One of my greatest loves in the music business is writing and recording my own material. I also see this as one the most challenging part of anyone’s musical journey. There is something about the blank page that scares the living daylight out of a musician. But once you get rolling, you have just embarked on an emotional, spiritual and self revealing expedition where there is no turning back. I could imagine that it's sort of like when Columbus came to America. There are many times when you want to turn back and quit but you know in order to grow and change and reach that other level of life, there is no way other then going through the ocean of challenge, pain and suffering. I think you can also relate it to giving birth. A woman goes through 9 months of discomfort and pain but when that baby is born it is all worth t!! Of course there is also a lot of joy, excitement and fun writing and recording your own record but challenging none of the less.

Before I began my first solo effort "Nevertheless", I thought about what musicians I would love to have on this record. I was teaching a Masters class at Berklee with a colleague named Joe Santerre. Joe is an amazing player. What blew my mind is how he could crank away on his 6 string bass in any style. He also has taught so many great players during his 20+ years at Berklee. People like Tom Hamilton from Aerosmith and John Myung from Dream Theater among many others. He has also performed with many world class players and wrote books on the art of bass playing. So I thought who better could I get for my recording then Joe and it was an honor that he agreed to do it. Also, I had thought about an old friend of mine that I actually had lost touch with, Mike Mangini. Mike and I were great friends in High School (he was at Waltham High and I was at Somerville High) and we were involved in the Massachusetts District and All State Ensembles together. We also played in a rock band and jammed all the time.

In the early 80's after graduating high school I took off with the band Blockyard in which I hit the road for a couple of years then continued with them for a total of 9 years. I know Mike at the time was working with Rick Berlin and other projects and with everything going on we just lost touch.

Well, when I was thinking about what drummer I would use, I thought "wouldn't it be great to have Mike Mangini on the record?" Well by that time in 2000, Mike was a world renown drummer and was touring with Steve Vai. I had actually saw a spread in Modern Drummer Magazine of Mike while I was in Daddy's Junky Music picking up a drum set for my 5 year old son Marco. I was blown away and thought, gee Mike really did it man! He's famous! Then I thought, what are the chances now he would record my record with me? I'm not even sure he will remember me! Well, I took a chance and called his mother in Waltham to get his contact info so I could reach him and I was amazed that after 20 years they were still living there. She told me that he was on tour with Vai and that he would be coming home for Christmas. Well as chance would have it, I was doing some Christmas shopping at the Burlington Mall and who do I bump into? Mike Mangini!! It blew my mind! Well we talked and it was like those 20 years that went by where I didn't see him never happened.

I expressed my desire to record my first record and ask him if he would play drums on it and he said that he would love to. That just goes to show you that old friends never die! He did say that he was jumping right back on the road with Steve (He was in the process of recording the Alive in an Ultra World CD which was a live CD recorded on this tour) and that he would only have a week off in February where he could do my project. Well, that kicked me in the butt and I wrote all the material and prepared the tracks for Mike to come in that week and lay down his drums. Well, that February he flew in, stayed at my house and in 2 days finished the whole record. Writing the music was challenging because I had this real piece of crap computer that was breaking down on me almost daily. I was running a Cakewalk software and used a keyboard controller to trigger some of the sounds in the computer. It was pretty lame but I was able to put together several tunes on CD. I contacted Tom Waltz from Waltz Audio in Boston who I had a reference from a mutual friend. He expressed a desire to take on the project so I went over and took my lame sounding tracks over to him and he definitely heard potential in the music and decided to take on the project. We tried to bounce the tracks that I had onto his system but because of the incompatibility of my sorry-ass computer, we had to start all the tracks over from scratch. But Tom was great and we started cranking on it.

He did a fine job producing it and we ended up collaborating on several of the compositions. So the way it worked is that we composed the music as we laid down all the instrumentation. Once it was all down I would have musicians come in one at a time and replace the part that I put down. So the songs and all the forms were there and all the musicians had to do is come in and lay down their parts. I would basically give them a sheet with the forms laid out and with a little direction we would roll. I also had Paul Stiller, Dan Foote, Keith Reed, Casey Schereuell, who are all very respected musicians on the project. I also talked my wife Jennifer into doing some cool voiceovers on the record.
Nevertheless took about 6 months to complete and thanks to everyone involved, it is a CD I am very proud of.


On this song I cranked the distortion big time. I used a sans amp preamp for most of the distorted sounds on this record. I used a slide for the A and B Sections and some cool hammer on stuff in the C Section. This song reminds me of a groove Aerosmith would have done on their earlier records. the outro is a poly-rhythmic phrase, a 7 over 4 kind of thing a la Dream Theater.


This is a slow funk/rock thing in A minor. On the clean rhythm parts I used a wah wah pedal. I doubled the melody and recorded the lower octave of it. The chorus goes through a more involved chord progression with a harmonized melody. Paul Stiller plays a nice keyboard solo on it. My solo is based mainly around the A Aeolian scale and the A Minor Pentatonic.


This song has an odd time signature of 11//8 in the A section. Of course Mike is the master of odd time signatures and totally killed this tune. This has a cool synth bass line a la Jeff Beck "There and Back". I use slide guitar again in the A sections. Then in the B section the time goes to a 4/4 and this is where my wife Jennifer does her voice over with a cool lyric written by a friend of mine Janet O'Donnell. Here it is:
Envisioning, desiring, aspiring toward
Believing it-for a moment, yet gaining reason,
Seeing hope tucked in place

Stretching, straining, reaching out
Grasping it-for a time then loosing hold
Watching doubt snatch it away

Pressing, driving, gaining ground
Taking it-for once, but sliding back
Letting fear pull my weight

Falling, hurting, giving in
Yielding it forever, facing myself
Nevertheless, Passions stir anew

I love this lyric because it's all about the typical 2 steps forward 1 step back then maybe even 2 or 3 steps back. Boy, fulfilling your dreams takes much effort, desire, resilience, passion and a lot of obstacles, setbacks and disappointments along the way. But with a "nevertheless" attitude nothing is impossible. OK enough of the philosophical stuff and back to the music. On the guitar solo, Mike and I go crazy (that is why i called the song Frenzy). I use a lot of harmonics and whammy bar stuff. Basically just making joyful noise! And Mike is adding fills around my stuff. This solo is in 11/8. During the outro I added some subliminal voice overs of my own. Nothing that you could really make out but they were Biblical passages mixed in with the music. Cool!


The inspiration for this song came from my relationship with God. When you have lived long enough and have been through enough turmoil I believe most people realize that there has got to be more than just these few years we have on this earth and the only way to get the most of this life now and thereafter is by following the author of life. O Boy, there I go again, I just can't help it. Well, Keith Reed laid down some lush keyboard pads that made it easy for me to lay down the melody. I also love the ascending chord progression in the B Section. The outro of the song goes into a 7/4 section where Mike and I go off a bit. I really feel like Mike and i really connected there and the lush keys add so much.


This song rocks from start to finish. It has a real cool main guitar riff in E. I also use a drop D tuning on this tune. I basically rip in between the main lick using the wah in certain spots.. Then I do a little solo melody using a country style riff in which i use 6th intervals. Then in the C section the time signature goes from a 4/4 to a 5/8 with some cool guitar overdubs and drum fills. Joe then does a nice solo using hammer-ons and poly rhythms. Next comes a concerted rhythm then we are right into the guitar solo where i use the wah wah again. The last section of the of the song goes into a half time feel 6/4 groove. I really love how Mike goes into a 6 over 4 thing that turns the groove around this is all under a nasty chromatic power chord rhythm part.


This is a funk Rock tune in 4/4. I use a harmonizer tuned in 5ths. What's real cool in this tune is the idea Tom Waltz came up with to add a DJ in the mix. We also added some simulated applause to give it sort of a pseudo- live feel. This song is in the spirit of the Jeff Beck fusion stuff. I love how the guitar solo is over a chord whole step up from the key. I played the keyboard solo after the guitar solo. The outro is the same as the solo where it just kicks up a whole step in the chord progression and I use the harmonizer in the outro solo.


This tune is in drop D tuning. I also use my fingers instead of a pick in the opening riffs a la Jeff Beck. I used a slide in the B sections. I really love the Clint Eastwood, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly Keyboard Riff in that section. In he C section I use a soaring lead sound with a cool Hendrix-style rhythm part behind it. Then the guitar solo section goes into a straight 4/4 groove. I start off using some double stops and things. Then the second half of the solo I kick my pickup switch to the next pickup for that deeper tone. the groove there goes into 3 bars of 4/4 and 1 bar of 3/4 meter or you can look at it as 15/4. On the outro I go back into that neck pickup for some Hendrix-style solo fills. Casey Schereuell did a nice job on the drums on this one.


   Casey also played on this one along with some programmed drums. This song is harmonics city. Then I played a melody over the harmonics. I use some harmonics in the b section near the bridge of the guitar which was cool. Joe Santerre cranks a cool bass solo while I am doing some funk rhythms with wah wah. Then after the guitar
Solo I do this thing where I am using the Whammy bar with my left hand while I am triggering Harmonics with my my right hand thumb.


This is is another heavy Rocking Tune. My wife adds her cool voice overs on top of some backward guitar tracks. The lyrics to this one are:
Chains broken,
Fears calmed,
Longings fulfilled,
Hurts relieved,

Backs straightened,
Minds soothed,
Furies doused,
And life's most valued-returned


This song was a tune that keith Reed and Tom Waltz were working on and they had laid down the Keyboard chords, drums and bass. They let me hear it and I began fooling around with the melody and solo and things. After a while I thought, why don't we just loose the drums and bass and make it a ballad kind of thing with just keys and guitar. It became a whole different tune and ended up becoming the title cut off the record!!

<<Back