So back to the start of the Nelson legacy, at what point did you put the
band together?
Well, we actually started putting the band together when we met Bobby Rock.
Bobby was sitting behind us at the American Music Awards one year and he was sitting with the guys from the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, they were a bunch of nice dudes, but I guess that band was gonna break up in six months, Bobby wasn't aware of that. And we met him there and kinda just kept in touch and when it came time for us to put our band together, about 8 months later, Bobby was the first guy we called and basically everybody else was word of mouth. Joey Cathcart was a guy we played in high school bands with. Brett Garsed was a guy that our manager from Australia turned us on to. He (our manager) came back from a tour of Australia freaking out about this unknown guitar player he had just seen with John Farnham. So we got a video tape of Brett, we talked to him on the phone and we sent for him and he came over.
And the last person was Paul Murkovich. Paul was a guy that we had done some sessions with when we were doing the demos for the ATR record and he joined the band last.

Did you play much live or were you put together as a studio band?
No, actually we did not get to play live before we did that first record together. Matthew, myself and Marc Tanner, our co-producer and co-writer from that first record, really worked together to put that first album together and we put the band together right around the time we made the album and the first thing that we actually did as a unit was actually making the finished album together after we had done the demo work. So, basically we got thrown into the deep end right away. We made the record and spent the next year or so as a new unit kinda honing our chops before it went to radio. And fortunately for us, we were prepared when it was so successful as quickly as it was.

You were signed to Geffen thanks to John Kalodner. Can you take us
through the process of how you got signed up initially?
Well sure I can. I think the signing to a major label deal is kinda the holy
grail for all up and coming artists at least it was that way about 10 years
ago when the LA music scene was like it was. We actually, instead of doing
the shotgun approach to getting signed, we focused on one label that we felt
was the best for us, and that was Geffen. Geffen was doing, in our opinion,
what we felt was the best quality work of the era. Working with bands like
Whitesnake and Aerosmith and Tesla, they did some really credible rock stuff
and we wanted to focus on that. And our managers at the time, had a contact
in John Kalodner. And unlike alot of the other A & R people, we felt that John was a good person to go to. Not because of his reputation but because he had been the one A & R guy that had really stuck with his label, he stayed there.
All these other guys were playing musical chairs and only staying with the label from 6 months to 2 years and we knew that we wanted a long-term career and we wanted a long-term relationship with an A & R person.
And so we focused on John. John was very difficult on us. We went through the courting process which included taking demos to him as we would write them, we pretty much had a meeting every month for a year. In that meeting we would play him 6 new songs. He'd trash every single one except 1 and basically after that year was up, we felt that we had enough material from the ones that he had kept to make the ATR record, but he still wasn't signing us.
And, to put it plainly, we were absolutely broke. So against the wishes of our managers and our attorneys and everybody who felt they had played the political game really well, Matthew and I needed to get signed, we needed to be officially in business and frankly we needed that advance to eat, so we went into John Kalodner's office with our acoustic guitars, told him we just needed ten minutes of his time, we sat him back and we played him a brand new song we had just written called 'I Can't Live Without Your Love & Affection'.
And it was just me and Matthew, acoustic. And John said, "fellas that's the first time I've seen that since the 60's and that's what I wanted to see from you guys. I wanted to see that you had the balls to stand up for yourselves and take your rightful place and you're gonna need them." And basically that's how we got signed. We got signed the next day.

Was there a lot of interest in you guys from other labels?
No, absolutely not. We got passed on by every other label in town.

How did you find the recording process of the debut album? Was it intimidating, exciting or were you guys seasoned veterans even at that stage?
Well, that's a really excellent question.
We weren't intimidated at all as a matter of fact. We were very used to the studio, having grown up around our father's bands and his recording process.
So the studio kinda felt like home to us.
And we had worked so hard making the demos for that first record that actually going into the studio was like a breath of fresh air and a real relief. I mean we weren't working around dodgy equipment in the studio we were actually working on a million dollar console with a real budget and stuff. And I have to hand it to Marc Tanner. He really did a great job in keeping us very focused in making an album that really had a focused original sound, it wasn't copying anything.
So hats off to Marc.

How much input did Geffen have into the recording process - as far as style and song selections?
Well, when you say Geffen, I am sure you are meaning John Kalodner. John was
really smart, he basically let us do our own thing. But most of John's work, he really believes in pre-production and once you get to the point that you are in the studio, it's kind of understood that you have already gone through a grueling process of sorting out what songs you are going to get to record.
What are the keepers, which are the weepers and which go into the scrap heap.
And you have already done months, if not years, of pre-production with John
where he has beaten you down to the point where you must stick up for yourself and you know that you have songs that did make a very rigorous cut process. And John was very smart. He hooked us up with a team that he believed in and then stepped back and let his faith and belief in the pre-production process give birth to a focused and finished record.
Again, I think the emphasis was really in pre-production and in the actual recording process they got out of our way.

You thanked quite a few Australians in the liner notes of the debut album
and Brett Garsed was a big part of your line then. When was the last time
you headed down under?
Unfortunately, it hasn't been for quite a long time. I think the last time I was over there was 6 or 7 years ago and my heart weeps for that. I love Australia. I loved having an Australian manager when we did.
Jeffrey Shoecraft was wonderful and he was from the Gold Coast.
And man, I have always considered Australia like my second home. That's why it wasn't farfetched at all to find our guitar player in Brett Garsed. Basically, I still feel to this day, that Brett is the best guitar player in the entire world. And I have been fortunate enough to play with some legendary guitar players but I think that Brett will go down in history as one of the finest guitar players that was ever born. He is really a gift to the planet.

The debut was a great success - what was the 6 months after it's release
like?
It was absolutely fascinating. A lot of work went into the preparation.
Matthew and I were the ones that were really in charge of the sound, the style and the band that we put together, which really shaped the sound in the studio, working with Marc Tanner, our image was very important and we put that whole thing together. We rehearsed our band and basically it was very interesting.
We all felt that it was going to take several singles being released to give us some success. We had no way of knowing that the first single was going to go to number one. And I think what really paved the way for that was that Matthew and I got to go and host MTV as guest VJ's.
And we were on the show a couple of weeks and then our record was released and they sold out of the first 50,000 copies they had pressed in the first day.
And Geffen was fairly unprepared for that kind of response, but man, it was huge.
And it was wonderful, man it was a dream come true. But, literally in that first 6 months we went from zeros to heroes and we went from a couple of guys who could live a normal life to a whole group of guys who couldn't go out in public.

From memory, you were written off in a few quarters for your looks, rather than your music, which was quite accomplished. Was that frustrating and how do you counter that?
Well, it was a little frustrating, but then again we always had a motto when we released that first record, "Love us or hate us, you were gonna know who we were". And we definitely achieved that outcome by the whole presentation of that first record. We combated that kind of negativity in the only way we could, which was having the absolute best rock n' roll band on the face of the planet at that time. And I will go on record to say that without a doubt we absolutely did. My group of guys, Brett, Paul, Bobby, Joey and the two of us, I knew that when we hit the stage every single night, there wasn't a band on the planet that could hold a candle to us. I know that sounds incredibly cocky but looking back on it, I can honestly say that we knew that whether or not we were out on stage with Bon Jovi, The Scorpions, Cinderella, Lynch Mob, all the different bands that we got to hang out with and work with, that we had the finest group of musicians and the finest stage show in the world.
I can't tell you how many times people that were in effect, speaking down on us
the loudest, walked away from that show kinda shaking their heads in wonder
and disbelief, going "man I had it all wrong." That was actually the most fun I had in that whole process was making believers out of the disbeliefs. I call it The Nelson Conversion Factor, but it was hard at work at the time.

Now this was the point where the honeymoon appeared to be over. Correct me if I am wrong at any point, but here's the story I know...There were considerable delays getting the second album released, but you really recorded 2 albums in that period. The first was rejected by Geffen if I heard correctly... The question...What vision did you have going back into the studio to do the second (Imaginator) album?
OK, lets start there. Basically we were a really hungry band. We had been
on tour together for 220 dates. We were seasoned, we were salty and we were
ready to prove our musicianship in the studio. We were also a little angry too because the whole music industry seemed to change, as well as our own label seemed to change. We were kinda like, even amongst the people at our label, the band that everyone loved to hate or hated to love. It was like one of those things. We basically had the idea for a concept record called 'Imaginator', that was really dark and brooding and angry and it was about the machine that is the media. That same machine that built us up and was also so ready to tear us down. And we weren't unique.
I mean it's been that way for countless musicians and entertainers in general in the past. So we went in the studio to make that record and we did it in isolation. And basically when we went to turn in the record, it scared the hell out of the people at Geffen, and basically they wanted to distance themselves from it as
quickly as possible. And we really wanted to release it. So basically we were given a choice and the choice was; either you go back in the studio and
make another record immediately, being given no additional funds, or you are
going to be dropped from the label. And we told them that we felt that they
should really release the Imaginator record. That we felt that was where
rock, especially hard rock, was going. They didn't believe us.
Unfortunately, 6 months later, the Metallica Black album came out and it was a
crossover success. Not only for the metal heads but for the pop guys too.
And the Imaginator record was really a big step in that direction. So who knows what would of happened if we had released that, but yes the honeymoon was definitely over.

Why the move to a tougher, more complex style?
What I think what I wanted to do was, I wanted to make a less pretentious record and really rely more heavily on the incredible talent that we had in the band that we were playing with every night. Also, there was a certain amount of proving ourselves we felt we needed to do at the time.

Why a concept album? Was this a reaction to prove you were capable of
achieving great depth in your writing and music?
Well, yeah, I suppose so too. But I think the concept subject matter was very close to our hearts and something we really wanted to make a comment on.
Which I guess the through-line and the theme was, don't rely on technology or on the media to make up your own mind for you, make up your own mind for yourself and make your own decisions on what you like to listen to, what you like see, what you like to do, how you are supposed to feel.
That was what the Imaginator record was really all about. It was speaking against the sort of lucidity that we all seem to get hypnotized into by relying on the media
to make up our tastes and our flavors of the minute for us so much.

If Kalodner had a problem with this album, or felt it was too uncommercial, why didn't you hear about it earlier in the process? Why did the album get completed before being shelved?
The album was completely completed. The album was completely finished before
we knew that Kalodner and the people at Geffen didn't want to release it.
It was a really interesting story of how that happened. The only thing that I can say is the truth and the truth is, that John didn't really care to get involved with the recording process. John was too busy making Aerosmith records.
And that was really where his heart had always been and where it was always gonna be. As evident by his move to Sony and him taking Aerosmith with him. Basically, they were in the studio and they were making the Pump album and John was in Vancouver the entire time and we were in Reno making our record and he never came to the studio. So basically what could we do?
We had two options... either not make the record or make the record the way
we envisioned it and hopefully he was going to like it at the end. And basically we had a big summit meeting at Geffen after the record was all done and John basically said he hated it. But it was alot of everybody all around.
I mean we had already spent our budget making a record that Geffen didn't want to release and I guess John had some questions to answer as to why... you are their A & R guy, why didn't you know about where this was going before this point and I guess, you know shit rolls downhill and I guess we kinda got buried in it for awhile. Well, I mean I suppose I have always been accused of being headstrong but I definitely have always had a vision for the kind of music I make and John is a very opinionated guy as well. He is very talented in his own way and very opinionated and alot of times John's constitution and my constitution really did not co-exist very smoothly. So that is the most political way I can answer that. Honestly, I think a lot of people dropped the ball on that one.
It was really unfortunate and that one situation really effectively killed Nelsons' career for five years.
The good news is that I will never let that happen again. What I should of done, is I should of taken the record that we were really proud of and should of found
another label. And we were given the option to do that and that is something we definitely should of done. There were other labels that were better and other people that we could of worked with that were better. I wouldn't of let my manager, at the time, go because he had done a good job of getting out first record out there working with very little help from the record company side of things. But, hey look man, woulda, coulda, shoulda. Everything happened for a reason and the one good thing that came out of it was the 'Because They Can' record which is very different, I'll give you that. But its a record that I am very, very proud of nowadays and just shows a different side of Matthew and Gunnar Nelson.

How did that leave you feeling?
Well, somewhat frustrated and helpless, to be honest with you. The way a
recording contract is structured, you know, the artists really have very little say, once they are signed, about their career. It's a shame, but it's true. Basically we were at the beck and call of the machine, so to speak, and we had to do everything that they said we had to do. So, I guess we made the next record, which was 'Because They Can' which was released and unfortunately Geffen had already been sold at that point.
Kalodner had left a week before the record was released and the powers that were still at Geffen, well they warned us before they released it, they were going to auto-flush the record. They weren't going to put any money into promoting it
or anything like that. Which is a real drag because the people that have heard that record come back and say "hey, it's different from ATR and it took too long to get out but it's a record we really like". So it's unfortunate because that was really good art and it deserved a better shot. So in the future, maybe people will get to hear it. But it left us frustrated and also I believe that everything in life is a test, if you look at it that way. And it was a just a test to our commitment and that's the way we looked at it.
If someone gives us lemons we are going to make lemonade and that's exactly
what we did. It was a very, very difficult process though.

So how long after this transpired did it take you to build the enthusiasm to record 'Because They Can'?
I call that period in my life, my dark years. I don't remember a whole lot of it, fortunately for me. I mean I never, thank God, never screwed up my life even more with any kind of substance abuse problems but I was in a relationship that was really horrible and one that I would like to forget about.
I kind of turned into a parody of myself. This typical ex-rock star dating a stripper kind of thing. It was just a nightmare and I was doing that and having problems with my label and feeling very disenfranchised because a lot of the artists that were representative of the 'confidence-rock era' which Matthew and I were definitely the bookends, excuse the pun, on the end of that era, were reviled by the new guard that came in which was really the 'insecurity-rock era' of Nirvana and all those other bands from Seattle.
Anybody who had a positive message or had a big stage presence or something
or even remotely represented that 'glam-rock' kind of thing, were publicly
attacked. And that was really the time for that too, so it was really tough.
I felt like not only the record company had turned on me and the public, the listening public had turned on me but deep down inside I knew I had turned on
myself. So it was a really difficult time for me.

That album seemed to sell OK, but disappeared pretty quickly. Had the record company basically decided to move on at that stage?
I think the record company hadn't let us in on the joke before the record was
released, which was really a drag. They had decided to move on years before
when we were still in the studio. Basically I think what happened is that
they didn't know how they were going to get out of paying us another advance,
or picking up another advance.
They pretty much stuck us in the studio again because they knew that was going to get rid of us for a couple of years. We were going to be back in creative land and weren't gonna be 'up their asses' so to speak. So I think that's what really happened and it's really kind of a shame 'cause I think, again, if they had put some effort and some money, more importantly, into promoting it, it could of really worked. I know the first single, 'All Shook Up', cracked the top 40 here, which is no small feat. I mean it went to 39 and it was definitely not what the first album was, but people really do worse than that. So, whose to say?

What did you think of the album after everything was said and done?
I thought it was a wonderful record.
I think it was a record that was definitely touches on where we come from musically and where we came from when we grew up around our father's Stone Canyon Band sound. That's very organic, more acoustic oriented. Which definitely worked for us. When Matthew and I were promoting the first record, a lot of the good work was done going to radio stations and just playing the two of us acoustically with our guitars and our voices.
And that kind of definitely eeked over into this new sound on the 'Because They Can' record. Basically what happened is we went 180 degrees in the opposite direction of 'Imaginator', which was very aggressive, very loud, very electric and very layered. We basically stripped away everything and tried to make the songs work for themselves. And that's basically what we were left with. I am very proud of this piece of work even though the process was very painful.

And then the label dropped you, is that correct?
Yes, that is absolutely correct. That was one of the best days of my life, let me explain.
There is only one thing worse than not having a record deal and that's having the wrong record deal. So that was a great day. Basically they decided not to work with us and we decided not to work with them and they have gone on to much success and I have gone on to much happiness. So it definitely worked out better for the both of us in the long run.

I saw in the liner notes on Imaginator...I unapologize to JD Kalodner.
Can I push it and ask for the story behind that?
Well, after all these years, I have to say this with a smile on my face, I have to credit John Kalodner for being the first record company guy to give me a shot in the industry. If it weren't for John, I would not of had any success at all. So I have to give John the credit for that.
But the story behind that is really the truth. And my experience in how painful telling the truth in this industry can sometimes be. What happened was, I had my
first interview, I think it was with Music Connection magazine or something like that, after the first record was released and was very successful, and the interviewer pissed me off. He said "well, John Kalodner totally fabricated you guys and it's been said that when you guys were signed at Geffen, you were nothing but a concept...is that true?" And what I said was "no, in fact that is not true. John was a very smart guy.
He definitely went through the song selection with us, but we wrote all the songs and when we were in the studio, he did the smartest thing by allowing us to do our own thing, he got out of our way. So John was very smart in that respect." Now, unfortunately, when I was on the road promoting, John read that and got
incredibly upset. He called my manager and he told my manager "I don't care
if they are selling 50,000 copies a week, unless I get a 10 page hand-written
apology from Gunnar, I am going to drop the band from the label." And John
was serious about this. So here was my dilemma... I either had to write a 10
page hand written apology to John, obviously a private one and all that albeit, or I had to kill my momentum and everything Matthew and I worked on our entire lives that was going so well at the time. It was the toughest decision I ever made. I literally was crying, pacing the room, so frustrated because all I had done was tell the truth. And you know, I didn't say anything to slight John, in any way. I just said, that was part of his genius, part of his genius was letting us do what we do. And, again, writing that letter of apology, which I ended up doing, after an entire weekend of fighting with myself over it.
Making the hardest decision of my life. Again, it was the toughest thing I have ever done. It was something that stayed with me for years and the whole experience of Imaginator was so awful, was so tough, when John and the people at Geffen rejected it and then made us go back in the studio to record 'Because They Can' and then John left for Sony the week before that record was released and abandoned us at Geffen.
Basically, when I finally did get to release the 'Imaginator' record, which is something that I wanted to do even if I had just made one copy of that record and finished it, just to say I had finished that album, that's all that I wanted to do. And I remember when I was making the credits... hey, in hindsight... should I have written, I unapologize John? Probably not, but to me it really represented taking my creative power back. And that's all I meant to do. No disrespect to John, but I just wanted to let him know that he didn't "break me" and it was unnecessary and I apologize for telling the truth.
Because I think that the most important thing in life is ones' search for the truth and championing the truth wherever it exists and unfortunately from the experience of writing that apology, I had felt that a part of me had died. Or at least been held hostage and I was letting it go, I was setting it free.

OK....so now you have your own label set up. Is this is why you guys want to go it alone from now on? Get off the record label merry go round?
Yeah, that's a good point. I think everything happens for a reason. Again, when you are given lemons, you should make lemonade with it. And I definitely know that the industry is changing, there is no sure-fire success formula. I think the most important thing is to do the music that you love and that's what we are looking at doing. And the best way for us to do that is to own our own label, which is Stone Canyon Records, and our own method of distribution, which is our website, www.TheNelsonBrothers.com, and do things ourselves.
And if we go back into business with a major label, we will do it as a partnership / joint venture and not an all-out buy out that is much more desperate and people don't need to do anymore.

Tell me how Victor Japan got involved and how they secured the release
of the album?
They got involved because, well basically we asked them to. We had the record that was completely done and what we wanted to do was license it to them and that's what we did. From now on, we are going to be funding the making of our own records and licensing them to foreign entities as well as domestic ones and maintaining the real estate for ourselves.

So back to that album...that sure was a little different to the debut. That opening track was like, yeah and who are these guys!
Yeah, that's absolutely true. Man, it's hard to talk about an album. You have to listen to it and see. But it was definitely a side to us.

What are your favorite tracks on that album?
Well, 'We Always Want What We Can't Get', was one of my favorites. Let's see
what else did I like.... I love 'She Gets Down', that's got some great attitude.

Even though it was only a Japanese release, I saw it on import everywhere, how did it sell compared with the worldwide released 'Because They Can'?
It actually sold very well. It almost went gold in Japan. And it continues to be sold through mail order and it's going to be very interesting to see what happens because we just did another distribution deal for our last four records. So we'll tell you how it goes.

So about now it was finally time to record a new album. Ignoring the release dates, what time frame was between 'Because...' and 'Silence Is Broken'?
I would say about a year, year and a half. That's about right. We try to get a new record there every 18 months.

I love this album. It was like the toughness of 'Imaginator', but with more easy going songs, or I mean ones not tied into a theme like they were on 'Imaginator'. What did you set to record for this album?
It was really kind of an experiment and it was kind of a transitional thing. It was the first, the first record we truly made for our individual label, for Stone Canyon Records. And I think if we were to do it again, I would do it with a different engineer and that's why it sounds as disjointed as it does. We were able to make another record called 'Life', which I think is a really good example of being very settled in our new direction. I think I will talk about that in a second.

That album has remained a Japanese only release, are there any plans to get that into other territories? Or will you be self-releasing these titles through Stone Canyon Records?
A combination of both. I definitely know that our manager is going to MIDEM
to do different territorial deals and so that is what we will be looking at.

And that brings us to present day! It's a pretty obvious question, but why set up your own label distribution?
Most major label contracts state that the label advance the band money, the
band, if they are successful, pays back the advance and then the label still
owns the band's masters.
How that translates... let me give you a good example. This is what that means in a sense. You go to the bank because you found a house that you want to build, OK, you get a loan from the bank, you then pay off your bank loan for your house, you pay off your mortgage and finally when that day comes, you have paid off your mortgage, the bank still owns your home.
That is the insanity that is still prevalent in most major label recording contracts today, that's just the way it's always been and no one has questioned that.
But I think fortunately, for some artists at least, we are getting into an era where some people are going to start questioning that. And that's why we decided to do that. Basically now, we build the house with our own money and then we rent out our house to different people and when the tenants want to change, we can either choose to keep the house for ourselves or rent it out to somebody else. That's what a distribution deal is. And that's what we've been doing.

So you have every intention of staying independent from this point on?
I think to a certain degree I think we will always, I am committed, we will always own our own masters, that is something that we will always do. But we will definitely be looking to doing joint ventures/partnership deals with major labels because no one can beat their PR machines. They definitely get the songs out there to the radio stations.

The site looks great... that is obviously working for you?
Yes! Please check it out and tell me what you think. www.TheNelsonBrothers.com, I am very proud of the site.

It was rumored that you guys were turning completely country, which I
guess isn't untrue, but you have covered both bases by recording a pop/rock album and a country album. That's awesome diversity!
Thank you very much. I think what we wanted to do was experiment with all
kinds of different music that we had grown up with and I think what you are going to see from this point on is very focused Nelson records that's going to incorporate the best elements of all the different things we experimented with. Like heavy metal, pop/rock, country, folk, you name it, it will all be in there, but it's going to sound distinctly Nelson and will definitely be arena/rock oriented.

Did you record them both at the same time or one after the other or a break in between to separate your heads from each one?
The 'Brother Harmony' record, which is the country record that you are referring to, basically started out as collection of record quality demos that we made to do a joint venture deal out of Nashville and it basically kind of all came together when we re-visited it.
You know nowadays, with technology, there is really no such thing as a demo, we really call it a master in progress. The 'Life' record however was done in partnership with JVC Victor in Japan and it was definitely something that really worked for us. We took the money from our Japanese distribution deal and put together a record of songs that was really a 'take no prisoners pop/rock album'. And that's what we set out to do and I think we definitely achieved that. I am
really proud of the 'Life' record.

I want to ask you about both, so let's start with the sensational 'Life' album. I think this is your best album yet. It has everything and the responses I have heard back so far agree.
I do believe wholeheartedly that 'Life' is the finest Nelson record to date.

What did you guys have in mind for this album?
This was an album that was made with the funding intact, so we had the resources. We had the time, we had the band that we wanted to record with and we also had the songs selected, first and foremost, around one outcome... and that was to make the finest Nelson pop/rock record we could possibly make. And that's what we did. We went in with no fear, yet with no record company suits looking over our shoulders and the result is a record that we are very, very proud of.

You should be! It's awesome. When did you start and finish work on it...writing and recording?
Well, we started writing for it about 18 months ago and we finished recording
it just 3 months later. It actually got recorded, start to finish, very quickly.
Which is not reflective of anything other than the fact that we really prepared for it.

It is such a simple pop album, yet the songs have a complexity and intensity that gives the album a real depth. Are you guys just getting better with age or did this time around things really just click?
Thank you for the compliments. I think it's a combination of both. I think
after you have done things often enough you learn to stay away from the pitfalls and you also learn to magnify the strengths. And from the feedback that we have gotten over the years, we know what our fans like and we also know what we enjoy playing. And that's what we incorporated into the making of the record.
The subject matter is very positive, its very powerful, its very simple and it's very Nelson. And it all kind of clicked when the players and the songs and the sounds came together on the same record.

Can I ask you about each track for a new section I am starting called
"Track By Track". There are a few thoughts in there from me too...

Sure, let's rock!

1. A Girl Like That... I am going on record to say that this song will be a
hit. I don't know when it's going to be hit, but this will be a hit. This
is one of those magical songs that really started out in a dream and it
wouldn't go away. It came back in a couple of dreams over a couple of
different nights and I basically got it to a point where Matthew and Mark
Collie could come in and help me out with the lyrics and tidy things up. Boy
is that a good song. I really enjoy playing it every night

2. I Would If You Want Me Too... It really has a great groove. It starts out
and it really makes me feel like a lot of the drumming of Kenny Aranoff who used to play with John Cougar, and it has that kind of feel.
It's a very simple pop/rock song.

3. Life... Why the cover tune? Great choice!
Well, thank you very much. That was actually a song that was written by our
father, Rick Nelson on his Rudy The Fifth record which was in 1970. Matthew
does an amazing job with the lead vocal, he sounds so much like our father.
And I recall recording it in the studio, it was effortless, it was one take
through the entire song for Matt and it was just a magical performance.

4. She Sheila... A cover again, again a perfect choice.
Thank you. That was a song that was originally written and recorded by a
band called The Producers. Which is a band from the American mid-west, when
I was going to high school, it was like one of my favorite bands. And unfortunately it never achieved a whole lot of commercial success but the guys were amazing and it was from the power pop era and I had always wanted to cover that song and I am glad we did.

5. Someone Like You....is one of my favorite songs on this record. This tune
was actually co-written with Matthew and Marc during our 'golden era'
together...while writing for the After The Rain debut. I think it's
positively beautiful. We actually let our recording band go all out with this
one...really 'be in the moment'. The vamp at the intro really shows the virtuosity of guitarist Tom Bukovac...you can also hear Marilyn Martin and Beth Hooker's background vocals perfectly...they are original background vocalists for Don Henley's touring band. They have a very particular sound.
What I love most about this particular recording is that it captures the
essence of the glory days of 'album tracks'...tracks that were meant not
just to be 3 minutes and 20 seconds long for radio airplay's sake... but
really move you and take you someplace. This song accomplishes that. It
really takes me to another land.

6. Everybody Cries Sometimes... This was written with Marc Tanner and
Matthew. It was a song that the three of us wrote together after we were
considering having Marc produce the Because They Can record. We wrote a total of six songs for that record, and this was one we decided to save for the
appropriate time. It's a fairly straight ahead song...but at the time we
didn't like Marc's production vision. I think that Matthew came up with a
stronger arrangement for it for this record.

7. Let's Talk About Me... A funny tune! Love it!
Thank you! That was originally written by Victoria Shaw, who we have done a
lot of co-writing with over the years. And she's a country writer. She wrote
'The River' for Garth Brooks and 'I Love The Way You Love Me' for John
Michael Montgomery. And she wrote that song that she was cutting for her
album and the first time I heard it I just told her... I said "Vic, I know
this is bold of me cause this is your song, but man, you are doing it all
wrong, you are totally crucifying this song, it's a great song and you are killing it." She said, "Well, what are you talking about?" And I said, with kind of a gleam in my eye, "Why don't you wait till we record it?" And we did and I will never forget the look on her face. Trust me, our version is 180 degrees different from what she originally did. Her thing was kind of a very typical, schmaltzy country sort of ballad thing and we turned it into an AC/DC song. So it's pretty cool, I love the way it turned out.

8. She Said She'd Be Mine... That is actually something that we co-wrote with
Marc Tanner and was from when we were writing for the 'Because They Can'
record. I hope you dig it. It's a very different song and a song that
actually stood the test of time, it kept on coming back in various forms
until we recorded it for the 'Life' record.

9. The Hunger... That's a song that we co-wrote with Taylor Rhodes, who has
written some great songs for Aerosmith. He's a great writer and song was
sonically and stylistically different from anything we had done before, you
can really hear Taylor's influences on it. But also you can hear in there too the influences of Nashville in the form of a little bit of mandolin. I also played a little bit of bizuki, which is an Irish instrument, on it as well. And Matthew did a really good job singing the verses as well.

10. Is That How It Is?... That's a song that we co-wrote with Russ Ballard,
who used to be in Argent. He wrote Hold Your Head Up and You Can Do Magic for America, he's an amazing writer. And we spent some time in England with Russ and his family before the ATR record. And that song was actually written when we went on a field trip of sorts with Russ in London and I saw people walking by a poor man in the street as if he wasn't even there, totally ignoring him which, and I don't mean to piss anybody off, is typically British, and I guess I did the typically un-American thing in sitting down next to the guy and starting a conversation and I wound up spending all day just sort of talking about life.
He turned out to be a fascinating person, the lyrics for the songs came from that. And we really didn't have a good opportunity to release it up until the 'Life' record. And I hope you like it too.

You have also recorded a country album... how's that going now that it
is in the marketplace?
No, its not in the market place yet. It's actually a collection of demos.
It's actually going to be in the marketplace in the next couple of months. So
listen out for it.

Is that Indie also?
Yes it is.

Have you found fans buying both or are they separating?
They are definitely buying both which is really attractive to me. I know for
myself I have a truly varied CD collection and I believe that fans listen to
a wide variety of music. And as long as it's good, it's good, ya know?

And what touring plans have you for summer?
Well, summer is past. Unfortunately, I took a little long to get back to you
on this Andrew. But basically, I do know that the definitive Rick Nelson box
set called 'Legacy' has just been released on Capitol. So you can check out
his website too... WWW.RickNelson.com and check out the album. It's 100
songs and it's the first time ever that both of the major labels that my
father had recorded for decided to get together and do one finished, focused
body of work. And I do know that as far as touring is concerned we are
planning on going out, not only in the United States, but also
internationally, hopefully Australia as well, promoting that too. So that's
what going to be going on, hopefully we are going to be touring our balls off
this year.

And I have to ask you, even at this early stage, what's next up for you
guys?
Well, we are working on a lot of stuff. Obviously promoting our father's box
set is really what we are going to be doing for the next 6 months. And I have
been working alot on his company. But as far as our own stuff, we are going
to be going into the studio making another original record, coming up in the
next couple of months. And looking again to doing a joint venture partnership deal with a major label for that. I am working on some solo stuff of my own and that's looking very encouraging. And we are also looking at doing a whole lot of touring. So again, hope to see you on the road.

Any thoughts on your next album?
Not really sure. It depends on which arrives first. I definitely know that I want to do an album of our hits, a collection album and I don't know what that means. I don't know if that means we can license the songs from the first two records from Geffen? Or if they won't allow us to do that then what I will probably end up doing is re-recording those things so at least we own the masters again.
And putting out one record of the 'best of Nelson' to date.
We will either be doing that or we will be doing an album of originals that we are doing in Nashville with our co-producer and he is also a guy that works with Mutt Lang quite a bit. It's a very interesting sound. So I will keep you informed and you can check out our website, www.TheNelsonBrothers.com, to see which comes out first.

Anything you would like to add?
Yes, thank you so much for your patience and to your readers for your
patience as well. Please write us, check in with us at the website and let us know if you want us to come down to Australia. And check out the new releases. And most importantly, please stay in touch. It's great with the Internet, we can really stay in closer contact with everybody out there. And we really feel like our fans are our family and we wanted to touch base with you.
So we look forward to seeing you on the web and seeing you on tour more
importantly and keep rockin!

So how did the whole concept get started? Who's idea was it for these tribute albums?
Al was doing records for Blue Dolphin for a while, he basically knows more about how the concept got started then I'll ever know.
One day I got a call to come bail him out on one of these record's, Volume 1, because Joe Lynn Turner & TM Stevens had backed out on him, and I was
called to do clean up.
When blue dolphin caught wind that the two big name's back out, they demanded the record be handed in immediately, which left about an hour and a half to sing all the song's on that record, not to mention, mixing was not an option.

When was the first time you heard of Blue Dolphin Records and how did they pitch their deal to you guys?
First time I heard of them, was when Al Pitrelli called for Volume one.
Al & I did a record year's ago for POLYGRAM in Japan (A Place called Rage). but I had never heard of Blue Dolphin before that.

So from what you have said it sounds like the label dealt with one album advance at a time?
After Al had a falling out with Blue Dolphin, he asked me if I would take over the project....or he was going to shit can it. Not being able to put up with the nonsense any more. And yes, they dealt one advance at a time.

So these guys are paying you only a US$10,000 advance to make, record and pay for the guys on each record?!!!
It was less than that towards the end. I had to take money out of my pocket to finish one of these records.

You told me that the label wouldn't forward any advance to you until you confirmed their nominated list of guest artists required for the album.
Did it work this way each time?
Yup, no advance until name's were confirmed. That meant theoretically we would have had a month for each record. But instead what happened was, they would play the name game....meaning that they would hem and horde until I came up with name's that satisfied them.
Anyone who's tried to confirm people for a record knows it could take a while and, in this case it always did. Which always left no time to record. In dealing with Blue Dolphin, it always seemed they were more interested in name's (or I should say, who they consider to be name's), than in making a great record.

I can see you would have been getting pretty tired of this by the time Volume 3 and 4 came around?
More like disgusted......pissed off......pissed on.......pick one.

At what point did you guys all wonder what the hell you had got yourselves into?
Around the end of Volume 2. We started to look at each other a little funny - especially when the U.P.S guy was there waiting for me to finish singing Mr. Browstone and we had to stall him for as long as possible, before we gave him the DAT. Remember there was never time to mix any of these record's ,so you can imagine how pissed I was when they kept giving me credit as producer.

Al Pitrelli produced the first project and then what happened?
Like I said before Al (on top of a million other thing's he was doing at the time) had had enough.

So Tommy Farese to the rescue?
More like Tommy goes down with the ship...(and took everyone with him).

I heard of these albums with the current release - Volume 3. The label dealt with you guys the same way for each album?
Every record was the same shit, different day....

And how about the upcoming Volume 4? Same again?
First let me say the whole idea for the name Rock Superstar's was completely Dolphin's idea; after mentioning on many occasion's the name was ridiculous.
I think they might have got the hint and took my advise. Volume 4 hopefully will be called Bang Zoom.
Even though the production once again on this record is not even close to
what it should be, there are some song's that stand out.
Some great performance's, listen to Theme From An Imaginary Western, Layla, Might Just Take Your Life and Band Of Gold.
Forget, if you can the production and listen to some of the performance's, especially Teddy Rondinelli's guitar solo on Theme. Al is brilliant as always on Layla, capturing this great jazz vibe & Randy Coven play's his ass off on Theme.
John Guido is probably my favorite rock solid drummer, but unfortunately we
never had time to get him a good drum sound.
George Cintron - one of my favorite all around guitar player's - he play's stuff I love to hear.

Did at any stage, you or anyone else involved try and approach the label for a better deal, re-negotiate the terms or at least try and explain the problems to them?
I tried almost every day. It was like spitting into the wind.

Their response?
Their response to put it politely.....don't understand English........make sure it's in on time. It always amazes me how English is only understood when it benefit's the other person.

You also mentioned that once you paid a few bigger names to appear on each album, there was bugger all left to pay the few base musicians...what were the guests being paid?
Some of the name's got between $3500 and $5000. After paying them then the studio time. And on some occasion's we had to fly them in put them up at a hotel etc. There was nothing left to pay anyone.

And you said the advance was paid with only a week before deadline left...so the albums were recorded in only 5 to 6 days max! That's high pressure performances…
Yes, all these records were done in five to six day's. Remember we had to learn the song's, come up with some type of arrangement and figure out who was best suited to play the song, then record and work around accommodating some of the name's on these records. Meaning we had to give most of the little time we had to them. I always sang clean up, meaning what ever was left, after everyone
picked their song's, I had to sing like it or not because there would literally be no time left.

You said you take your hat off to the guys who hung in there with you under tough circumstances...do you want to take this opportunity to publicly say anything to these guys?
I'd like to thank every one of them for putting up with the worst atmosphere, ever handed to anyone. Especially like to thank Danny Miranda (one of my favorite bass player's) for always giving a 1000% under any circumstances. Frank Gilchrist for always pulling through for us in the clinches.
Dominick Esposito for also playing clean up, along with me and Rob.
Thanks Dom, we couldn't have done it without you.
Snake & Corey Clover for being gentlemen in every sense of the word;
James LaBrie for putting up with everything that was going on...thanks James - I owe you one!
Mike Dimeo, I can listen to you sing all night. Mike Flyntz, thanks for being part of this whole fiasco.
Katrina Chester - my favorite female singer (thank you darlin') see you next
year on tour.
Katrina, Al & I are all member's of the Trans Siberian Orchestra - in case anyone would like to hear some great Christmas music!
Frank Vestri, Jeff Cropper, George Carr, John Bavona - thank you all for your contribution's, it meant a lot…..but most of all to Ron Demartino for putting up with unbelievably bad circumstances.
Rob and I felt like the two guy's in the movie Papillion...it would always be just us at 7 o'clock in the morning trying to make head's or tail's out of what went to tape. By the way. Rob played clean up bass on all these record's, and under the circumstance's did an incredible job.......and yes your still my favorite bass player!
If I forgot anyone please forgive me, I don't have any copies of the records for reference.

There are some OK versions of some classic tracks on V3 especially, the production just let things down....what were your favorite tracks?
You've Got Another Thing Comin', Wanted Dead Or Alive, Into The Fire, Panama.

Why was V2 a sole Guns N Roses tribute? Who's idea was that? And who picked the tracks out for each album - V1,2 & 3?
Dolphin picked the tribute and 90% of the song's we had to fight for that 10%. Honestly we had no business doing a tribute to Gun's And Roses, seeing as how none of us ever listened to them. Not to take anything away from them and not to say some of us didn't listen to them, but none of us knew one song from them. And to pull off a tribute album in six days is nothing short of a miracle.

And what is planned for Volume 4 coming up?
Volume 4 or Bang Zoom was finished in February.....which really pissed us off because they told us to hurry up and hand it in so they can release it in March. Then we found out it was going to be released in May.

Did you get any copies of the finished product from the label for your collection?!!
Yes I got copy's for the player's....but none for myself.

You wrote to me but then expressed that you were not trying to make excuses for anyone or anything. That is very honorable I must say. Is there anything you would like to add to that?
No excuses. I will take full responsibility for all the bad vibe's these records might have created (and in some case's the good one's too). I just don't want anyone who appeared on these records's being trashed in any way, shape or form, it's not their fault it's all mine.
I could have stopped trying to do the impossible and just quit, but I didn't and that's my entire fault.
Not anyone else's, these people put their trust and talent in my hand's and their not to blame. I remember growing up and a lot of my favorite bands were not so well produced, but the talent was incredible, all over those records. I think this generation (in a sense ) has been spoiled with production.....and can't hear past it.

Any other / further thoughts you would like to ad?
Yes, I'd like to thank you (Andrew) for taking the time to even do this interview. Not too many people would after hitting us as hard as you did.
But that's the nature of the beast and in this business you better learn how to roll with the punch's OR GET THE HELL OUT.
Hopefully we'll be able to hit back with some great music. If I can find a label that's willing to do the right thing….

What is next for the guys on the albums? Back to their regular bands?
I don't have to tell you about Al, he's doing great......as far as everyone else I'm sure it's back to touring and recording.

And what's in the future for Tommy Farese?
Always working on something. Getting ready to record Trans Siberian 3....then comes fall, looking forward to going on tour.....in-between I'm looking for a good label.

Any further dealings with Blue Dolphin planned?!! :)
Haven't spoken to them since February and they're not returning my call's.
I guess that's another birthday card I won't be getting.
If there's a copy of any record out of the 4 we did, I'd have to say I want volume 4. Being that they probably won't send me any, let me know how I can get one!!

Is there any pointers you would like to throw out there for any new bands or artist on the scene? Advice that could help them avoid what you have been through?
Yes, never settle, demand; never compromise your integrity, especially when your not the only one to be accounted for.
Once again thanks Andrew, no hard feeling's. Just telling it the way you saw it and I respect that.

Thanks for your time also Tommy.

Canadian rock legend Rik Emmett talks over his vast musical career - Triumph to his collected solo works and the new Airtime project.



Andrew from MelodicRock.com Rik.
Hello Andrew.

A great pleasure to talk to you.
Well it's nice to talk to you too.

It's been too long. We did an email interview about many years ago or several years ago at least, but never a phone interview and I'm really pleased to touch base with you.
That's great, it's nice to talk to you too.

How are things? Where have I reached you, at home in Canada?
Yeah, I'm sitting in my studio and all is right with the world. The Toronto Maple Leaves hockey team has had a lovely victory this evening. Between interviews I was watching them play hockey and it takes me back to my childhood. When they win I feel good, when they lose I feel like something's not right.

Where about it Toronto or in the area do you live?
I live in Mississauga which is sort of a western bedroom community. It's a city in its own right.

Yes, I lived on Queen St. West in Toronto for about a year in '93.
Oh yeah?

Loved the place.
Yeah, Toronto is a fantastic city. I mean I've seen a lot of places and I'm always happy to come home. I do like my hometown. I'm a bit of a homebody kind of guy.

It's a great city. It's a big city without that big city presence or without the sort of intimidation isn't it?
Yeah, it's not bad that way. It's starting to get bad in terms of traffic. We're starting to have the same kinds of problems that every major metropolitan city faces in terms of traffic but it has a nice vibe to it. You sound like you're calling from Australia.

Yes.
I've never had the opportunity to travel there and I've heard some fantastic wonderful things about that, so one day I hope to come and visit there.

Yeah, absolutely. I thought we had you down to do some guitar clinics at one stage or a couple of proposed solo tours.
You know the thing that happened about, I guess maybe three years ago now or something, and Rick Wharton had set something up, and a guy had even sent a deposit to start booking the air fares, and then he just kind of disappeared. I don't know what happened. It was gonna be a solo thing and come down and do some guitar clinics, play some festivals and then the guy just literally sort of disappeared off the face of the earth.

Yeah, it happens. It's the industry for it isn't it?
Yeah, I guess. (laughter)

Well, you've got Airtime out, which is great. You've always been making music all the while but I suppose this goes back to your core audience doesn't it?
I guess if there's still a core audience around that acts like a core audience.(laughing) I don't know if that's necessary true after all these years. Certainly I know from the reaction to the record over the last little while that there were a lot of fans that were anxious that I would return to hard rock at some point and make a record that touched on a lot of the things that Triumph had done in its day and traveled around in that kind of ballpark and did those kinds of things.
So it's been fun and it certainly seems as if there's a lot more interest in this record than say in some of the smooth jazz or classical guitar things that I've done. I guess it's a much bigger audience again and so I realized oh yeah, Ok, there is something to be said for strapping your guitar on and turning your amp up to 11. It makes people notice it a little more.

What a position to be in to be able to have such a lengthy career and just make records whenever you feel like it basically.
It is a privilege. In some ways it's liberating and in other ways it's weird to have expectations placed upon you. I mean, I'm not complaining but it kind of strange that the way our world is in terms of stylistic kind of demographic shoeboxing, you know. You have to live in this pigeonhole. How dare you come out of that pigeonhole, you're not supposed to do that? When rock and roll sort of started to spread its wings and really take off during the 60s and 70s it did seem to have more of an eclectic kind of nature to it and a more embracing kind of progressive nature. Then slowly but surely the world became subdivided up into different camps. I mean it's not like the different camps didn't already exist but we live in an age now of a kind of niched demographic kind of marketing and it makes it a little hard to be an eclectic kind of person or artist or musician. But as you say, I am kind of lucky that I am the guy that used to be the guy so you'll indulge me a little bit and that's OK so now I'll indulge you back, so hear's some of the old stuff and here's some stuff that's in the vein of the old stuff. Maybe I'm twisting a little bit to my own ends, but don't worry I'm not gonna make it too uncomfortable for you. So there is a relationship that exists with your audience and with your past and with expectations place upon you so you cope with those and deal with them. It's part of the ongoing chemistry in the whole affair.

Airtime definitely touches on some of the old Triumph sound but you're also pushing the envelope forward a little bit which is interesting to hear.
I felt that we broke ground without making it too uncomfortable for fans that would be melodic rock and hard rock kinds of fans, and maybe even heavy metalish kinds of fans. But by the same token I think we sort of set ourselves up so that maybe we can move a little bit further afield next time. There's a tiny bit of progressive nature in what was going on on the Liberty Manifesto record so I'm thinking next time Airtime will be able to take a few more chances and have some adventures and then maybe people will kind of be a little bit more open minded about it.

I'm very happy that you're talking about next time. This one took a little while to get together. Was it the length of time recording the album or actually shopping a deal, because you didn't rush it did you?
No there were a whole bunch of things that played into it. I mean when we first started, when Mike and I first got together he was just after me to play some guitar on some things he was doing, different sort of recording projects that he had going in his studio where he was sort of functioning as a producer.
Then it was, well maybe we should write a few things together, and then I think Shotten had an agenda all along but he was very kind of subtle and moved at a slow pace pushing me along. I was a little reluctant and I'll admit it and I didn't necessarily feel any giant need to be making a rock record but he kept insisting that this would be a great thing, and it would be lots of fun and I should embrace this, and we'll start writing and it'll turn into something and then it was 'hey Rik you should sing these things' and I'm like 'oh no, you should sing them' then 'oh, no, no Rik you should sing it, people have been waiting to hear you sing rock for a long time'. So then I sort of got into the spirit of it and said 'I think I'll play bass guitar' so I tried a couple and I said 'Gee this is kinda fun do you mind if I try and play everything?'.
Of course it takes a lot more time to do that. You could get a much more competent player to play it in a shorter period of time, but you know I was now kinda getting into this whole homegrown two of us against the world kind of approach. But we went through a lot of stuff. Mike went through a divorce and the song Moving Day is about that. I wrote the lyrics about the fact that he was going through this very heavy time period where he's got two boys and it was rough.
He was having to adjust to becoming a single dad and dealing with that and the kids are away with their mom 3 or 4 days a week and he's coping with that. Then his brother committed suicide and that was a heavy duty thing that knocked a whole bunch of time out of the middle. Then my brother was diagnosed with liver cancer and he passed away back in September. So there was a lot of stuff that came up that was personal stuff and then there were the regular kinds of things that you mentioned like shopping the record. He started down the road a couple of times with a few different labels as we chatted and negotiated sending emails back and forth.
It's a different world now. My expectations of what constitutes a deal and even Mike's from his Von Groove days. You know people are not necessarily as willing to bank on the future and make as much of an advance as they used to and all of those kinds of things. So there was an education process that we had to go through, or I guess a re-education process about the state of the business.

Yeah, it's not real good is it?
No, no it's not healthy. And so, those things all took their time and the other thing was of course that the biggest concern for Mike and I at the bottom of everything was simply that the record be really good. We wanted to make it sound good and we wanted it to be mixed good so we had Ricky Anderson help us a lot. He's a guy, because Mike and I had done so much over-dubbing, lots of overdubs and lots of guitar harmony parts so the record ended up being very thick and we had lots of production stuff going on. So we needed somebody who had a lot of expertise in handling upwards of 60 or 65 tracks for a song.

Wow.
Yeah, so Anderson was very good at that and he helped us through that stage. Then I was going through this stuff where I was sort of having all of this reunion stuff happen with the Triumph guys. So that was knocking a hole in things. Then Gil was saying you've gotta come into the Metalworks and you gotta master here and you gotta use Nick Blagona so that added a little chunk of time onto the back end of it. That was something that just helped get the quality of what we were after to naturally I took advantage of that.

Oh you've got a great sound, absolutely.
Well thanks. Anyway, so that's the long answer. It was a kind of convoluted story and it did take a long time to get it done.

But now you've got the structure in place you can hopefully do it quicker next time.
Yeah and in fact, that's exactly, we've been kind of talking around it and I've been doing all these interviews and stuff and it's the logical question that everybody asks. Yeah, I do think we should be able to and hopefully we won't have all the sorrow and grief and horrible, terrible stuff that happened. I hope my wife won't divorce me. (laughter)

You've been together a long time.
Yeah, she's put up with a lot.

You remind me of, you know this gentleman very well, a very good friend of mine, Jim Peterik. Who is an absolute, I mean I love the man, he's just fabulous, but you know he's in the same boat. He's in this crazy industry but he's managed to keep a sane sort of family life on the side.
Yeah I think it's a question of, and like you say I know Jim very well, in fact's he's the guy who gave me the song title idea for the song Rise so he's got a little piece of that on the album.

Oh good, I forgot the writing credits.
Oh yeah, Rise was like, I'd sent him a couple of the tracks and he'd sent back some ideas and stuff, and I wasn't knocked out with the direction he was going. But he had a line in the lyrics for the song that became Rise about a phoenix rising from the ashes and it tied so beautifully to some of the subtext that existed in the record. Like Liberty is a song about post 9/11 and what do you do when you're trying to rebuild your whole concept of freedom and liberty and those kinds of things.
Of course there was also the subtext of me being the guy that used to be in Triumph and here I am returning to rock, so what am I trying to do rebuilding the whole phoenix from the ashes kind of thing. So that really hit home with me, that that was a really nice idea for a lyric. So I sort of stole that line and it became part of the chorus of the song called Rise and I thought it would be unconscionable of me if I didn't at least give Jim a piece of the tune because he'd kind of been the inspiration.
Anyway, I've gone and played in Chicago and played on some of his shows and things and yeah, he's a great guy. I think that Jim lives for the music. I doesn't live for anything else but how great the song can be and how great the music can be. And because he's a guy like that he's got a lot of integrity and personal humility because he know the music is this sort of infinite challenge and he's in love with that.
So I think when he found a girl and build a life with and have kids with and stuff that he knew he had something good and meaningful and true and right because he's a guy who understands that stuff. There're lots of guys in rock and roll who don't really have a grip on that. Their grip is more on the idea of wanting to be a star and wanting to have fame and fortune and all of that stuff. There's nothing wrong with that either. I'm not putting it down but it ends of being kind of a shallower kind of existence and those people tend to crash into one thing and burn, then crash into something else and burn, and crash into something else and burn……(laughter)

I see it, absolutely. You've got the European deal for this record with Escape, how is it coming out in Canada or the US?
We did that on our own. It's not like we didn't have some offers but we also made a deal in Japan with Marquee so it's out in Asia as well. And we did talk, again this goes back to your question about the length of time, there was a certain period of time when we had people saying, 'no wait don't got yet, we've got an offer, we want to make an offer, we really like you' so we say OK we'll wait, we'll wait and we waited.
Then when the offers came when I measured them against what I knew I could do off my own site in the first few months because I'd been putting out my own little records and I knew this one would do at least as well as one of my own little records. So then I realized, well the state of the business is so awful and so terrible that these guys can't do any better than I can do. They can't help me so I might as well just do it myself.
So that's what we've done. I put it on RikEmmett.com for sale through Maple Music and we've done great the first few weeks. We're moving some product and we're doing fine and the big thing of course is that I'm not indebted to anybody else. I own my own masters and we own our own publishing so it's ours free and clear. I mean, we've already made a license deal to have one of the songs in a movie, a feature film.

That's great. In Triumph you sort of came up or evolved through the whole traditional label set-up dealing with the same label for years but as a solo artist you soon diversified. You were one of the first people out there really using the internet to its full advantage.
I know there's been some stuff written about me and media things that have said that and it's nice to read that people sort of want to give me that credit but I don't necessarily see myself as to much of a pioneer because it wasn't like I couldn't see other people and get ideas from them and started saying 'ooh that looks like a good idea, why don't I try that?' I do think that for a guy in my position I might have been one of the first guys to say I don't think the old system works and I'm willing to jump ship right away and try something new because I don't want to be hanging around on what looks to me like a sinking ship. In a sense that goes right back into 1988 with Triumph.
I really did get a feeling that if it stayed the way it was, it was doomed. It was unhappy from the inside out, and it seemed to be getting unhappy from the outside in. The world was changing and grunge was starting to happen and the face of radio was changing and so much was going through a huge evolution.
Then of course the internet came along and that really started to change things. It's not like I couldn't look and see, say like the idea of doing network shows coming off my own website. That came from Patrick Moraz, the guy who'd been the keyboard player in Yes. I'd seen him essentially booking them so his brother was actually running a business off of Patrick's site. So I went 'well that's a clever idea why wouldn't I do that?' I could look at Ani DiFranco who had done an incredible job of setting up her own label and appealing to a certain small demographic and building her own independence. Loreena McKennitt had done it. She was a Canadian who was a Celtic harpist. A very small kind of humble beginnings almost like a busker in a way in playing small festivals and things. She built it into a huge kind of international thing pretty much on her own as an independent. So it's not like I couldn't look around and go hey there're other people doing this.
It's just a question I think of having the courage of your own convictions. You have to say 'look, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is, I'll pay to make a record, I'll pay to manufacture it, I'll pay to try and market it and little bit and have my own website to do this'. Part of the giant deceit and conceit of the record business was that all of the pre-production, production, manufacturing, and marketing of a record, record companies could turn around and say 'well geez, I'm sorry artist, I know we sold a million records and we made 10 million bucks, but we don't owe you any royalties because it was just way too expensive to try and do this'.
Well in truth, over time it became clear there was a lot of monkey business going on with the way they did their accounting. They got to be the manufacturer, the banker, the accountant, you know, they got to be everything. When the scales started to fall from people's eyes they realized, hey, wait a sec. At the same time the digital revolution was occurring and it was getting cheaper and cheaper to make records all the time and now anybody with a laptop and a microphone can be a recording artist. It hasn't necessarily made things better in the sense that we've got so much better quality music out there. (laughter) There's just so much more music out there and a lot of it is pretty awful. Now it's hard to get heard through just the fact that there's so much competition and so much noise. It becomes more a question of marketing than a question of talent and ability. So who's gonna be a patron of this? Who's gonna help artists go through the learning phase of becoming a good artist, becoming a good writer, becoming a great recording artist by being able to spend a lot of time in the recording studio learning? These things are expensive propositions and there aren't any record companies anymore to do it. We've got a lot of people teaching themselves. I don't know if it's necessarily gonna result in a lot of great recording artists that the world gets to find and recognize, but let's hope it happens.

Yeah, I hope so too, but for an artist to have the longevity of Triumph or Led Zeppelin or any other band like that it seems a fair long shot doesn't it?
Again I think it's probably a numbers game. If you look back in the past and try and count how many bands actually got the opportunity to make their second album you would probably find that there weren't that many. There were a lot of acts that would make a record and they'd be dropped. You know, one hit wonders that came and went. The business constantly fed itself on that part of the paradigm too. It's not like it didn't exist. There were less bands in the 60s and 70s. There was less radio, there was less play listing, it was a narrower, smaller kind of a world.
Now it's widened out and there are so many demographic slices but now it's just as hard to break through to the maid stream of any one of those demographic slices and it's ultra-uber-competitive. Certainly the whole kind of paradigm has changed and yet the odds probably aren't much different. I'd venture to say that there are probably 10,000 bands that started today and another 10,000 that broke up. You know, because they make records and they tried to do it independently and spent all of their own money and all of their Uncle Louie's money and all of their Aunt Maybelle's money. Now that's it. Their patronage has run out and their own bank account is empty and they go yeah, we'll break up this band and we'll go see if we can't get something else off the ground.

Yeah, absolutely, I mentioned Led Zeppelin a moment ago and thinking of that, they say never say never on things. Does the induction of Triumph into the Hall of Fame last year help freeze hell over for you guys?
I think it's safe to say that hell has sort of frozen over in the sense that I never thought I'd ever talk to them again in my lifetime. It was eighteen years that I hadn't.

Was it that long really? Well, I suppose it is, yeah, wow.
Yeah, like it had ended very unhappy. So it had been a long time. Actually my brother getting sick and me going through the process of sitting with him and talking with him, I phone him every night and we'd have conversations on the phone. I mean, he was in a life and death kind of circumstance, so when you have those kinds of conversations with people they tend to get right down to the important stuff in a hurry. He would say to me when the invitation came, and it's not like those hadn't come along from time to time over the course of the years, but I'd always rejected them.
But when this one came along I said, 'well what do you think?' and my brother said 'well look, opportunity comes and knocks every now ant then, and life is short'. That was never a more poignant statement than when it came from him under those circumstances. And he said 'you've been carrying around a lot of negative baggage for a long time and this is an opportunity for you to put it behind you and move on and try and find something better. Move on to a better circumstance. You should try and take advantage of those opportunities because they don't come along all the time'.
So on my brother's insistence that was really why I decided to try and reconcile with Gil and Mike.
It was awkward. It was not easy at first. As I've said in many interviews since, there was more than one pink elephant in that room where we were sitting around having coffee. I think we were all determined to try and ignore them as much as we possibly could, and I even said to them 'Guys this will never work of we revisit any of the negative stuff, if we try to talk about it again, if we try to rationalize or justify positions that we took that'll never work. The only way this is gonna work is if we just move ahead from here and then if we do revisit the past we only do it to wax nostalgic about good things and talk about how much fun this was or how crazy this was'.
Then it didn't take us that long to get to the point where we could share stories where we were laughing about things that happened and anecdotes.
Because it had been a long history and it had been a good one. It had a lot of success and it had good things to be able to be positive and proud about. So once we got there, that made it easy to go to the actual award ceremony itself and then nothing but good vibes from that. Geez when you actually get into talking to media again and then we were in a room with old radio dogs and record company guys and you would have figured if we could put all of the heard and soul of all these people together we might be able to build one good one.(laughter)
These are music business guys after all. They're cynical and these guys are 'Integrity, what, I've never even heard of that word.' (laughter) But it was quite, it was something, really something to see all of them kind of giving a heartfelt standing ovation and some tears in some eyes and stuff. And I felt, geez, I never even realized that at this level with guys like this there was that much kind of respect and affection. Then of course you start doing media and you realize wow, even the media and then of course fans. They go, oh God, when are you gonna do it again and then the flood gates are open and here it comes. So we have sat down and talked about the possibility and the potential of what might happen in the future and there are some more of these kinds of industry event things that will arise in the future. It looks like, but I'm not at liberty to talk about them right now but I think some other things are gonna happen.
And then there are offers that are coming, and do we maybe want to play a one off here, do we want to do a couple over here, do we want to do a giant tour? Then of course because of Led Zeppelin and the Police and Van Halen and all these others who have had such huge interest, it seems like sort of a natural spin-off and people get interested in the possibility of a Triumph thing.
But Mike and Gil haven't played in such a long time and when we sat down to talk that was kind of a central issue. There's no point in us doing it unless when we do it, it resonates with energy and quality that existed when we first started and tried it as young guys. And we're not young guys anymore. So for Gil, at this age and stage of his life, he's got a young family that he's just, you know, second marriage, second wife and the kids are still young. You're not gonna want to go off on the road for a long time.
Plus he started this huge sound and light business that's a multi-million dollar thing and he's devoting all of his time and energy to it. Then he's got the studio still running and he's got a school in conjunction with that that requires a lot of time and energy. So he said look, I know these offers are coming in an people are talking about Memorial Day of this year, 2008, and I couldn't really even look at this until maybe Memorial Day of 2009 to give myself time to get back in drumming shape again. He hasn't played drums for almost a decade and a half or something like that. So that's the way that got left. We said ok, fine, we'll revisit it again on a time schedule where we might work up to May of 2009. (laughter)

That's cool.
Yeah, it was cool, and it was very, no pressure you know? No body was pressuring anybody else it was all just kinda like we don't have to do this, there's no need to do it. We would never want to do it just for the money but of course there'd be no point in doing it of there was none. And Triumph was a band that was always known for sort of large scale productions and very high quality kind of productions. That also became part of the conversation about geez, we're not just gonna try to throw together a few roadies and pack it all in the back of a van and show up and be the opening act for somebody. That's not gonna happen. So anyhow, that's the way it all got left.

Well, I'll look forward to the next part of that. Were you aware that the entire catalog's about to be re-released in Japan again?
I just did an interview with someone else that mentioned it. I was talking to Khalil who's the Escape Music guy and he was telling me, and he said that he knows who's doing there in Japan and he's a huge collector and it's coming out and he asked of I'd like to get it? And I went, yeah sure, but the truth of the situation, and I don't mean this in any negative way at all, but Triumph is like literally, none of my business.
I don't have anything to do with it. I got bought out of it and I don't participate in it, so when those things happen they're decisions that are made by Mike and Gil and they don't have anything to do with me. So here I am doing a round of promotion for the new Airtime thing and naturally people want to talk about Triumph but I'm not really out here in the market place again trying to promote Triumph. That'll be their job when these things happen if in fact they take much interest in it, but they seem to be able to come up with a new DVD or something every now and then. I know that when I'm signing autographs after gigs and things I get new stuff put in front of me and I go 'What the heck is this?'

That must be a funny feeling.
It is kind of strange. But I mean, I'm in show business. If I'm gonna let strange things throw me…

…you are in the wrong business.
(laughter) Yeah because something strange comes along about every five minutes.

Absolutely, look, well I just said the word myself, Absolutely, probably one of my top 20 of records of all time.
Nice, great.

A wonderful, wonderful record that I've spent many years listening to inside and out.
Well, I was proud of that record. It was the first big step after leaving Triumph and there were so things that I was trying to do to break out of the mold of being perceived just as a rock guy. There were some ballads and it was more of a singer/songwriter type record in some ways than your average rock band kind of record. It's funny, I remember when it came out how there were, because I was the guy who had left Triumph, there were some people in the rock community who didn't want that record to succeed. There was some jealousy and things here in the Canadian market that I had to put up with that I was the guy who betrayed the whole Triumph thing so, you know, screw me.
So there was some of that, and then there were changes that were happening at the time where rock radio wasn't really like it had been. There was the advent of the whole Seattle grunge thing starting to happen in a big way. That transition was occurring so anything that had that melodic kind of quality to it or classic rock kind of quality was losing it preeminence in the rock market. There was that big conversion occurring. So you know, whatever, I still think like, whenever I do acoustic shows there are a lot of songs off that album that I can just sit with an acoustic guitar and those tunes work fine.

I love the record. I really do. Stuff like Middle Ground meant a lot to me and still does.
That was the first song I wrote after I left Triumph. I remember playing it for an A&R man, and I don't remember if it was a demo or I just played it acoustically, and the guy was just totally unimpressed. He described it as a pronoun song. He goes, that's one of those pronoun songs. You're talking about yourself, me, this I, he, she, we and you. I go 'Really, OK, thanks a lot. Then I said, 'Do you think I could get a release from your record company so I'd be free to go and find something else?' And the guy said yeah, I think I could talk the record company people into that. I said great thanks pal.

And he's probably flipping burgers at this point.
Ah who knows, but that's the whole thing about it. The music business is a very strange, itinerant one. Over time the only way I got any widespread respect was just because I'd survived. That's really what it boils down to. If you can hang around long enough then people will go well geez there must be something good about it because so many others have crashed and burned or come and gone. I've done everything I can to try and promote them or make them successful but for some reason they didn't survive so this guy must have something. I don't like it and I don't know what it is but I'll give him his dues. Then you see that and in the end it kinda makes you laugh, but it is a very strange, itinerant kind of world. You kind of just go OK, I'll just keep kinda rolling along and take the punches when I get them and ride the waves when I can catch one.

Well you kept making records through the years do you have a favorite. I mean you've got Spiral Notebook, Swing Shift, you've got blues, you've got jazz.
I think what happens, I mean this is a relatively stock question and my relatively stock answer for it is, my favorite record is always the next one. My favorite song is always the next one. I'm an artist so that's the way I think. That's the way I feel. That's the way my DNA is constructed, you know? I don't really go back and listen to my old records much at all. I move forward and into new work, which is what fascinates me. I'm not fascinated with my own history. The more I kind of navel gaze on that basis the more my stomach starts to turn.

The less momentum you get?
Well that's part of it for sure. That's not to say that I don't respect and honor the past. I know that for my fans, they're the soundtrack to their lives that they find to be incredibly compelling and they want their own lives to have a substantial kind of meaning so they want me to have continuity with those songs. I understand that and I respect that. So this is kind of what happens with past records. Inevitably you get up on stage and you try different things and different times. There's a few song that kind of stick with you and they're great live so you keep playing them. And there are some songs that get air play so they're gonna stick with you because there are certain audiences in certain markets that have to hear them.
If I go to St. Louis by God I'd better play Hold On because it was a top 5 song there on both AM and FM radio so you go geez, you can't go to St Louis and not play that song, everybody expects to hear it. So when I go back into the past there're certain parts of the Allied Forces album from Triumph that are really good. I think the band hit its stride and did a lot of good things on that particular album. But we'd done some good things on the Just a Game album too.
So there're a few songs here and a few songs there then when I move up into my own solo career I go, yeah well you know, say off the Absolutely album. I hadn't heard Stand and Deliver in a long time and somebody played it on the radio when I was doing an interview one time and I went 'man I haven't heard that in a long time' and I thought that's got some pretty good stuff on it, that was a pretty interesting track. So I know there're moments. I thought the Ipso Facto album had some good things on it, you mentioned Spiral Notebook, I felt that was a record where I made big strides as a singer/songwriter.

That was the real departure, when I heard that record. I thought yeah, there's a change in direction here.
Yeah and a lot of people went, ooh God he got really soft. What happened to the rock guy? That had already happened for Ipso Facto, but then the record company said we can't put this record out. You have to go back in the studio and make some hard rock songs. We need some hard rock on this record. Then I'd gone back in and I'd done Straight Up and Band On, Do Me Good, Rainbow Man, so there'd been about 4 or 5 rock tracks that I'd done that got pasted into that record.

Interesting, yeah it kinda sounds like two different records.
Yeah I think it was three different records actually, because there was some jazz finger style stuff too like Woke up This Morning, and Transition, Calling St Cecilia, on there where you can see Spiral Notebook coming. You can hear it. You can smell it.

Yeah, Ipso Facto was the crossroads.
It kinda was. I've almost gotta have a soft spot in my heart for the Ten Invitations CD because that was the one finger style classical that I dreamed about even when I was in Triumph. For years and years I dreamed about doing a classical guitar record with nothing but finger style guitar pieces and that was what Invitations was. And that was the one that launched my own little label, my independence.

It was the start.
Then Swing Shift had some. Live I still play two or three things from Swing Shift almost every kind of gig that I do other than a classic rock on. Even then I'll throw in, like we did a classic rock one last week and I played Libre Animado off of Handwork and we did a band version of Three Clouds which gives everybody a chance to just blow their brains out. Like a sneak that stuff into the set now and I'll even tell the audience 'Look I've indulged you with Fight the Good Fight and Magic Power now you're gonna have to give me five minutes and I'm gonna do some of my own. I have been making records all these years folks'.

Anything you'd like to close with Rik?
Not really. I appreciate the fact that we've had a lot of support from you on your website. That's been a great thing.

Thank you, it's been a pleasure. I'm a long time fan.
I know that the record company guy tells me that it's important to have support of guys like you so I appreciate it and it was nice to chat with you.

Yeah you too Rik, it's been a great pleasure. Like I said, I came in on Thunder Seven to be a Triumph fan and went backwards from there and I've always traveled forward with you. It's great to talk things over.
Well, thank you very much.
OK Andrew.

Thanks Rik.
Take care now.


Within the interview, Rik gave mention to an offer on the table - well, as we now know that was for the Sweden Rock Festival Triumph reunion show. I updated this interview by getting back to Rik and asking him about this news:

How did the proposal of Sweden Rock come to you guys and why did this in particular appeal to you to do?
The Sweden offer came through an agent. It appealed to us because it was the first substantial offer, and it obviously came from a true fan, as well as a promoter with a track record, and we'd never been to Sweden, so it satisfied a sense of adventure and experiment.

How will you prepare for this show and it sounds like there could be a few more on North American soil this year?
We'll prep with a lot of rehearsal - the other fellows will really need it, to get back into playing shape. Whether or not there will be a few more anywhere remains to be seen. As far as I know, there aren't other firm offers on the table as of this writing: at least, no one has brought them to my attention. My attitude is - let's wait and see what develops. Let's have a lot of rehearsals under our belt before we start looking to far down the road. Maybe we should do one concert, and see how it goes, before we commit to booking months & months ahead.