Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is guitarist Alex Colnick. Alex explain jazz
Speaker 1: to the.
Speaker 2: Rocker A nice easy question to begin with, right, First
Speaker 2: of all, thanks for having me on, Bob. I'm a
Speaker 2: longtime reader, loyal reader. The occasional times I pop up
Speaker 2: in the mail bag newsletters is always a big thrill,
Speaker 2: So thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3: So no, but really, I listen, jazz came along and
Speaker 3: people say jazz is dead. It's funny you're playing jazz
Speaker 3: now because the rock is dead. But you were, you know,
Speaker 3: guitarist in Testament, and now you have the Alex Golnick trio,
Speaker 3: which is jazz. Their two things. There's a lot How
Speaker 3: did you get into jazz and how does the average
Speaker 3: rocker come to understand jazz?
Speaker 2: It was a very interesting journey for me because, yes,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, I'm sort of best known for being
Speaker 2: the guitarist for Testament, which is from the San Francisco
Speaker 2: Bay area music scene. We followed in the footsteps of Metallica.
Speaker 2: I was very young when I joined the band and
Speaker 2: I did my first record with the band. Way was eighteen,
Speaker 2: shortly after high school, and I'd gone through this period
Speaker 2: of just being in the post van Halen Revolution. You know,
Speaker 2: it was all about Eddie van Halen and virtueoso guitar
Speaker 2: players Rany Rhodes from the Ozzy Osbourne's band, the late
Speaker 2: great guitarists like Joe Satriani who was actually a teacher
Speaker 2: of mine, and I know, you know you've had him
Speaker 2: on And by the time I was doing my first record,
Speaker 2: I was still developing, you know. So at eighteen years old,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm still discovering things musically, and I guess
Speaker 2: you know, the way I found my way to it
Speaker 2: was music that is arguably jazz. So an example would
Speaker 2: be the music that Miles Davis recorded in the eighties,
Speaker 2: where he had like screaming guitarists like Mike Stern and
Speaker 2: John Schofield. And also, you know what's considered jazz rock.
Speaker 2: So al Damiola is a name a lot of rock
Speaker 2: guitar players would know. He inspired a lot of rock
Speaker 2: guitar players. You could talk to Zach Wilde about Aldamiola
Speaker 2: and he would not stop talking. John Patucci from Dream
Speaker 2: Theater was very inspired by al Damiola, and Aldemia sort
Speaker 2: of occupies this space that's in between jazz and rock
Speaker 2: and world music. But he also had these incredible other
Speaker 2: musicians that he collaborated with over the years, like Chick Corea,
Speaker 2: for example, or Jocko Pastorias and if you follow the
Speaker 2: sort of family tree of musicians on records by Al
Speaker 2: Damiola and another one, Alan Holdsworth, who was a big
Speaker 2: influence on Eddie van Haleen. He had worked with Tony Williams,
Speaker 2: who had also worked with Miles Davis. So jazz rock
Speaker 2: is really what got me right around the time I
Speaker 2: was doing my first professional heavy metal recordings, and it
Speaker 2: was wanting to understand jazz rock Aldemiola, Tony Williams with
Speaker 2: Alan Holdsworth, et cetera. That made me want to study
Speaker 2: actual jazz, jazz that even jazz pure jazz fans or
Speaker 2: traditional jazz bands could agree is jazz.
Speaker 3: Okay? So what'd you do next?
Speaker 2: Okay? So so I well, I was, I guess, sort
Speaker 2: of a guitar prodigy doing the first Testament records when
Speaker 2: I was still in my teens and getting a lot
Speaker 2: of attention for that because you know, in thrash metal, uh,
Speaker 2: most most of the playing at that time was a
Speaker 2: little more raw and punk based. If you were a
Speaker 2: more polished player with a lot of technique, you were
Speaker 2: expected to play glam metal, you know, something more along
Speaker 2: the lines of the group's the Sunset Strip fans, for example,
Speaker 2: who had some great guitar players. Yeah, and in my case,
Speaker 2: you know, I was able to learn solos by the
Speaker 2: likes of some of the people I mentioned, Randy Rhodes,
Speaker 2: our friend Joe Satriani. You know, not that I could
Speaker 2: play quite like them, but I could, so I could
Speaker 2: understand it, and I could get it, get a handle
Speaker 2: on it. When it came to jazz rock, I could
Speaker 2: not understand what the heck was going on. Some of
Speaker 2: the al Daimiola stuff made sense because he he st
Speaker 2: of has his own vocabulary, which isn't really jazz. But
Speaker 2: you know the music I mentioned before, Miles Davis in
Speaker 2: the late eighties, mid to late eighties, with guitar players
Speaker 2: John Schofield, Mike Stern, Robin Ford, I could not figure
Speaker 2: out what the heck was going on. It's a completely
Speaker 2: different language. And I went to a few different music
Speaker 2: teachers in the Bay Area. By this time, Satrianni was
Speaker 2: already off and running with his career, so I found
Speaker 2: some music teachers in the Bay Area that were more
Speaker 2: focused on jazz and jazz fusion, and they explained to me, like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: all these people you're listening to, they know how to
Speaker 2: play jazz even though you're hearing them in this jazz
Speaker 2: rock setting. They can play tunes. They've listened to artists
Speaker 2: like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, saxophonists. They've listened to
Speaker 2: piano players like Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner and all.
Speaker 2: You know, there's too many essential jazz musicians to name,
Speaker 2: but basically, you have to get a handle on the
Speaker 2: vocabulary of the music. You have to appreciate the history
Speaker 2: of it, you have to learn about all these historical musicians,
Speaker 2: and you have to obviously, you have to like the music.
Speaker 2: So by the time I started studying it just to
Speaker 2: help with my jazz rock interest, I developed a taste
Speaker 2: for it, and then I got it. I really liked it.
Speaker 2: But I was never one of these kids that sort
Speaker 2: of grew up wanting to be a jazz player. It
Speaker 2: hit me later, which is very unusual.
Speaker 3: Okay, you keep referencing eighties Miles Davis and all those people.
Speaker 3: Did you like it from the first time you heard
Speaker 3: it or did you have to work and become comfortable
Speaker 3: with it? Was it more of an intellectual appreciation before
Speaker 3: an emotional appreciation. Tell me about that awakening.
Speaker 2: Well, the late eighties, Miles Davis was current as I
Speaker 2: discovered it, which is very different because you know, when
Speaker 2: I was here, when I heard what you could call
Speaker 2: straight ahead jazz on the jazz radio station. Yeah, we
Speaker 2: had a very good jazz radio station in San Francisco
Speaker 2: areak kja Z, but it was definitely more straight ahead.
Speaker 2: You didn't hear a lot of stuff like that. And
Speaker 2: you know, I was young, I was in my teens
Speaker 2: and very into screaming guitar. So to me, the reason
Speaker 2: I didn't gravitate towards that type of jazz was it
Speaker 2: sounded old. Yeah, I saw music from the you know,
Speaker 2: the forties and fifties and early six It just it
Speaker 2: felt old. And when I heard Miles Davis for the
Speaker 2: first time doing late eighties music in the late eighties,
Speaker 2: it sounded like the future. This is you know, this
Speaker 2: is this is what's happening now, this is what's going
Speaker 2: to happen. So it gave me a very different feeling.
Speaker 2: And also I if I remember right. The first time
Speaker 2: I discovered it was on a public television station, so
Speaker 2: they were airing a concert. It was one of these
Speaker 2: arts programs on PBS or the some East. I think
Speaker 2: I was on the East Coast at the time, and
Speaker 2: they were showing this whole concert and I was just
Speaker 2: knocked out. I didn't know what it was. I remember
Speaker 2: I wrote down the names of all the musicians afterwards.
Speaker 2: But I think it really took hearing it, even though
Speaker 2: I wasn't live in the room with them, but he
Speaker 2: you know, hearing the music being played live, watching it
Speaker 2: and just having it be current and not feeling like
Speaker 2: old music.
Speaker 3: Okay, a lot of people would hear what we call
Speaker 3: traditional jazz and from the get go say, I don't
Speaker 3: get it. I don't like it. It's discordant, it's free form.
Speaker 3: I don't know where it's going. Is it something where
Speaker 3: it either clicks for you or not or can you
Speaker 3: learn to like it?
Speaker 2: Well? You know, it's it's such a broad category, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's as broad a category, arguably as rock. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you know you have soft rock, you have punk rock,
Speaker 2: you have so many types of rock, and it's very
Speaker 2: similar with jazz. You know, there's what's called smooth jazz,
Speaker 2: which you know, some would say isn't jazz at all,
Speaker 2: but some would you know, which is. You might hear
Speaker 2: at club med vacations, at dentist offices. You have avant
Speaker 2: garde jazz, which had actually some of which has more
Speaker 2: in common with punk rock. You know, you have artists
Speaker 2: very few, but there are actually artists that cover all
Speaker 2: this ground. John Zorn is an example of somebody like that.
Speaker 2: You could hear moments of most types of jazz. So
Speaker 2: I would say, you know, liking getting somebody to like jazz,
Speaker 2: you know, it really depends on their taste. It depends
Speaker 2: on the type of jazz. You'd have to point them
Speaker 2: in the right direction. Somebody who likes funk and R
Speaker 2: and B music, for example, well they might gravitate more
Speaker 2: towards the music of early Herbie Hancock certainly seventies Herby Hancock.
Speaker 2: They probably already know about that. You know, Horace Silver,
Speaker 2: you know who is a big influence on Steely Dan.
Speaker 2: Believe it or yeah, listen to Steely Dan. You know,
Speaker 2: Josie Comes Home. It's almost sampled from a song called
Speaker 2: Song for My Father by Horace Silver. So you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes making these connections helps somebody who is familiar with
Speaker 2: some element of rock and roll might relate to something
Speaker 2: in jazz if you point them in the right direction.
Speaker 2: And I would just also add that blues is something
Speaker 2: that definitely, you know, you find all over rock and
Speaker 2: roll and you find all over jazz and in very
Speaker 2: different ways.
Speaker 3: So how would you describe the music of the Alex
Speaker 3: school mactrio.
Speaker 2: I would say, you know, my trio is definitely more
Speaker 2: on the jazz rock side of things, although guitar wise,
Speaker 2: it has a little more to do with straight ahead guitar.
Speaker 2: So the guitar is a little has a little more
Speaker 2: in common with straight ahead jazz. The music is mildly experimental.
Speaker 2: It's it's definitely more high energy than not, but you
Speaker 2: know it's it's it's very hot, probably the hardest music
Speaker 2: to describe as my own music.
Speaker 3: Is this a labor of love or is the audience
Speaker 3: growing for the Alex Culnick Trio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the audience seems to be growing. You know, I
Speaker 2: started My whole story is strange. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: you know, I sort of I took a sabbatical from
Speaker 2: heavy battle. I didn't even know I was doing this.
Speaker 2: It wasn't really planned, but I sort of followed my passion,
Speaker 2: if you will, and it led me to moving to
Speaker 2: New York City from Berkeley, California. And everybody thought I
Speaker 2: was crazy. Most people make the move from the East
Speaker 2: Coast to the West coast. I know you're you're one
Speaker 2: of those. My parents are academics. They had done the
Speaker 2: same thing. They had moved from New York to California.
Speaker 2: I knew many people who would did that. And you
Speaker 2: have to move back to New York from California was
Speaker 2: considered a little crazy. So I needed a good excuse.
Speaker 2: And my excuse was to get a music degree and
Speaker 2: study at the New School in New York, and which
Speaker 2: kind of made my parents happy because they hated the
Speaker 2: fact that I never went to college. And also I
Speaker 2: was getting to know people in the jazz world at
Speaker 2: that time. So while at school, I threw this band
Speaker 2: together just for fun and it started. We started getting
Speaker 2: gigs and put out a record that was actually it
Speaker 2: shocked me. It was actually well reviewed by Downbead and
Speaker 2: jazz Is and some other jazz magazines. A jazz radio promoter,
Speaker 2: Michael Morrick took a liking to it and got us
Speaker 2: played on a bunch of jazz radio stations. So I
Speaker 2: had really initially thought of our first album as like
Speaker 2: a demo. I'll put this out into the world, we'll
Speaker 2: see how it goes. But it did well enough to
Speaker 2: launch a band that's still going a couple decades later.
Speaker 3: Okay, everybody talks about the economics of the road and
Speaker 3: how terrible they are. Three guys go on on the road.
Speaker 3: How many people come to see you? And can you
Speaker 3: make any money?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, it's it depends on the situation. It depends
Speaker 2: on where we are in the world for one thing.
Speaker 2: It's all it's interesting. I think. I think in some
Speaker 2: ways it's gotten better for the Alex and the trio,
Speaker 2: partially because I think at this point, uh, it's very
Speaker 2: clear I'm not doing this as a novelty. I think.
Speaker 2: You know, when it was first announced after the first album,
Speaker 2: you know of guitarist for Testaments doing a jazz guitar album. Okay, sure, next,
Speaker 2: But you know, I've stuck with it all this time,
Speaker 2: and the offers have gotten better. We've played some very
Speaker 2: prestigious venues. We just did a tour in March, we
Speaker 2: played a place in Vienna called Porgy and Best, which
Speaker 2: is yeah, John Schofield was playing there the same week.
Speaker 2: I can't play all the venues he plays, but yeah,
Speaker 2: at least there's some common venues. And these are the
Speaker 2: types of venues that twenty years ago absolutely not. You know,
Speaker 2: they either assumed again it was a novelty or they
Speaker 2: figured I'm some I'm going to be doing some shred act.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do instrumental jazz, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: bring in Marshall stacks and drums that look like Peter
Speaker 2: Cris's kit from Kiss. You know. No, actually I have
Speaker 2: real jazz players. I have great guys, Matt Sebraski and
Speaker 2: Nathan Peck. The drum kit is small, the bass is
Speaker 2: an actual jazz bass, although he does some electric now
Speaker 2: as well, But for a long time it was always
Speaker 2: with upright base and we always had this acoustic dynamic.
Speaker 2: So it's taken a while to have the credibility to
Speaker 2: play more established jazzy places, if you will, but we're
Speaker 2: doing a lot of those, and yeah, we keep the
Speaker 2: overhead low. We obviously don't. We don't have a light
Speaker 2: show when we tour Europe. For example, we have one
Speaker 2: crew person and he he's amazing. His name's Alex as well,
Speaker 2: and he drives the van, does the merchandise, helps set
Speaker 2: everything up. And this friend of ours, he also he
Speaker 2: works for a lot of different musicians. Right after our
Speaker 2: tour in March, he went off to tour for Dominic Miller,
Speaker 2: who plays for guitar for Sting. And when Dominic Miller
Speaker 2: is not playing with thing, you know, he's he's not
Speaker 2: doing places like Stink, you know, he's to actually some
Speaker 2: of the same same places my trios do.
Speaker 3: So who is coming to an Alex Goulnick trio show.
Speaker 3: Is a Testament fans or New fans?
Speaker 2: You know, it's a it's a combination. Especially when we
Speaker 2: play in Europe. We actually have a lot of fans
Speaker 2: that know me more for the instrumental side of things,
Speaker 2: and but there's always going to be a portion of
Speaker 2: fans that know me from Testament and they're curious what
Speaker 2: is going on. In the US, I'd say it's a
Speaker 2: little more of a mix. It's more maybe more fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty. But you often know the Testament fans because
Speaker 2: you know they show up and teach. If not Testament shirts.
Speaker 2: They'll show up in a megott Ass or a Slayer.
Speaker 3: Well, having listened to it, just giving my take. You know,
Speaker 3: the big breakthrough when I was growing up as the
Speaker 3: Mahavish New Orchestra, which I bought the first album and
Speaker 3: I saw them live. John McLaughlan had played with Miles Davis.
Speaker 3: That was one step a little much for me. Although
Speaker 3: they had success with the second album. I think with
Speaker 3: Birds of Fire Weather Report, I actually understood more. But
Speaker 3: this is all a setup for the listeners. You know,
Speaker 3: listen to Alex's trio because it's not as far out.
Speaker 3: If it wasn't sold as jazz, you wouldn't necessarily hear
Speaker 3: it that way. It's not as out there. Whatever, just
Speaker 3: switching gears. Tell me about your experience at the New School.
Speaker 2: Okay, well I'll just piggyback off. You're what you said
Speaker 2: before about the Mahavish New Orchestra. That's an example of somebody,
Speaker 2: you know. I could talk about John McLoughlin too many
Speaker 2: rock and metal guitar players. He's somebody that truly crossed over.
Speaker 2: So we all we all know him, you know, and
Speaker 2: uh true a true inspiration as well. So yeah, and
Speaker 2: he was part of this whole group of players that
Speaker 2: I think was my gateway to jazz guitar was guys
Speaker 2: like John McLoughlin, Aldon Yola. And now, interestingly, I get
Speaker 2: to the New School, this is uh late nineties around,
Speaker 2: you know, two thousand and Yeah, I'm an older student
Speaker 2: at that point, I'm like pushing thirty, but I'm ready
Speaker 2: at that At that point, I was hungry, hungry to study,
Speaker 2: and not just the jazz part of it too. I
Speaker 2: also took a couple of courses in philosophy and creative writing.
Speaker 2: A lot of my classmates were just out of high school.
Speaker 2: Now I wasn't. There were actually a few older students.
Speaker 2: I was definitely one of the oldest ones. I wasn't
Speaker 2: the oldest one, but the vast majority had gone straight
Speaker 2: from high school college. And yeah, they might have been
Speaker 2: stars and their jazz program, you know, whatever town they're from,
Speaker 2: so you had a lot of there was energy I
Speaker 2: picked up on, like I was surprised, a lot of
Speaker 2: unhappy energy because I think a lot of these kids,
Speaker 2: you know, they'd been the jazz or you know, the
Speaker 2: virtuoso champion and their little music scene in their town
Speaker 2: and then they get here, they get to the big city,
Speaker 2: this music program where you just you know, you have
Speaker 2: like the best of the best, and you know, I
Speaker 2: think a lot of hearts were breaking. I just I
Speaker 2: picked up on it, and I was in this interesting
Speaker 2: place because I wasn't really affected by it. I was
Speaker 2: sort of disillusioned having been a professional on the rock
Speaker 2: side of things, and I was just ready to learn.
Speaker 2: I just I was so excited to study with all
Speaker 2: these great players. You had legendary teachers at this school,
Speaker 2: guys like you, Reggie Workman, who was a bassist who
Speaker 2: played with John Coltrane, seeciul McBee. Yeah, yeah, there's like
Speaker 2: too many to name, but a lot of these are
Speaker 2: very well known names for jazz insiders. But you just
Speaker 2: you have access to these people and you could talk
Speaker 2: to them all the time, and you're put into ensembles
Speaker 2: with other players, and you're you suddenly have this very
Speaker 2: structured learning and I I never had that. I did
Speaker 2: have guitar lessons with Satriani for a couple of years,
Speaker 2: which was the most serious musician I'd ever studied with,
Speaker 2: but that that was very guitar focused. And when I
Speaker 2: got to the New school, it was really about music.
Speaker 2: Guitarists weren't even the majority of the musicians there. There
Speaker 2: were a lot of piano players and saxophonists, and I
Speaker 2: was so excited to just be around that and just
Speaker 2: be in this environment where it's not just about guitar
Speaker 2: based and vocals and you know, other instruments matter, and
Speaker 2: studying the history of the music, learning about what's called
Speaker 2: ear training, where you actually focus on listening and not
Speaker 2: just playing music, but being able to tell one note
Speaker 2: from another, how far away is it, what type of
Speaker 2: chord is this, just by hearing it. All this great stuff.
Speaker 2: So I was really excited. I did see a lot
Speaker 2: of you know, unhappy young players. I tried not to
Speaker 2: get bummed out by that. I saw a lot of
Speaker 2: people drop out because there were many players there that
Speaker 2: just wanted to go there, network and drop out. I
Speaker 2: was determined to get my education. So for me, it
Speaker 2: was like the perfect thing. I met the you know,
Speaker 2: these great musicians there I'm still friends with to this day,
Speaker 2: launched my band from there, got my education. But the yeah,
Speaker 2: the one thing that was odd about it, in addition
Speaker 2: to yeah, the unhappiness I could sense from some of
Speaker 2: the players that were kind of struggling. The younger players,
Speaker 2: the artists we're talking about John McLaughlin, h Jaco Pastorius,
Speaker 2: Weather Report, they really weren't talked about very much. They
Speaker 2: were at that time there was such an emphasis on
Speaker 2: straight ahead jazz, and there was this sense that it's
Speaker 2: time to you know, to bring back, you know, the
Speaker 2: real jazz. There had been this movement called the the
Speaker 2: Young Lions. You know, Wynton Marsalis had been a part
Speaker 2: of that, and he tended to have a little bit
Speaker 2: more conservative jazz views. He wasn't a big fan of fusion.
Speaker 2: He was championed by the jazz writer Stanley Crouch that
Speaker 2: was a great writer and had great taste in music,
Speaker 2: but absolutely hated electric music and jazz rock. So at
Speaker 2: the time, the School I think was very much under
Speaker 2: the effects of that. You know, it was almost like
Speaker 2: the alternative music movement and rock suddenly, you know, this
Speaker 2: big change. I've heard it's very different now. Now it's
Speaker 2: a lot more open. You've had players come out of
Speaker 2: from that period like Robert Glasberg, and he was actually
Speaker 2: at the New School at the same time I was.
Speaker 2: He's kind of one of the leading lights in jazz music.
Speaker 2: These days, and he collaborates with hip hop artists. You know,
Speaker 2: he's he's very well known for playing with Kendrick Lamart
Speaker 2: and apparently so like somebody like Glassberg being a star
Speaker 2: student at the News Classic, that's had a big influence.
Speaker 2: So it's less conservative than it was. But at the
Speaker 2: time I was there, there was this sense of it
Speaker 2: being just being very conservative, and even guitar was a
Speaker 2: little bit frowned upon. But I was at an age
Speaker 2: where I wasn't affected by the negativity.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're going to college, You've already had a good
Speaker 3: are you financially comfortable enough from Testament in order to
Speaker 3: you know, pay for college and take the time off
Speaker 3: from your regular career.
Speaker 2: Well, I had been very conservative with the earnings from Testament. Now,
Speaker 2: Testament had never had hits. We never sort of crossed
Speaker 2: the threshold of sort of winning awards.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The Bay Area music scene for heavy metal it was fun.
Speaker 2: I mean they always compare different scenes. You know, the
Speaker 2: British invasion you have the Beatles and the Stones, and
Speaker 2: I had a bunch of smaller bands like Kermit's Hermits
Speaker 2: for example. You know, and see at the Seattle scene,
Speaker 2: you had several huge bands, and the Bay Area music scene,
Speaker 2: you really had one huge band metality, and the rest
Speaker 2: of the bands were more like the bands that you know,
Speaker 2: insiders know about, but they weren't household names, so the
Speaker 2: band never made the kind of money where you just
Speaker 2: felt like you could retire. But at that point I
Speaker 2: had put enough away. I felt like, Okay, I certainly
Speaker 2: have enough to move to go back to school. Now,
Speaker 2: full disclosure, I had academic parents that desperately wanted me
Speaker 2: to go to college, you know, insist did on helping
Speaker 2: out for one of my years. But for the first
Speaker 2: part of going college, I've done it all myself. I'd
Speaker 2: actually taken care of all my basic credits at a
Speaker 2: community college in California, so actually I only had to
Speaker 2: go to the new school for like a half a term,
Speaker 2: just a couple of years, and yeah, financially I was okay,
Speaker 2: I had enough to you know, I knew I could
Speaker 2: take a few years and do whatever I want. But
Speaker 2: after a few years, you know, of course, then you
Speaker 2: have to start thinking, Okay, what am I going to
Speaker 2: do here? And I was always able to teach, And
Speaker 2: there was a music school called the American Institute of
Speaker 2: guitar that was just had nothing to do with college journey,
Speaker 2: just an informal music school that that had a few
Speaker 2: guitar teachers and they were all professional musicians. And I
Speaker 2: got in there and that became a job. And then
Speaker 2: I got the strangest call in my life from someone
Speaker 2: named David Krebs. I'm sure.
Speaker 3: I certainly know crib.
Speaker 2: So David, David Krebs calls me. Yo, actually his assistant
Speaker 2: calls and I I call, I call back, and I'm
Speaker 2: on hold waiting for he comes on. Doesn't even say hell,
Speaker 2: It just starts telling me he he heard this guitar
Speaker 2: playing on the he and he's he's managing this concert.
Speaker 2: And I asked, who was that guitar play and and
Speaker 2: and are you that guitar player? It was very funny,
Speaker 2: and I'm you know, he's a friend too, I've were.
Speaker 2: I saw him a couple of years ago at an
Speaker 2: event where the Scorpions were being honored and yeah, one
Speaker 2: of the great music industry personalities.
Speaker 3: For those who don't know, you know, he broke Erosmith,
Speaker 3: AC DC Nugent. But continue your narrative.
Speaker 2: Yes, So David was managing a group called the Trans
Speaker 2: Hibernian Orchestra. It was to be this traveling rock concert
Speaker 2: come kind of with elements of a Broadway show. I
Speaker 2: didn't really understand what it was. So it turned out
Speaker 2: that the producer composer, Paul O'Neill was working with David,
Speaker 2: who had worked for liber Krebs. And I had known
Speaker 2: Paul because during the nineties, in between moving to New
Speaker 2: York and leaving Testament, I got called to fill in
Speaker 2: and with a group, Sabotage, that Paul was producing. And
Speaker 2: it Sabotage is guitarist was a great, great guitarist, Chris Oliva,
Speaker 2: and sadly he had passed away and the band needed
Speaker 2: somebody quickly to do solos on the record. And initially
Speaker 2: I said no, And I'd been a fan of the band,
Speaker 2: and Testament had toured with the band, That's how we
Speaker 2: knew each other. But I said no because, you know,
Speaker 2: Testament had it had gotten very difficult towards the end,
Speaker 2: you know, classic VH one behind the music stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: we weren't getting along, felt like a toxic environment. So
Speaker 2: I was also getting more and more into jazz guitar.
Speaker 2: The last thing I was going to do was join
Speaker 2: another band just because of those reasons. But the band
Speaker 2: gave me a call personally, and you know, John Oliva
Speaker 2: was Chris's brother, and he said, you know, I, Chris
Speaker 2: would I think I want you to play guitar on
Speaker 2: this album. I think you're the only one he would
Speaker 2: want to play on this record. So how do you
Speaker 2: say no to that? So I recorded for Sabotage. I
Speaker 2: did a bunch of shows and that was how I
Speaker 2: got to know Paul O'Neal. Well, fast forward a few years,
Speaker 2: they've Sabotage had turned into this had become the nucleus
Speaker 2: for the Trans Hyberine Orchestra, this traveling show with some
Speaker 2: of this similar music but brought with Broadway singers and
Speaker 2: dancers and a light show and everything. And yeah, I
Speaker 2: got this this call from David Krebs and they were
Speaker 2: auditioning people, but yeah, we just want you to do
Speaker 2: it if you want to, like, you don't even have
Speaker 2: have to audition. And it was funny because it wasn't
Speaker 2: really what I saw doing. I kind of I was
Speaker 2: so focused on developing as an instrumentalist and not thinking
Speaker 2: about performing, and here was a show that's all about
Speaker 2: performing and literally had pyrotechnics, but you know what, I
Speaker 2: needed a job and I thought, Okay, you know what,
Speaker 2: the experience will probably be good. And the next thing
Speaker 2: you know, I this is while I'm still at the
Speaker 2: New School. By the way, I was able to take
Speaker 2: a month off and do homework assignments while I was
Speaker 2: on this tour. And it was still theaters at the time.
Speaker 2: We've played the Beacon. We played the theaters in Cleveland
Speaker 2: and Pittsburgh for multiple nights, and.
Speaker 3: That was.
Speaker 2: Almost the beginning of TSO. I think they had done
Speaker 2: like one tour before this, and it ended up turning
Speaker 2: into this arena concert that is still going to this day.
Speaker 2: Paul is no longer with us, May he rest in peace.
Speaker 2: David stopped working with them at some point, but it's
Speaker 2: still a big hit holiday concert. You know, if you
Speaker 2: talk to anybody about TSO or transfer of your archers,
Speaker 2: they know somebody if they don't know it themselves, they
Speaker 2: have a family member that loves to go every year
Speaker 2: and it's like this holiday tradition. And I was part
Speaker 2: of this tour for nine years. At the end of
Speaker 2: the year that that was what I did.
Speaker 3: Let's go back to the beginning, so you grew up
Speaker 3: in Berkeley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was born and raised in Berkeley, California, and
Speaker 2: it's a very straight, I guess, a strange place to
Speaker 2: grow up. It's funny because now in the news, you know,
Speaker 2: people talk about Portland and San Francisco as these lake
Speaker 2: looney places where anything goes. But you know when I
Speaker 2: when I grew up in Berkeley that that felt so normal.
Speaker 2: It felt like, you know, the way they described Portland today.
Speaker 2: I went to a school named after the head of
Speaker 2: the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X Elementary.
Speaker 3: I know it sounds like was that a public school?
Speaker 2: This is a public This is the Berkeley Public school system.
Speaker 2: We had a park nearby, they called it Ho Chi
Speaker 2: Min Park in honor of our nemesis. And in Vietnam War,
Speaker 2: of course, we had People's Park and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: literal like characters everywhere, even some of them are well known,
Speaker 2: you know, like Wavy Gravy for example. You know, he's
Speaker 2: a pretty famous person, part of the Mary Pranksters, and
Speaker 2: you'd see him around and it just wasn't unusual. And
Speaker 2: you know, when you're a child growing up, you know
Speaker 2: your city, that's your whole world. You know, they there's
Speaker 2: that famous New Yorker cartoon about how New Yorkers see
Speaker 2: the world, didn't they right? But you know, that applied
Speaker 2: to us growing up in Berkeley, and we saw the
Speaker 2: whole world through you know, it was te We have
Speaker 2: Telegraph Avenue and then San Pablo Avenue and yeah, and
Speaker 2: of course as you get older, you realize, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: there's more to the world than just this little corner
Speaker 2: where we are. But growing up, you know, from the
Speaker 2: time time I was, when I was in single digits,
Speaker 2: I assumed, oh, the whole world must be like this,
Speaker 2: all these strange characters around and you know, and of
Speaker 2: course I found I found out that that is not
Speaker 2: the case.
Speaker 3: How many kids were in the family.
Speaker 2: Two So I was the youngest of two. My brother
Speaker 2: was seven years older.
Speaker 3: And what path did your brother follow?
Speaker 2: So my brother got into music first, and in a
Speaker 2: way he was kind of a gateway to the local
Speaker 2: music scene in Berkeley. Now he was in his teens
Speaker 2: at the time new wave music was popular, so he was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was playing in bands that were influenced by groups
Speaker 2: like The Cars and the Knack and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But you know, my brother, he in a way, he
Speaker 2: was the opposite of what I became. I became this
Speaker 2: hyper serious person that that's studied music NonStop and you know,
Speaker 2: spent hours with the guitar at all times. And he
Speaker 2: was always looking for gimmicks and ways to make it
Speaker 2: as easy as possible, you know, and he he had
Speaker 2: even you know, it's funny, and he thought it would
Speaker 2: be so simple to just sign a record deal and
Speaker 2: everything will just fall into place and you become this
Speaker 2: big rock star. And even you know, even being seven
Speaker 2: years younger, I realized, Okay, I think maybe he's take
Speaker 2: you know, taking too many hits off the bong. You know,
Speaker 2: he's uh.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He eventually got into teaching English is the second language,
Speaker 2: which he still death. But he also when he's a
Speaker 2: real Berkeley type, he spent a number of years living
Speaker 2: in like ashram's and yoga centers. And by the time
Speaker 2: I had reached adolescence, you know, my parents were determined
Speaker 2: I was not going to turn out like him. I
Speaker 2: was going to go to college. I was not going
Speaker 2: to be this flaky musician. I was going to be
Speaker 2: a serious person. But of course all that did was
Speaker 2: make me be more serious about being a musician.
Speaker 3: What kind of kid. Were you growing up? Were you isolated?
Speaker 3: Were you a sports person? You were good in school?
Speaker 2: Definitely isolated, not a sports person and not good in school.
Speaker 2: Now I thought I was smart. I've since come to learn, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm actually quite intelligent. But I didn't realize that. I thought.
Speaker 2: I thought I had little intelligence just because I had
Speaker 2: very poor communication skills. And there, you know, words like
Speaker 2: introverted weren't really tossed around back and knowing what I
Speaker 2: know now, Yes, I was just very introverted and happy
Speaker 2: doing my own thing, and uh, not a big people person.
Speaker 2: And it is a bit ironic that I chose a
Speaker 2: career where I'm on a stage in front of lots
Speaker 2: of people, because that, yeah, that would seem to go
Speaker 2: against it. But yeah, of course I later heard that
Speaker 2: many shy children or even shy adults end up being performers.
Speaker 2: And as far as sports, I just never got the neck.
Speaker 2: I never had the interest that I never saw what
Speaker 2: the big deal was, and I was never good at it.
Speaker 3: Are you still introverted today?
Speaker 1: Not like I was.
Speaker 2: I'm certainly better at communicating than I was. I. I
Speaker 2: love being on a stage because then I feel like
Speaker 2: I have all the control, you know, I could. I
Speaker 2: can decide what's talked about on the stage. I can
Speaker 2: make the joke you have. If you're seated and it's
Speaker 2: my show, you you have to listen to me. But
Speaker 2: but if I walk into a party and it's a
Speaker 2: room full of strangers, yeah, I'm I'm panicked. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: call it panic. I'm exaggerating, of course, But uh, I've
Speaker 2: never understood people who can just instantly make friends at
Speaker 2: a party and be the so called life of the party.
Speaker 2: That's definitely not me. And it's funny. With sports, I
Speaker 2: just I always felt it was this thing everybody was
Speaker 2: into and I just couldn't get into it. I never
Speaker 2: had the talent to throw a baseball or football like
Speaker 2: everybody else did. But I'm almost having corrective experience in
Speaker 2: recent years. I was just invited to play for the
Speaker 2: Cleveland Browns at a pregame event on NFL Opening Day.
Speaker 3: How does that even happen?
Speaker 2: That happens because they partner with the Rock and Roll
Speaker 2: Hall of Fame every year in Cleveland, and they like
Speaker 2: to do rock and roll events. They've had Zach Wilde,
Speaker 2: They've had Neil Sean, and this year they were going
Speaker 2: to have orianthe and she had to cancel. I would
Speaker 2: say at the last minute, but close enough to the
Speaker 2: last minute that there was a search for somebody that
Speaker 2: could jump in and play guitar and do what needed
Speaker 2: to be done. And I happened to get the call
Speaker 2: and it was It was amazing, It went, it went great.
Speaker 2: I had a great time. I have a Cleveland Browns
Speaker 2: jersey with my name on it. I watched the game
Speaker 2: afterwards with these friends of mine who set it up
Speaker 2: and had just had a great time. And actually a
Speaker 2: couple of years before that, I played the anthem for
Speaker 2: the Chicago Wolves.
Speaker 3: How did that come there?
Speaker 2: Happen? And then how did that happened? Because I was
Speaker 2: playing for an all star group of musical all stars.
Speaker 2: It's called Metal Allegiance, and it's like a collective of musicians.
Speaker 2: We usually play and then around the Nam show. In fact,
Speaker 2: we're playing this year at the House of Blues Ana
Speaker 2: I'm January twenty second, and we always have it's always
Speaker 2: with different people. So this Chicago show, it was the
Speaker 2: drummer for masted On bron Daylor and Mark Mani the founder,
Speaker 2: and myself, Bobby Blitz from Overkill you know, it's always
Speaker 2: a mashup. We played in Chicago and it was right
Speaker 2: I think it was right around hall Leen too, if
Speaker 2: I remember. And somebody who works in the Bills office
Speaker 2: is got word of it and they were looking for
Speaker 2: somebody to do the anthem, and you know, they they've
Speaker 2: had singers, but I think they've been talking about bringing
Speaker 2: in an instrumentalist. And somebody who is this guy that
Speaker 2: works for the team who's also a fan of music,
Speaker 2: reached out it saw that we were going to be
Speaker 2: in town and said, would you like to play the
Speaker 2: national anthem? I said sure. So I love doing stuff
Speaker 2: like that, and every time it's it's sort of it's
Speaker 2: this window into sports fandom, like I get it. I'm
Speaker 2: at the game, I'm feeling the passion from everybody. So
Speaker 2: somehow growing up I never had it. But when I
Speaker 2: do these events where I play music at the game,
Speaker 2: so I have a great time.
Speaker 3: Okay, your brother was into music, who was in music?
Speaker 3: Where your parents big music bands? Where they playing music
Speaker 3: in the house.
Speaker 2: Not much, not much at all. I've talked about this before.
Speaker 2: You know, some kids grow up hearing music played in
Speaker 2: the house or they're singing around a piano or you
Speaker 2: know there was There really wasn't much of that at all.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of public affairs, television, uh, the McNeil,
Speaker 2: Lair Report, Washington Weekend Review. So you know, you know
Speaker 2: what these are. I probably have to explain them to
Speaker 2: you know, some folks of a younger generation.
Speaker 3: How did you end up taking music lessons and what
Speaker 3: were your first lessons.
Speaker 2: I got into music because the music that was occasionally
Speaker 2: played around the house was good, So I have to
Speaker 2: give my prayers credit for that. They like the Beatles
Speaker 2: a lot, and I'm told that I used to sing
Speaker 2: Beatles songs when I was too young to remember some
Speaker 2: of those songs. Of course, you know they're perfect for
Speaker 2: a kid. Yellow Submarine that could be a children's song,
Speaker 2: Comes the Sun that could be a children's son. So
Speaker 2: I used to sing those songs. And by the time
Speaker 2: I was sort of nine or ten years old, I
Speaker 2: think I was just looking for something exciting to do.
Speaker 2: Even though I had tried piano lessons and the teacher
Speaker 2: I really wasn't very nurturing. I think I needed more
Speaker 2: attention as a student, and it just it didn't work
Speaker 2: out with piano. I thought I wasn't gonna be good
Speaker 2: at music, and then I started begging for guitar lessons
Speaker 2: when I discovered Kiss. And the way I discovered Kiss
Speaker 2: was on the schoolyard there was I was very tired
Speaker 2: of hearing about baseball cards. All my friends, you know,
Speaker 2: would trade baseball cards. And one day I these friends
Speaker 2: were calling me over, I have to look at these
Speaker 2: baseball car and you know, and I resisted, No, I
Speaker 2: don't know, No, You're gonna love this look and it
Speaker 2: was Kiss cards. And that moment was like it was
Speaker 2: life changing. And you know, these guys, they looked straight
Speaker 2: out of comic book and they have guitars and Ace,
Speaker 2: may he rest in peace. We just lost Ace. You know,
Speaker 2: he's got this guitar. Smoke is coming out of the guitar.
Speaker 2: So suddenly guitar got very interesting. And then the first
Speaker 2: record that I had wanted to buy on my own
Speaker 2: was a Kiss record. And I didn't know about compilations
Speaker 2: or Greatest Hiss records at the time, but it was
Speaker 2: called Double Platinum and it was a compilation, but it
Speaker 2: had some great songs and I genuinely loved the music.
Speaker 2: And between Kisses music and imagery, I had to learn guitar,
Speaker 2: So I started studying with.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of a lot of steps there. Hey,
Speaker 3: you don't have a guitar, so you gotta You know,
Speaker 3: the lessons can't happen without a guitar, So how does
Speaker 3: it really go down? You're begging your parents right right.
Speaker 2: So at this point, my brother had already played, he
Speaker 2: was already starting to play in local bands. Uh, he
Speaker 2: was switching from guitar to bass. But for a while
Speaker 2: he did have a guitar, and occasionally I could play
Speaker 2: one of his guitars. But ye know it was a
Speaker 2: typical older versus little brother. Yeah, guitar. He didn't want
Speaker 2: me to touch his guitar. So eventually they we found
Speaker 2: a cheap guitar at a garage sale, and it was
Speaker 2: like the complete op of my brother. Because my brother
Speaker 2: had gone to my parents and I begged for a
Speaker 2: less Paul. He needed a less Paul guitar, which he
Speaker 2: eventually traded for a bass. I was not gonna be
Speaker 2: so lucky. They Yeah, they said, okay, yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 2: get you this classical guitar and if you stick with that,
Speaker 2: maybe one day you'll get an electric guitar. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I had a really difficult to play acoustic guitar nylon strings,
Speaker 2: but I stuck with it, and I think it in
Speaker 2: retrospect I might have helped that I had to work
Speaker 2: for it, and I had to put in all this
Speaker 2: extra effort. And by the time I got a good guitar,
Speaker 2: I was probably fourteen years old, and I'd been bagging
Speaker 2: groceries at a local supermarket and saved up, and I
Speaker 2: saved up enough to buy my own last bom. So
Speaker 2: I got this sense of working hard at it and
Speaker 2: also just really kind of earning my own keep and
Speaker 2: earning what I got. Okay, not having things handed.
Speaker 3: How old are you then? How do you start taking
Speaker 3: lessons with a nylon string guitar.
Speaker 2: So I'm about ten years old when I have the
Speaker 2: nylon string guitar. And there was a local guitar teacher.
Speaker 2: His name was Gary Lapoue and a real Berkeley type.
Speaker 2: I used to play at anti nuclear weapons rallies, so
Speaker 2: I had songs about saving the whales. But he actually
Speaker 2: ended up going on to be a pretty respected children's
Speaker 2: recording artist, So I need to look him up, but
Speaker 2: his I think he's probably still doing it. Gary Lepoe,
Speaker 2: and he was great. He was a great teacher. When
Speaker 2: I went to him, I was very determined. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to have the same experience that I had had
Speaker 2: with piano, where I just didn't practice enough and I
Speaker 2: lost interest. The teacher didn't want to teach me. So
Speaker 2: I worked really hard my first week or so, and
Speaker 2: he was very complimentary. I couldn't believe how fast I
Speaker 2: was picking it up and taking to the chords. And
Speaker 2: he was very good at making connections between different types
Speaker 2: of music. So, for example, there was a fifties resurgence
Speaker 2: going on around this time. This is around nineteen eighty,
Speaker 2: so not only am I into kiss, but I really
Speaker 2: liked fifties rock. I was hearing fifties rock. Happy Days
Speaker 2: was the number one show. There was a film called
Speaker 2: American Hot Wax that had Jay Leno and fran Dresser,
Speaker 2: and it was not the best acted film. It was
Speaker 2: kind of not surprising that they both ended up on
Speaker 2: TV movies, But with all due respect, it was a
Speaker 2: fun film and the best part about it was it
Speaker 2: starred all these fifties artists as themselves. It was the
Speaker 2: story about Alan Free, so it's kind of educational in
Speaker 2: a Way too, and Judge Jerry Lee Lewis is in
Speaker 2: the movie Screaming. Jay Hawkins is in this movie. And
Speaker 2: the one who stole the show for me was Chuck Barry.
Speaker 2: So when I went to Gary, my first guitar teacher,
Speaker 2: I talked about the music I loved, and part of
Speaker 2: it was Kiss, but also I really liked this music
Speaker 2: from this film and especially Chuck Berry. And that was
Speaker 2: perfect because this guy, he didn't know Kiss songs, but
Speaker 2: he certainly knew about Chuck Berry, and he made connections
Speaker 2: between like what Chuck Berry was doing and how he
Speaker 2: influenced the Beatles and the Stones. The Beatles even covered
Speaker 2: Chuck Berry songs. I didn't even know that at the time,
Speaker 2: and it was very educational, and I learned those basic
Speaker 2: chuck Berry hits, you know, Johnny be Good, roll over Beethoven.
Speaker 2: To this day, those intros that Chuck Berry played on
Speaker 2: those songs really get me excited. I still yeah, they
Speaker 2: haven't lost any of their magic. But Gary's best quality,
Speaker 2: I think, was just making that connection. And when I
Speaker 2: started talking to him about ac DC, same thing, He's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: here's how the blues riff influenced this AC DC tune.
Speaker 2: Here's how I would influence this Kiss tune, and it
Speaker 2: just really gave me a good understanding about connections with
Speaker 2: fifties rock and the hard rock that I was then
Speaker 2: getting into, like Kiss and Athies.
Speaker 3: Okay, you start with this guy, you start with an
Speaker 3: acoustic guitar, what's the next step.
Speaker 2: So the next step, I guess A couple of years later,
Speaker 2: by the time I played guitar for about two years,
Speaker 2: we're talking eighty two. At this time, you know, Ozzie
Speaker 2: has emerged as an artist and I didn't know anything
Speaker 2: about him. I yeah, I hadn't grown up with Black Sabbath.
Speaker 2: I wasn't a band my brother had been into. But
Speaker 2: kids in my class, you know, the seventh grade, they're
Speaker 2: all talking about Ozzie, and somebody who knew that I
Speaker 2: played guitar told me, I have to hear this guitarist
Speaker 2: on the Aussie record. And this is the time, too
Speaker 2: win not as many kids played guitar. Today, there are
Speaker 2: more kids than you can count that have that played
Speaker 2: guitar and play guitar well, and they most of them
Speaker 2: have Instagram pages. But at this time it wasn't as
Speaker 2: common to start guitar at a young age. Most kids
Speaker 2: I knew started in their early teens, and I had
Speaker 2: already been playing for a few years. So I was told,
Speaker 2: you know, listen to Ozzy Osbourne and this amazing guitarist
Speaker 2: Randy Roads. And I think that was partly what got
Speaker 2: me interested in wanting to play guitar solos. But I also,
Speaker 2: around the same time, discovered van Halen. The van Halen
Speaker 2: had been out for a few years, but he hadn't
Speaker 2: really reached my radar. And then the same kids that
Speaker 2: were into Ozzie were into van Halen, and then they
Speaker 2: played the first van Halen record and that was it.
Speaker 2: I was off to the races. And I know many
Speaker 2: guitar players today tell the same story. Yeah, they they
Speaker 2: heard eruption for the first time on a record or
Speaker 2: a cassette and it was just life change, Like, oh,
Speaker 2: I didn't know what guitar could do. That that's exciting.
Speaker 2: And up until then I thought about being a singer guitarist.
Speaker 2: I never cared that much about having an electric guitar.
Speaker 2: I knew I would get one eventually, but you know,
Speaker 2: playing that type of guitar was never a thought. And
Speaker 2: then it all changed. The day I heard that first
Speaker 2: Van Haalen record, as it did for so many.
Speaker 3: Okay, so how did you learn and how'd you get
Speaker 3: the les Paul? I mean, what was the transition?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I had to break it to Gary, my
Speaker 2: guitar teacher, that I need to I need to find
Speaker 2: some teachers that can yeah respect, you know, because he
Speaker 2: taught me so much, and it was very difficult. It
Speaker 2: was sad, you know. It was almost like a fork
Speaker 2: in the road, you know, because I liked him so
Speaker 2: much and he was so nurturing and such a nice
Speaker 2: guy and very talented at what he did. But I
Speaker 2: had to make this decision. I need to find somebody
Speaker 2: who can play.
Speaker 3: Like these guys.
Speaker 2: And as it turned out. I mentioned my older brother
Speaker 2: was in the music scene and he tended to play
Speaker 2: more me music that was could be described as new
Speaker 2: wave SKA, not really hard rock. But he had some
Speaker 2: friends that did play rock guitar and one of his
Speaker 2: friends was a player. His name was Danny Gill, and
Speaker 2: he was playing in hard rock band. He kept trying
Speaker 2: to get my brother to join his band. My brother
Speaker 2: was interested in that kind of music, but Danny was
Speaker 2: really getting good fast, you know, and he was the
Speaker 2: only guy that I knew in the Berkeley music scene
Speaker 2: in that sort of had a grip on Van Hamlinton's
Speaker 2: and I saw him play. We were I remember a
Speaker 2: couple of times at home just or at there were
Speaker 2: gatherings or at local parties when people would pass around
Speaker 2: a guitar, This guy, Danny Gill would would get the
Speaker 2: guitar and he would do these licks. He learned from eruption,
Speaker 2: and so I could see how it was done and
Speaker 2: that was shocking, right, Wow, that's how you do that.
Speaker 2: And I ended up asking him for lessons, so I
Speaker 2: studied with him for a while. He later became a
Speaker 2: teacher at m I Musicians Institute down in Hollywood. He
Speaker 2: lives in Sweden today. He actually married a Swede, but
Speaker 2: he's a full time teacher. So but he ended up
Speaker 2: being my next teacher, and he was a very good teacher.
Speaker 2: And around the time I studied with him, that was
Speaker 2: around the time I got my first electric guitar. This
Speaker 2: lest Paul. I think in the meantime I had played it.
Speaker 2: There was a cheap guitar that my brother acquired that
Speaker 2: I played a little bit. It was so cheap. I
Speaker 2: really needed a good guitar, so I I got the
Speaker 2: less Paul. I started startying with Danny. But within a
Speaker 2: year or so, it felt like I was able to
Speaker 2: learn some of the Van Halen stuff on my own.
Speaker 2: And I remember there was one lesson and I say this,
Speaker 2: you know, with all respect to Danny, but I I
Speaker 2: was showing him how this song was. It was a
Speaker 2: song called Little Guitars off of nineteen eighty four, and yes,
Speaker 2: I figured out how to do the riff and he
Speaker 2: he looks at me, how do you do that? I'm like, wait, oh,
Speaker 2: you should be paying me by the hour. So I
Speaker 2: started realize, Okay, I wonder who taught Dan. Did you
Speaker 2: know did Danny take lessons? And I knew Danny had
Speaker 2: studied with this music teacher. He taught all all the
Speaker 2: best players, all the top guitar players in the area.
Speaker 2: They talked about this guy, the very mysterious person. All
Speaker 2: I knew about him was that he was Italian and
Speaker 2: he's from New York and he's very serious. Like, if
Speaker 2: you go and study with this guy, you have to
Speaker 2: do your lessons and you have to practice hard otherwise
Speaker 2: he will he will fire you. Yeah, And of course
Speaker 2: that turned out to be Joe Satrianni.
Speaker 3: So you go to see Joe for lessons, what's that
Speaker 3: experience like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a funny experience the first time because
Speaker 2: Joe had a waiting list, so he taught in a
Speaker 2: little guitar store and you go to the guitar store
Speaker 2: or you call up you say you want lessons, and
Speaker 2: then you'd have to wait. You have to wait like
Speaker 2: a period of weeks, sometimes months. And one day I
Speaker 2: got a call and Joe had an opening and I scheduled.
Speaker 2: I remember I scheduled this lesson, but it was the
Speaker 2: same day as this political rally. And my mother, I think,
Speaker 2: you know, she's sort of been this repressed political activist,
Speaker 2: you know, to this day, she's like an MSNBC news junkie.
Speaker 2: And I think she'd always wanted to be involved with politics,
Speaker 2: but it never did. And so she's insisted I come
Speaker 2: to this rally, and I think she thought I would
Speaker 2: take to politics and political activism. And the rally was
Speaker 2: for a presidential candidate named Gary Hart, and all this
Speaker 2: did it completely turned me off politics. First of all,
Speaker 2: the guy showed up like hours late, and suddenly I realized,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be late for this lesson. I've been
Speaker 2: want on the waiting west for this, this teacher that
Speaker 2: it's really important to me and my mother. You know.
Speaker 2: It was arguing with me, you know, no, this is important,
Speaker 2: and I remember running off going, you know, no, this
Speaker 2: is important. And I was a few minutes late. I
Speaker 2: but Joe was very understanding. It never happened again, and
Speaker 2: it just caused me to be even more punctual and
Speaker 2: serious in my lessons with Joe. And of course, as
Speaker 2: we all know, Gary Hart ends up caught in a
Speaker 2: sex scandal and kicked out of public office. The whole
Speaker 2: situation was just very metaphoric.
Speaker 3: But didn't Gary Hart become the head of the new school? Ah?
Speaker 2: Did he that? When I was there? I should look
Speaker 2: into that.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's another politician.
Speaker 2: There was a senator whose name escaped me.
Speaker 3: That was the head, Gary Hurt. So, okay, you're taking
Speaker 3: lessons from Joe. How does that go?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So that taking lessons with Joe was that next level.
Speaker 2: I felt like I unlocked a new level of music education.
Speaker 2: And of course, you know, knowing what we know now,
Speaker 2: he would go on to be this very important good
Speaker 2: figure in the world of guitar. We didn't know that
Speaker 2: in a way, it was a cautionary tale about the
Speaker 2: music business, the fact that somebody this talented is teaching
Speaker 2: guitar lessons of the little back room behind a guitar shop.
Speaker 2: But it was amazing. It was just suddenly, you know,
Speaker 2: I really understand unstood what serious music lessons were. And
Speaker 2: guitar really wasn't thought of as a serious instrument at
Speaker 2: that time. Like if you're a serious musician, okay, you
Speaker 2: there's there were serious teachers for violin, for piano, electric guitar,
Speaker 2: not so much at that time. But he was somebody
Speaker 2: like that. It was like going to a classical violinist
Speaker 2: or pianist that had regimens, and you know, practice was
Speaker 2: incredibly important, discipline was really important, and he really didn't
Speaker 2: want he didn't want his time wasted, and he made
Speaker 2: that very clear. In fact, I was recently speaking to
Speaker 2: a friend of mine, Mark Mark DeVito. He's a guy
Speaker 2: who did a lot of artwork for various bands, my band,
Speaker 2: He's did some work for Metallica, he did Motorhead's last
Speaker 2: album cover, went on to be a full time artist,
Speaker 2: but at one time he wanted to be a guitarist
Speaker 2: and we were talking recently and he never told me
Speaker 2: the story before, but he actually went to Joe for
Speaker 2: lessons and yo, Joe was very honest with him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he said, do you have any other hobbies?
Speaker 3: So when do you start forming bands?
Speaker 2: Well, the whole time I was with Joe, you know,
Speaker 2: like ages fourteen fifteen, I am trying to form a band.
Speaker 2: I want to form a band, but again, to use
Speaker 2: that word introvert, I very introverted. I don't have the
Speaker 2: quality too, you know. I certainly didn't have leadership skill
Speaker 2: for whatever musical skill I had for my age, which
Speaker 2: was great, Yeah, I didn't have that know how to
Speaker 2: just round people up pick musicians. And there also weren't
Speaker 2: musicians my age, very there weren't very many. Like I
Speaker 2: explained earlier, it was a different time. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: tried jamming with a couple guys in my school and
Speaker 2: it just didn't really go anywhere. And around this time
Speaker 2: I am going to concerts. There's a whole local scene happening,
Speaker 2: and I particularly enjoy with the music that is later
Speaker 2: known as Thrash Meult. It was funny because at the
Speaker 2: time I never thought about playing that music. I was
Speaker 2: really focused on Van Halen Randy rose Evy Meltinstein has
Speaker 2: come along by then, and he was my new hero.
Speaker 2: But I loved going to concerts by these bands. And
Speaker 2: you know, Exodus was one slayer who did I saw
Speaker 2: their first time? Answered Metallica, I think was sort of
Speaker 2: off to the races at that point. They'd already released
Speaker 2: an album and I think we're working on their second record.
Speaker 2: But under them, there was this whole scene going on,
Speaker 2: and I remember thinking, you know, if I could join
Speaker 2: one of these local bands that's already playing, then I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have to go through this trying to search for
Speaker 2: guys my age to play with because it's not working out.
Speaker 2: And lo and behold, I hear about a band that
Speaker 2: needs a guitar player. And it's this band that at
Speaker 2: the time is called Legacy. It's the band that would
Speaker 2: go on to be called Testament. And it all happened,
Speaker 2: you know, in a snap. At this point. I think
Speaker 2: when I first met them, I was fifteen. By the
Speaker 2: time I did my first gig with them, I was sixteen,
Speaker 2: and by the time I was eighteen, I was on
Speaker 2: the East Coast recording my first album with the band.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's the framework, but there's a lot of steps.
Speaker 3: Were these guys your age or older? Did they accept you?
Speaker 3: How did you write the material? What about gigs? How
Speaker 3: did it all play out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the band was founded by the other guitarist.
Speaker 2: His name is Eric Peterson. They were all older, they'd
Speaker 2: been out of school a number of years. They were
Speaker 2: all in their early twenties at this point, and somehow
Speaker 2: it was interesting. Eric was kind of shy too, but
Speaker 2: he was good at getting gigs, and yeah, we all
Speaker 2: went to the same shows, even though we were all
Speaker 2: from different places. You know, the Bay Area has all
Speaker 2: these little pockets. Yeah, you've got the East Bay, the
Speaker 2: far East Bay, like Dublin, Pleasanton. I was in Berkeley
Speaker 2: where a lot of the clubs were, so in a way,
Speaker 2: I was lucky because it was very easy for me
Speaker 2: to and my friends. We could just take the bus
Speaker 2: downtown and we would go to the Keystone Berkeley, which
Speaker 2: was the big venue at the time, or you know,
Speaker 2: go across the Bay. We had the Stone in San Francisco,
Speaker 2: and Testament, which was then called Legacy, was already playing
Speaker 2: these clubs. They supported Slayer. I think they supported Megadeth
Speaker 2: on one of their first shows when Megadeth was a
Speaker 2: brand new band, and Mustaine had just been kicked out
Speaker 2: of Metallica and uh the Yeah. By the time I
Speaker 2: got asked to join the band, they were already gigging.
Speaker 2: They already had these shows. There was a new venue
Speaker 2: called Ruthie's In, which became sort of an epicenter for
Speaker 2: this type of music. Pretty Much all the thrash metal
Speaker 2: bands you've heard of played there, except Metallica, who was
Speaker 2: already on their way. They actually did play there once,
Speaker 2: but it was like an unannounced fun gig. And my
Speaker 2: very first show was that Ruthie's In and it was
Speaker 2: just a whirlwind. Suddenly, you know, one minute, I am
Speaker 2: kind of a frustrated high school student, yeah, wishing I
Speaker 2: was in a band. The next thing, you know, I
Speaker 2: have shows. I mean this, I'm rehearsing a couple times
Speaker 2: a week, and you know, my parents were not happy
Speaker 2: about it, but I think at that point they knew
Speaker 2: there's there's no stopping me. And that was Yeah, that
Speaker 2: was how it all started.
Speaker 3: Well, when did you realize it was starting to click?
Speaker 2: Well, the band had about probably I don't know, half
Speaker 2: a dozen songs, like almost enough songs for a set
Speaker 2: plus some covers. I had some musical ideas. I had
Speaker 2: songs and parts that I'd been working on. Now, my
Speaker 2: parts were much more like Ozzie Deo Rainbow, you know,
Speaker 2: Vey the stuff I was listening to at that time,
Speaker 2: much slower than this. So yeah, the first thing that
Speaker 2: became clear is, Okay, we're gonna have to speed up
Speaker 2: all these parts like double speed, and uh yeah, we
Speaker 2: ended up it ended up working out. We put a
Speaker 2: lot of my parts with parts that Eric had, and well,
Speaker 2: you know, within a year we had you know, the
Speaker 2: first almost half a dozen songs that the band had,
Speaker 2: which were you know, much much simpler. They were mostly
Speaker 2: like fast songs in one key, not a lot of harmony,
Speaker 2: not a lot of melody. But I was bringing in
Speaker 2: different elements. So I sort of taught Eric how to harmonize,
Speaker 2: how to play scales together. Let's get out of you know,
Speaker 2: the low key on guitar as all guitars know as
Speaker 2: e but there, Yeah, we don't have to be stuck there,
Speaker 2: we can we could take apart and move it somewhere else.
Speaker 2: So I and by that point i'd been with I
Speaker 2: had enough of my Satriani lessons that you know, I
Speaker 2: was getting pretty good at harmony and melody, and uh yeah,
Speaker 2: I'd say within a year and a half or so,
Speaker 2: we had enough material to do the first record. Now,
Speaker 2: of course, there was some major drama that happened with
Speaker 2: the lineup, which I can explain later. We'll explain now, Okay,
Speaker 2: So the lineup at that time included a singer. His
Speaker 2: name's Steve Stuza, and he was like the drill sergeant
Speaker 2: of the band. It was almost I didn't even know
Speaker 2: Eric had started the band because I thought this it
Speaker 2: must be his band, because this guy ran it like
Speaker 2: he ran the show, and it was all Later I
Speaker 2: thought it was kind of a source of contention with them,
Speaker 2: but very type a personality. And during this time, the
Speaker 2: biggest band around is Exodus, and every it's expected that
Speaker 2: Exodus is going to follow in the footsteps of Metallica,
Speaker 2: largely because Exodus was arted by Kirk Hamick before he
Speaker 2: was coached by Metallic, so we all look up to Exodus.
Speaker 2: You know, the outside of Metallica, the biggest concerts, the
Speaker 2: biggest thrash metal shows are by Exodus, and lo and behold,
Speaker 2: Exodus decides to fire their singer Paul bailoff. May he
Speaker 2: rest in peace and take our singer. Yeah. So I'm
Speaker 2: only in this band for a year. I'm still in
Speaker 2: high school, and suddenly I'm embroiled in this like major
Speaker 2: band drama. So Steve joins Exodus and we need a
Speaker 2: singer right quickly. And another funny thing that had happened was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: my my exasperated father. You know, he he gave up
Speaker 2: on me going to law school and whatever the hell
Speaker 2: he wanted me to do. But he said, the one
Speaker 2: thing I'm going to insist on, which and he was
Speaker 2: right about this, is that you hire a lawyer. So
Speaker 2: he had had a former teaching assistant that ended up
Speaker 2: working in entertainment law. And the teaching assistants name was
Speaker 2: Elliot Kahan. Elliott Kahn had a very interesting history because
Speaker 2: he had been a member of Shauna not while at
Speaker 2: Columbia and had actually done Woodstock as a member of Shauna.
Speaker 2: Not met Hendrix, you know, so he had this incredible backstory.
Speaker 2: And around this time, you know, he's basically doing doing
Speaker 2: law and but you know, helping out musicians in the
Speaker 2: San Francisco Bay area. So I got to know Elliott
Speaker 2: because my dad, Elliott became the band's manager. Elliott had
Speaker 2: some connection with John and Marcia's Uzula, I forget what
Speaker 2: it was, and knew that they had been involved with
Speaker 2: Metallica on their first record. Knew that they were they
Speaker 2: were signing metal bands, they were looking for metal bands.
Speaker 2: So Elliott Cohn, my friend of my father, which is
Speaker 2: so ironic, ends up sending our demo tape to the
Speaker 2: Uzulas and this Zula's liked what they heard, and we
Speaker 2: were already in negotiations to at least do a showcase
Speaker 2: for John and Marsha's Zula. And then shortly before that happens,
Speaker 2: we find out Exodus has fired their singer. They're talking
Speaker 2: to Capitol Records. They take our singer, and we need
Speaker 2: a singer, so I the singer we got is his
Speaker 2: name is Chuck Billy, and he's this six foot four
Speaker 2: Native American towering presence, and he had been in a
Speaker 2: band that was more of a glam band, but it
Speaker 2: was with that great guitarist who I used to take
Speaker 2: lessons from Danny Gill, and that was how we knew
Speaker 2: about him, and we weren't sure he would be able
Speaker 2: to sing heavy music, you know, this fat but he
Speaker 2: you know, he learned, he was willing to learn, and
Speaker 2: he became the singer. And this all happened really fast.
Speaker 2: We did a new demo with Chuck. The Zazulas liked
Speaker 2: it and they came out and we showcased for them.
Speaker 2: The day that we showcased for the Zazulas, Cliff Burton
Speaker 2: from Metallica passed away in a bus accident. So it
Speaker 2: ended up being this very somber, sad day, But it
Speaker 2: was the day we showcased for the Suzulas and signed
Speaker 2: our first record.
Speaker 3: So you must have been on cloud nine, yes and no.
Speaker 2: It was like, in a way, it was very metaphoric
Speaker 2: because in some ways it was such a rollercoaster rat
Speaker 2: in some ways, Okay, things are great, they're looking up.
Speaker 2: You know, we have the you know, the people that
Speaker 2: introduced the Metallica to the world are interested in us,
Speaker 2: and they're also managing Anthrax, who's having a moment at
Speaker 2: that time. So we were part of this whole thing.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, just yeah, the whirlwind of
Speaker 2: losing a singer, finding a singer, having a successful showcase.
Speaker 2: But it's on this very sad day that the world
Speaker 2: lost the great Cliff Burton. So it was definitely a
Speaker 2: period of growing up fast and recognizing yes, you know,
Speaker 2: there's going to be these very positive moments, but there's
Speaker 2: going to be some difficult sad moments too, and sometimes
Speaker 2: all within a very short period of time.
Speaker 3: So what was your experience with Testamon? You have a
Speaker 3: record deal, Megaport is distributed by Atlantic. This music is happening,
Speaker 3: So what was your world like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, all of a sudden, you know, we're not
Speaker 2: just doing gigs at Ruthie's Inn, and you know the
Speaker 2: zone and the local Bay area clubs.
Speaker 3: But we.
Speaker 2: Miszulas really wanted to get us out of our comfort zone,
Speaker 2: the bubble of the San Francisco area. So they sent
Speaker 2: us to southern California and we did a show I
Speaker 2: think it was Corona, California, and opening for Anthrax, and
Speaker 2: they sent us to a club called Lamore's in Brooklyn,
Speaker 2: and ye know, Lamors is pretty legendary. And at Lamore's
Speaker 2: we opened up for Slayer, which, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: that's yeah, it's a big thrill. We were all big
Speaker 2: fans of Slayer. On the other hand, the New York
Speaker 2: fans of Slayer were notorious. You know, they were like
Speaker 2: Mets fans, you know, just if they don't like you,
Speaker 2: they they're not shy about it. But everybody told us,
Speaker 2: if you can survive opening for Slayer at Lamores in Brooklyn,
Speaker 2: you're on your way. And we got flown to New York.
Speaker 2: We did the show with Slayer. We were booed, we
Speaker 2: were subjected to Slayer chants, but it started dying down
Speaker 2: midway through, and by the end, I think we'd won
Speaker 2: over enough people, so it really felt like, Okay, things
Speaker 2: are happening now. And right around the same time, we
Speaker 2: went to upstate New York. There was a producer up
Speaker 2: there named Alex Pirialis, and he had recorded Anthrax and
Speaker 2: a bunch of other albums for Mega Force, and they
Speaker 2: had a relationship already, so he wanted to take us
Speaker 2: under his wing. And at the same time, a lot
Speaker 2: of my friends were going off to college. I was
Speaker 2: on a plane heading to Ithaca, New York, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, being in a pro recording studio for the
Speaker 2: first time. We've done a couple of demos at this point,
Speaker 2: but yeah, this this was the next level and the
Speaker 2: whole going through the whole process of you know, the
Speaker 2: calendar dates. Here's when you're going to do your drum tracks,
Speaker 2: Here's when you're going to do your guitar tracks. Here's
Speaker 2: the budget here. We want to come in under budget.
Speaker 2: We want to come in ahead of time. You know,
Speaker 2: I just learned this crash course learning how this is done,
Speaker 2: and it was an incredible on the job experience, on
Speaker 2: the job training.
Speaker 3: So you make these albums with Testament. How many dates
Speaker 3: were you playing a year? And did you think that
Speaker 3: you were just a minute from becoming Metallica? What was
Speaker 3: going through your heads?
Speaker 2: Well, knowing it's funny knowing what I know now, I
Speaker 2: can I could see that, you know, Metallica really had
Speaker 2: they had some extra smarts to them. And of course
Speaker 2: I know the guys and now it's not a surprise,
Speaker 2: but they yeah, kind of really learn, you know new.
Speaker 2: I think it's not that they knew exactly how big
Speaker 2: they would get, but I think they knew how to
Speaker 2: they were with all that. They were very in some
Speaker 2: ways self produced, and obviously being with Q Prime was
Speaker 2: a big help. But I think that you know, Lars
Speaker 2: makes a lot of decisions too. It's like a real
Speaker 2: great partnership. And I think with us, I think Testament
Speaker 2: we were so green. We were really just started looking
Speaker 2: for guidance, so I don't think we knew what would
Speaker 2: have We just ended up on a tour with Anthrax
Speaker 2: and across the United States. We ended up on another
Speaker 2: tour with Overkilled. These are both Mega Forest bands. We
Speaker 2: did our very first tour in Europe, and yeah, Mega
Speaker 2: Death at that time is starting to reach a higher level.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we were sort of part of this echosystem
Speaker 2: of all of all these bands, but it was never
Speaker 2: clear how big we could get, and Metallica just always
Speaker 2: felt like they were in a category of their own,
Speaker 2: so I kind of never never thought we would quite
Speaker 2: catch up to them, but it did feel like they
Speaker 2: were making it more acceptable to do music that at
Speaker 2: the time was considered very uncommercial. This was not glam metal,
Speaker 2: this was not Sunset strip.
Speaker 3: No, well, did you how many dates were you doing
Speaker 3: a year and were you just grinding it out or
Speaker 3: you say this is fantastic, this is my life. What
Speaker 3: was it like emotionally?
Speaker 2: Oh it was uh, yeah, it was mixed, you know,
Speaker 2: because you do have these illusions that, yeah, things are
Speaker 2: going to fall into place and you're going to be
Speaker 2: much more comfortable than you are you know, we did
Speaker 2: that first tour in a van and you know, definitely
Speaker 2: not enough sleep. There was a van and a rider truck.
Speaker 2: Now at this time Anthrax had graduated to a bus,
Speaker 2: so we could at least sort of see our future. Okay,
Speaker 2: one day we aspired to the bus and we did
Speaker 2: get the bus. I think like midway through touring for
Speaker 2: the second record. But yeah, emotionally it was I definitely
Speaker 2: went through some mixed emotions because I felt like, on
Speaker 2: the one hand, yeah, this is kind of what I've
Speaker 2: always wanted. I'm touring and I'm playing guitar, getting some
Speaker 2: nice attention for my guitar playing. At that time, technical
Speaker 2: playing wasn't really a thing in that style of music.
Speaker 2: It was more limited to glam metal and for the
Speaker 2: world of you know, sort of thrash or speed metal
Speaker 2: as it was called. I was getting some nice attention,
Speaker 2: but I also felt like at the shows, you know,
Speaker 2: they didn't really know how to mix the music yet,
Speaker 2: and the equipment has come a long way. It's much
Speaker 2: better now. At that time, you're playing through amplifiers that
Speaker 2: you know, they're designed for music like fog Hat Foreigner,
Speaker 2: the whole crunchy heavy metal sound. It's still a very
Speaker 2: new thing. It's very hard to get that sound, and
Speaker 2: it often didn't sound good live. The PA systems could
Speaker 2: not handle it. They weren't designed for that music, so
Speaker 2: it just sometimes it sounded like this just wall with noise.
Speaker 2: And yes, the crowds were excited and their crowdsurfing and washing,
Speaker 2: but I felt like, Okay, I really kind of wish
Speaker 2: there was more listening, and I wish there was more
Speaker 2: attention to the music itself. And maybe this contributed to
Speaker 2: me getting so into sort of yeah, virtuoso instrumental music
Speaker 2: the way I did. A short time later.
Speaker 3: You ultimately leave Testament. Do you leave Testament to use
Speaker 3: the cliche for musical differences or are you saying I
Speaker 3: just can't do this anymore. It's a grind, it's not
Speaker 3: becoming any bigger. What were your motivations?
Speaker 2: Okay, it's a little above. It's not that I didn't
Speaker 2: want to do it anymore, but I was definitely disillusioned.
Speaker 2: I felt like, yeah, we in between that first tour
Speaker 2: I was just describing and the time I left, we
Speaker 2: definitely had reached some milestones. You know, we had some
Speaker 2: good moments. We went to Japan, for the first time,
Speaker 2: and there the sound quality was terrific. The Japanese really
Speaker 2: knew how to design PA systems. The crowd was a
Speaker 2: more of a listening crowd. Uh so I that that
Speaker 2: was very satisfying. But also we had our first arena
Speaker 2: support tours, so we had supported judas priests and from
Speaker 2: the time I was in you know, ninth grade, all
Speaker 2: the way through high school, just you know, they were
Speaker 2: heroes and they seemed like giants to me. But at
Speaker 2: this time they were having a hard time. Suddenly the
Speaker 2: arenas weren't selling as well as they should and it
Speaker 2: was kind of right out of a spinal tap. And
Speaker 2: then on top of that, we're the first group on
Speaker 2: the arena tour, and so you've also got Megadeth, and
Speaker 2: it's on the one hand, it's terrific. Wow. I got
Speaker 2: to play the Oakland Colisseum, which is where I've seen
Speaker 2: some of my favorite concerts, and that show was great.
Speaker 2: But then we would do other shows where we're playing
Speaker 2: people are walking into the arena and it's it's not
Speaker 2: how you imagine. You know, there are some groups that
Speaker 2: are lucky to just have a big break and suddenly
Speaker 2: they're they're they're playing in front of an arena crowd.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that wasn't the case. So there was some
Speaker 2: disillusion there. As I mentioned much earlier, the band really
Speaker 2: wasn't getting along. And also, yeah, I was having, you know,
Speaker 2: musical interests that were different. I realized I could stick
Speaker 2: around and sort of just be the thrash metal guy.
Speaker 2: But I've been already been developing as a musician. You know.
Speaker 2: When we did our third record, we didn't go to
Speaker 2: the East Coast. We stayed at home and recorded at
Speaker 2: Fantasy Studios, which was home to Fantasy Records. And at
Speaker 2: that time, Fantasy Records was buying up all these defunct
Speaker 2: jazz labels like Riverside and Impulse, and I was listening
Speaker 2: to jazz albums being remastered. It was just an amazing experience.
Speaker 2: I heard a live John Coltrane record being remastered. I
Speaker 2: thought he was in the room. It sounded that good.
Speaker 2: So that we really sort of contributed to my jazz interests,
Speaker 2: and Fantasy cooked me up with a whole box load
Speaker 2: of jazz albums that I got for nothing were dollar
Speaker 2: and and then so I was studying jazz. And then
Speaker 2: a couple of years later, by nineteen ninety two, the
Speaker 2: band took a break. We had been going non stop too,
Speaker 2: I should mention like it was practically an album a year,
Speaker 2: followed by this touring cycle where everybody was exhausted. The
Speaker 2: one time we did some time, the one time we
Speaker 2: did take a break was in nineteen ninety one, and
Speaker 2: everybody just yeah, took vacations, didn't want to think about music.
Speaker 2: I auditioned for Stuart Ham, who was this great virtuoso
Speaker 2: bass player who played on Joe Satriani's records, had toured
Speaker 2: with Joe and Stu heard something in me and hired
Speaker 2: me to tour with him. So that was my first
Speaker 2: taste of the world of music outside of Heavy Melt.
Speaker 2: And there I'm playing to people who have no idea
Speaker 2: who I am, but they're listening and it was just
Speaker 2: very diverse music. So get to get back to your question. Yeah,
Speaker 2: by the time I leave the band, yeah, everybody's exhausted,
Speaker 2: they're not getting along. I'm exploring, playing instrumental music, exploring
Speaker 2: jazz music, and it was time.
Speaker 3: Okay, how do you end up getting back together with Testament?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. That was not on the
Speaker 2: bingo card. I don't think that was on. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't get anybody could have predicted that. But by
Speaker 2: the mid two thousands, you know, I was playing with
Speaker 2: my trio, I was doing transpian orchestra part of the year,
Speaker 2: I was doing recording sessions, so I I found a
Speaker 2: place as a full time musician. But I always thought
Speaker 2: about stepping back into heavy metal. I got curious about it.
Speaker 2: I think I had been away from it for a
Speaker 2: while and it started to interesting to me again. At
Speaker 2: this point too, you also had some changes in the
Speaker 2: music and the culture. The whole alternative period had died down.
Speaker 2: The anti guitar solo fever had died down. You know
Speaker 2: that that was another thing too. You know, the way
Speaker 2: music was going in the nineties, it just seemed like
Speaker 2: rock was going through this phase out with the solo
Speaker 2: out with virtuosity. Okay, what am I doing? This is
Speaker 2: what I do. So but by the two thousands, okay,
Speaker 2: it's starting to come back. The guitar solo was coming back.
Speaker 2: The oz Fest was happening at that time. So now
Speaker 2: there's newer bands, and some of the bands had grown
Speaker 2: up listening to Testament, and I was coming into contact
Speaker 2: with some of these bands. One of those bands is
Speaker 2: band called Lamb of God, and I got to know
Speaker 2: the guys. They invited me to do a guest solo
Speaker 2: on their record, a record called Ashes of the Wig,
Speaker 2: and I thought, okay, that would be interesting. At that point,
Speaker 2: I had not done heavy metal. I'm mostly, you know,
Speaker 2: playing these jazz box guitars, and okay, let me step
Speaker 2: back in there and see you. And it felt great.
Speaker 2: And then I went to see Lamb of God play
Speaker 2: at one of the OZ fests, and I met other
Speaker 2: new bands, bands like Slipknot and Hate Breed, all these
Speaker 2: newer bands, and they they recognized me, and they they
Speaker 2: were very complimentary, and so suddenly I was feeling this
Speaker 2: appreciation from this newer wave of heavy metal guys, and
Speaker 2: I just started to think it might be fun to
Speaker 2: do a metal project. You know, maybe I could get
Speaker 2: some of these guys and put together some new band.
Speaker 2: And just around that time, I hear from the guys
Speaker 2: in Testament, the original guys that are still there. That's
Speaker 2: Chuck the singer and Eric Peterson, the guitarist. They'd been
Speaker 2: through a revolving door. By that time, they'd been through
Speaker 2: about more drummers than Spinal tap other guitar and they
Speaker 2: were tired of it. They were actually ready to retire
Speaker 2: the band, and they we worked out. We had a
Speaker 2: few business disagreements that got worked out, like here, here's
Speaker 2: that thing you should have gotten paid for that you
Speaker 2: didn't get sorry about that. That was okay, and we're
Speaker 2: friends again. And they just, you know, they wanted to
Speaker 2: do some shows with the old lineup, and they actually
Speaker 2: had a couple offers come in because at this time
Speaker 2: European festivals are really popping. You know, you have Vakin
Speaker 2: in Germany, Sweden Rock. It's this whole other world where
Speaker 2: every country is trying to outdo with each other with
Speaker 2: a big hard rock and heavy metal festival and some
Speaker 2: so these promoters were wanted us to play as the
Speaker 2: original lineup, and we took We agreed and did a
Speaker 2: few shows. We were like weekend Warriors for the mid
Speaker 2: two thousands, and we would go to Europe play a
Speaker 2: few shows here and there, and then the offers kept
Speaker 2: coming in and the people said, oh, this is great.
Speaker 2: You know, why don't you guys do a full tour,
Speaker 2: why don't you do a record? And we were a
Speaker 2: bit resistant, and then one day the band gets an
Speaker 2: offer to tour with motor Head, Judas Priest and Heaven
Speaker 2: and Hell, which is Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dia,
Speaker 2: one of his last go around on the condition that
Speaker 2: there is a new album. You can't tour without an album,
Speaker 2: so we go into the studio. We recorded an album
Speaker 2: called The Formation of Damnation. We end up doing this
Speaker 2: tour with Motorhead, Judas Priests, Heaven and Hell. It was
Speaker 2: called the Metal Masters Tour, and next thing you know,
Speaker 2: we're back. Offers kept coming in. Another tour that followed
Speaker 2: was with Slayer and Megadeth, and that was called the
Speaker 2: American Carnage Tour. In fact, the funny side note, Rachel
Speaker 2: Maddow talked about this tour when Trump did his whole
Speaker 2: American Carnage theme at the first inauguration, And if you
Speaker 2: watch this episode of Madows, she actually holds up a
Speaker 2: t shirt from this tour. Up until now, American Carnage
Speaker 2: meant this tour with Slayer, Meganeth and Testament. Today it
Speaker 2: means something. It was hilarious, but anyway, yeah, since then, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just it's kept up. The band had this resurgence
Speaker 2: and we seem to be doing better. We're Yeah, we've
Speaker 2: definitely learned from mistakes of the past. The new album
Speaker 2: came out Parabellum, it's charting, it's actually getting good reviews.
Speaker 2: We just we're in the Guardian, so a lot of
Speaker 2: the types of outlets that would never have covered the
Speaker 2: band before paying attention and it all yeah, it all
Speaker 2: really started with that tour in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: the Metal Mask.
Speaker 3: To So how much of your time is spent on Testament?
Speaker 2: Well, we're also at the point again the you know,
Speaker 2: they were in their twenties when I joined the band,
Speaker 2: and so they're a few years older, which works out
Speaker 2: well because they don't want to do the band full time.
Speaker 2: I mean, we are doing it full time because we
Speaker 2: you know, we're in an era where you need to
Speaker 2: tour much more than you used to due to the
Speaker 2: depletion of album sales. But there's there's definitely an understanding
Speaker 2: about having other projects. Other members of the band have
Speaker 2: other projects that used to be sacrileged to have a
Speaker 2: band outside of your main band, and now it's it's
Speaker 2: very understood. So well. This year, for example, we we
Speaker 2: did a summer tour that lasted about five weeks. We
Speaker 2: just did a European tour that lasted three weeks, but
Speaker 2: I also toured with my trio in March for the
Speaker 2: whole month. Later this month, I'm going to do a
Speaker 2: two week East coast Midwest tour with my trio. And
Speaker 2: in January I'll be touring in Texas with the trio
Speaker 2: and also up and down the West coast. But then
Speaker 2: in the plant. Current plan is to do a testament
Speaker 2: tour in March and April for about five weeks. So
Speaker 2: normally the tours are about five weeks. There are about
Speaker 2: three or four of those tours a year, so it's
Speaker 2: actually a lot. It's a lot of time, and when
Speaker 2: you add up the other the instrumental music I do,
Speaker 2: it's it's a lot, but it's fun.
Speaker 3: So all these years later, yes, as you referenced earlier,
Speaker 3: or you're a working musician, are you happy? Do you
Speaker 3: have dreams and desires beyond where you are? Are you frustrated?
Speaker 3: Is the dream still alive? Where you at?
Speaker 2: The dream is interesting?
Speaker 3: The dream?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny. It's like you know that the theme
Speaker 2: opening theme from Welcome Back Cotter, right, you know the
Speaker 2: dreams have changed? They who'd have thought they'd lead you
Speaker 2: back here.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like that.
Speaker 2: It's not as I expected. I thought, Okay, join the band.
Speaker 2: The band is going to be your full time gig
Speaker 2: and everything else will take care of itself. It's I
Speaker 2: I am happy. I'm actually having a great time. It's
Speaker 2: it's more complicated than it used to be because there's
Speaker 2: and this is just reality, and I'm very accepting of it.
Speaker 2: But to be a full time musician these days, you
Speaker 2: have to be much more than a musician.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: You you have to know how to use social media,
Speaker 2: so you're you're in a way, you're a content creator. Uh,
Speaker 2: you're an engineer part of the time. You know, we
Speaker 2: all have studios on our laptops and that's part of
Speaker 2: the music making process. So I used to always think,
Speaker 2: you know, okay, people who work in studios, they do
Speaker 2: the recording. That's not what I do. So, yeah, you
Speaker 2: have to know that skill. You have to if you
Speaker 2: run a band. I run a small band, which is
Speaker 2: my trio. Yeah, then you have to learn about you book.
Speaker 2: You know, transportation and logistics, and I'm able to delegate
Speaker 2: some things and you know, there are things that I
Speaker 2: don't do. Visual art is not something I do. I
Speaker 2: admire artists like you know, Joni Mitchell and Rob Zombie
Speaker 2: that do all their artwork. I don't. I don't do that,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's it's it's been fun. I mean, I
Speaker 2: really like the un predictable things that come up. So
Speaker 2: an example of an unpredictable thing is I just did
Speaker 2: my first soundtrack and it's for a film called Traction
Speaker 2: Park Massacre. The director works for Metallica. His name is
Speaker 2: Adam Duban, and he did a year and a half
Speaker 2: of the Life of Metallica, but he also did some
Speaker 2: iconic music videos Beat by the Beastie Boys, fight for
Speaker 2: Your Right to Party, and this is his first feature film,
Speaker 2: and he and I kind of get it off. We
Speaker 2: actually live in the same neighborhood, and he convinced me
Speaker 2: to do this soundtrack. And the film just debuted at
Speaker 2: New York Comic Con and it's getting some raves and
Speaker 2: I'm hearing a lot about the music, so it's I
Speaker 2: think it's possible I may do more of that. I
Speaker 2: just got back from an event called the Guitar Summit
Speaker 2: in Europe and played on a stage with Weasel Zappa
Speaker 2: and Andy Timmins. And a bunch of other guys. And
Speaker 2: you know, there's these guitar events like that. Joe Satriani,
Speaker 2: our friend, has done some great guitar events. He does
Speaker 2: this thing called the G four Experience. I've been a
Speaker 2: guest on two of those, and yeah, just you know,
Speaker 2: when you add it all up, it's it's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. I don't really know what each year looks like,
Speaker 2: but I'm totally fine with it. This year I was
Speaker 2: able to to squeeze out an album with it with
Speaker 2: my trio. But you know, coming up, I also have
Speaker 2: a tour with this great bass player, Percy Jones. He
Speaker 2: was in a band called brand X in the seventies
Speaker 2: and has He's associated with artists like Brian Eno and
Speaker 2: h Phil Collins who was part of brand X, And
Speaker 2: so Percy's a legend like any fretless bass player knows him.
Speaker 2: And we have a project together, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I just did a CD release party or album release
Speaker 2: party in New York a few weeks ago. Vernon Reed
Speaker 2: was a special guest.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So I'm doing a lot a lot of fun stuff.
Speaker 2: So it's it's not I I never like planned it
Speaker 2: this way, but I've also learned that you can't plan
Speaker 2: too much. I think I've had more success by not
Speaker 2: planning or ex expecting anything.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll look forward to what pops up in the future.
Speaker 3: Once again, you can hear Alice's music on all the
Speaker 3: streaming services which should check out. It's pretty interesting. Also
Speaker 3: does covers of stuff like Tom Petty's Breakdown from a
Speaker 3: jazz perspective, don't let that take you too far with
Speaker 3: jazz if you listen to it, it's still Tom Petty's
Speaker 3: breakdown and of course testament Alex. Thanks for taking this
Speaker 3: time speaking my audience.
Speaker 2: Bob, thanks so much for having me again. I'm a
Speaker 2: loyal reader and please keep up what you're doing. It's
Speaker 2: you're our voice of sanity and it's a big honor
Speaker 2: to be on the left of the podcast.
Speaker 3: Wow as they say, Yeah, you email me all the time,
Speaker 3: so it's great to meet you in person. Until next time,
Speaker 3: This is Bob Leftstacks