1. Richard would you like to talk us about your musical background (guest studio appearances , recordings ,etc.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0 I played the rock scene of the southeastern United States for a good part of the last 12 years.\u00a0 When the bottom fell out of the US melodic rock market somewhere in the 90s I played fraternity house parties to keep myself out gigging…\u00a0 playing lots of covers.<\/p>\n
In the mean time I have also done a lot of the backing music and backing vocals on tribute songs that Versailles Records has used for recording artists to perform over.\u00a0 Artists such as: Jake E. Lee, Tony Harnell, Jason McMaster, Paul Shortino, Dave Ragsdale, Jimmy Crespo, Brad Gillis, George Lynch, Gilby Clarke, Stevie Rachelle, Jim Martin, and a few others.\u00a0 We did a tribute to 80s Hard Rock\/Heavy Metal, a tribute The Cult and a tribute to Steve Vai and Joe Satriani.<\/p>\n
I do the recordings in my spare time, at my house on 3 ADAT recorders.\u00a0 For percussion, sometimes I use a sequencer and sometimes I get Dave Campbell the drummer of my band to do it. I have friends that occasionally contribute bass guitar to some of these tracks.\u00a0 I play as much of the guitars as I can get away with and then the keyboards, if they are easy enough.\u00a0 If not, I use a sequencer for the keys too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I mail off tapes of a rough mix of the songs to the artists. Then they record their parts and send the tapes back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When all of the songs for a particular project are ready to be mixed I fly to a real studio (John Schwabb studios) in Ohio and Mix them down with a great Pro Tools engineer named Joe Viers.\u00a0 He also helped mix my record.\u00a0 We actually did that at the same time we were mixing the Lords of Karma, a Tribute to Vai\/Satriani CD. That was quite a busy 5 days.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been, sort of, the Engineer\/Producer of these records and it has been the best learning experience of my life.\u00a0 I\u2019m very thankful to Jake at Versailles for trusting me with what I have contributed.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 2. How did you contact Versailles Records ?<\/p>\n
\u00a0 I saw an ad in Metal Edge magazines\u2019 metal wire a couple of years ago, for a record label that wanted to put out a record showcasing unsigned bands, paying tribute to 80 hard rock.\u00a0 I felt like I had the perfect band for that.\u00a0 I e-mailed Jake Brown, the president of the label, and then he called me.\u00a0 I played him some songs on the phone and he instantly loved my singers\u2019 (Ross Stephens) voice.\u00a0 Jake asked if we could do two songs for the record \u2013which we did.\u00a0 As Mudbone, which was our touring name for the fraternity band, we did \u201cWait\u201d by White Lion and as Straitjacket Smile, which was the name of the band Ross and I had been in prior to Mudbone, we did Photograph by Def Leppard. The band, which also included Dave Campbell on drums and Jason Keller on bass, could not agree on which songs to do so we let Jake pick the songs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jake and I developed a great working relationship and he has included me on every project ever since.\u00a0 This led to my doing a solo record.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 3. You have a new album , please let us know about it<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Murder and The F-Word: It\u2019s a concept record that I started a long time ago.\u00a0 I never actually intended for it to be a solo record but it felt right at the time so I went with it.<\/p>\n
Roughly five of the songs were written as standalone songs and then I realized I had the skeleton of a story and I filled in the blanks.\u00a0 It was a good way for me to raid my 4-track tapes and old discarded songs for cool parts.<\/p>\n
The story is about a guy that is followed around in high school by this dorky girl that he eventually falls in love with.\u00a0 She matures (mentally and physically) and begins to realize that the guy she loves isn\u2019t maturing with her.\u00a0 She severs ties with the guy but won\u2019t let go completely.\u00a0 He\u2019s fun to be around but codependent.\u00a0 She continually hurts the guy to the point where he snaps.\u00a0 He stalks her and kills her, which at this point in the story he feels is exactly what she wanted from him.\u00a0 The murder makes headlines. The guy becomes egomaniacal and continues to spiral into nuttiness. He is institutionalized -where he is kept drugged, dreaming of this girl and questioning his faith in anything.\u00a0 I never made it quite apparent whether he was actually seeing her ghost or just dreaming, but somehow in his stupor he gets released from the nut house.\u00a0 He realizes he doesn\u2019t want to live without her so he jumps off of a bridge.\u00a0 Knowing this poor guys\u2019 luck, the fall into the water only hurt and he survived…\u00a0 We\u2019ll never know.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 4. The album is separated in 5 parts , why that ?<\/p>\n
\u00a0 The songs were all written intentionally to flow well into each other.\u00a0 The sections were titled as chapters in a book to show where we were going next in the story.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFame, Faith, Farrago,\u201d which includes songs 7 through 12, originally had the working title \u201cNew Man Medley.\u201d I wanted to show that in his mind, he felt that he really had changed and done what his ex had asked \u2013 which was become a new man. In working on the song I realized that all of the other elements (Fame and Faith) were popping up, so I changed the title.\u00a0 Incidentally, \u201cFarrago\u201d means Medley.\u00a0 And all the chapter titles start with an \u201cF\u201d which goes along with the title of the record.<\/p>\n
There was one more factor too.\u00a0 There are a few short songs that join things together that are part of the flow of the album and felt better as parts to a bigger picture.\u00a0 \u201cReprisal,\u201d which is part of the Finale, is a mixture of classically influenced pieces from all of the other songs on the CD.\u00a0 If you listen closely, you will hear all of the parts somewhere on the record buried behind distorted guitars.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 5. What about the lyrics , were they based in personal experiences ?<\/p>\n
\u00a0 All of them. Except, I never killed her or went in the nut house. I had a pretty inspiring break up at one point in my life.\u00a0 It has been so long ago now that it was hard for me to muster up some of that pain to use in the recording.<\/p>\n
My wife was the inspiration for track 2, \u201cOne Life Stand.\u201d\u00a0 Five or six years ago we had an argument and I felt guilty about it.\u00a0 She\u2019s a sweetheart.<\/p>\n
\u201cLaughin\u2019 Myself Goodbye,\u201d the song about jumping off of a bridge, was originally a Straitjacket Smile song that my friend Phil Wang wrote when he was in the band.\u00a0 I felt like it fit the story pretty well and so I asked him if I could use it.\u00a0 I rewrote the main riff of the song and hopefully I did not ruin the song too badly.<\/p>\n
I had to turn in lyrics for the artwork of the record before I was finished singing all of the songs.\u00a0 As these things go, some of the lyrics were rewritten as I went.\u00a0 I have the corrected lyrics posted on my website.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 6. Your music sounds like most of the late 80’s bands , am I right ?<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Yes, I would say that\u2019s fair.\u00a0 I grew up on that stuff.\u00a0 Actually, I tried to blend a lot of my influences into the recording.\u00a0 I love bands like TNT, Queen, ELO, Winger, Dream Theater, Stryper… I could name so many.\u00a0 I just did what I do (whatever that is) and the end result was F-Word.\u00a0 I expected to be slammed very hard by reviewers for not sounding modern or not fitting into any particular AOR box.\u00a0 I was never really concerned about that.\u00a0 I was not doing this record for them.\u00a0 I think, more than anything, releasing F-Word was just a way for me to get some of this pent up music out of my system and prove to myself that I could do something like this.\u00a0 Now I can move on.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 7. You are a great guitarist but a good singer too , so you prefer the role of guitarist or singer ?<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Thanks very much.\u00a0 I wish it were cool, in this day and age, to be a \u201cGreat Guitarist.\u201d\u00a0 When I was eleven I started playing guitar no less than 8 hours a day.\u00a0 When I was seventeen, I realized there were millions of great guitarists.\u00a0 Most of the time the one\u2019s that were in working bands could sing.\u00a0 And the ones that really had a grasp of harmonies were the guys that caught my ear.\u00a0 I decided I wanted to be a well-rounded player that would have all the tools to be in a great band.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To answer your question, I prefer being a guitar player.\u00a0 Although, If I\u2019m not gigging I don\u2019t practice much.\u00a0 In a band situation I love to sing harmony.\u00a0 My singer, Ross absolutely puts me to shame.\u00a0 We have played together for years, covering bands like Boston and Styx \u2013 Writing songs that are a lot more melodic and strait-forward hard rock than my record.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 8. Have you ever tried to sing in your current band Straitjacket ?<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Yes, I used to sing a few songs.\u00a0 I did \u201cDon\u2019t Fly Away\u201d for years.\u00a0 I also used to cover\u00a0 \u201cLove Gun\u201d by Kiss.\u00a0 I get the \u201cyou sound like Paul Stanley,\u201d comparison a good bit.\u00a0 I have done quite a few songs over the years.<\/p>\n
We were singer-less at one point and I took over most of the lead vocals, but it wasn\u2019t much fun.\u00a0 We did one gig.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 9. Are you going to tour for your album ?<\/p>\n
\u00a0 No, I\u2019m putting together the band right now to play gigs so I can pay some bills.\u00a0 The brutal truth in this business is that melodic hard rock does not put buts in seats in the USA.\u00a0 You have to sneak it right into their face.\u00a0 They love it -they just don\u2019t know it.\u00a0 They\u2019re not being programmed to know it.\u00a0 During our shows we\u2019ll be hitting them with Straitjacket Smile originals and maybe a couple of my songs.\u00a0 We\u2019ll see how it goes from there.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019ll sell a few CDs that way.\u00a0 I\u2019d love to have the record distributed overseas.\u00a0 I think it would be better received there. I\u2019d love to play in some other countries as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 10. Which are the future plans for Richard & Straitjacket ?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll be talking with AJ Caruso, the other guitarist\/songwriter from a past incarnation of SJS and hopefully, be working on an SJS record sometime this year.\u00a0 We had a decent following in and around Louisiana and people ask me about the old SJS tunes all the time.\u00a0 We have some great melodic rock songs and the songs deserve to be recorded.<\/p>\n
I plan to continue to record music for Versailles Records as well.\u00a0 I enjoy the work and the experience and I think it helps me get exposure for my band.\u00a0 You never know what can happen in this business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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