tell you how many times I’d be working outside or something and then that song would come on, and I was just go with it.  It’s actually the best thing I ever…

Ben: Yeah, that’s exactly the vintage I was thinking of.

Jared: Yeah, and it’s very super simple song.  I think there is a really cheap archs, and then the guitar solo breaks often are almost kind of a riff, but the guitar solo is so hooky that it catches up anyway.  It’s got that jam prog rock bit to that, I don’t know.

Ben: Oh, I agree.  So what’s up with you guys lately?  Do you guys have any big gigs you want to promote or events or albums?  You alluded to something you’re working on now, but now is the chance, anything going on?

Jared: Yeah, definitely, we are halfway through an album right now, so that should be out here, hopefully, in the next few months.  It’s going to be our first full length.  We’re pretty excited about it.  Our last EP, ‘The Filth & The Fury’, was just nominated for best rock album of the year here in San Diego.  Every year San Diego has a music awards.  They’ve doing it for 25-26 years or something like that.  Not only it, you see, it got nominated for best rock album of the year, so that’s just the big news here lately, so I’m pretty excited about it.  If any of your listeners have not heard it yet.  They should go and check it out definitely.

Ben: Cool, I always include one or two songs.  I think by picking the favorite or two favorites and intersperse them within our conversation.  Cool, great, so Jared, this has been great talking to you.  Again, we’ll stay in touch and thanks for talking to us.



The Vital Might is a Boston-based prog rock/punk trio. Today I speak with the Vital Might’s guitarist, singer and primary song-writer in the band – Andy Milk – hitting on several topics near to my heart:

• The recording & production process
• How to achieve a “big” sound as a prog power-trio
• Stylistic mixing/matching in a composition: i.e. moving from grunge to pop to metal to pretentious prog – all in one song
• Andy’s vocal affinities with Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon

We also hear two full tracks – a whacked out track called Make My Day from the debut album, and a heavy late-Rush style track Phantom Spaceman from their latest album Red Planet.

Ben: So I’m here with Andy. This is Ben from BandsLikeRush.com. He’s the guitarist. Is that right, Andy?

Andy: Guitarist and singer.

Ben: Right, for the Boston-based band, the Vital Might. Andy, welcome, won’t you just give us a little insight into what you’re band is all, and what you’re doing lately.

Andy: Well, yeah, we’re based out of Boston. We’ve been together with the band for, I think, about five years. We put out a record on our own called ‘Obsidian’ back in 2006, and then we had some personnel changes. We have a new album called ‘Red Planet’ that we put ourselves and it was put out again by 10T Records. We’re kind of all over the place as far as what we think our style is. Some people say prog. Sometimes we say that, you know, we don’t. That’s what we set up to do it, but it just comes across that way sometimes.

Ben: What else do people say?

Andy: Some of our influences are being called out like, you know, I’m fan of like Minus the Bear, and even like heavier stuff like Mastodon, but I’m also into like some singers and songwriter stuff like Jeff Buckley or Ray LaMontagne. I mean, we haven’t really heard either of those last two, but you know that’s…

Ben: Well, even if you haven’t heard someone to call you out as sounding like a particular band, if you have have that influence combining those two or three bands into one – that usually equals “prog”. If you’re doing anything off the beating path with harmony, melody, with content, theme, rhythm, you’re prog almost, you know, at the first level anyway.

Andy: Yeah, yeah, and we play live. We’re either too loud for the bands we’re playing with or we’re too quiet for the bands we’re playing with because our set can go from, you know, like singer/songwriter song to like odd time heavy lots of loud guitars and cymbals.

Ben: Right. When I was listening through your work online, I heard kind of a live sound. I don’t know if you guys record all live in the studio, but it sure sound like it has a kind of that vibe and energy. So am I right or wrong on that, first of all?

Andy: I think a chunk of it is live, but yeah, definitely do some overdubbings. I mean, we’re a three-piece band, so we chunk up the guitars and there is a couple of fun try. I do my actual own harmony, so you know.

Ben: You can’t get away from that.

Andy: Yeah. We try to get it live with people, you know, there are live shows. They’re what we’re all about until we recorded anything.

Ben: I heard that, which is kind of a punk approach, but yeah, you hear three or four guitar parts and the same voice doubling. It obviously gives it away. I also heard the metal and kind of a post-grunge vibe, the pop-ish melodies at times. So I hear what you’re saying when you’re saying as soon as you have an unusual or unhealthy mix for the touring gigs anyway.

Andy: Sometimes I even just do exactly opposite of whatever the last thing we just wrote or worked on.

Ben: You made a point that you’ve played out and played live as a band before you even recorded something. Although these days, there is so much of “mad scientist musician in basement recording and refining” than “doing”. You then either leave it in a locker or form a band and doing something solo. So are you traditional in that respect? Are you band oriented?

Andy: Yeah, I mean, most of the projects I’ve done I had one band for many years like at the end of college, and that was a little bit more mad scientist. The Vital Might actually kind of came out of the break up of another project I had and I sort of took the songs I liked – and some other guys liked them too – and kind of organically formed the band that way.

Ben:  So who does the songwriting? Is that a split thing or do you most of it?

Andy: I do most of it.  I’m definitely the structure guy of the band. I bring in the riffs, and maybe some lyrics, and then we kind of all bash it up together, then the other guys have a good chunk of the songwriting, especially since I can sort of play bass but I definitely can’t play any drums. So then I need their help.

Ben: So you leave the rhythmic complexities up to your man on drums.

Andy: Yeah. For sure.

Ben: When you say that you start on the performing stage and then try to translate that and go record later, how do you decide what to overdub, how to produce the recorded product and then how do you translate that back, if at all, to the live performance?

Andy: Oh, yes, actually, it’s an interesting kind of progress that our songs have gone through. A lot of times, we have some harmonies written. If one of the songs is a specific song we play out a lot, then our bass player and drummer – Evan or Rick – they kind of jump in and they’ll throw in a harmony just randomly at a show and then we’ll be like, “Oh, yeah.” You know, we don’t often sit down and practice and like too many harmonies and those later parts and then, when we get to recording, some songs are so new that they have no harmonies written. We work with a producer and we all kind of come up with the harmony and layer ideas. We even throw in a couple of guitar parts in, and then, once the finished product comes out, we’ve heard it so many times in the studios and really come to love it. I also focus on getting a big guitar sound like – as well as in the studio

It’s actually been a comment we frequently get after our shows: “Wow, I can’t believe you guys are three-piece.”

Ben: How big your guitar sound is?

Andy: That’s what people are saying. I guess, we never really know since we’re not in the audience.

Ben: Well, you say you can’t do two guitars live. But have you explored it? You can do anything these days with trigger samples.

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: You know, I heard a demo from a podcast I listened to of this new harmony pedal – a device that will harmonize the voice according to key. I mean, it was uncanny. You could hardly believe it was just a lead voice with harmonics around it, so have have you ever messed with anything like that?

Andy: Yeah, I played around them a little bit. I think, maybe with that kind speaks a little bit of punkishness where I don’t necessarily want to do too much fake stuff on stage. But that’s me. I don’t mean to label it that way because. Just for the fans, I think we just move around, we jump around on stage while our shirts are sweating out by the end, so you know, we put a lot of energy. Some of the mellower songs have a lightness to them on stage. But in our live shows, we play more of our louder/faster stuff.

Ben: Right, so you can get away on energy and a big amp sound instead of pyrotechnics & triggered sounds.

Andy: Yeah, you know, I’ve already got more pedals than I should – for the kind of stuff that we’re playing. I don’t want to have to do too much on stage beside playing.

Actually, when we first started, I had a delay pedal that I would hook up.

Ben:Y ou need a guy in the background to manage all that gear live, you know.

Andy: Yeah. I’d love to have a guy like Mars Volta has – he just does sound manipulation live. Like he just takes the stuff that comes out of the vocals with some keys on guitars and then swirls them all around like…

Ben: Wow. I didn’t know that.

Andy: Yeah. The original guy passed away, but I think they’ve got a new guy that does that stuff.

Ben: Wow, when I went to grad school for music (of all things), I had a friend who would perform improvised electronic stuff. He would just sit there with his computer set up, and do these absolutely nutty things, live/real-time.

So I have a couple of specific questions only because I listened to a bunch of your songs and maybe you get a kick out of here on what I hear.

Because I’m a musician. I can never tell what my own influences are. It’s almost like a baby where you can’t tell your own resemblance in him, because you’re too close and you need someone else’s opinion.

Andy: Right.

Ben: So, I heard System of a Down. Are you fans of them at all?

Andy: Oh, yeah, definitely.

Ben: Great. I mean, it wasn’t obvious. I don’t take it like you’re wearing it on your sleeve. It’s just I love that band, too, when I heard that, definitely in there. The vocal, you have a funny, well, it’s not funny, it’s a good kind of mix, a kind of a poppy style with a bit of roughness, you know, so it’s almost like a punk Simon Le Bon, that guy from Duran Duran.

Andy: All right. I like that.

Ben: I thought you’d like that, but overall I think the element I hear the most is the kind of symphonic textures that are all overlaying, It’s the big guitar sound, with the kind of more personal and emotive lyrics than you usually hear with most prog rock. So that struck me more like Radiohead or even The Who maybe.

Andy: Okay.

Ben: But lastly, this one song, I think it’s called Make My Day, is the song. That thing is weird. I mean, I dont’ know what to compare it to. Only Zappa can compare to that, so where does that song come from, what it’s all about?

Andy: That’s actually our original bass player. He is no longer with the band, but still a friend who is around. He wrote that totally. He wrote everything about it like apart from the band and he kind of brought to us and then, you know, when we were recording it, you know, we definitely were like let’s really weave this one out, and you know, we recorded that. That was our first album. We recorded that at like a private school up in New Hampshire like in the Windsor in New Hampshire and we actually got to use their theater that the kids would put on shows. And it was like old like 150-year-old theater that, you know, they claimed was haunted or something.

Ben: Wow.

Andy: So we really tried to like get the vibe of that place. They had like an electric piano thing there had all these weird sound effects. We actually recorded all the sound effects that were on this old like electric, you know, synthesizer thing and we kind of mess with that stuff when we came back to the studio.

Ben: That’s cool, wow, what a story.

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah, well, anyway, this is a weird song. It wasn’t too far out of field of left field, but it was just struck me and another thing I noted down, which is always worth noting is a double kick that would put Neil Peart to shame, so everyone else is always saying Neil Peart is the greatest and this is a Rush site, so I ought to give a nod to your drummer. It seems that he’s maybe part of late crop of drummers who have just the technique, at least, with the feet but also with the hands. It’s just sick. I mean, the level of skill in most, you know, hard core metal or prog drummers these days is incredible.

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: And then here’s another guy that’s pretty awesome.

Andy: Yeah, well, I’ll make sure Kraker knows about that. Right before our band, he was in the metal band and doing a lot of double kick and then, you know, before that he was playing jazz.

Ben: Oh.

Andy: So you definitely hear jazz metal would kind of combine in his style for sure.

Ben: Yeah, those are two techniques to go for it, if you’re going to go for it.

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: You can do anything. It’s like a history degree. You can do anything with it.

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: Cool.

Andy: I can play tone wild thing on the drums, but that’s about it. I can’t do any of this crazy…

Ben: Oh, that’s a good line. That was probably samples of some pseudo, you know, similarly lame, you know…

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: Oh, it’s Wild Thing.

Andy: Yeah, and it’s like it’s from…

Ben: Yeah, we’re dating ourselves there. Cool, this has been great talking to you. Where can the people find you online?

Andy: www.vitalmight.com is the best spot and that kind of links out to Facebook and MySpace and YouTube and PureVolume and all of that stuff.

Ben: Cool. Do you have any shows or anything else specific people should know about?

Andy: Yeah, we’ve got a couple of shows in September. We have one in Boston on September 17th at the Middle East.

Ben: Oh, cool.

Andy: And then the next night on Saturday, September 18th at Kenny’s Castaways in New York City.

Ben: Cool. I’ll put them on my calendar and see if I can make it. I live in the South Shore, so you and I are locals.

Andy: Oh, cool, cool.

Ben: Yeah, excellent. Well, thanks for joining us. Take care.

Andy: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Today I speak with Keyboardist Steve Mauk from the west coast prog rock band Mars Hollow.

This is the third band from the indie label 10T that I’ve interviewed. The first two – Elf Project & Fluttr Effect – were simple accidents. One band I had sought out, the other was referred to me by a friend. The fact that both were on 10T was ironic – but when I went exploring the 10T progressive/experimental catalog I discovered several other “Bands Like Rush” that would be perfect for the site. So I contact a few more of them – Mars Hollow is the first from that latest batch

Steve and I discuss the differences between the prog music scenes in Los Angeles & Mexico (guess which is the better place for prog). We also discuss the oddly traditional route they’ve taken to starting the band – recording an album with a top producer, “shopping it around”, then performing out live looking for a break.

Ben Sommer:  Hi, I’m here with Steve Mauk from the band Mars Hollow.  You guys are from San Diego area, correct?

Steve Mauk:  Actually, LA area.

Ben Sommer:  Oh, good.  Well, West Coast, the left coast.  Good to have you on the show, www.BandsLikeRush.com.  Why don’t you just start out and just give me a little bit of background about yourself and the band and how you get started.

Steve Mauk:  I met Jerry Beller who is the drummer in our band, and it was back in the spring of 2007.  He put an ad in Music Connection, which is a classified music paper here in LA, and he was looking for a progressive rock keyboard player.  He and our bass player, Kerry, had been playing in a Emerson, Lake and Palmer tribute band, and they had also played with Ryo Okumoto, the keyboard player for Spock’s Beard.  He had a side project called Code Red, and so they were playing with him.  But that project, I guess, ended, so Jerry was looking to start his own progressive rock band, so he found in the ad and Kerry and he and I started writing together and really kind of clicked and we started looking for a guitar player.

But Kerry had to take a little bit of time off, so we actually ended up through more classified ads finding another bass player in this very, very gifted and talented guitar player John Baker.  So we just started writing together as a four piece, and then as chance would have it, Kerry was able to come back into the band again.  At that point, we were calling ourselves NEXT and we recorded a demo of three songs.  John, the guitar player, has a studio, so we recorded three songs there, and we put them up on the MySpace page.

At that point, we got in contact with Ronan Chris Murphy.  He is the producer, who has done a lot of great work, a great guy too, and he had remixed all of the King Crimson catalogs and he has worked with Terry Bozzio and Tony Levin and on and on progressive rock luminaries that he has worked with, so we felt extremely fortunate to find him and to have him interested at all on working with us.  So yeah, it’s just exciting and he added a lot of great inspiration and good advice, and we started pre-production and then went in and recorded an album with him.  We actually recorded that last March or March a year ago.

Ben Sommer:  Yeah, with Tantalize.

Steve Mauk:  Yeah, that’s right.  So when we finished the album, which was in about November, we started shopping it around and we were lucky enough to find 10T Records, and we ended signing with them in January.  It has been great ever since, and 10T has been great.  They have gotten the record out there for us, and it gotten a lot of good response.

Ben Sommer:  Oh, that’s cool.  So it’s interesting.  I told in the email that I’ve already interviewed two of your co-mates on 10T.

Steve Mauk:  Yeah.

Ben Sommer:  Totally unplanned, the Elf Project and Fluttr Effect, and then I actually sent an email to a few of those guys I interviewed.  Carl Schultz from Elf Project emailed back.  I was asking for more leads on good bands to be interviewed and he said, “Just through the 10T’s roster and see what you like.”

Steve Mauk:  That’s cool.  I listened to that interview, too, and it was great.

Ben Sommer:  Oh, the Elf Project one?

Steve Mauk:  It’s very interesting. Oh, yeah, yeah.  It was really cool.

Ben Sommer:  Yeah, thanks, thanks.  I mean, I dig all this music in 10T.  I mean, I haven’t been listening to the non-progressive.  I’ve listened mostly to just all the progressive bands that are on the label, but it seems like they’re picking quality stuff, and frankly, with most people I think I probably never heard of.  So that’s kind of the mission behind the site is with people, the only name they know which is Rush and their ilk and introduce them to lesser known bands who are just as good and interesting, but just don’t know how to start here.

Steve Mauk:  It’s very, very cool.  And the 10T guys, Jeff and Steve, they’re great guys and I think they really believe in the bands that they sign in and they don’t have a huge roster, so they are able to really put a lot of effort and personal pride into each one of the bands that Dave Scott signed and they’ve really worked hard for us to get our name out there, and I can’t say enough good things about them.  We have been extremely fortunate with our relationships and with finding Ronan and then being signed by 10T and since then we have been super lucky.

Ben Sommer:  That’s cool.  I’m curious on 10T, so it’s just this small indie label these days.  You hear so much and you read so much about everything on changing the industry and labels, what are they good for?  Of course, that’s usually targeted with the big labels because we know what they’re good for is re-compensating artists and playing fair and all of that jazz.

Steve Mauk:  Yeah.

Ben Sommer:  So indie labels still have a good rap, but when you described your path, you got a band together, you got a good producer, you recorded an album, and you shopped it around.  That sounds so old school.  What is 10T?  What is an indie label doing for you now versus what you could do on your own?

Steve Mauk:  I think you very rarely understand the art and science of getting reviews with getting the album out there to the people that matter and know how to review albums.  They really got it out there and they got a real great buzz going, and they know how to coordinate that right in terms of when the product is going to be available at retailers, and it all kind of has this coordinated marking the gap for that.  I think if you had done it a lot of times, you, in theory, could do it yourself as a band, but it’s really you’re relying on their expertise to know how to kind of time the whole machine and get the word out there.  They are experts at doing this.

Ben Sommer:  Right, right, and I assume that they’re raping you financially as a big label would.

Steve Mauk:  No, but I also have to throw in there that this is definitely not a business to get rich and that’s for sure.

Ben Sommer:  Yeah, well, and in this, you’re not alone by any means.  I don’t think I’ve interviewed anyone yet who either isn’t fully employed, has a day job or like voluntarily underemployed, so that they can do their music and attend to the kind of situations, so you’re calling from work.  You just clocked out, I guess.  Where do you work?

Steve Mauk:  Yeah, I actually work at movie studio in the LA area, kind on the Hollywood area doing print stuff, so yeah, we all have day jobs.  It’s definitely a labor of love because you got the record company out there pitching records, but it’s not big business by any means.

Ben Sommer:  Right.

Steve Mauk:  It’s a real labor of love.

Ben Sommer:  So the music is interesting.  My gummy tick, and I wish I were this person who could “sounds” like this that the other kind of like a real high fidelity music key.  But I’m reaching for sounds that I’ve heard before when I was seeing you guys.  Your keyboards are really dominant, not dominant, it’s just they’re not subservient like they are in most rock or prog rock, which maybe calls it out.  But what are your influences?  I know I hear like kind of on one of these tunes I listened to in MySpace, geez, I forget the name of it.  It sounds like half between Genesis and Yes playing live, but with a lot of improve and riffing maybe.  I maybe hearing it wrong, but what kind of music influences you and gets you guys excited?

Steve Mauk:  Oh, well, you are definitely hearing it right.  Back in the 70’s, I was listening to anything I could get my hands on that was progressive rock, but probably my biggest influences were Emerson, Lake and Palmer.  I just absolutely love those guys.  I wanted to be Keith Emerson so bad, and he made me want to practice keyboards and make weird sounds on a synthesizer.  I just loved their music and still do, and probably a real close second to that for me was Genesis.  I was just completely enamored by ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’ and ‘Foxtrot’, so those are my two real big influences.  But I also really sought out any other bands where the keyboard is really dominant.  I love Carl Barat.  So those were my biggest influences with a lot of Yes.  I love that band.  And in the band as a whole, the guys in the band, they all have a lot of different influences.  The drummer, Jerry, loves Rush.  He is an encyclopedia of progressive rock.  I mean, he knows so many bands and he’s just fluent in so many different styles and so many different bands, but he’s a real Rush fanatic.  The bass player loves Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but he also loves Todd Rundgren.  He’s got really an eclectic taste and our guitar player likes Steely Dan and Maha Vishnu Orchestra.

Ben Sommer:  Cool.  That’s a nice mix.

Steve Mauk:  Yeah, I simple kind of potpourri, I think, of influences, but they’re all firmly rooted in the progressive rock, that is for sure.

Ben Sommer:  Yeah. When you guys recorded, I’m serious when I say it sounds almost like a live album, a bit of a raw edged.  The fellow who produced it, what his is name again?

Steve Mauk:  Ronan Chris Murphy.

Ben Sommer:  Right, did he have you guys just do take after take live, or did you guys record it in parts or what?

Steve Mauk:  Yeah, well, it’s interesting that you ask that.  One of the things that we felt pretty strongly about all of us is that we didn’t want to record to a click track, even though if you’re recording to a click track, of course, it makes certain things easier.

Ben Sommer:  Yeah.

Steve Mauk:  But we just didn’t want to that sound, so we just did these takes live in Ronan Studio.  They’re long songs and we had a limited amount of time, so we couldn’t do too many take.

Ben Sommer:  Yeah.

Steve Mauk:  But we did them a few times and pick the best picking from what we did, and then we came back and overdubbed a few parts and John did the vocals.  We recorded the vocals, but one thing we also didn’t want was we didn’t want a ton of overdubs and a sound that we couldn’t recreate live, so what I mean, when you hear that, when we play live, that is what we sound.  All the parts are there.  It’s not like, “Oh, well, we can’t do that because that was an overdub.”  I mean, we pretty much can pull off the whole thing live, which is really satisfying because some people listen to the record and go, “Wow, do you guys really play all that live.”  And it’s like, “Yeah, you know, we do and that’s what makes it fun and challenging at times.”

Ben Sommer:  Yeah, I think, not having just the guitars as your only kind of filler pallet to choose from really helps.  But yeah, otherwise, you’re rearranging the songs for live performances, which kind of sucks because you have a vision that you made you put it down on tape one way or your doing it like Rush does and sing it like you can do that forever since they want another sync phase or they have like triggers up to wazoo and sometimes even have a keyboard player backstage filling in parts to try to recreate the studio song.

Steve Mauk:  And we definitely can’t afford that.

Ben Sommer:  Yeah, well, I mean, these days maybe you could.  The technology is so cheap.

Steve Mauk:  Well, that’s true.  That’s true.  Yeah, that is true.

Ben Sommer:  I’m looking at your website at MySpace site.  It looks like you just played as some place called Mexicali Prog in Mexico and you’re playing it at Prog Day in Chapel Hill.  Tell me about what happened in Mexico and what’s coming up in North Carolina.

Steve Mauk:  Well, there is a guy in Mexico that used to organize a Baja Prog, and actually he’s doing a kind of private show and he found us, I think at our MySpace page, but he asked if we could come down and do the show in Mexicali, so we’re really looking forward to it, and we’re packing up all the gear and hitting the road, and then we’re going to make the drive from LA to Mexicali.  He’s coming up in a few weeks here and do that gig, and I guess he’s got a real nice venue for playing.  So we’re really excited about that.

Ben Sommer:  How long a drive is that?  I’m just curious.

Steve Mauk:  It’s going to be about a 4-hour drive, and from what we understand, through the desert in August in Mexicali.  We’re ready.  We’re going to make sure that the van has air-conditioning.  That’s for sure.

Ben Sommer:  Yeah.

Steve Mauk:  We’ve talked about that a little bit.  And then, on Prog Day, we got asked to play at Prog Day, which is one of the Prog Festivals, and we’re really looking forward to doing that with Muffins, one of the bands playing.  It’s a classic prog band from way back when, and that should be fun too.

Ben Sommer:  You’re going to drive there, too?

Steve Mauk:  No, with that one, now, we talked about it.  We actually did talk about trying to make it into a road trip, but nobody could get off of work that long.  I think that was the biggest limiting factors, so we’re going to fly out.  We’re trying to coordinate how to get our gear there and we’re making all those travel arrangements, and then we’ll be there.  It’s over Labor Day weekend, and it is real cool.  It’s outdoor.  I think outdoor festival where everybody sets up tents and it just looks like a whole lot of fun.  We’re really, really looking forward to doing that, too.

Ben Sommer:  That’s great.  I think those kind of experiences are more in demand now with not just live gigs at bars, but kind of festivals and events, especially with everyone stuck in there and holding iPods, jam the tunes where they don’t give as much concert experience as they used to.

Steve Mauk:  Well, and the other thing too is we’ve done a few shows, if you’re in LA that have been really fun and I think good shows, but to get a group of people together that are all into prog and appreciate that kind of music, that’s what the festivals I think are all about.  I mean, we’re just really looking forward to these two gigs that we’re playing there.  Everybody is going to be there, not by chance, but because they’re lovers of the genre and that’s going to be really satisfying to play to people that loves the music.

Ben Sommer:  Right, so gig in local, do you do a lot of it?  What’s your idea or a plan or strategy like do you have a radius that surround LA you gig in or what?

Steve Mauk:  It’s funny.  You see, we kind of have like slightly differences of opinion in the band of how much we should be playing the local area, and one school of thought is that if you play a lot, if you’re playing, you build a following and you kind of tend to believe that a little.  When you do a show and there are people that come up and say, “Oh my gosh, where did you guys come from?  When you are playing again?”  And you think, “Well, if we do this enough, you know, we could really build a following, but LA is just a really hard city to build a following in.”

Ben Sommer:  Why is that?

Steve Mauk:  I don’t know.  I don’t know why that is, but I think especially in genre of music that we’re playing.  I don’t know.  I’m not sure why that is.

Ben Sommer:  Not that I know anything.  I’m a dope who just reads about how to have success versus achieve success but this guy, Martin Atkins, he’s kind of guru, a marketing guru.  I just bought his book about touring, and he is very blunt and frankly profane, but he’s like, “Move the hell out of LA.  Move out of New York.”  These are big markets where no one cares because there are a million different bands.  I mean, that’s it.  You’re just drowning in good music.

Steve Mauk:  Well, that’s funny because Ronan actually told us the exact same thing, and I’ve heard other people say the same thing, too.  It’s like if you really want anybody to listen to you, you’ve got to get out of LA, and I think that in New York, it’s probably the same thing.  I think it’s also partly because people are just jaded.  They’re just bombarded with so much from music to clubs to whatever it is.  There are just so much distracting people.  Shows are fun, but when you do the shows, you’ve got to get people out there, so a lot of people that shows end up being people that you know and that you’ve asked to come and it becomes more of a kind of like a family affair.  It’s like you’re playing for your friends and for some new people, but to build a following, that’s a tough thing.

Ben Sommer:  It pays to be a big fish in a small pond when you’re trying to start from scratch.

Steve Mauk:  Yeah, I think so.  I think so, but that doesn’t mean we’ve done our last show in LA.  I mean, we’ll continue to do them, but we spread it about, and trying to make each one count and have a reason to do it, so that’s kind of where our heads are around now in terms of playing locally at least.

Ben Sommer:  All right, so is your next gig the August 7th gig down in Mexicali?

Steve Mauk:  We are there in, yehey, Mexico!

Ben Sommer:  I will give a shoutout to everyone on the podcast and Twitter, et cetera.  I’m not sure if I have any readers in Mexico yet, but any prog hippies who are thinking about trailing you down in the van there.

Steve Mauk:  You know that’s cool, and I guess, from what I understand or I’m learning, Mexico has a big prog community.  I mean, there are a lot of Mexican people into prog, so I didn’t know that.

Ben Sommer:  That’s odd.

Steve Mauk:  I think it’s really cool.

Ben Sommer:  It is cool.  I mean, did you happen to see the Rush documentary that came out recently?

Steve Mauk:  It is on my list.  I’m really looking forward to seeing it, and I was actually going to see it this weekend once I’m able to.  So anyway, don’t spoil it for me, but what are you going to say?

Ben Sommer:  Well, I was just going to key off what you are saying.  I don’t know if it is about Central or South America, but they tell the story about when they did their big album in Rio.  When they went to Rio, and they actually showed footages of the fans, I mean there was like a 100,000 people like screaming and bouncing up and down.  I don’t know what it is about South America and progressive music, but it seems that in Central America, that’s where it’s at.  Odd.

Steve Mauk:  It’s so cool, and of course, Europe, I think, is way into prog or has been, in a lot of ways, more than they are here in the States, so it is good to know that it’s alive and well in a lot of our Latino, it makes me feel good.

Ben Sommer:  Yeah, me too.  Cool.  Well, thank you so much for talking, Steve, and good luck and well, keep in touch with us, okay?

Steve Mauk:  Well, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Ben Sommer:  Thanks for listening.  You can find out more about the band at their website, www.marshollow.com and become a fan on their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/marshollow.  We conclude with another full track from their self-titled debut.  This one is called ‘Midnight’.  Take care.

Today I speak with Clutch – the guitarist and primary song-writer for the band Colorado-based prog rock band Red Star Revolt. The music is really original – powerful and interesting progressive rock arrangements, mixing in a tad bit of psychedelic, hip-hop and electronica. Today’s podcast is short to allow for two full tracks from the bands last self-titled album. Mid-way through we here the song Prove Me Wrong, and we close with the song Dementia.

Ben Sommer: I’m here with Clutch from the Colorado-based band, Red Star Revolt. Clutch, nice to have you, won’t you tell me a little bit about the band and your music?

Darren (Clutch) Jacobson: Yeah, I guess I’ll start with myself real briefly. I’ve been playing guitar about for twenty years, and Rush is coincidentally the reason I started playing guitar. It’s a band that I always liked for a couple of years. I really liked Snake & Arrows, their last CD a couple of years ago, and a couple of the singles they released this year, so that was kind of my musical foundations and then over time that’s kind of sprung out into other interests.

About ten years ago, I joined a band called Shaft, which was a cover band and we did the cover circuit for a few years and I kind of got burned out on that. And then over time, Aaron Nava, who was the singer and bassist of Shaft, and I ended up forming Red Star Revolt. That was probably around 2007 that we started writing material, and we were interested in getting a little bit more progressive than we had been in Shaft, and getting a little more creative and hopefully a little bit more contemporary.

So we didn’t have any luck finding a drummer at the outset, so we just went ahead full steam and kind of wrote twelve to thirteen songs and then started recording them. And then we found a drummer named Dino Cuneo, who had a studio west of Denver, and he agreed to record the drum tracks at his studio.

So finally, I mean, the whole writing-recording process was kind of drawn out because were going through some personal issues in our life. But in 2008, we released Red Star Revolt, our self-titled CD, and it was picked up by a European distributor, so that got us a little bit of buzz at least among some of the European prog rock community, and some fairly positive reviews overall. As far as playing and gigging and that, we have been focusing more in the Denver area. And towards the end of last year, Dino who’s a full-time musician and excellent drummer, he realized, although he was having a blast and really he enjoyed the music he was playing with us, but monetarily speaking, there were other things he could get involved with, with his studio, and it would probably be more lucrative, so we parted ways amicably late last year.

And then early this year, we hooked up with a drummer named Mike Covairt, who’s also a really awesome drummer, a really talented guy. We kind of depend on drums to be pretty propulsive, so we’re kind of picky on that aspect. So we got him and then the latest drama in the Red Star Revolt saga is that Aaron, who again was our vocalist and bassist, got a job offer in California so he has just relocated out to L.A. and he’ll probably be out there for some time. So at this point, it’s Mike and I here in Denver. We’re continuing to write some new material but we’re not really gigging at this point.

Ben: Oh, so there’s a Red Star…

Clutch: Some intrigue there, huh?

Ben: Yeah, Red Star Counterrevolution going on, huh?

Clutch: Yeah, yeah exactly. That’s one thing I would say about the name Red Star Revolt, a lot of people think it is political or that. At the time we just feel it sounded cool, but if people read something in to it and get interested based on it, more power to them.

Ben: Well, that’s easy to do. Your cover art in the album is, there’s a name for that kind of communist era, Soviet art but it’s…

Clutch: Yeah, the original concept for the cover, we wanted something that sit with the name; you know the name itself to us didn’t mean anything. And so Red Star, you kind of think a lot of them and that, and so the original idea was to kind of have the Tiananmen Square photo where the guy is standing up against a column of tanks, and that we would replace that standing figure with like an old gramophone. So the idea is music going against the kind of the mainstream stuff that’s being shoved down our throats on the radio and that. Of course, that original photo from Tiananmen Square was copy written on that, so we just went with that general idea and had an original cover drawn up for that.

Ben: Oh, it’s nice. First of all, I don’t have to tell the listeners that I listened to several of your top tracks. It’s awesome stuff. I can hear you claim certain influences in your MySpace page. The classic prog rock gods, Rush, even the new ones like prog metal bands like Opeth, I hear all of that, but it is not derivative on any way. So it real, it’s a mix. Well, it’s too bad you lost Aaron because his vocals were tops, but I’m sure you’ll find someone to match it. Anyway, I’m just giving you kudos. It’s really cool, all around interesting.

Clutch: Well, I’m glad you enjoyed it. That’s always great to hear.

Ben: Talk me through why Rush got you started playing guitar? What have been into? What, consciously or not, do you think influences your music now?

Clutch: Well, when I was in high school, I saw all the kids around me were really into music, and I would try listening to pop radio and some of the cookie cutter, mostly pop stuff that they were listening to, and just nothing interested me remotely. It wasn’t until one night I was just randomly flipping radio stations, and I heard Tom Sawyer, and it just literally gave me the chills. It would have been a long time after Moving Pictures had come out. It’s always been one of their mainstay radio songs. And I just could not believe it. I mean, I couldn’t even tell if the singer was a guy or a girl. I couldn’t tell if it was the same band that did that Barracuda song. It’s just like a high-singing voice but a really cool, really cool music.

Over time, I kind of heard a couple more songs of theirs, and I heard the name of the band, and I was like, “Okay, I got to find out who these guys are. So I got a stoner buddy. I was kind of always a straight arrow. But I had a stoner friend in high school who was, “Oh yeah, Rush.” So he copied a couple CDs for me, and I think he copied Moving Pictures and 2112. Everyday when I got home from school, I was just like whistling at those non-stop. One time, I would dig out some of their other material. After I was listening to 2112, I bought Hold Your Fire randomly. I didn’t know anything about, stylistically, that these guys did other stuff besides kind of the more rocking stuff, but to hear some synthesizer-based music in that, I mean, that really threw me for a trip. You know I liked everything I heard and I thought it’s just such interesting music, but it was also a very cult thing. Most people in high school had never heard of them or knew who they were. It was just kind of more of the stoner kids who liked Metallica and that kind of stuff that also liked Rush. So that’s how I got into them.

Over time I kind of got into other progressive bands like Yes especially their ‘70s stuff, Pink Floyd, Zeppelin. Rush and Zeppelin are still my top two favorite bands. There was a great band called Voivod. I don’t know if you are familiar with them. They were a metal band but they were progressive and really, really weird music but I just found their stuff really compelling.

Ben: Yeah I know. I have heard of them. We had this guy, Kevin Hufnagel who is in this prog metal band, Dysrhythmia, and it was kind of an odd interview in that he is not a super Rush disciple, but he’s a Voivod disciple.

Clutch: And Voivod has really weird stuff. I think a lot of Rush fans would like it, and even for a lot of Rush fans, it might be a little out there. If people are interested in finding out, I would say start with Nothingface, and do the next two or three albums after that. It’s really good stuff.

Over time, I kind of got more into some alternative bands that I thought were interesting especially Radiohead. You couldn’t get those guys to write a bad song. If you try it, everything they do is pretty consistently brilliant. You know bands like Incubus, Mars Volta was a huge influence. That’s more of the most mind-blowing bands I think to that come out in the past decade or so. So that kind of goes the gamut and then I listen to a lot of jazz. I really enjoy jazz music. I like going to our local jazz club, and checking out jazz bands, but it’s really as more as the hobby thing. I don’t have any illusions that I’m going to be a great jazz guitarist. But I just think it’s great music. The thing that jazz has that most of rock doesn’t is just beautiful harmonies.

Ben: I know, I hear it well. That and chops and – as a friend of mine pejoratively calls it – the “Ta-Ting”. I came from prog rock then I got schooled in jazz and was in that vein for a long time, then I ditched it. I came back to my roots.

Clutch: Oh, okay.

Ben: So I think we kind of have a similar journey…

Clutch: We’ll check out some of your songs. I definitely hear a little classical guitar, and mixed in one of the songs, and it really had rock, another is some little progs in this and that.

Ben: Yeah, it’s a smorgasbord.

Clutch: So great some stuff.

Ben: I think it’s good to absorb even if just as a fan with other types of music because just by osmosis, it comes in your own music and mixes it up, makes it more interesting.

Clutch: Oh, absolutely.

Ben: You’re in Colorado, right? You know, you keep losing band members, one guy moved into California. How did you wind up in Colorado? Is that where you grew up? And what’s the music scene like out there?

Clutch: Yeah, Colorado is where I grew up. I probably lived my whole life aside from a couple of years in Colorado, and Aaron had been here for many years, so it all started with Shaft really with that band. Then Aaron and I ended up being together, and he and I always had simple things in common as far as influences and the type of music we wanted to make. I think anything one of us wrote the other person could contribute to and make it better. So it’s a huge deal for him to move, like I said Mike and I are still writing and right now, that’s what we are going to focus on. It’s just writing stuff and then down the road, we’ll figure out what happens at that point.

Ben: You know, the last band I interviewed, Elf Project, I’d say these guys come out of the Rush tribute band tradition. So they’ve only recently going original, so they’re really, really like Rush. But even there, the guy, the lead songwriter/singer, he plays the bass, he does all the sync and stuff live, and he sings in high pitch, and now you have this where you had this fellow who sang and play bass, and did he do the sync as well? Or was that you?

Clutch: Yeah, Aaron, when we played live, I mean, we would reproduce the CD and then add to it. We would like to insert jam sections like in Dementia, which is the lead track and what not. In the CD, Aaron and I kind of split up keyboard duties but live, Aaron would have the keyboard in front of him and a Taurus-type trigger pedal to trigger stuff, and then separately, I had a loop pedal, so I could record sections and then loop underneath live, and then play on top of those, so we kind of use a little bit of that technology to help fill out the sound and reproduce all of the little details that were on the CD.

Ben: Right, well, that’s a great approach for a trio. I don’t know if what the chicken came first or whatever. If Rush hadn’t done that years ago, started that trend to flush out their live performance and make it like the studio version, if others probably wouldn’t have caught on. But I just think it is ironic the second prog rock band in the row I’m interviewing had that same kind of formula.

Clutch: Yeah. I mean we didn’t set out like we want to be a trio, or we want to be like Rush and have the same instrumentation. But just as we wrote the music, we realized that keyboards could fill a good supporting role here and there, even though they’re certainly not my primary instrument or Aaron’s. And so just being aware that, hey, Rush was able to pull that off with three people kind of gave us some confidence that, yeah, you can use technology in a way where you can do all that stuff, and still have not that, or you just had a mix tape playing the background where you’re singing over it or doing karaoke, but it’s ridiculous.

Ben: Right, right. Now, it can get ridiculous, but you use technology if you can?

Clutch: Yeah, absolutely.

Ben: What are your ambitions for the band?

Clutch: Our short term ambitions really for this year are to keep writing material. We have some new stuff that’s pretty cool. I really like it and I think that other people would too once we are able to record it. I just want to purely focus with that with Mike, and then next year, we’d really like to be in a state where we can start gigging again and recording. Ideally by the end of the year, get out another CD. Right now, there’s been so much change recently that I’m just trying to keep on my blinders and worry about what I can control right now, which is trying to write music, try to stretch out a little bit and do something new aside from our normal style, but still have the RSR sound.

Ben: Right, right, cool. Well, thanks for talking. This has been excellent.

Clutch: Well, thank you. I appreciate it

Today I talk to Carl Shultz of Elf Project - a band that (aside from that one single up on myspace) has a sound VERY much like Rush.

I talk w/Carl about the challenges of living and working in a relative backwater area for (Progressive Rock) like suburban Albany, how Elf Project evolved out of a Rush tribute band. We even talk shop a bit about how he gets his amazing bass sound – modeled faithfully after Geddy Lee’s muscular, edgy bass sound.

Mid-way through the podcast we hear a full-length version of the band’s single Serene from their latest album Mirage. We close the podcast with another full-length track from Mirage – Lessons

Ben: Carl, would you mind just giving us a bit of your background and where you’re at, how you came to be in the band you’re in, and just a little bit about yourself and the band?

Carl: Well, I’m located up outside Albany, New York, and I’ve been a musician for about 20 years. I started off like a lot of kids in high school playing in high school band, and then discovered progressive rock and it was basically all over from there. I had to play bass, so I’ve been playing bass for about 20 years, and we always had little bands that we had little cover bands and stuff like that and a friend of mine had a Four-Track, so we just started writing our own stuff.

And Rush has definitely been a huge influence, not only with me but the other guys that are on the group, the other guys that play in Elf Project, Mike Cappadozy and Dave Wayne, they live here in the same town that I do, and they were hugely influenced by Rush and once we started playing together we kind of realized that the music that we were writing had a lot of the Rush influence. And we’ve basically just been kind of going in that direction ever since, it’s not a forced kind of thing, this is just the music that we’re writing.

And, of course, there’s also the Rush Tribute band, which was a culmination of playing in different Rush tribute bands over the years, Archives and Hemispheres. And we would play all these gigs, and I would try to record them with just like a room microphone or something like that, and it was always frustrating to hear these playbacks because it sounded like Doo-Doo. So we just decided let’s give it a shot, let’s do a studio recording.

And over the years, of course, we’ve certainly upgraded from a Four-Track and I’ve got a home studio. And so we got a good recording in ‘05 when I started that project. And as we got going with it I brought in a friend of mine who is an audio engineer, and he helped out with it and it started sounding really good. So we’ve started shopping it around to some labels, and Eclipse Records picked it up and that came out the same day that the Snakes & Arrows CD came out, and we had a little bit of success with it. We’ve kind of dropped the Rush Tribute thing to focus in on our own stuff, and that’s where our attention has been out for the last couple of years.

Ben: So this is Elf Project we’re just talking about?

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: Okay. So Elf Project evolved from your tribute band “Hemispheres”, is that it?

Carl: Yeah, basically. We always kind of write songs on our own and with different musicians here in the area, but the core that was the Rush Tribute band has turned into the Elf Project since 2006.

Ben: So when you were playing out live as the Tribute band, were you starting to slip into your own original stuff or did you consciously decide that you guys had good ideas of your own?

Carl: Well, we always kept the Rush Tribute. When we were going with that thing we had 3 sets of material that was all Rush, so our hands were definitely full with that. That was a long performance so we didn’t do any of our original stuff and we figured, “Hey, if people are going to come out to a bar or a club or whatever and see the Rush Tribute band, they don’t want to be bothered with somebody’s original music.” So that was our focus. But on the side we were writing our own stuff, and we’re all getting a little bit older, and we realized now, “Yeah, it’s a lot of fun to play Rush music, but we got to do our own thing.”

Ben: One curious thing you said earlier, you had to play bass, you fell in love with prog rock. Did you mean to say that you had to play bass? I’m only asking you because you’re the vocalist and the bassist, and I don’t know if it’s conscious but I see this, I was the bassist and vocalist in a garage band on high school, and we played a lot of Rush. And I’m interviewing this other guy in a few weeks, same deal. Is there something to that?

Carl: I don’t know, it’s weird. It’s weird like that, isn’t it? I love the idea of the 3-piece and I think the first time I saw Rush I was in tenth grade. I remembered watching him do all the stuff, and I was just like, “That is really cool.” I mean, vocals, bass, keyboard samples, foot pedals, everything, and I was really blown away by that. I’m also a huge Yes fan, a Chris Squire fan as well. And but I like the idea of the 3-piece, and I don’t know, over time it’s not like a hard thing to do at this point. You just kind of learn these different moves and it just kind of comes together.

Ben: All right. So what’s the label you’re on again?

Carl: The Rush Tribute is on the Eclipse Records label, and Elf Project is signed to 10T Records and they’re based out at Charleston, South Carolina.

Ben: Fluttr Effect is a co-band of yours on the same label.

Carl: That’s right.

Ben: They’re were the second or third interview I did for this site. I know they’re in the same major “prog rock” genre, and obviously not super-Rush clones, but I reached out to them mainly because I like their music, and they’re on the Boston area, and I kind of imagine I could just go down and catalog that label, which got some pretty good bands and just pick and choose, which one to interview with some pretty good music.

Carl: Yeah, they’ve got some different stuff on there. It’s not all progressive rock. They’re a well-rounded label, and that’s really their MO. Prog is a big thing for them, and they’ve got like some Christian music. They’re trying to not just be a pigeonholed as the progressive rock label.

Ben: Another connection between us – and this is super-ironic – a friend of mine, Peter Richards, who I gathered you’ve heard or you know and…

Carl: He’s from my area.

Ben: Yeah. So a week or two before you emailed me, which is cold email from a link on RushIsABand.com

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: He knew what I was up to, and said, “Hey, I got this buddy who you might want to check out.” So when you emailed me I thought that Peter put you up to it.

Carl: No.

Ben: Isn’t that ironic?

Carl: Not at all. And when you said Peter Richards, I had to scratch my head, because I’m not really tight with him. He’s a good friend, actually, of my next-door neighbor. And last year, our guitar player in Elf Project, another friend of mine, Israel Stark, he quit the group, and I was kind of reaching out to people to see who would be interested, and I knew that Peter played and I know that he’s good. And he came over one day, and I gave him the music, we listened to the tunes. He’s like, “All right, you know, let me get back to you.” And I never really heard from him again, and my friend that was in the Rush Tribute band with me, Mike Cappadozy, stepped in, he’s like, “Yeah, I want to do this.” So he’s been with us ever since.

Ben: That’s so like Peter, he is super-talented. I didn’t go to school with him, but I came years after him at UMass Amherst, that’s where we met – when I was as a grad student. And he’s a talented composer and a good player, but he has inferiority complex to match no others.

Carl: I definitely sensed that? Like I say, he’s a good friend with my neighbor, and she introduced us a while ago, and she even said to me, she’s like, “Yeah, you know, it’s hard to get him out of that, you know, out of his comfort zone, and get him to do things.” And I thought, “Well, hey, maybe if he likes the tunes, that will be good for him to get him out, you know?”

Ben: Yeah. Well, try again if you ever lose another guitarist, give him another shot because he’s a sharp guy.

Carl: Because he called me like, I don’t know, a couple of weeks after we met and he’s just like, “Yeah, I’ve got all the stuff put together whenever you’re ready.” And I was, “Shit, I haven’t heard from him in so long, and the other guy has stepped up to the plate.”

Ben: Oh, shoot.

Carl: And this other friend of mine, Mike Cappadozy, I’ve known him a long, long time, and so I have some quite a lot of loyalty in my friend Mike.

Ben:  So that’s 3 degrees of bands like Rush, I don’t know.

Carl: Yeah, there you go. Now, if you don’t mind me asking where are you located?

Ben: I’m now outside of Boston area. I moved closer to the city.  South of Boston and I still maintain contacts with folks out there.

So I really like the music, and it’s almost as though your original stuff, it’s almost as though if Rush came out with that, I would be like super psyched because it’s got elements of the old stuff that we like. It’s still a bit harder-edged as is the recent Rush.

Carl: Right.

Ben: And I don’t want to use this word pejoratively, but its derivative in the best sense.

Carl: Yes, thanks.

Ben: And that’s just the fact and it must be just a product of you having been in the tribute band vein, for so long. What do you think?

Carl: I think you’re absolutely right. I think because it’s not the kind of music where I just like, “Hey, let’s play some Rush tunes.” I mean, you’ve got to sit down with this stuff. Everybody’s got to learn their parts before even getting in the room together, and then when you come together it all falls into place. So when you study that stuff, and it can’t help but rub off on your own writing, and it’s not like anything that we’re trying to cap, it’s just where we’re at. It’s like “Hey, I got a rep.” And it’s like “Okay, you play on it, and yeah, it kind of sounds like something Rush, but you know, so we just kind of roll with it.”

Ben: Although two modifiers to that. Well, before I try to contrast the similarities again, your voice, even the inflections in the way you say words ending with ‘I’. I don’t know if you can tell, but it’s all Geddy all day in a lot of phrases, and I like it, I love it. But are you aware of that?

Carl: No, because I’m just doing just what comes naturally, and being also the lyric writer I’ve got to find the rhythm of the words that make sense to me, and of course, when you’re playing bass and I’m also playing foot pedals and samples, all those things kind of have to fall in. So it’s not like I’m trying to sound like that. I’m just trying to fit things that are natural to me, and if it comes off that way, well, I’m sorry.

Ben: No, it’s not…

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: It’s not a criticism. Well, because I can imagine if you’re doing 3 or 4 things at once, you can’t be thinking too hard. It’s got to be an almost auto-pilot subliminal thing after all that requiring tons of rehearsal obviously to internalize it. But it’s…

Carl: Well, what we’ve been doing with our kind of deal is that we get together, we write stuff together in the rehearsal room and once we’re happy with the music, I’ll take a little demo and then I’ll work on the lyrics and I’ll demo the lyrics and make sure the guys like it, and once we’re all happy with that then we’ll go ahead and record it. And once we do that final recording, things change a little bit here and there, and then when we go to play live that’s what we’re trying to read, we’re trying to capture what we’ve recorded.

Ben: All right. So that’s a little different. You don’t go for super layering in production in the studio but then, you know?

Carl: Oh no, there’s plenty of that in the studio. There’s plenty of that because I kind of feel like if you’re going to take the time to record it, if you’re going to put some layers in there that you can’t do live, well, you’re going to compensate, and you might come up a little bit short but if you’re going to make a record and people are going to listen to it in their home or in their car or on their iPod, whatever, put the stuff on there to fill it out. And, there’s bass pedals and different synthesizers and stuff. I mean, we’ve tried to have keyboard players along the way, and it’s tough. It’s tough to keep people interested, so that’s why I like the 3-piece; it’s very easy to manage.

Ben: Low maintenance, right?

Carl: Low maintenance, and the drummer, Dave Wayne, he lives right down the road from me. Mike, he lives 8-10 miles from here. So it’s good that we’re all close, and we’re close friends too, so that makes a huge difference. It’s just not a business kind of thing.

Ben: Now that I hear it, that’s excellent. Although it’s interesting the first tune shows up on your MySpace page is this tune ‘Shine A Light’, and it sounds nothing like Rush at all. It hearkens to something like kind of almost hippie throwback, feel-good rock. How come?

Carl: Okay, I can tell you. One night I was laying in bed, and I heard this little chord progression, and I got up and grab my guitar. It’s just an acoustic guitar just so I could figure out what I was hearing, and I wrote it down real quick and some of the words came to me right there. So I just wrote it down. I didn’t think too much about it, I went back to bed. The next day I came home from work and I looked at it and I started playing. I was just like, “Wow, there’s a tune here.” And even though it doesn’t sound anything like Rush, I just went ahead and we recorded it anyway and we finished it, and we’re just like, “This is a pretty cool tune, you know?”

Ben: Wow.

Carl: And we’ve gotten a lot of compliments on that song and we’ve even joked with it, “Boy, we should just write a whole record like that.”

Ben: That’s funny. You could be accused of bait and switch if you lure people into that kind of tune and then throw the Rush-type prog stuff on them.

Carl: Yeah, yeah, you know.

Ben: The chord progression, I dig it. And it’s that weird step-wise progression which doesn’t follow the normal falling to this type of approach for most music. And it took me forever to place it. I knew I’d kind of heard it and…

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: ‘Melissa’, The Allman Brothers Band.

Carl: Absolutely, absolutely.

Ben: That key over there is probably subliminal.

Carl: I didn’t even realize that then until somebody playing that out to me, and I was like “Yeah, it’s that,” and it’s also the beginning of ‘Your Move’ with Yes.

Ben: It’s a couple of ones. Yeah, that one, too. Geez.

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: Well, I mean, at least it’s not like the EAD progression, which I can name probably 30 songs at the top of my head.

Carl: Yeah. Yeah, it’s got that jangly, it’s just an E major chord and then you go up 2 frets and then 2 more frets and then you arrive at A, and one more fret up and that’s basically all the chords that are in there. But it sounds really good, it’s got a good feel to it. And like I say, that was pointed out to me after we finished it. A friend of mine was like “You know, it kind of sounds like the Allman Brothers, dude.” And I was like “Well, it’s done.” Do you know what I mean? It’s not like I’ve woke up out of a sleep and ripped off the Allman Brothers. It just came to me and we rolled with it.

Ben: Yeah. Well, someone said, [18:15 [Noah Shamberg] said there’s still great music to be written in the key of C. This is from a guy who didn’t do a ton of music or so. And I’m sorry if I keep dumping like my impressions of the music. But before I do more, the whole subject of who sounds like what and your identity is probably something you think about a lot with the roots that your band has and tribute band for Rush. But aside from Rush, what other influences do you have? You’ve mentioned Yes so, I mean, other prog bands or what?

Carl: Oh, absolutely, Yes was a huge one. You know it was Rush and Yes right from the beginning. And now even, I think my grandfather, I said to him, “You know, I want to get a bass here.” And he was like super supportive of me because he was a musician himself. And he’s like, “All right, you know, let’s go down to the music store and get you a bass.” So the first base I got was a Rickenbacker. But other bands, it’s Genesis, Gentle Giant, of course, they’re incredible. I still listen to that stuff quite a bit. Personally, I like the band Camel. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them. And the other guys in the band always make fun of me for listening to them, but they’re really super-melodic band. I’m trying to think. Just like the classic progressive rock is really my thing.

Ben: Yeah.

Carl: And I try to keep up with what’s going on around us because we’re in the present and we’re a band that’s here today. So I try to keep an ear to what’s going on and you mentioned that we have a harder edge, but to me I think that we’re still pretty mellow compared to some of the harder-edged stuff that goes on.

Ben: Oh, true, true. When I said harder-edged, yeah, by comparison these days is not that hard, but comparison to the classic days of prog rock, it’s pretty hard.

Carl: Right, right. So I think that those bands, Yes, Rush, Genesis, Gentle Giant, the other guys in the group are big fans of that music as well. So…

Ben: What do you think of kind of the new progressive music? There’s a lot of really, really cool and interesting stuff out there. It is tending to be more aggressive, the virtuosity, but I think particularly in the drum side. I mean, its nuts these days. Do you get in that at all or what?

Carl: I have.

Ben: No?

Carl: Well, a good friend of mine that I used to play with is Jason Bittner, and he plays in Shadows Fall, he is from Schenectady. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Shadows Fall.

Ben: No.

Carl: They’re pretty popular metal band, and they’re doing really great, and they’re touring all over the world and we used to play with Jason a lot, and Jason is one of these guys. He has column in Modern Drummer every month, and he’s like super, super good. And he was always trying to get us to like super double bass drum and trying to get us to like get into the metal thing and I’m just, “I don’t know. man. I have a hard time with it because it’s not really my thing.”

And another friend of mine who’s a very good drummer, Mike Mumblow. He played with us in the Hemispheres Band. He is a huge Dream Theater fan, and he lives with me for a while. And, man, he will play that stuff everyday, and I think he kind of turned me off to it. I would hear it, and it was more like a sporting event than it was music to me, but I don’t want to sound derogatory about that stuff because…

Ben: You can, that’s fine.

Carl: They’re a huge band and they have a huge following, so that’s just my opinion, that’s all.

Ben: Isn’t there a saying about them that 90% of their audience is other musicians as their fans?

Carl: I totally believe that. I totally believe that. But I think the same thing holds true with like Rush and even Yes, to a degree. I mean, I think that those music influenced a lot of people. I think people heard that music, and they were just like this is something that is different, this is not your regular stuff that you’re going to hear on rock radio, and I think it resonated with a lot of people. And I’m sure that Rickenbacker had sold a lot of basses based on Geddy and Chris Squire with people going, “Yeah, I want to play like that, you know?”

Ben: Is that what you play still?

Carl: No, I play a Fender Jazz bass only because it’s a little bit easier to get around down than the Rickenbacker, but I’ve got a Rick and I use it quite a bit for recording.

Ben: I’m sorry to do this again. I love your bass sound and in the production, in general, I think is awesome and it’s slightly distorted. It’s very heavy with the bass. It’s a third voice or a fourth or whatever. It’s a voice on its own in the song. What is that? Is that the production, is that the post-processing, is that the bass itself? How do you get that? It’s very Geddy Lee-esk.

Carl: Well, the bass that I’ve used, or my bass that I use is the Geddy Lee Jazz bass, the Thunder bass. So that probably has a part of it to get the sound tube head, tube mpeg into just the 4/10 cab. It’s not loud when I record. I just use a good condenser microphone and kind of close to the speaker, and it’s not loud but yet there’s just a little bit of front-end drive coming into it. I’ve got an Ashly preamp, so I preamp into the head, and there’s just a little bit of drive and it break up. You got to have a little bit of break up in there. I always thought probably want that clean sound.

Ben: Smooth…

Carl: But if you go for that super-clean sound, there’s no character to it. You got to have a little bit of dirt in there.

Ben: Yeah.

Carl: Yeah. And it comes through, and yeah, that is something that I’ve been chasing ever since I started recording. I’m like, “How do these guys get this down, you know?”

Ben: Yeah, I record my bass direct, so I got to do something about it. I don’t know what, but if you have any suggestion on just put a little distortion on it afterwards, or what?

Carl: Do you have any amplifiers?

Ben: Well, no, I got rid of them all. I’m using pods all day. I mean, it’s…

Carl: Because I’ve got a pod as well, and I use sometimes off front end with the pod into the amp. One thing that works, and I’ve done this before and I’ve done it with other instruments like keyboards, you record direct. You’ve got a direct signal, send it back out of whatever you’re recording on and send that out into an amplifier, mike it.

Ben: All right.

Carl: Set up another track and reamp and when you reamp you can sit there and then the performance is done. You don’t have to worry about that and then you can sit there and hone in on the EQ. And you can hone in, if you want a little bit of dirt in there, and that works really well.

Ben: Yeah. I haven’t tried that, maybe mostly because I’m too lazy. But….

Carl: What format do you record on?

Ben: You mean, what software, what rig? Just through in an audio interface in the computer.

Carl: Yeah, okay. So if you just took an output for just that track, send it into your amp and then put a mike on it, and then have another track ready to go input, you might find that you can hone in a little bit better on the sound.

Ben: Thanks. Now, I’m going to try that because the sound you got is to be envied, for sure.

Carl: Well, like I say it’s taken me a lifetime to arrive with that.

Ben: I know, you should write up the recipe and post it online. I’m sure people would appreciate it. And if you send it to me, I’ll take care of it, I will put it on my website. When we called last week, we had to postpone as you got a close friend die, I don’t want to get into that. But was that someone within the music community?

Carl: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben: A guy you played with?

Carl: Well, he had played with us in various things over the years. He was then the first incarnation of our first Rush Tribute band, going back about 15 years. I’ve known him for well over 15 years. And yeah, he was a musician, he was a keyboard player.

Ben: What is his name?

Carl: His name is Dave Wetra, and he’s a local guy and my neighbor who knows Peter, she used to date David and that’s how she introduced him to all of us. And he was a musician, and he saw what we were doing, he was just like, “Wow, this is great, you know, can I get in on this.” And we’re like, “Yeah man, of course.” And he was a super, super great guy and a dear friend, and it’s been a week that he’s been gone and it’s been one of the toughest weeks of my life.

Ben: Took his own life, correct?

Carl: Yes, he did.

Ben: Well, I’m sorry. I wish you luck in dealing with it.

Carl: Yeah, it hurt a lot of people in this community because he was very loved by everybody because he was a super good guy. He was one of these guys that he went out of his way to make sure that you’ll like him. Not that he tried too hard, that was just in his nature, he wanted people to like him and everybody did, and nobody can say anything negative about the guy. He was a super good guy, and he was battling some things and he wouldn’t let anybody in on that. And he was trying to deal with it himself. And if he had just reached out to any of us and said I need some help, we would have been there for him. And it’s just been really tough.

Ben: Well, your last album has got some attention and success, so what shape is that taking, touring, sales, fans, what?

Carl: Well, 10T Records have been great. I got a hold of them probably about a year and a half ago because I did it independently. And I figured, “Well, you know, I will shop it around like I did with the Rush Tribute thing.” And Eclipse Records, they took that, but with the Elf Project thing, they grabbed on to it and they called me and they were just like, “Wow you know, we want to work with you.” And they’ve been really great, and we’ve been able to make a little bit of money off of it, not a lot.

But that’s not even the reason why we do it. We do it because we feel that we have to, because we need to be creative.

Ben: Yeah.

Carl: And we just played a show last weekend and we’ve got a show coming up on June, let me look at the calendar here, June 17th at a club in Albany. We’re opening up for a national band called Moraine, they’re from Seattle and they are a progressive band that is like a cross between King Crimson and Mahavishnu.

Ben: Oh, cool.

Carl: I mean, it’s a pretty cool stuff, pretty cool stuff. So we’re pretty stealth on that and we’re taking some time away from all of this stuff. But another week or so, we got to get hustling to get our show back together, and we’re looking to make a good impact down there.

Ben: Cool. That’s excellent.

Carl: This area where we live, it’s kind of weird with progressive rock stuff. It’s weird, like I used to work over at this club in Troy called Revolution Hall and the club is still in there, a friend of mine was running it. And I used to do monitors there and we have all sorts of bands in there, but I’ll never forget right on this time when we first opened, we had the Carl Palmer Band, and of course, he was playing drums and he have these 2 kids, in their early 20s or whatever, and I guess they were from somewhere in Europe. But these kids were awesome. One kid played bass and the other kid played the guitar, and he mimicked all of the keyboard stuff on the guitar. And it was like this heavy approach to ELT, right? There was like 50 people in there. And it was like, here we are watching this legend kick serious ass with this young guys and it’s like a vortex. I don’t know, it’s weird.

Ben: So it’s not a huge area for prog?

Carl: Well, Saratoga Performing Art Center is right up the road. We’re only a half hour from Saratoga, and you go up there, Rush will play there this summer and that place will be packed, there’ll be 10,000 to 12,000 people there.

Ben: Well, that’s a destination for the whole upstate, right?

Carl: Right, right. You’ve got people coming in from the Adirondack. You’ve got people coming in from Western New York, over in your neck of the woods. People flock to that place, but it’s a nice place to be.

Ben: Yeah.

Carl: It’s nice there. But even Yes played here. It’s like two years ago. I wasn’t on their last tour. It was a couple tours back and they played the Arena in downtown Albany and there was like 1,100 people in this huge hockey arena.

Ben: Oh, that’s tough.

Carl: It’s tough man, it’s tough.

Ben: Embarrassing.

Carl: Well, I don’t know. I just think that some of it has to do it like these classic bands like with Yes and Rush. It’s like people that like that stuff and if they grow up with it, hell, they are in their 50s now.

Ben: Yeah.

Carl: So it might be tough for these people to justify to go out. They’ve got kids. They got jobs and all this stuff. So it’s tough to feel like let’s go relive our youth, and go see this band and I don’t know.

Ben: Right, right, right.

Carl: I don’t know, but…

Ben: Well, you know, either you live in the area that we call the countryside and deal with it, or you often live somewhere else. So it seems like you’re after the creativity and process more than the hopes of fame and fortune, so…

Carl: Absolutely, absolutely. Any of that stuff is a bonus. I mean, we’ve made a little bit of money. We’re not taking nice trips anywhere with that money. But just a little bit of money here and there to buy equipment and just keep the thing going, that’s fine. That’s fine.

Ben: Cool. Cool, all right. So awesome. Well, good luck.

Carl: Thanks a lot, man. It’s been nice talking with you.

Dysrhythmia is a three-piece instrumental, progressive metal band from New York City. They’ve been together for over 10 years – producing aggressive, complex – and frankly scary metal. I interviewed their primary songwriter and guitarist Kevin Hufnagel several months ago and am only now getting around to posting this. The timing is good however, since they’re embarking on a European tour in a week – here’s hoping the publicity is well-timed.

Yet again – I find this podcast veering out a bit from the mission statement to bring you “bands like Rush”. I won’t make you giggle by trying to argue for a Rush/Dysrhythmia similarity. Aside from dwelling in the same major genre of progressive rock – Rush and Dysrhythmia have little in common. The bigger point I make by including bands like Dysrhythmia in this podcast is that Rush fans who appreciate complex and challenging song structures, virtuosity and music that “grows on you” are going to appreciate lesser-known bands like Dysrhythmia. Expect more bands like this in the months ahead.

Ben: Why don’t you just start just giving where you guys are at now, where you feel you sit artistically and what your aspirations and a little bit about your history.

Kevin: Okay. Well, the band started with me and our original bass player whose name was Clayton Ingerson in August of 1998. We had pretty much written an entire album’s worth of stuff with just guitar and bass before being able to find a drummer during that summer where we got together for the first time.

So then, in March of ’99, we found our drummer, Jeff, who’s been going ever since then. Clayton left the band in 2004, and then Colin Marston joined on bass and we’ve been with him every since.

So, that’s been about 11 years now and we have five records, five full-length studio albums, and a couple splits and EPs and things. We’re already working on the sixth one. All three of us in the band do a lot of other things outside of Dysrhythmia musically.

Ben: Yeah? Like what?

Kevin: Our bass player, Colin, runs a recording studio full-time and he’s in a black metal band called Krallice. He plays in Gorguts who are an old death metal band that just reformed, and I also play in that band now too.

Ben: Gorguts? That’s some name.

Kevin: They started off as a brutal death metal band, but their third record was called Obscure. It came out in 1998. It was a huge influence on me as a guitar player because it’s a really weird record. You should check it out, actually.

Ben: Yeah, I will.

Kevin: It’s very interesting. It kind of goes beyond the metal in its ideas and stuff. It definitely takes aggressive music to a different planet. Gorguts, that was a band that had been around for a long time and really made a name for themselves in the underground, and then disappeared for a while. Now they’ve sort of re-emerged.

Strangely enough, the main guy behind that band was into Dysrhythmia and needed to replace the bass and second guitar slot in the reformation of the band, so he hired us. Me and Colin were already huge fans though. That happened about a year and a half ago we joined.

So, we’re working on a new record with that band. Colin and I also do another band called Byla which is more like ambient guitar stuff. Our drummer, Jeff, has a really cool progressive dark jazz trio called Zevious. So, we’re just all over the place.

Ben: Do you think Dysrhythmia is your main gig?

Kevin: That’s always been my main thing. But, I find that these days it’s healthier to do other things basically outside the band. It keeps it fresh, basically. I think, for a while, especially when we first signed to Relapse in 2003, the first record we put out with them was called Pretest. And that year, we toured probably five or six months out of the year.

So, that was a lot of touring. We were kind of on that path for a while; tour, tour, tour. Let’s tour. This is the only way to get people to really find out who we are. We did it that way for a while, but then you kind of get burned out. You kind of get tired of the music itself and each other.

I find it healthier these days to do other things too. I feel I need a way to balance it all. I think that’s why the band is still around now, going on over 11 years.

Ben: You took some time in between.

Kevin: Yeah, we give each other the freedom to do other things. I’m still totally, and we’re all still, totally into Dysrhythmia. We’re going to Europe in June. Things are still happening. We’re working on new material. It’s great, actually. It’s not like we’re going to hang it up or anything.

The band keeps growing still; very slowly because it’s the kind of music that’s just not going to catch on with a mainstream audience, but the audience is still slowly going upwards.

Ben: What’s the audience like? It is a real specific niche you guys are in. What do the critics call it; prog metal, alt metal? What’s the stupid term?

Kevin: I don’t know. People always debate about whether we’re a metal band or not. To me, metal is probably my first real love musically. So, I feel like there’s a part of me, anything I do musically, even if it’s an acoustic classical guitar piece or something, there’s always been a metal influence in there somewhere because that’s just a huge part of me.

But, actually, the goal with Dysrhythmia was never to be a “metal band.” But, over the years, the records just keep getting more and more intense, and more and more aggressive. And I think our live performances are a little more intense than listening to the studio records. It’s aggressive, but I still don’t think of it as really metal, though.

Ben: Yeah, I hear you.

Kevin: None of are concerned with trying to figure out what it is and calling it anything. It depends. It depends on the person’s background. People that listen to lots of prog rock that hear us will say we sound like lots of other prog bands that they listen to.

Our fan always come from more of, let’s say, in the punk and stuff. They hear Black Flag and stuff. It all depends on the person’s own background. Everyone hears something different, which I think is cool.

Ben: It’s true. I hear that. I’m a musician myself. I’m just trying to start out, versus you. I was still picking my naval in 1998 trying to find my way. It’s like when you have a baby. I don’t know if you have kids; I have two kids. I can’t tell my own resemblance in them.

I can’t tease out the influences in my own music, so I rely on other people. And it’s exactly right. I get things out of left field when I ask people, “What does my music sound like?” That’s true. It’s really what they relate to about their own tastes in your music.

Kevin: Right.

Ben: I’m curious. You guys have been around a long time. Forgive me if this is prying, but I’m just curious for my own self, and maybe the fans would be, when we were arranging this call, you said your job at the hospital. I’m curious, you were saying you have a European tour coming up. One of your band mates runs a studio full-time.

I’m curious, do you guys spread your living across different musical endeavors plus stuff to plug the holes, to keep the living going; day jobs, etc? How do you guys manage the long-term? What’s your long-term goal and is where you’re at now it?

Kevin: Yeah, we all have day jobs. Colin’s really the only one that gets to actually do what he loves to do. That’s his real job. Me and Jeff have jobs. We’re just office drones or whatever. But, these jobs have let us, for years, come and go; go on tour for a month and a half, and then come back and still have a job.

Ben: Well, that’s great.

Kevin: Yeah, it’s great. To me, I’ve got to do what I love to do. I don’t care about – I could be making more money if I just stopped this band. I’ve been a temp for the past five years now living here in New York. I could’ve easily taken any of these jobs that were pretty well paying, and just worked there full-time, and gotten the benefits and all that stuff. But, I wouldn’t be happy, really, if I wouldn’t be able to get to tour, and take time off to make records and all that stuff.

Like I said, even with all the other music projects we do and everything, somehow – I don’t know how – but we’ve all been able to just balance all of those jobs, our personal lives, and other bands; just everything and still get by.

Ben: Where are you at in your album release cycle? You’ve got something new you were going to go on tour to promote?

Kevin: Yeah, we’ve already started working on some new songs and we’re hoping to get probably at least two of them ready to be performed by the time we leave in June. The way we work though, we’re not too concerned about putting out an album every year, even every two years. It takes as long as it needs to take.

For us, too, even after a song’s written, we’ll play it live for two years at least before recording it because even though the songs are very structured, and thought-out, and composed and rehearsed a lot in the rehearsal room, when we go out and play them live, lots of things happen spontaneously, especially with our drummer, Jeff, where he just kind of will change things around the spur of the moment just with what he’s playing on drums and stuff that will make the song even cooler.

I don’t know. I’m always afraid of recording songs too soon because there’s so many times you record a record and then, afterwards, you’re like, “Oh, we could’ve done that and that would’ve been so much cooler in that song.” Now, we really let the material…

Ben: Mature.

Kevin: Yeah, mature. That’s a good word for it. Before we go out and record it and stuff. Realistically, I don’t think we’ll put out another album until 2011 or 2012 probably.

Ben: Oh, wow. That’s kind of counter to things these days, is it not?

Kevin: It’s crazy right now how business is changing and with the Internet, just how accessible music is in general now. People are being overwhelmed with too many options. I feel like with our band, the people that like us already, they’re not going to forget about us in three years or whatever until our next record comes out. They’ll still…

Ben: They’ll be there.

Kevin: That’s the thing with this kind of music. It’s such a select audience, and a select face and aesthetic that these are the kind of listeners – it’s not like pop music where it’s like, “Britney Spears was cool a couple of years ago, and now I’ve grown out of that.”

It’s okay to take time between records I feel like. For me, it doesn’t matter. I just want the material to be as strong as possible. For me, I feel like that takes time to get to that point because, like I said, we need to segregate a time for our other bands too. Of course, that will slow down Dysrhythmia’s progression as we are recording records with other bands and stuff.

Ben: Right. You’ve got to give yourself space to keep it fresh when you re-engage, right?

Kevin: I think so, yeah.

Ben: You said you guys are very structured in the rehearsal phase. Do you guys actually right stuff down, sketches? What’s your compositional process like?

Kevin: It’s probably not as complex as people might think it is maybe when they hear it. We actually don’t really write anything down. Actually, only recently have I actually started writing down my guitar parts, but just basically half-assed tabbing it out just so I don’t forget it.

But, as far as composing the music, a lot of the songs are starting with me and I just work by myself – and always on acoustic guitar in my apartment playing acoustic guitar and, eventually, I don’t know. Music is mysterious. Who knows where it comes from. Ideas will just happen. If they’re exciting ideas, then a song will just sort of write itself sometimes.

So, usually, I work on it first and I try to get a pretty strong structure together, and I bring that to practice and show it to Jeff and Colin. Usually, Jeff will sort of start playing along with my ideas first and we’ll try to get some drums worked out. Colin likes to work on his own with the bass part.

So, usually, we’ll demo guitar and drums for him, and he’ll work on his bass parts on his own time. Then the next weeks, I’ll have some bass parts written. We’ll hear them and then we’ll… you know.

So, basically, it’s like I start the songs, but then it’s extremely collaborative after that. After we start on a song, everyone’s free to change things around and make suggestions. I’m always making suggestions for drum parts even though I don’t know how to play drums, and Jeff will even tell me the change in guitar chords even though he doesn’t play guitar; stuff like that.

Ben: That’s healthy. That’s good. I’m curious though, if you base the song so much on playing live from when you start rehearsing to when you finally get on tour and then you feel like recording it, when you bring it into the studio, are you really just all about capturing the performance you’ve worked through over time or do you layer stuff on?

Kevin: That’s a good question because going into the studio and doing it live – well, it’s pretty much the way we first did every record. But, on the most recent one, Psychic Maps, we did that and then we also felt like we wanted to add more on top of that. So, that’s kind of what we did with the newest record.

Some of the guitar we redone, which was kind of a first for us, but almost all the bass and the drums was live together; the same take. But, I wanted to do more with the guitars this time. I wanted to add more. I just wanted it to sound a little bit fuller and layered. There’s a lot of, actually, acoustic guitar, especially on the first four songs on the record. It’s just a texturing underneath. I just like that sound of chimey with the guitar underneath a heavy, heavy guitar sort of thing.

Ben: It’s a different attack. Blended together, it’s a nice mix. I understand.

Kevin: And also, I think that had to do with the fact that this record was recorded in our own studio, so we didn’t feel quite as pressured for time. We could be a little bit more relaxed and experimental this time.

Ben: I understand when people hear the music, they bring to it and relate to it based on what, personally, their music they like sounds like yours, but what was your guy’s favorite bands, artists, musical influences?

Kevin: Pretty different between the three of us. I think that can always make or break a band when everyone’s into something else. Obviously, there’s stuff – there’s some common ground there that all three of us like. But, mostly, I feel each of us brings our own influence, our own musical history, what we like and we grew up listening to into the bands.

Our drummer kind of came a little bit more from a jazz background. Since playing with us, he’s become a very hard – he hits the drums really hard. So, he’s got that great balance of aggression and finesse.

Ben: Yeah, that’s excellent.

Kevin: Yeah. Before he started playing with us, he wasn’t aware of too much heavy music or just stuff like that, so we kind of…

Ben: Shocked him into it.

Kevin: We’re all like super nerds musically, always trying to find new stuff to listen to. It’s definitely cool that we all share our discoveries with each other; like, “Oh, have you ever heard this record? You should check this out.”

But yeah, basically, he came from more of a jazz background. Our original bass player, Clayton, was way more into BC, hardcore, and old punk rock and stuff like that. So, he kind of brought that influence to the band, but it’s definitely not there as much now obviously since he’s not in the band, because Colin has more of a metal influence, especially more like extreme metal; death metal, and black metal and stuff like that is stuff he’s more into. I study classical guitar, I study jazz and I love so many different kinds of music.

Ben: Did you go to school for it or just self-study?

Kevin: Yeah, I went to school for it.

Ben: Where did you go?

Kevin: I went to University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Ben: Oh right, wow.

Kevin: Yeah, I studied jazz guitar there. And I didn’t know anything really about the jazz guitar before I went there. That was sort of the purpose was to learn about it. But, it sort of had a backwards effect on me where it didn’t actually make me want to be a jazz guitar player. It’s so awkward. I took from it what I could, and then just applied it into my own style. But, I definitely didn’t want to go down that one path just playing little jazz clubs, playing standards and stuff like that.

Ben: Not too much. It’s kind of the rut. I was the same way. When I went to college, jazz guitar was my thing. I quickly turned – well, my teacher bent me to classical guitar and then when I came down with carpal tunnel syndrome, I became a composer. So, fitting into that kind of rut is kind of a boring avenue. I relate to that.

Kevin: I feel like if you want to write your own music, I don’t know, jazz is not the first style I think of.

Ben: Unless it’s free jazz you mean?

Kevin: Yeah. Obviously, if you’re a free jazz musician, and you’re constantly making your own music and improvising.

Ben: Right. There’s absolutely zero market for that kind of stuff. That’s interesting. I haven’t heard all your discography, just what’s available on MySpace and your website, but do you bring all those instruments into the recording studio or are you just keeping your chops up on the electric mostly?

Kevin: You mean just with Dysrhythmia?

Ben: Yeah, the classical guitar.

Kevin: Like I said, Dysrhythmia, all our records are fairly stripped down. We’ve never had any guest musicians on any of our records, and there’s never been any other instruments other than guitar, bass, and drums on anything we’ve ever done.

A lot of records are pretty straightforward. There’s not much overdubbing or anything. But, like I said, on the latest one, Psychic Maps, there is a lot of acoustic guitar, especially on the first four songs.

And it’s not even really playing too much different than what the electric guitars was already playing. It’s just sort of like an additional texture. I’m really into textural guitar playing and stuff. That’s something I explore on a different project and not so much on Dysrhythmia, but I wanted to start to incorporate that more into Dysrhythmia. Fans like My Bloody Valentine and Slow Dive.

It’s kind of like 90s bands from England, bands that took the guitar into a way more abstract, textural sort of realm. I love that kind of stuff too. I think it’s interesting to take that kind of influence and put into more of a slant of progressive metal, rhythmic-oriented style too; the contrast of complex rhythms, and then to sort of an ambient walt of guitar I think is an interesting combination.

Ben: I’m curious about the instrumental bent, why no drive to do lyrics or make a lyrical statement?

Kevin: Definitely a conscious choice. At the time the band started, I guess they were just like a lot of bands where I felt like they would be better if they just didn’t have this annoying singer. Honestly, that was the motivation because it wasn’t like there was a lot of other instrumental bands we were influenced by or anything.

Nowadays, there’s lots of instrumental bands. Most of them are more like post-rock sounding; that sort of other style of instrumental. It’s more repetitive. There’s a lot of them today, but I feel like when we started, we weren’t really influenced by too many other instrumental bands.

So, I guess the idea was just, “Wow, a lot of these bands have annoying singers and went to music school, so let’s do something where we just not even bother with a singer.” I just like the whole idea of just how interpretive instrumental music is. It can really be anything since there’s no words there.

Ben: That’s true. Do you want to name any of those bands that you found annoying or just the student bands that you grew up with that seemed to tack on a singer to an otherwise solid rhythm section that was kind of gross?

Kevin: Well, it’s weird because some of the bands where I thought I don’t understand what the vocalist is adding to, but the music’s cool. Now, 11 years later, now I like these bands with the way they were with singers.

But, I think maybe the first time I heard that band Dillinger Escape Plan, I didn’t understand why they had this guy that was just shouting over this really cool music. I was like, “This would be cool if this guy would just shut up and I could see all this crazy music that’s going on.” But now, I understand. That’s part of the craziness is someone going mad on top of that mad music.

Ben: Have you ever thought of – there’s the idea of some guy or gal singing a big vocal line on top that just is disjoined from the music. But, I hear you with that and in my own music, until recently, although I’ve started to do more prog rock format where I’m signing a straight verse using the voice as an instrument instead, maybe even wordless. Have you ever thought about doing something like that? Has that moved you or no?

Kevin: I think, at this point, I don’t ever want to add vocals to our band.

Ben: Don’t jinx it?

Kevin: The idea was never to have a vocalist anyway, but at this point, I feel like we’ve established ourselves so much as an instrumental band that I don’t understand why we would ever do something with vocals at this point.

Like I said, also because we have so many other music things outside of this band that we do and some of them involve vocalist. It’s kind of like any ideas I have for vocals and stuff, I’ll do with a different band.

Ben: That makes sense. That’s one reason why maybe you need to have some space, so if you have those ideas you can exercise them with a different group and keep the Dysrhythmia idea pure.

Kevin: Yeah, each band sort of has its own – I don’t want to say concept, but its own different musical goal. I guess it’s more why we keep doing these other new projects. I’m annoyed by bands that do too much; too much genre hopping in one band where you can tell that these like a lot of different kind of music.

I’m all into diversity and stuff, but sometimes it just goes a little overboard where I feel like these guys should start another band if they want to have songs that sound like this, then sound totally like this. But, that’s my own personal taste. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but that’s just how I am.

Ben: I hear you. It’s schizophrenic. I like the idea of keeping things separate stove-piped, if not between musical efforts, at least between albums or musical statements.

Kevin: Well, actually, I think it’s cool when bands will sort of reinvent themselves from album to album. I think that’s different than within one album; like a band like Voivod or something. I think it was really interesting how throughout the 80s, they just got so much more advanced with each record and kept changing their sound, but still being unique. It was an album to album kind of thing; it wasn’t within one album where it happened.

Ben: Who? Voivod?

Kevin: Voivod, yeah; from Canada. They’re one of my favorite bands. Actually, that’s the band that all three of us in Dysrhythmia love. That’s one common band we all like.

Ben: Well, that’s good. That’s an unusual one for a jazz drummer or former, repented jazz guitarist. Cool. So, do you guys have any events coming up, or dates, or gigs that you want to plug? You mentioned the tour in June, but anything sooner than that?

Kevin: No, I don’t think there’s going to be really anything sooner. We think we’re just going to – the June tour starts on, I think, June 6^th or 7^th. All the dates are up on our MySpace page, and that lasts about a month.

Before that, I think we’ve pretty much been turning down any kind of show offers just so that we can just try to finish up some of the new songs first because any time we have a show, every rehearsal is just practicing what we’re going to play; practicing the old songs instead of working on new stuff. We’ve mostly just been working on new stuff right now. So, no shows coming up before June.

Ben: Well, you guys are holding fast then. That’s impressive. So, are you typically in the place where you turn stuff down; shows? Do you have a demand that’s greater than what you guys typically can supply?

Kevin: Sorry, say that again?

Ben: That’s an enviable position to be able to turn down shows.

Kevin: Well, these are just local shows in New York City or whatever. I feel like with touring, in general, but especially playing local shows, I feel like if you’re a band that’s been around for a while, I feel like playing too many shows or playing every show that you’re offered, people can get sick of you. It’s like, “Oh, they’re playing again.”

Ben: Right. I guess so.

Kevin: I kind of like to spread it out more now where maybe we’ll play in New York twice a year. That way, it’s more exciting for us and it’s probably more exciting for anyone that comes to see us every other month somewhere.

Ben: It’s more of an event. That makes sense.

Kevin: It’s so weird how my attitude towards that has changed in the past five years. I used to want to play every show we were offered, but nowadays not so excited to do that.

Ben: It can burn you out; not only you, but the fans if you don’t have anything new to say.

Kevin: Yeah, that’s the thing. It takes us a while to write new stuff, and I don’t want to bore people by playing the same songs. That’s the thing about us. We have a pretty loyal fan base that comes to see us every time we play. I know a lot of times when we play it’s going to be a lot of familiar faces, so I don’t want to bore them with the same set list. So, got to keep writing new stuff to keep it interesting.

Ben: That makes sense. Where can everyone find you on the web? Can you plug your site, etc?

Kevin: Well, MySpace.com/dysrhythmiaband. That’s where you can find out about tour dates and stuff. Our official website is actually down now, so that’s worthless.

Ben: I noticed that. What happened? Did you guys ditch it?

Kevin: We’ve had that site forever. I didn’t really want to renew it, honestly. I feel like I don’t know anyone that still goes to our website anymore. I feel like everyone just – it’s all blogs and Facebook. Even MySpace is dying now. But, people just are going through different avenues now to discover music or see where a band’s playing.

Ben: That’s kind of true.

Kevin: Yeah. And our website was never very interesting to look at. It was never very expansive. It just basically was all text about where we were playing or whatever. Maybe I’ll start up the site again, but for now it’s down. People can just Google Dysrhythmia if you can spell it right.

Ben: Well, your Wikipedia entry shows up right next to cardiac dysrythmia which is good.

Kevin: Yeah, I guess you’ll get some medical documents and stuff.

Ben: Oh, that’s cool. It’s a unique name at least. If you’re looking for music, there’s only one out there. You guys have got it covered.

Kevin: There’s another one too actually.

Ben: There is?

Kevin: Yeah. Well, there was. They eventually changed their name. But yeah, at one point, there was another band. They were from Wisconsin or something. They were playing regularly in Wisconsin, especially in 2003 when we were touring a lot. People were emailing me saying that they went to go see them, but it wasn’t us.

Ben: That’s confusing.

Kevin: Yeah, they eventually changed their name.

Ben: Cool. Well, Kevin, it’s been great talking to you. I appreciate the time. I’ll post the interview and the transcript, and definitely links to your site and your music, and let you know when it’s up.

Kevin: Alright, great. Thanks, man.

My guest today is the first unsolicited interviewee for BandsLikeRush.com. Ben Averch – a one-man progressive rock band from Seattle – contacted me directly at this website with an offer to talk. I’m glad he did because – not only is his music great – but he’s an avid, long-time Rush fan, with great stories to boot. Its quite rare to find a fellow musician who – like me – writes, performs and records his own music – and doesn’t SUCK! On the contrary, his music is not at all simple Rush “similac” or directly derivative from any other classic prog rock band, but are personal statements, with great arrangement, production, and musicianship. His songs have grown on me – they’re in my iPod – I suggest they get in yours.

Well, this is Ben Sommer. I’m thrilled to have Ben Averch here who is, you know, a young up and coming indie prog rock. You know, an aspiring star from the Northwest, that is, and Ben, so if you could just, you know, say hi to the folks and, you know, give us a little background about who you are, what your music is like and how you got started?

Ben Averch: Sure. Hey, Ben, it’s great to be with you. Thanks for the invitation. It’s an awesome idea to have a website dedicated to bands like Rush, so I’m very happy and very honored to be able to contribute.

Let’s see, what’s my deal. I am a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. I live in Seattle right now and I’ve been a Rush band since I was a little boy. My brother Mike turned me on to Rush when I was like 6 or 7 and he was 12 or 13 and we got moving pictures and ‘Exit…Stage Left’, and then we got the betamax tape of ‘Exit…Stage Left’ in concert and we watched it every day, probably 2 or 3 times a day and it was just, you know, mesmerizing.

Ben Sommer: Wow.

Ben Averch: It’s just so fantastic, you know. Prior to discovering Rush, you know, most of the music, you know, household was what would Dad would play, which was Simon and Garfunkel, Peter, Paul and Mary.

Ben Sommer: Yeah.

Ben Averch: And it’s just really laid-back folk stuff. You know, it’s when I first heard ‘Limelight’ and ‘Vital Signs’ and I couldn’t believe that there was music that was so powerful and yet melodic at the same time and the lyrics that passed made them, too. So the whole thing was just, you know, it was just the light switch turning on and that was the way the music should sound. And I pretty much carried that sort of belief in aesthetic through to my adulthood where I now create a sort of Rush-esque thematic albums where I play drums, bass guitars, vocals, do the keyboards and do all the production.

Ben Sommer: Right. Well, so when you first got turned on to prog rock, sorry if I didn’t catch that, were you a musician when you’re playing then or did you hear the music first?

Ben Averch: I was just a little boy, so I was just in discovering mode and what the deal was, we wanted to play those songs, me and my brother and his best friend, Dave and, you know, they were both pretty good guitar players as far as I knew at age 6 and so there wasn’t any room for another guitar player so I decided I would be the drummer.

Ben Sommer: Right.

Ben Averch: So I got out some phone books and pots and pans and started tapping away trying to reproduce, you know, ‘Red Barchetta’.

Ben Sommer: Yeah.

Ben Averch: And so it was a lifelong quest to try to replicate that Rush sound and eventually I got a drum set and I actually played drums and got relatively proficient with it and I decided to become a songwriter and a singer also by the time when I was maybe 16. And so what happened was we had a band where, you know, a very sort of late 80’s Rush-like band where I played drums and sang and wrote the lyrics and it felt very limiting as far as my drumming went and in terms of how you can express yourself as a singer being behind the drum set, so I decided I would learn the guitar and be the more of sort of classical rock frontman-guitar player-singer guy.

Ben Sommer: Right.

Ben Averch: And so that started a new band, which was called Bison, which was based out of Boston and we made a record called ‘Space Evader’, which was basically a super hyperactive, you know, Grunge meets Rush, I guess, you could say, except it was much faster and not sludgy the way Grunge could be. But eventually when Bison stopped to exist, I wanted to continue to create music, but I didn’t have any band mates and I didn’t really want to seek out band mates, so I just decided to record all the parts myself and that’s pretty much my M.O. for the last eight, nine or ten years.

Ben Sommer: I just did a quick Google for Bison’s ‘Space Evaders’. I got the album cover up here. It’s hilarious.

Ben Averch: Yeah. [Laughs]

Ben Sommer: What is that little monster there?

Ben Averch: Yeah, I don’t know. Our drummer, his name is Doug Cabot, did the art work. We wanted this, you know, samurai-looking guy out in the space, you know.

Ben Sommer: Right.

Ben Averch: Now, when I think of it, the album cover for my current record, which is called ‘Fortune Cookie’ kind of evokes similar feeling with outer space and the solitary figure.

Ben Sommer: Yeah, it does. Is that Athena or is it just, you know, you like the stripey and the space out colors?

Ben Averch: Yeah, well, with the… so the new record is called ‘Fortune Cookie’ and the story of how the album cover came to be is kind of cool. I was at the Sundance Film Festival in January for work and they have this like underground multi-media extravaganza thing and they had this projected images area where they were showing these really trippy psychedelic underwater-looking things and they had this red background and blue background and some green stuff with fish going by. So I just took out my camera phone and snapped a picture of my silhouette in front of the projected images and it turned out super cool.

Ben Sommer: Oh, wow.

Ben Averch: So then I said, “Hey, I could make this a very good cover.” And I got these images called Ecliptic Path somewhere on the Web and I added a little blur effect and now you have an album cover. It’s vaguely reminiscent of the ‘Grace Under Pressure’ cover in the sense of the isolated figure staring off into the void, I guess.

Ben Sommer: Void.

Ben Averch: Yeah.

Ben Sommer: That looks like, yeah, it looks like Southern Mercury.

Ben Averch: Yeah.

Ben Sommer: Anyway, that’s funny. Well, I’m curious, though. You piqued my interest. What were you doing at Sundance? What’s your work that takes you there?

Ben Averch: Oh, my day job is I’m a marketing guy for a company called Microvision, which makes a tiny laser display that you can project images from you iPod or iPhone onto the wall or ceiling or any piece of paper and so we’ve got a brand new product that you can buy now at Microvision.com.

Ben Sommer: Wow, cool.

Ben Averch: Yeah, it’s a great deal.

Ben Sommer: Is that has any performance, you know, potential or that kind of thing.

Ben Averch: I also write a blog about the company and I’ve got my music on the side bar and most of the hits to my site and my embedded players come from people interested in Microvision, so you know, we just sort of try to insert the creative element in there as much as I can.

Ben Sommer: Okay, here we go, yeah. I’m just scrolling down the site for… let me just take a look. Cool.

Ben Averch: Yeah.

Ben Sommer: So I’m curious because also I live in the Boston area, so it looks like ‘Space Evaders’ is 1996, so it’s back in the 90’s. What were you doing there? Did you go to college here or were you just…

Ben Averch: Well, I grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts.

Ben Sommer: Oh, yeah.

Ben Averch: And I actually went to high school at Brooklyn High and so my band mates… my bass player is Matt Olken or was in Bison and we met in high school at Brooklyn and basically we had our band, Bison, and we went around and things looked promising, but ultimately, it didn’t materialize into, you know, something that could support a lifestyle, you know, as it were.

Ben Sommer: Yeah.

Ben Averch: And Matt had a scholarship to Harvard and you know, it gets harder and harder to say no to Harvard scholarship when you’re playing in these dirgy bars and going nowhere to…

Ben Sommer: No kidding.

Ben Averch: And so he made an intelligent decision to accept that and you know, we decided to figure out what else we’re going to do creatively, so I ended up moving to California and then to Washington about 5 years ago.

Ben Sommer: Cool. Cool, so what was your kind of musical education? Were you all, you know, 00:12:05.202 [inaudible], self-taught in all the instruments or do you have a foundation in theory or composition or anything?

Ben Averch: I took drum lessons for a while as a kid, but my real musical sort of school, if you will, was I was a street musician in Harvard Square, Cambridge, which is where Tracy Chapman used to play and stuff like that. And basically I would support myself by playing 12-16 hours a day in front of the Coop in Harvard Square, Cambridge and I learned how to play guitar and sing by doing this. So it was like boot camp, but it was hard core because my approach to it was I’m going to make this as hard core and a Reno Rock power as I possibly can, even if there is nobody walking by. So invested myself in each song that I would play and I got a lot better at playing and singing and writing and I learned how to project my voice and learned everything that I know really about how to be a musician from this 3-year period of performing solo acoustic as a street buster.

Ben Sommer: That’s a…

Ben Averch: But I had some experiences that I’ll never forget. You know, there was a time when I was playing, I forgot what song I was playing, but all of a sudden that I realized I couldn’t remember the next lyric or the next chord or what to do with my hands, but the song kept going, and my consciousness was detached from the performance of the song and I just saw myself from a different perspective. I was not aware of what was happening and it was a magical experience that I still think about sometimes and you know, it’s just cool to have something happen outside your awareness when normally you’re like, okay, I know what I have to do when I’m doing it.

Ben Sommer: What did you do? Did you remember the song or did you start winging lyrics or what happened?

Ben Averch: The song kept going. I sang the right songs. I played the right chords and it was all, all good. It’s probably one of my originals. I emphasized original songs as much as I could. I played a few covers. I played ‘I Would Die For You’ by Prince, and one thing that was cool was Eddie Vedder was in town. This was at the height of their popularity in ‘94 and so Pro-Jam was playing in Boston somewhere.

And so I’m playing and I see this little dude all curled up in an Army jacket and I’m thinking, you know, there is only one person who doesn’t want to be seen as much as that guy and that has to be Eddie Vedder, so I realized this is Eddie Vedder who was watching me play. So I go okay, I’m going to turn it up.

Ben Sommer: Wow.

Ben Averch: And just rock, so I was playing ‘I Would Die For You’. It was like really good, you know, for me. So sure enough, he comes up and he looks at me. He sees the Bison tape and the guitar case.

Ben Sommer: Yeah.

Ben Averch: He said, “Is this the tape?” I said, “Yeah, yeah, please take one.” So he tucked a little money in the guitar case and I’m like, “Hey, you know, I’m a big fan, right?” So sure enough, he looked all alarmed and takes off.

Ben Sommer: Geez.

Ben Averch: He’s recognized, right?

Ben Sommer: Yeah, Grunge kid, he doesn’t want to…

Ben Averch: Yeah, exactly.

Ben Sommer: He wants to lay low.

Ben Averch: So you know, here I’m kind of having fun with it a little bit, you know, because I couldn’t help myself, so I’m standing there, “Eddie Vedder is in Harvard Square! You know, find him!”

Ben Sommer: Oh, you did that? [Laughs].

Ben Averch: Yeah. [Laughs]. What can I say? You know, I was young and impetuous. And sure enough, at the end of the day, it was a $50 bill, so that was his tip. So you know, I apologize, Eddie. If Eddie was… for making your day more difficult.

Ben Sommer: Oh, he’s the first one who is listening to this podcast, so he will put you… [Laughs]

Ben Averch: Oh, yeah. [Laughs]

Ben Sommer: Just kidding.

Ben Averch: Yeah, I know.

Ben Sommer: Cool. So you moved out there. It looks like from your bio, you have a few albums for the last few years, and the last one, ‘Fortune Cookie’. You know, here’s a phrase. Now, I identify with your kind of your musical style even, but even more than that the kind of the do-I-like-the-piece of it, so you’re doing everything.

Ben Averch: Right.

Ben Sommer: I’m a musician. I don’t do everything, you know, drums particularly. But you’re mixing, you’re recording, you’re just producing, in a way, yourself and you’re arranging all the music. What are the pros and cons and you know, what’s the upside or downside? I’m thinking of a phrase that I’ve heard that says that anyone who defends himself in court has a fool for a client.

Ben Averch: [Laughs]

Ben Sommer: And so you know what I mean. What do you think? Is this working out? The album sounds very good, the quality.

Ben Averch: Thank you.

Ben Sommer: So what do you think?

Ben Averch: Yeah, I mean, there are pros and cons to it. The pro is I can work very fast because I don’t have to convinve anybody or, you know, put forward a point of view and get somebody else to buy in. I can just hear it in my mind and then go and execute it. And now having done 3 albums in this vein, I’m fast at it and so I can do a whole song in, you know, one day or two days and then spend a lot of time mixing and perfecting it.

Ben Sommer: Right.

Ben Averch: So I’m also very comfortable because I know nobody is going to tell me this sucks, right? It’s either as good as I think it is, right?

Ben Sommer: Which could be a liability, you know?

Ben Averch: Yeah, you know, there are benefits in working in a band. You get creative synergy. You get multiple ideas from people and you know, it creates a positive thing when you have multiple points of view all helping on a creative process. But for me, I guess, these are really glorified folk songs in a way. You know, they all start with lyrics and an acoustic guitar and then the way that they become prog or rock is that through the arrangement and sort of the choices that are involved in that. You know, so it’s fun to be able to experiment totally with different sounds and different approaches and different ways of doing things without having to clear it with anybody to make sure it expresses somebody else’s point of view also.

Ben Sommer: Right.

Ben Averch: So from that sort of mega little, I mean, eye of point of view, it works for me.

Ben Sommer: [Laughs]. Well, for me, it’s like… I, myself, I’m kind of an over-educated trained composer who kind of drifted back to his rock roots, so it’s not megalomaniacal to say, you know, if you’re the prime creator and you just happened to be… you know, a lot of composers play a lot of their music, so if your instrument, so to speak, is kind of the rock trio kind of format and it’s not a big deal to learn how to mix and do the engineering to a certain extent. I mean, I’m surprised there are more of us out there because, you know, a really single-minded composer who goes to either trains himself like you did or gets educated like I did, you know, it’s perfectly natural to be in control of every elements without having a producer telling you, you know, how the text needs to go and then you have to have a ringer for every instrument or vocal part or whatever.

Ben Averch: Yeah, I think the one element where having somebody else involved would really be beneficial is in producing the vocals because that’s one element where I have, I would say, limited ability to push myself and, you know, I would benefit, I know for sure, from somebody else, saying, “You know, you can sing that line again better.”

Ben Sommer: Oh?

Ben Averch: Or things like that, you know, because, you know, when I make the call, it’s often like, “Okay, well, that’s how it sounds when I sing that line.”

Ben Sommer: Good point, yeah.

Ben Averch: You know, it’s either great or maybe not as great, but hopefully it all works out anyway.

Ben Sommer: Right, right.

Ben Averch: But I know for sure, I worked with producers when Bison was going. We did a few sessions one with a really great producer named Mike Gazzios 00:21:04.983 [ph] who is down in LA now, and it’s really great to have somebody else knowing the switches and telling you go and saying do it again and to not have to worry about that and just say, “Okay, my job now is strictly to be a performer, you know, at least of a vocal piece.” It seems to make the most difference.

Ben Sommer: Right, it’s funny you mentioned your voice. I mean, it’s a very… I can’t… the name that comes up and I actually had to Google for the name, but it’s the guy, the lead singer for the Smithereens. Do you remember them?

Ben Averch: I do remember the Smithereens.

Ben Sommer: So it’s this guy, Pat DiNizio.

Ben Averch: Pat DiNizio

Ben Sommer: Yeah, I remember from the 80’s, he always had a soul patch and he had a kind of a wobbly but kind of husky baritone.

Ben Averch: Yeah.

Ben Sommer: Anyway, that just sort of reminded me sort of a way and I’m showing you I was horrified to see his latest picture. He is like 300 pounds. He is getting like that.

Ben Averch: Oh, I don’t look like that audience.

Ben Sommer: Yeah.

Ben Averch: So don’t get me confused wit Pat DiNizio.

Ben Sommer: I won’t.

Ben Averch: Yeah, I used to listen to the Smithereens. I mean, I’d like everything. Buffalo Tom was the band that I used to love. They’re from Boston back in the day. I mean, apart from Rush, the biggest influences on my music were probably Bob Mould and Sugar and 00:22:32.485 [inaudible] and then Joe Box, which is sort of a post-punk band from Washington, DC. And I don’t think that my music sounds anything like Joe Box because they just have such a unique thing happening. But when I would see them perform, they were so intense and so incredible at playing live that I just thought, ‘Okay, so this is what’s possible for a rock band.’ You know, they would sweat all over everyone and yet, they were just amazingly tight. I’ve never seen any band like that, before or since, so they were huge for me.

Sugar was huge for me because the heaviness was… it was heavier than Rush in terms of the guitar and the angst level and this sort of saturation of it all. It was just, you know, extremely dense.

Ben Sommer: Yeah.

Ben Averch: But the harmonies and the melody and the vocals were just as melodic and there was just always something to hang your hat on. You know, I don’t listen to a lot of metal or really anything that doesn’t have a very strong melodic element to it. So the Sugar for me was great when Beaster came out. Man, I was listening constantly and it was just like, okay, huge, heavy guitars, heavy everything with great tones, but then these melodies and these vocal harmonies, which I really love. And in particular, the first song on ‘Fortune Cookie’, which was called ‘Love Me Anyway’ has this sort of Bob Mould-Sugar style vocal harmony and I just love doing that. It always sounded so cool and it reminds me when I was a little bit younger, I guess.

Ben Sommer: Oh, yeah, nostalgic.

Ben Averch: Right.

Ben Sommer: So anyway, our time has kind of passed, but that image of playing 12-plus hours a day in Harvard Square, that’s pretty intense.

Ben Averch: Yeah.

Ben Sommer: That’s awesome that you had the nuts to stand out there that long and hone yourself. What do you do now for touring? Do you…

Ben Averch: I don’t do anything.

Ben Sommer: [Laughs]. You’re a mad scientist in your studio?

Ben Averch: Oh, yeah. It’s like one guy in his room who is creating rock albums. You know, I’ll play acoustically maybe once or twice a year if I’m asked to and have the opportunity and if you look on YouTube, there is a variety of live videos of concerts I’ve done over the last, you know, couple of years. But being the solo guy, it’s a very, very different, you know, atmosphere and experience to play acoustic when it could be epic rock.

Ben Sommer: Right, yeah. Well, I mean, is that the trick when you’re a solo guy. If you want that and replicate when you’re out in the studio, you’ve got to shell out and to shell out, you’ve got to be independently wealthy or something.

Ben Averch: Right. I don’t want to… you know, that’s thing, right? I don’t want to hire people to play my songs, right? I want to find people that hear the song and they’re like, “Oh, my God.” This is my life’s work. It’s not to play bass with this guy, right?

Ben Sommer: Oh, well, that guy still needs to eat.

Ben Averch: Right, right, yeah, true enough, right? So anyway, the focus for me is songwriting and recording right now just because I don’t have… you know, my best buddies who plays bass and my good pal playing drums and all that.

Ben Sommer: Right.

Ben Averch: And I really think that that what’s needed to create a viable live entity.

Ben Sommer: Why don’t you do what I do? I mean, I can’t play drums, so I have a guy, a ringer, who I have known for years and he is enthusiastic about my music and you know, I pay him when I can, but you know, he’s been playing for me even when I couldn’t pay him.

Ben Averch: Right.

Ben Sommer: And so maybe next time you try to, at least, get a guest guitarist or a guest drummer who you can recruit to your cause and maybe…

Ben Averch: Yeah, that’s a great idea. You know, as I look at the track listing of the ‘Fortune Cookie’ record, I imagine how much fun it would be to play some of these songs live. I think they would just really just leap out.

Ben Sommer: Yeah, you know, I think so. So I will play… I like, you know, the title track of the album.

Ben Averch: So, now, here is a funny note about this.

Ben Sommer: What?

Ben Averch: The song ‘Fortune Cookie’, I had as the number one song on that record. It’s a 13-song record and I was driving around and I just decided that it didn’t fit with the rest of the material and so I took it off the record and now I have a 12-song record that starts with ‘Love Me Anyway’ instead.

Ben Sommer: Yeah.

Ben Averch: And now I have to put up ‘Fortune Cookie’ as a bonus track on my band camp page and then basically try to get all the proceeds to go held the earthquake repair in Haiti.

Ben Sommer: Oh, wow!

Ben Averch: Yeah! So I thought, you know, hey, if I’m not going to put this song on the record… you know, it’s a good song. I wrote it maybe 15 or 16 years ago.

Ben Sommer: Yeah?

Ben Averch: So I guess it shouldn’t be a shock to me if it doesn’t fit seamlessly with these contemporary songs, but yeah, on my page, which is Averch.bandcamp.com…

Ben Sommer: Yeah, I’m looking at it.

Ben Averch: Yeah, I’ve got the ‘Fortune Cookie’ single plus a $1 donation that helps benefit the earthquake relief and just, you know, just seeing what good can I do with this. All right, you know, maybe it will not generate millions of dollars, but I figure it can’t hurt so…

Ben Sommer: Yeah, you know, well, that’s awesome. So pardon me if I’m probably or any fans of Rush or this site will not get too interested if I get any… or talk shop with you, but just because I’m curious.

Ben Averch: Sure.

Ben Sommer: So what is your ambition career-wise? Are you wanting to stay where you are and quit your day job from, you know, being in that side, just the basement and just producing music? What is your kind of goal?

Ben Averch: Yeah, well, it’s tough, man. I mean, of course, it’s my dream that I could support myself, you know, though music. But you know, I’ve got a family and I’m in my mid-30s.

Ben Sommer: Me, too.

Ben Averch: And so there are a lot of certain realistic considerations that a guy has to make. So while I have an ambition of being a self-sufficient musician in terms of lifestyle and income generation, I have to be as pragmatic as I have to be to, you know, because the kids need new shoes and all the rest of it.

Ben Sommer: Yeah, I hear you. I’m in the same place.

Ben Averch: Yeah. You know, that being said, who knows? You know, if I keep my goal really, you know, from a realistic perspective, is to just make as much material as I can and as good a material as I can and try to get it out there for people because I think that, you know, a lot of these songs have kind of a different perspective on things than most rock songs. You know, this album ‘Fortune Cookie’ is mostly about relationships and the difficulties of relationships and how to take it on yourself to understand, you know, the contributions that you made to this situation, for good or not for good, you know. And I find that most music or the general default setting for people when they are thinking about their relationship is why aren’t you doing this and I don’t like it when you do that and I wish you would do this other thing.

And there is very little kind of self-reflection and self-ownership about the state of things. And so what I’m trying to say is there is a song called ‘Landfall’ and the refrain is ‘coming up against my limitations’ and when I heard that song being sang back to me on the recording, I thought, you know what? I’ve never heard that type of sentiment in a rock song that, okay, you know, emotionally, I’m limited and that I recognize that and I understand that and this is the way it manifest itself. It’s that I can’t figure out the right way to be or the right thing to do. I don’t know. For me, it’s unique, but there is probably someone else out there doing the exact same thing I just hadn’t heard of.

Ben Sommer: Well, no. I mean, I think it sounds pretty unique. And even if there were, you know, you ticked off a bunch of other influences besides Rush and now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m not the biggest, you know, high fidelity guy who knows all the obscure bands, but those ring true as influences in the music. But even if you were just like a Rush nut from start to finish and you consciously try to then make your music sound like Rush, you know, it always comes out a little skewed, a little unique, so…

Ben Averch: Yeah, well, I appreciate that. You know, for the Rush bands that read your site and listen to the podcast, I think that there are some super-Rush bands. One of the things about Rush that I’ve always loved are the guitar solos. From me, that’s the high point of every Rush song. You know, ‘Emotion Detector’ is a great example of a Rush song that, you know, if it didn’t have the most amazing guitar solo you ever heard, it could be just a kind of an okay song. It’s not amazing. But then when he played that solo, it’s like forget it, this is the best thing I’ve heard in my life.

Ben Sommer: Yeah.

Ben Averch: And that’s what I feel about all his leads, you know, ‘Chemistry’, ‘After Image’, ‘It’s Beautiful’, even on the new record, the track ‘Faithless’ has a beautiful solo. ‘Bravado’ in the ‘Live’ version. For me, I mean, the Rush songs exist so that when Alex plays the lead, it just transcends and that’s the experience that I really aspire to. You know, I try to have a solo in each of my song and I don’t think I could play that good, right, as far as Alex because Alex is always the best. But I want to push my playing to create for my song to have the same effect where I’m like, “Okay, I’m going along in a rock song, this guy who is not interested back there in all of this and then, bam, the lead hits and I want him to return and just make that lead say everything that the vocal and the music are trying to say by just pushing it to that other level.

Ben Sommer: It’s funny that you mentioned that. I forgot about that. Your style of replaying. You know, if I hadn’t connected with you through this Rush channel, I might not have caught it, but absolutely I hear Lifeson all over it in a good way. I mean, anyone who can… you know, in the 80’s, there were hundreds and hundreds of 00:34:34.953 [inaudible], right?

Ben Averch: But…

Ben Sommer: You know, there were several that were just very good, you know, no matter if they were finger-tapping their asses off. But I definitely hear in the tone in that, you know, peculiar way use of the ‘Bravado’, the ‘Way Me Back’.

Ben Averch: Right.

Ben Sommer: So as they say back East.

Ben Averch: That’s right.

Ben Sommer: You know, it’s very cool. I appreciate, you know, it comes across as it should.

Ben Averch: Yeah, it absolutely out of love, you know, as far as his playing has meant for just personally. You know, it bring tears to my eyes this song, ‘Available Light’, right? They never ever have played it live. It’s still one of the… I think one of their best songs of all time. Why is it so great? Because the lead, if you listen to that lead with headphones on and your eyes closed, you will cry.

Ben Sommer: It’s pretty great.

Ben Averch: It’s really fantastic and I’m sure that they probably don’t know how great some of the stuff is. One thing I haven’t told you about is the time I met Rush.

Ben Sommer: Oh?

Ben Averch: So this is kind of a funny story. Back, I guess, I think it was 1992 or 1993, they were given the award from Harvard Lampoon of Musicians of the Millennium.

Ben Sommer: [Laughs]

Ben Averch: Right?

Ben Sommer: Yeah.

Ben Averch: And so, you know, they do this thing with the Hasty Pudding Club and they had, I think, in Hathaway, there recently and they basically, find a way. This is a humour group within Harvard.

Ben Sommer: Right.

Ben Averch: One of my friends from high school was in Harvard and he was part of this Harvard Lampoon group and he told me that they were inviting Rush and Rush was going to come and he wanted me to be there. And, of course, I freaked out. You know, part of me felt bad because my brother and my bass player, Matt, who also loved Rush just as much as I did, you know, couldn’t come. It’s like one invite per person. But I was the most over the top insane about Rush, so I got in. And sure enough, you know, here they come right there wearing either new tuxedos and stuff, and I got to spend some good time with Geddy and Alex.

Ben Sommer: Wow!

Ben Averch: And I told Alex, you know, how much the music meant to me and a few other things. I told him I saw him on the Power Windows tour, you know, when I was 10 years old and he’s like, “Don’t say that,” thinking that had been a long time ago.

Ben Sommer: Oh, yeah.

Ben Averch: I didn’t necessarily get to spend quality time with Neil, which was something that I wish had happened differently.

Ben Sommer: Yeah.

Ben Averch: But it was great to be there. It’s at the ‘Counterparts’ CD, album cover basically. There is a picture of the three of them holding up medallions and I was seated right at that table, you know, out of the frame, but it was an amazing time I’ll never forget. Sure enough, there were just three guys who happened to be amazing musicians who are lifelong friends and they’re not outer space aliens at all.

Ben Sommer: That’s good to know. Yeah, yeah, well, they strike you as that way. They’d either be way back in Corps, straight up dorks if you met them in person, but…

Ben Averch: Yeah, it may be a little bit of both. But they are, you know, they just lit the candle, right? And for me, it’s about the music and being a musician and expressing through music and it’s been going ever since.

Ben Sommer: Cool.

Ben Averch: Back to the question of guitar solos, there is a song called ‘World Fictive’ on my record that does not have a solo, but probably has the most Rush-like instrumental break of any of the tracks in terms of its, I don’t want to say, lifting, but referencing the vibe of ‘After Image’, which has always been my favorite instrumental breaks in Rush because of the build-up, right? You’ve got the pulsing fore on the floor with the kick drum and a little high hat is going, you know, ktsk, ktsk, ktsk and then he alternates between the synth tom and snare drum and the chords are bang, ringing out, and ultimately manifest in this big solo that’s all chord-based and just fantastic. But the ambience of that part, the keyboards and the synth bass and the drums and the guitar chords just chunking out and kind of hanging there, man, that’s just beautiful. Red Zachary is a little bit like that, too.

Ben Sommer: Right.

Ben Averch: But I don’t know. I just get off on that stuff, so whenever I can make my own kind of atmospheric wonderland, I’ve been just excited to do it.

Ben Sommer: Cool, is that to do an intro and altro into the podcast, would that be one of your selections?

Ben Averch: Yeah, you know, I love the ‘World Fictive’. The ‘Hook’ is probably my favorite song along with ‘Starting To Be Real’. I love them all for different reasons and it’s hard to say, but I think ‘World Fictive’ is probably the most straight up Rush-like vive. It’s got a drum loop that is in 7 and the whole track is mostly in 4.

Ben Sommer: Oh.

Ben Averch: So when you hear the beat, you know, what it takes, I guess, 7 times through the repetition of the loop before it catches up to where you think the one should be.

Ben Sommer: Okay, I can’t even compute that. Is that even lined up?

Ben Averch: Maybe in 4 now.

Ben Sommer: Okay, I’ll trust you.

Ben Averch: But yeah, the song is in 4, but the drum part is in 7 and the only reason it doesn’t sound totally weird is because you’ve got 4 on the floor on the bass drum.

Ben Sommer: Right.

Ben Averch: You know, the bass drum is going on all the quarter notes and it’s just different places where the open hat and the snare drum hit that it creates the sort of accents. But yeah, that’s a grea song for Rush bands to get into. I think anybody that really loves Rush would enjoy this music because I approach each instrument, you know, almost from the point of view, what would the guy in Rush do? And I can’t necessarily do it all, but I come at it from that point of view and yet, it doesn’t sound hopefully like a complete rip-off.

Ben Sommer: No, I don’t think it does. Like I said, only if someone wouldn’t find you through this avenue of being a Rush fan person and looking for like-minded artist, I think, would they make the obvious connection on, you know, the song writing and you know, the rhythmic and harmonic textures and the solos, but I think if someone came cold, they’ll just say you have some very interesting indie prog rock.

Ben Averch: Cool, cool. Yeah, I mean, one of the things about Rush that is really unique is the lyrics, right? And then the ‘Vapor Trails’ record has seem to me, at least, was so wildly different from the ‘Test For Echo’ and the previous set of recordings because of the directness and the personal nature, of course, Neil has his tragedy. But you know, songs like ‘Ghost Rider’ and ‘Vapor Trails’ and ‘Secret Touch’ and ‘Sweet Miracle’, they’re so moving in such a direct way that it almost seems like an entirely different band. You know, if you go back and listen to some of the more sort of intellectual music like ‘Alien Shore’ from ‘Counterpart’, you know, he’s saying sex is not a competition and these kinds of, you know, puzzling intellectual scenes, but it’s just so radically different when you hear some like ‘Secret Touch’, ‘the way out is the way in’.

Ben Sommer: [Laughs], yeah.

Ben Averch: And it’s just, oh, my God. It’s mind-blowing in that growth and the fact that he was willing to make such a personal statement, you know, is I’m sure very healing for him, but for all the fans that love the band, that love him and just as a songwriter, I found that to be distransformational.

Ben Sommer: Pretty shocking.

Ben Averch: Yeah.

Ben Sommer: You know, I never caught that. Good quote, though. Out through the in hole. I know I… [Laughs].

Ben Averch: Yeah.

Ben Sommer: Creepy. Cool. Well, listen, I want to thank you for spending the time with me. What I’m going to do like I promised, I think I’ll pick out the ‘World Fictive’ tune and maybe I’ll give the whole album another listening and pick out another tune with your permission included in the podcast.

Ben Averch: Cool, absolutely.

Ben Sommer: Cool, and I will let you know when this is published. It will be on, you know, iTunes site and actually this is the main boy for the screencast edition.

Ben Averch: Oh, fantastic.

Ben Sommer: So I’ll throw it out in YouTube and hopefully, it won’t crash and burn.

Ben Averch: That’s great. Well, yeah, I’m trying to get as many people to visit my Averch.bandcamp page as I can, so if they can click through on your site, that would be huge.

Ben Sommer: Absolutely, absolutely. Let’s do a link exchange and so is that place you want to funnel people through or you want to plug any other site?

Ben Averch: That’s the place. You know, Averch.com is there, but you know, it’s just kind of generic information about me and all the music is on Bandcamp page.

Ben Sommer: Okay.

Ben Averch: So if people want to hear it or want to transact, it would be even better, right?

Ben Sommer: Right.

Ben Averch: That’s the way to do that.

Ben Sommer: Cool. Hey…

Ben Averch: I’m curious to listen to your stuff now. I did not know about your sort of classically-trained guy doing rock.

Ben Sommer: Yeah. Well, you know, it’s a long story, but I still retain some of those bad influences of classical, you know, straight-up compositions. So yeah, it definitely take a listen. Let’s exchange emails. Put me on your list and I’ll put you in mine and I’ll let you know as soon as this thing is published.

Ben Averch: Hey, man, I appreciate it so much. Thanks for taking the time and, you know, thanks for listening to the record.

Ben Sommer: Hey, no problem. It’s my pleasure. Thank you very much, Ben.

Ben Averch: All right, talk to you soon.

Ben Sommer: Right, take care. Bye.

Ben Averch: Bye-bye.

Warning: salty & silly content today…

Today’s interview is a special one. By special arrangement, I’ve recruited a very talented actor friend – let’s call him Fozzy – to dramatically re-enact the first – but certainly not my last – bizarre AND entertaining personal encounter to come from this podcast.

Gino Foti is an Italian-American prog rock guy from New England. He’s smart and has a way with words. And when I emailed him at his website a few weeks ago, asking for an interview with he and his band mates from instrumental rock trio Electrum, he displayed his skill at cutting a nice guy down to size.

Playful at first, his mood soon turned. He went trolling on the site and found that I had posted our email exchange. Then, like a Dark Lord wielding The Force for evil ends, he impaled me on his verbal acuity.

For example, in this podcast I stand accused me of being…

• Self-pitying
• A woman with a vagina
• Mentally ill, and in need of a Zoloft dose increase
• A disgrace to my children

What do I accuse HIM of? Missing his calling as an insult comic – that’s what.

As a friend recently told me – experiences like this are why he doesn’t publish for the world as I do. Of course its a bit disturbing to have a stalker online who hates you, but its entertaining too.

Enjoy!

I talked with Troy about the band’s origins, journey to where they are now, and his plans for the future of both Fluttr Effect and his own fledgling career as a producer and record label entrepreneur.

I knew when I started this podcast that I might be stretching it to call every band I interview a “band that sounds like Rush”. Fluttr Effect more straddles the art-rock/classical/jazz crossover areas – more than it sounds like a copy or disciple of Rush. Still, anyone who is drawn to Rush’s core greatness, which is all about great songs, interesting themes, and awesome chops – will appreciate and enjoy Fluttr Effect.

Ben Sommer: Do you want to just maybe start off a little bit about yourself and the band and its history?

Troy Kidwell: Sure, Vessela and I formed Fluttr Effect after a previous project Wave fell apart. They were all Berkelee kids who had then graduated and then moved away. And we were basically wondering what we’re going to do. It was her on vibes – she didn’t really have the electric vibes then – and me on guitar, and we were just jamming in her basement. It turned out that Jason, our drummer, was her roommate and he just came down the basement one night and asked if he could sit in and it was fantastic – and we knew Valerie from previous projects and my original idea was to have a deejay instead of a rhythm section. But the deejays I know were too busy. Then I thought a tuba player would work – because I knew a tuba player; he was too busy.

Ben: You wanted a tuba player???

Troy: He was awesome. He would duct tape an SM-58 to the bell and play it through a Marshall bass stack.

Ben: It sounds fun.

Troy: It was the meanest tuba ever, so I was like, “I want that.” But we eventually settled on Valerie because we were like, “Who else can we call?” Though knew Val and she was a classical player, so we weren’t sure if she was going to dig it. But it turns out she did and we found ways to make it work, so with her, we have the classical thing going. Vessela and she have that in common because they are more classical players. Jay and I are more of the rock players, so it worked out.

Ben: You kind of have an unconventional line-up, so is Val the cello player?

Troy: Yeah

Ben: What’s the rest of the group comprised? Do you guys switch it up or do you have a primary instrument each?

Troy: We have our primary instruments, me on guitar and Jason on drums and Vessela on MIDI marimba and Valerie on cello. But we really don’t have a bass player per se, but we’ve all handled the bass functions. There is a lot of synth bass, a lot of cello. Mostly cello is the bass, but not always. I’ve even cut the baselines for everybody. The guitar through an octave pedal is the bass, so that kind of mix is often used in terms of instrumentation. But other than that, everybody has their primary instrument and I’ve lately been forcing everybody to sing more back-up vocals.

Ben: Oh, good.

Troy: But musicians are scared to sing usually.

Ben: Well, not really. Non-singers are afraid to sing.

Troy: Yeah, well, I mean, you don’t get to be a singer until you sing.

Ben: Yeah. So you’re all “Berkelee Kids”, as you say, but maybe you’re not a kid. Do you work there, is it your day job?

Troy: Yeah, well, my day job is a night job. I supervise a building full of practice basses that Berkelee has and I pretty much hang out and do interviews on Skype and make sure the kids don’t burn the place down and hang out with Berkelee kids all day, or I’ll practice bass maybe.

Ben: Yeah, cool.

Troy: I didn’t actually go to Berkelee. Well, me and Val are old friends. She didn’t go to Berkelee either, but the other three, they all went to Berkelee and knew each other from Berkelee. I didn’t set out to make a band per se. It was just – we were playing and it just sort of most organically grew. We started playing songs I wrote because I had songs written.

Ben: Yeah.

Troy: And Jason is a drummer. He didn’t really write songs. Vess, she composes, but in more of a classical style – film scoring. And Val didn’t really write tunes at that time, so I was the only guy writing tunes so we just ended up playing mostly my tunes. So that’s how we started musically and then it evolved from there, of course. After a few years, I was able to tailor my music to what I had. Now, I learned more about writing for cello, more about writing for marimba and with things Jason would and would not play, with things that the band could and could not play. We can’t really do a super-authentic reggae thing, but we’re working with the limitations. I’m more of a work-with-what-you-got artist rather than “unlimited options” – that would be totally overwhelming for me.

Ben: My favorite Stravinsky quote is something like “Put a stylistic straight-jacket on yourself, so once you concentrate on the idea instead of the style’.

Troy: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Ben: Say, are you the primary songwriter then?

Troy: Yeah. Val has a couple of tunes and there are a lot of hybrids. We all show up with ideas and then it develops as we bounce it around and rehearse and learn the song and everybody learns their parts. I just try to write as much as they need to figure out what the song is and obviously, when I’m writing a keyboard part or a synth part for Vessela on MIDI marimba, I can’t play as well as she can. My keyboard chops aren’t as good as her marimba chops and it’s kind of different. So I try to write as little as I need to give her the idea for the song and then let her elaborate on it in her marimba way and let Val elaborate on her parts in her cello way and all three of them come up with ideas all the time that I never would have thought of, so it gets arranged by Fluttr Effect after I come in with sometimes with pretty sketchy ideas.

Ben: Yeah, so for the newbies out there that heard you, throw out some names or styles that either you hear people compare you to other bands or artists or that you think your music embodies.

Troy: Well, for me, personally King Crimson is probably my biggest influence. They totally changed everything for me and also John Zorn and Mr. Bungle. That whole idea, I think a lot of my stuff has is blocky in texture, with rapid stylistic changes, and dramatic shifts in texture. Tool, a lot of people compare us to Tool because of the odd time signatures that we’ll do, but that comes from our Balkan background and where Vessela comes in. She’s Bulgarian, so a lot of the more Middle Eastern and Balkan sounds and influences come from her. The band that her and I were in previous to this was a Balkan jazz-rock fusion group, so that’s where I learned to play Bulgarian and Balkan. We had Greeks and Macedonians and Bulgarians in the band that we were in before that, so they gave me a quick tutorial on it and just threw me on the fire and I started running with it.

Ben: What’s the hallmark of the Balkan style? If you are to say one or two things that would strike you with that style of music? Is it the scale? Is it the…

Troy: Yeah, the Balkans are interesting because it’s a middle ground between Western classical and Middle Eastern music. They have a lot of odd time signatures and Middle Eastern modalities, but in terms of structure and song form and stuff, it really has a lot of Western theme, especially the Balkan classical music is like that. We were played folk music. Every mother teaches her kids folk music in Bulgaria. So I guess it’s like learning ‘Blue Grass’ over here or something like that. But from playing that kind of stuff, with the odd time signatures and things are more organic and dance-oriented rather than sort of prog rock mechanical or mathematical sort of things like that.

Over there, they just feel like long and short beats and they jump around in this certain pattern and then it just happens to be a 9-beat pattern or something like that, so I like that a lot when I start getting into that because in the numbers prog rock before that and this opened up a whole world for me of thinking about being able to groove in 7 and 9 and 11 and all that sort of things and how to do it and there is some ideas, and I love that sound, that Balkan and Middle Eastern sound.

So that just carried over into Fluttr from the band previous to that, because that’s just one of the things that we have just been doing for a couple of years with our previous band and musically, that was awesome for me. It was exotic and I was learning new at that time and the band previous to that was our first band with all these Berkelee Cats and I got spoiled. Those guys were amazing. So it’s the enthusiasm for what we were doing before it carried over into Fluttr.

And then once Jay came in, it was 50% rock, 50% classical with some Balkan influence with the whole mix of band changed a bit and it became a little more rock with more of the classical and Balkan influence. That’s where the sound comes from. That’s where our sound evolved. It was a little bit of everybody’s personality fused together. Since we worked, I didn’t go into planning a rock band or anything like that, so it was just 4 people who knew each other and we just sort of put it together with what we had with no intention of being a rock band that’s going to take over the world or anything like that.

Ben: So if you’re the primary songwriter, I’m interested because you’ve got a couple of classical players in the group with some vocal right now, but then you say one of your guys in the band does composing, so what your process is like when you’re composing? So do you give any glimpse into saying you bring a kernel of an idea and leave the players to flush it out. Do you write stuff down on paper?

Troy: I’m not so much a paper guy. I write sketches down. And I have in the past come in with pieces that were written out in detail, but the earlier stuff was more like that. But as we learned to work together in what each other could do, I didn’t have to write all of that anymore. So that was what I’m saying that I just try to write enough for them to get the idea of the song, to get the idea of the part that I want them to play, but the flushing out part is all of that. So the process pretty much is I come in with some sketch and for different songs, there are different amounts of sketch actually, so sometimes it’s just, “I’ve got these 3 chords and here is a cool rhythm. Let’s see what we can do with that.”

And other times, I’ve got everything mapped out in my head and we just sort of expand on that as we’re learning the song because, of course, as soon as I’m teaching them the song, somebody will make a mistake, but we would like that mistake or we’ll immediately hear it’s not working and change the whole thing to minor or whatever we do at the time. Once you get it in the room and 4 people start playing on it, you’ll actually hear what it sounds like as a band as opposed to my drum machine and keyboard at home that I’m writing with. It takes on a life of its own and that’s where everybody’s personality comes in and you can’t really predict where it’s going to go with all of these.

People have thrown ideas at you from 3 directions and often I just let it run in some direction and we’re not afraid to practice the song in a certain way and then just scrap it if we realize that’s a dead end and we don’t really like it. We’ll try this as a funk song for 3 weeks in rehearsal and then decide we hate it and turn it into something else later on, so that’s also part of the learning process.

Ben: Did you do improvisation at all or is it just improvisation is just an element into conjuring up the right arrangement?

Troy: I structure improvisation where it goes and usually how long it goes on. I never wanted us to be like a jazz or jam band or anything like that, but just a sort of show off with solos and stuff and that’s just great. But that’s one of the things I don’t really like a lot about prog music is the wonkiness of it and that’s all great. You know I love chops and stuff like that, but this stuff that sticks with you are great songs and great pieces of music, so I wanted to be more focused on that rather than blazing chops and good solos, which people in this band can do but no one really feels like that kind of player either. I mean, in a way, I’m lucky. That’s what I like because I’m trying to get anybody in this band to play a solo. Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth, especially with Jay. He never wants a drum solo and it’s the opposite of what people usually expect from a prog drummer

Ben: It sounds like you guys are like over-talented people with inferiority complex. They don’t want to sing, they don’t want a solo, come on!

Troy: Well, they wanted to do what they do well and that’s the classical player element with the girls. It’s something you practice and rehearse and it’s structured and you have a very clear idea of what it is that you’re trying to do and achieve, and we have sections where it’s like once this happens, it’s kind of open-ended or the intros open and we try to say we’ll try this idea, but we don’t always have the total idea of how long it’s going to be, when it’s going to end, or what we’re going to do while we’re in it. But usually, in terms of open solos, we’re all pretty conservative. When we do take solos, no one does that 20-minute solo that we have to drag him off stage with the hook to finish. Everyone is pretty good about taking as long as they feel the solo needs without it being overbearing.

Ben: Right.

Troy: And like you said, getting Jay to do solo. He plays great parts. You know he loves to play parts, but trying to do just some flashy solo with chops is tough because he has chops and sometimes I just want that. I want this blazing fill or something like that and I can usually coax it out of somebody then. Sometimes, it’s coaxing. I’m just like, “Come on, you’ve got the chops. Just hit it.”

Ben: I’m curious. You guys have been around for a while. You haven’t achieved superstardom, not that you’re shooting for that. I’m just wondering where you guys want to be, where you thought you’d be, what your ambitions are? I mean, with people I’ve talked to, it runs all the way from a guy we talked last week from this UK band, The Treat. They held that tone on moving forward and he’s very aggressive and I talked to another band called Tiles. They’re from Detroit. They’ve been around from eons. They called themselves the anvil of progressive rock. They just never seem to get it anywhere, but they have an underground following. So where you do guys you think fit into this spectrum?

Troy: Yeah, like I said, I was surprised with the success that we have. It was just another one of the bands in my life that played some gigs and maybe have some fans and stuff, but into the 90’s too, when the Internet and all of that stuff was coming out, it became much more tangible for bands to have a following and know what the following was. So Flutter took off. We were shocked as anybody when people seemed to be digging it and we won the Emergenza Festival and got a lot of publicity out of that and we’re playing big shows and stuff like that around here in Boston and New England and touring all over the place, working it and we all got burned out. It’s cool, but it’s at the same time, once you turn what you love into a business and making money at it. It can take away from that. I wish I could spend all my time playing music. You didn’t have to spend a lot of time doing other stuff; working on my website doing Mail Merges. We’re the guys that did these things.

Ben: Yeah.

Troy: Not that I hate Mail Merge, it’s awesome.

Ben: Are you still doing that?

Troy: Yeah. I mean, we still get orders and stuff like that and I’m still the guy that puts it in the box and mails it to you and it’s awesome, but at some point, you can take it for granted and it can become a drag. I wish I could play my guitar right now, but I’ve got to go and do this and I’ve got to go and do that and I’ve got to maintain the band and everything. It was us, so that idea of what success was to us kind of change. Because I don’t think we were going to be a huge rock band, so I always pictured some sort of success being more around like we could pay our bills and not to have to have another job. That’s all anybody was really looking for and to some extent that’s still what we would hope for, but in terms of how we were doing it, that has changed. Like marketing online, selling albums and things like that are great and we’ll continue to do that, but in terms of driving around the country in a van and touring around and stuff like that, that’s a hard life.

Ben: When Emergenza happened and this was a few years ago, you guys did not have the day job? You weren’t babysitting the practice rooms at Berkelee – or were you?

Troy: Well, luckily because Vessela and I both worked at Berkelee and lucky for us that we do because that’s just one of the few places selling job I had ever in my life when I can, “Hey, I’m taking 3 weeks off to go on tour.” Instead of groan like your co-workers who were like, “Awesome, where are you going? That sounds great. I wish I could go with you.”

Ben: That’s very cool.

Troy: And Jason was the guy who had the hard time because he has a real job usually. He’s an engineer of some kind depending on where he’s working, and Val teaches and gigs. She’s the only full-time musician in the band. She is just constantly hustling, doing gigs and teaching and recording and a million things at once. But she’s an amazing ball of energy that just keeps running. She really loves what she does, so she makes it happen.

Ben: So where do you want to be? Are you where you are now as you have a very flexible day job. This other fellow I talked to the other week from New York has the exact same thing. He made a conscious choice to be a temp. He’s got a rotating temp job at this hospital where he takes off whenever he wants to do a 3-week European tour or whatever, but that’s like it. Is that the kind of life you guys are looking for?

Troy: Well, no, not really. I mean, we still want to make a living playing music, but doing it in the tour-bus fashion is different. Selling albums and doing things virtually is more of the idea for me these days. The girls still like to play out and do a lot of that stuff a lot more than I do, so they’re also in another group called Goli. They play constantly. They busk on the street and stuff like that. So in terms of that, they’re more into the playing-live-for-money kind of idea, but I’m hoping for a new business model.

Ben: Right.

Troy: Jay and I are more a studio rats. I would much rather be in the studio recording than on stage, not that I dislike stage. I really yearn for a gig when I’m in the studio for too long, but I’m more like 80% studio, 20% gig. The idea of getting it on tape and recording is for us, so finding a way to make things that way would be the best idea for me. If I never leave my house, if I could stay in my basement, pick on my music.

Ben: So you’re a real composer.

Troy: Like that. I like to drink coffee 24 hours a day if somebody would support that.

Ben: Sounds like fun. So do you have any concrete idea how to make that a reality? Selling albums is a dicey business now, right?

Troy: So make popular music. I’m starting my own record label as well, Trojan Horse Power Records, and doing or expanding to more than just Fluttr. I’m doing my solo stuff and I’ve been producing other artists as well since last summer and diversifying, making stuff. I’m an eclectic person, so I’ve some electronic stuff in there. There some more folk. I’m producing this hip-hop poet that I know around here in Boston and setting up my own label just to have an outlet for these guys because they are artists. They don’t want to set up websites and deal with all of that stuff. And now that they’ve done that for Fluttr, I know how to do it, so I might as well take the skill set that I’ve learned from that and expand and Fluttr is just one more avenue in that outlet, in that umbrella that I’m setting up for ourselves.

Ben: That sounds excellent. I hear exactly where you’re coming from. I mean, so you have the skill set. You’ve already built it. You don’t want to do the other thing, which is touring and that life. So I mean, I feel that same way. I mean, I’ve got a several friends around me who make amazing music and they are like you. They want to stay in the basement and just produce and not share with anyone and that they don’t care about that. It kind of drive you nuts, so it’s almost like, gee, I’d like to get it out there. I mean, that’s something I actually thought about and doing some sort of record label. Is that kind of how you started or is it just more of find a business model that would get you away from the night shift?

Troy: Well, it’s a little bonus. Basically, my friend, Ramiro Milan, he’s an artist named on my label. He’s a friend of mine and he came for a 4-day weekend and stayed at my house and we recorded some tunes and I really liked how they were working out, but at the same time, he’s not a guy that is going to really push him or do much with him. It seemed like a shame to let them go to waste. I’ve been working also with Kara, our old singer again and doing this electronic project with her in a kind of Goldfrapp-like stuff and we had a couple of songs recorded and I just noticed one day, if I put all these things that I’ve been producing together. I’ve got a bunch of stuff. With Fluttr things, I didn’t feel like I’m doing anything particular. I’ve just been floating around with all these projects, but putting them all together, it was just starting to look like…

Ben: A label.

Troy: Yes. So I was, “Well, give them all a name and a web page and let’s try to sell all of these stuff. The idea for me now is to bring back the single, the idea of releasing one or two songs at a time. I don’t have to work on the big album that comes up once a year and I’ve got 12 songs on it and all of that stuff. I will work on those things when I feel when I have an album. I viewed the album as more than just 10 songs you put together and that’s just what most albums are, not to knock them, but I want to release singles, yeah. That’s how I write and record, so I record them one at a time.

Ben: Right and that is what most people do and I think Phil Spector once said, like in the 60’s when albums were new, he said its the dumbest idea ever, “You know, an album is like 8 or 9 cruddy songs surrounding one hit single.”

Troy: Yeah, exactly.

Ben: It seems like it’s almost full circle now. A lot of people are doing that because the people aren’t consuming music in album form anymore. They’re picking and choosing, so why the hell not produce in that way.

Troy: Yeah, and the idea, like when we were recording albums with Fluttr with going in and doing all of the drum tracks and then doing all of the cello tracks and then doing all of the guitar tracks with this another toms or maintenance, it’s cool. But one of the things I like about is each one has its own flavor because I go into the studio and I spend a weekend working on this one song and then next week I come back and I start over from scratch and I work on another song and that’s how it works. So I like that idea of each one having its own sound and character and with my diversity, one week it could be a hip-hop track, the next week it could be some heavy metal and that’s all good. I should be able to release all of that stuff.

And if you’re not into electronic stuff, then you do not have to buy the electronic tracks, but there will be other stuff on there that you’ll dig, hopefully.

Ben: You’re going to keep the band going? Or if you get too successful, then you’re back in that rut where you’re doing all the muck work of keeping the business running. You’re not practicing your guitar and twiddling with mixes in the basement.

Troy: Not to knock that. If success demands it, I will certainly do it happily. And the touring and playing out is not out of the question, but the idea of driving yourself around in your van and living in the jeep isn’t really what any of us are that excited about anymore. The longer you do it, the harder that overnight trip to New York becomes and me driving back and showing up here in Boston at 8 AM and being work at noon gets old after a while as well as expensive with the price of gas. So I totally forgot where I was going with this. If I can be successful at home in my basement recording good stuff, I’ll be happy doing that, too.

And one can lead to the other, so I’d rather approach it from an angle of having that magic track that’s out there and people love it and it takes me somewhere. And if someone wants to drive me on tour, then I will be all over it, but driving myself 6 or 8 or 10 or 12 hours a day is not any fun anymore. And Fluttr might play out. We’ve got another album in the works. I’ve been in the studio diligently working on that all winter. That will be coming out soon, so we’ll see what happens after we released that. We’re even debating whether we’re going to release a CD or if it’s going to be in digital only if anything. And I’m more digital, but the audience demographic for prog music likes CDs.

Ben: Why is that?

Troy: We’ll, we’re older guys. People that don’t either trust their computers or like their computers or we have had request for Vinyl, man. So younger people don’t mind digital only. Some do like my roommate. He’s a guy in his 20s and he wants a CD. He wants a physical thing he can hold with shiny graphics and all of that stuff, and that’s great. But I think most people are digital people. So either way, if you only release it in one format, somebody is going to be upset, so you’ve got to get it out there in as many ways as you can but physical CDs cost a lot more to produce, so it’s debatable.

Ben: So are the people looking for Vinyl, those really old fuddy duddies or they’re just like “retro-kids”

Troy: A little slightly. We’ve got a older couple fans – the kind of guys who saw YES in ‘74 and stuff like that and those guys want Vinyl because obviously Vinyl is the best thing.

Ben: Ever.

Troy: Ever.

Ben: Yeah.

Troy: And then you’ve got more like young hipster kids. The cool thing about hip-hop is that sort of kept Vinyl alive. We still have deejays and stuff to go out and search new Vinyl.

Ben: That’s true.

Troy: And people still release things on Vinyl. It’s not a bad idea if you ever think you might have some kind of dance club hit to make some Vinyls.

Ben: Right, that’s good.

Troy: And it’s a cool thing in terms of having something people can hold in their hands. That’s a cool thing to hold in your hands, even if I didn’t have a Vinyl player. I do, but if I didn’t, I could have Fluttr Effect album, I think I will get it and Managed Neil is really good at that because they sort of have levels. It’s sort of for $10, you get the files, for $20, you get the CD with the flashy graphics and for $50, you get the limited edition DVD/CD/extra packaging sort of thing, so they’re really good with that because a lot of people do want stuff and some people just want to hear the songs and some people want a really kick-ass shiny thing to hold, so they’re really cool. He’s really good to check out for that stuff. He’s always on the cutting edge.

Ben: He gets a lot of press from that with people they’re making, so it’s great giving the consumer what he or she may want, which is not always a cookie cutter CD jewel case.

Troy: Exactly.

Ben: But then it’s also you can almost give away the low-end stuff because it doesn’t cost you anything and then you just make up the difference by upselling to your psychotic hard-core fans.

Troy: Yeah, exactly. He’s got a great model and he’s got a team to push it.

Ben: So your new album is coming out. Do you have a projected date?

Troy: Oh, well, let’s say June 1st.

Ben: Oh, good.

Troy: Or the 10th. So yeah, there is not a lot left for me to do on it. So this album was recorded at home and Jay and I moved in together and put our studios and decided to record the Fluttr album at home. Doing it one song at a time in your basement, in your bathrobe with your cup of coffee is great, but at the same time, things can linger.

Ben: Yeah, it doesn’t put the fire under you.

Troy: Yeah, and really, in terms of our recordings before, they’re great now when I listen back. But at the time, I remember, listening to a lot of those and it’s like hating your guitar sound. We didn’t the toms on that one. We didn’t like the kick drum on that one or the cello was terrible on this track. But in the studio when you have time to always go back and really tweak things and fix things and be as obsessive-compulsive as both Jay and I about these things. So at home, 3 weeks later when you’re still listening to that track and you’re recording the back-up vocals, you’re like “I really hate my guitar part. I’m going to go ahead and change it. I need a better tone.”

Ben: Go back and do it.

Troy: And you can, which is great. I think we’re going to come up with a really cool album, but at the same time, you can over-obsessed about things and we do kind of need a little fire under our ass with things sometimes to get things done, but I’m not in any hurry. I want to make the album and I want to make and release it, so this is first time ever for Fluttr that I’ve just said, “It’s going to take how long it takes and when I’m done with it, I’ll let you guys know.” So I haven’t been in any hurry to do anything to really crank it out. If I don’t know where to go with the track, I take a time off listening to it just because I couldn’t listen to all that stuff again. You lose perspective when you’re working on it every day all day.

Ben: Yeah.

Troy: It’s like smelling perfume. After a couple of them, you just can’t tell anymore.

Ben: Or drinking beer.

Troy: Yeah, exactly. You’ve got to take some time off and get some perspective on it, so I took some time off and now I’m back at it hopefully with some fresh angles and certainly with renewed spirit to get it done and to get excited about it. You don’t listen to it. You come back to it and you don’t hear the things you didn’t like anymore. You hear the things that are good about it and that’s important to remember as an obsessive artist. There are parts in there that sound great, and the longer you’re allowed to do it and depending on the person, you can really over-analyse yourself and really tweak too much sometimes. Sometimes it’s the spirit of it that needs to come out and not the technicalities.

Ben: So where can everyone find you online?

Troy: Well, yeah, we’re at FluttrEffect.com, of course. The label is not really ready to go yet.

Ben: Yeah.

Troy: So we’ll hold off with the Trojan Horse thing, but I mean, you can put it out there. It certainly not promotional yet, so the spring has been very busy for me. Hopefully, with all of these, I’m going to take a big, creative dump at the end of the spring and put it all out there at once. It’s all building up right now.

Ben: Awesome.

Troy: So I guess I’m producing 3 other people, so I’m finishing their stuff up and at the same time finishing Fluttr and doing the label, so hopefully, all of these are going to coincide with the big release right around June 1st or somewhere there that just says here’s to everything. The promotion for Fluttr will cross over into promotion for the label and the label promotion can cross over with the Fluttr promotion and we can use both things to help each other.

Ben: Cool.

Troy: So that’s idea. Yeah, we’re on MySpace, Facebook and we have a Twitter, so we’re all on of the social media.

Ben: That’s it. That’s the hat trick with all 3 of them?

Troy: Yeah, yeah. The social media hat trick is these.

Ben: It’s nuts.

Troy: Everybody has got a Twitter.

Troy: You’ve got one of each and yet you’ve got to say the exact same thing on each, so they might as well be one. All right, it’s great talking with you and thank you for your time.

Troy: You’re welcome. Thanks, man, and well, hopefully hear from you soon.

from:	Gino Foti
to:	Ben Sommer
subject	Re: Inquiry from Electrum.org

Rush??? Never heard of them… wait, is that the opening act for Lady Gaga?

Intrigued to hear more about ME? Cool! Well… my first memory is when I was just a fetus… I was stuck in this small apartment for about 9 months… next door neighbor was playing one of those heartbeat sound CDs at about 90 dB all fucking day & night! I couldn’t wait to get out of that hole…

I was born in Sicily, which as you may know is an island, and I have webbed feet, but I can’t swim. Pretty ironic, if you ask me. Let’s flash forward a bit: my first toy was a Teddy Bear – like a lot of babies – except mine was anatomically correct. I still have nightmares to this day!

But that’s enough for now, let’s save the rest for the real interview, shall we? Make sure to ask me about the time I met The Dalai Lama in a strip joint in Newark, New Jersey, ok? Nice guy. Bought me a lap dance. What was the name of that Asian chick again? I want to say “Jade”… wait… Jasmin?? No. Oh, well…

If you want to talk about the band, I should invite the other two knuckleheads into this, since we do everything as a tri-lateral commission. Which is why we haven’t recorded a composition in almost 10 years! Not that I’m bitter… ok, maybe a little. No wonder the downfall of the Roman Empire can be attributed to the start of the triumvirate system, hmmm?

So… how do you usually conduct these interviews – by phone? Through e-mail?? Do we have any control/input on the topics that will be covered? Do you like gladiator movies? But I digress…

You know what? It might be better if you do an interview with Dave, since he also has a solo CD in the same vein as Electrum; and although he’s by far the least talented member of the group, he’s a guitarist, like yourself, so you can both jerk off while you talk about pick sizes, bridge heights, and tremolo systems, or whatever the hell it is you guitarists do when there is nobody watching.

Oh, by the way, if this is a ruse to score free CDs, you would have done better by sending me an e-mail telling me that you are the widow of a Nigerian oil baron who left his fortune to me. I am happy to say that both our releases are Out Of Print!

And if you are the widow of a Nigerian oil baron, please send me some naked pictures of yourself, ok?

Ciao,
Gino Foti