December 19, 2024

Skylight Webzine

Online since 2000

Eclectic Music Ensemble The Vegetarians Release New Album “Bill Haley”

The Vegetarians is a project lead by Hans Annellsson, composer & musician from Sweden, working together with several different singers such as John Tabacco, Robin Schell, John Crowe, Marc Mollan, John Marshall Gibbs and Napoleon Murphy Brock. The project started around 2000 as a vehicle for recording some prog covers of YES, Frank Zappa, King Crimson, Genesis, ELP, Adrian Belew, Peter Hammill etc. The prog covers can be found on the albums “Remustered & Remixed Salad” and “The Calling”. 

Billy Sherwood said this about the song “The Calling”: “A good rocking version, well done boys.”

Adrian Belew had this to say about The Vegetarians version of his song “Dream Life,”: “Beautiful, I was really moved to hear your version, maybe I’m not forgotten after all.”

The new album, “Bill Haley,” a mixture of Prog/Alternative/Classic Rock, consists of fourteen original songs, mostly written by Annellsson-Tabacco, and one cover written by Susan DeVita. The recording was done by sending files back and forth.  John recorded all his vocals at his studio in Long Island and Hans recorded his parts at Annellssongs studio, the mix being done at Studio Loftet in Malmö, Sweden. There are plenty of musicians on the album, most notably Morgan Ågren (Devin Townsend, Mats/Morgan Band, Zappa’s Universe) on drums, Mats Öberg (Mats/Morgan Band, Zappa’s Universe) on keyboards & harmonica and Dan Bornemark on keyboards.

The Vegetarians performed at the “Zappanale Festival” in Germany in 2011, and hope to perform there again in the future.

Hans Annellsson

Composer & musician from Sweden. On the Annellssongs label Hans has released both music in Swedish, with The Vegetarians in English, and some instrumental music. The instrumental music is available on the albums “A Pirate In Ambient Waters” & “Scenes & Takes”. A new instrumental album “Goodly Odd” will be released later this year. To support himself Hans works as a music teacher at Malmö International School. Being a massive Frank Zappa fan Hans got permission from Frank, before he went on his last tour, to release a Swedish version of “Penis Dimension.” That version can be found on an album called “Från A Till Ö” by Hans and Mats Öberg. Hans also recently produced Mats Öberg’s album “Frankful,” solo piano renditions of the music of Frank Zappa.

John Tabacco

American composer, singer songwriter, engineer, multi instrumentalist, and graphic artist. He is co-founder of SA3 (a proprietary analog to digital conversion technology for sound and video) and has engineered /mixed and mastered music for the past 30 years.

To purchase The Vegetarians “Bill Haley”:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sxA7e1
Bandcamp: https://thevegetarians.bandcamp.com/album/bill-haley

For more information about The Vegetarians:
Homepage: www.annellssongs.com
Facebook: https://bit.ly/3iOXuw7
https://www.johntabacco.net/