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Papadosio is a trendsetting, progressive voice in the world of Rock, mixing an electronic sound with improvisation and dashes of psychedelia. The North Carolina-based band has created a groundswell through the musical landscape with steady tour dates and the development of its own festival, Rootwire, in Southeastern Ohio, the group's birthplace. CityBeat caught up with drummer Mike Healy, a Cincinnati native, and chatted about his Ohio roots and the development of the Rootwire Music and Arts Festival. Papadosio storms into Bogarts this Friday night for an evening of high energy and eclectic sounds. Click here for tickets and further information.
CityBeat: I wanted to ask you about the Rootwire Festival. How did you guys start the festival and decide on the location?
Mike Healy: Some of us went to school in Athens, Ohio, and we actually played some festivals there before we started doing Rootwire six or seven years ago. We checked out the property and really liked it and had an idea to do a festival ourselves from traveling a lot and making so many awesome friends across the country we could collaborate with and create an amazing event. We decided (on) that land because we had previously visited it, Kaeppner Woods, outside of Athens in Logan. It is absolutely beautiful, some of the oldest mountains in the world in the Appalachian foothills. There is a lot of great energy there, it's beautiful and it just couldn't be a more perfect place to throw a festival the last four years. That's how that place came about. The festival, we have just been collaborating with so many amazing friends. We just invite our friend bands and friend artists from all over the country and installation artists from all walks of life. It's just been an absolutely amazing time for four years.
CB: I saw the band for the first time this year at the All Good festival (in Thornville, Ohio). Listening to your music, it feel like there is a little bit of a spiritual element to it. Do you guys consider yourself spiritual or religious and how does that inspire your music?
MH: I would say that none of us are religious. There are definitely all sorts of messages throughout our music of some sort of divine connection to Mother Earth and taking care of the place we live and taking care of others and loving others, all kinds of common things we like to talk about. I guess if you want to call it spiritual you can — we call it a no-brainer. You love your neighbor you take care of each other. You want peace in the world and all these universal values I feel like people can connect to. There are definitely a lot of those messages in our music. I don't find any of us to be religious at all. Music is our religion, honestly. We are always searching for alternative thinking. We are all into the green movement and really into eco-building and sustainable living and alternative energy. All these things are on our mind a lot and we speak about them in music.
CB: The band has relocated from Ohio to Asheville, N.C. I heard you moved to a cabin somewhere outside of town. You must be together as a band a lot of the time — or all the time. Is it hard being around each other so much?
MH: We actually don't live in that cabin anymore. We are spread out around town living with our girlfriends and stuff. We do spend a lot of time together. We are on the road 200 days a year. We are always just hanging out on the tour bus together. Even when we are home we still get together and hang out. We are a big ol' band of brothers (and) just love spending time together. We really enjoy making music and we are all really great friends. It is totally insane. We are gone all the time and it is hard on our ladies, spending so much time away. It's quite the crazy lifestyle. It is not for everyone. We love it. We try to do the best to make it work.
CB: What is your favorite part of being on the road?
MH: Definitely playing music every night. That is what we live for. The whole set up and tear down and all the long hours of waiting around are not so fun, but once you get on stage and are able to create and get people dancing and seeing all these smiling faces everywhere, that definitely fuels us. Some of the favorite times too are when we are on the road and have a couple days off that we get to go do beautiful things like go visit beautiful national parks or go on some crazy hikes or go relax at a really nice hotel or someone's house. Those kind of times we look forward to because it is nice to relax and see friends all around the country.
CB: What is your favorite song to play live?
MH: That's a hard one. We have like 50 songs that we have in rotation. I love all of them. I really like playing a new one that Anthony (Thogmartin) wrote called "New Love." (There) are really fun new songs we have been playing live a lot in every town. Everybody has been really digging it. It is hard to pick a favorite because I love all the material.
CB: The band has played a lot of festivals, particularly around Ohio. Do you have a favorite festival moment?
MH: There are so many. I guess we love playing All Good every year, because those have been some of the biggest crowds we have ever got to play in front of. We got to play on the main stage last year in front of 15-20,000 people. Previous years … we got to play after Flaming Lips one year and right before Primus one year and those crowds were like 30,000 people. It was totally insane. It was so cool. Those are definitely high moments. Obviously Rootwire is a big moment.
We have started playing some festivals on the West Coast and all over the country. We are really enjoying trying new ones out. We have played so many in the Midwest and East Coast and it has been so nice to try some new festies out west. This year we are doing some of our first international plays. We are really excited to go down to Central America and play … in December. There is so much going on.
CB: Can you describe your songwriting process?
MH: There (are) several different ways we go about doing it. We will have a jam session and we come up with a song on the spot and write it together in the rehearsal room, and somebody will have a riff and we will go around adding pieces of the puzzle together as a group. Other times, somebody will have almost a completely finished song idea and bring it to the table. People will learn their parts and put their own flare on it. Sometimes someone will have half a song and come to somebody else to help finish it and someone else will write lyrics.
It all depends on what is happening during the creative process. Sometimes we will be on tour sitting on our laptops and all of a sudden a riff will come to our heads and we will start writing the song while sitting on the van or the bus and then bring it back after (the) tour and bring it to the band and go from there. Sometimes we are walking through the woods and we get an idea in our head and sing it into our phone real quick and then we will go back later and hop on the computer and our instruments and figure it out and bring it to the band later. It just comes to you sometimes. It's crazy how it works. It is part of the creative process — you just never know when you will get an idea that will pop into your head and you have to jot it down somehow.
CB: Being with the band in Athens, I am sure you have spent a little time in Cincinnati. Do you have any fond Cincinnati stories from the past?
MH: Oh yeah. I grew up in Cincinnati. I lived there until I was 18 and then I went to Athens for school for seven years and then I moved down to Asheville. I've been playing drums since I was 3 years old and I have been in a band non-stop since fourth grade, so from fourth grade all the way through senior year I was in so many different projects. I played at Bogarts all the time for the Battle of the Bands in high school and got a lot of exposure back then with my younger bands. Now it's full circle and now my band Papadosio is back playing at Bogarts again. We played there last year for the first time since high school. It was great. It has a lot of memories for me (from) when I was younger.
CB: Where did you go to high school here?
MH: I went to Clark Montessori in Hyde Park. I played in a steel drum band all through junior high and high school too and played all over the city and also toured the country. I played in Hip Hop bands and Rock & Roll bands, Metal bands, Alternative Rock bands, all sorts of bands in Cincy, as well as steel drum ensembles and the steel drum band in high school. I was quite the busy musician all throughout my childhood.
CB: This is basically a hometown show for you, so it will be fun to be back.
MH: It's great — so many friends and family.
Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights (JTNL) is a Texas-born/California-based Rock band with a bluesy, rootsy edge that has been a workhorse on the road, touring anywhere and everywhere since forming in 2007. Along with tour jaunts with musical giants like ZZ Top, JTNL has also been very popular on the festival scene, every summer playing to large crowds all over the country. Although the band hasn't released an album since 2010's major label debut, Pardon Me (on F-Stop Music/Atlantic), there was promise of a lot of new music on their current tour when Tyler spoke with CityBeat recently. JTNL plays Bogart's this Wednesday with friends and fellow rockers Taddy Porter. (Click here for tickets and further show info.)
CityBeat: You are currently on tour with Taddy Porter. How did this tour come about?
Jonathan Tyler: We have toured with them a lot in the past. Both of our bands formed around the same time. I think about three or four years ago. We started playing shows together and became friends. When we were looking into a tour this fall, their name came up and everybody was really excited about it. It just came together naturally.
CB: You have been touring pretty extensively since 2007. What is the best part of being on the road for you?
JT: I love playing music live. There is something really special about it. It is one of my favorite things to do. It is really fun to get in front of a live audience and play songs and to just kind of get that energy going between the crowd and the band. It is fun to see what happens, a lot of unique, special, unexpected things happen sometimes and it makes it more fun. It is always fun to try out new songs on people as well.
CB: Are you guys working on new music currently?
JT: Oh yeah, pretty regularly, all the time. We will be playing new songs at the Cincinnati show.
CB: What does the perfect day look like for you?
JT: Well, I live in California so I love to go to the beach and I love to surf and I love to eat good food and spend time with my girlfriend. When I am on the road, I love to walk around. We usually travel during the day, early in the morning, to the city we are playing in. We will set up our gear and we usually have a few hours off. I try to find a good restaurant in town and try out new places basically. I try to see what the city is all about.
CB: I know you are in different cities every day so it all merges together sometimes.
JT: Yeah. For some reason we haven't played Cincinnati very much. I don't know why. We are looking forward to it.
CB: At one point weren't you living in Texas?
JT: Yeah, that is where the band was formed. I moved in January to California.
CB: What music are you currently listening to that is inspiring you?
JT: There is a lot of different stuff. I really like the band Endless Boogie from New York. It is like a ZZ Top style Rock & Roll band. I really like those guys. There's some Electronic music also that I like, which probably doesn't seem likely because I play Rock music and it may surprise some people. I listen to a lot of different music, really anything that will inspire me. I'm also really into Bruce Springsteen right now.
CB: Some people are saying that Rock is dying. Do you believe that, with the popularity of EDM and other genres of music, that is happening right now?
JT: Yeah, I do. I think it will come back around. I think everything kind of goes in cycles. I think it is easier right now for musicians to do the Electronic thing because it is cheaper. You can just make it with one person really. You don't need an entire band to make tracks and people are making recordings out of their houses. The whole industry is turned up on its side. It's interesting for sure, but I think Rock is always going to live on.
CB: If you could trade places with anyone for a month who would it be?
JT: I have to think about that. I really don't want to be anyone else. That's a hard one. I honestly can't say.
CB: Do you have any habits you'd like to break?
JT: So many. Smoking cigarettes would probably be the No. 1 thing. I guess I don't want to break it that badly since I still do it.
CB: What can the fans look forward to in Cincinnati next week?
JT: They can look forward to some new music. We will probably play a lot of new songs. They can look forward to a high-energy Rock & Roll show.
CB: I have seen you many times over the years. I look forward to it. It is always high energy and great Rock & Roll.
JT: Well thanks, I appreciate that. We will probably play half new music and half of the older songs. I think people will be happy to come out and see something different if they have seen us before, but maybe hear the songs they love as well.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd has brought a youthful side to American Blues music ever since the great success of his first album, Ledbetter Heights,
which went platinum and reached No. 1 on the Blues charts. He was just
17 at the time of the album's release and has gone on to put out several
more successful Rock/Blues albums with his Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band,
featuring Cincinnati's Noah Hunt on lead vocals.
Shepherd has developed a new exciting project called The Rides with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Stephen Stills and Barry Goldberg, a veteran musician who formed The Electric Flag with Mike Bloomfield in the late '60s and has written and produced many classics. The Rides are performing at the Ohio River Throwdown, a new Roots music festival, this Saturday at Riverbend Music Center, playing alongside other acts like Tedeschi Trucks Band, JJ Grey and the Mofro, Los Lobos and many other artists. CityBeat chatted with Shepherd recently about his new project.
CityBeat: I saw behind the scenes videos of The Rides recording in the studio together. What was your favorite experience being in the studio with the other two guys?
Kenny Wayne Shepherd: Well, the whole thing was a really good experience. Everybody had a really great time doing the record. It's just very interesting. You look back over the course Stephen's career, and Barry as well, and these guys have made some really tremendous records in their time. They have also been on so many albums and done this for so many years that they have accumulated a vast wealth of knowledge of how to do things in the studio. For me, even though I have had my recording career for 20 years now, I still consider myself to be like a sponge, just trying to soak up as much information as I can. I learned a lot from those guys and it was a really good time.
CB: Where did the name of the band actually originate?
KWS: We were putting our heads together. It went on for two weeks. One of the hardest things to do is to come up with a band name, at least it can be one of the most challenging things to do. A lot of the reasons why it is so hard to do nowadays is because almost every name has been used. Everything we came up with, we would go back home and I would look it up online and do a Google search and someone would have that name and we would start over again.
We spent a lot of the time in the studio between recordings … Stephen and I are both big car guys, I mean we love cars. Stephen and his wife have some of the most incredible cars you could hope to own. I have a pretty cool collection myself. We spent a good bit of time talking about cars and driving and stuff like that. As we were exploring name options for the band, one day we were at Stephen's house and I had driven my 1964 Dodge to his house and we were walking out to the driveway to leave and he just looked at my car and said, "You know we should be called 'The Rides.' " I was like, "Yeah. That's cool." I went home and checked and couldn't find anybody with that name. So here we are.
CB: What is your favorite car you have?
KWS: I don't know. I would say right now my 1969 Dodge Charger, and I think it is one of the most beautiful, one of the most visually stunning cars that was ever designed. Probably that one is my favorite.
CB: I have listened to the new album and I really, really love it. What is your favorite song to play on the new album?
KWS: I go through phases when I do a new record like, "Right now this is my favorite song …" and then a few months from now a different one is my favorite one. Currently my favorite is "Can't Get Enough," the title track. That song is a great representation of this band and what we are about. It is one of the songs we wrote together. It has great, heavy guitars. It has got really, good lyrics. Even the vocal is nice and raspy and bluesy. There are lots of dynamics to that song and I think it is just really a great representation of who we are as a group.
CB: Typically you are touring with your band by yourself. What was it like splitting singing duties with Stephen?
KWS: I split singing duties, to a degree, in my own band. I have Noah Hunt, who is from Cincinnati, he has been my lead vocalist for 17 years. But over the past few years of my career, I have stepped up here and there to the microphone when I wanted to, and on the last record we recorded, Noah and I sang a lot of songs together. I have kind of started to integrate that idea into my own band even though I tend to let Noah sing most of the songs because he has such an incredible voice and it enables me more to focus more on my guitar playing. There is certainly, in this band, more vocal responsibility for me. I really wanted to do it. It is pretty cool. Like being around Stephen, who is so well known for his singing and vocals, it has been inspiring to me to step up to the microphone and sing more.
CB: I thought I saw Noah at the Peter Frampton show in Cincinnati.
KWS: He was there. He went to the show because we had just been on the road with Peter over the past two months, we had done some shows with him. Noah wanted to go hang out and see everybody when they came through town so he went.
CB: What is the favorite guitar you have ever played?
KWS: The one I am most attached to is my 1961 Stratocaster. It is the first Strat I ever got.
When you are a guitar player you hear this story about how there is this one guitar that is your soulmate. There is one guitar out there that was built for you. You know it the minute you pick it up and start playing it. Some guys go their entire lives trying to find it. I found this guitar when I was just 15 years old. The minute I picked it up, it fit me like a glove. I did everything I could to get it, I couldn't afford it at the time, then later on, the following year, it was in Los Angeles at the Guitar Center. Then I came back a year later and it was still there. I still didn't have the money to afford it, but I decided I wasn't leaving the store without it. I told my Dad, he was like "We gotta go." I'm like, "I'm not leaving without this guitar." Between him, the guy at my record company, my A&R guy, my music attorney, they decide they would split the cost up on their credit cards as long as I agreed to pay them back. I did. That guitar has been with me ever since. It has toured the world with me and been on every record I have ever done. It is just my baby.
CB: That is a great story. I have interviewed so many guitar players and nobody has talked to me about their soulmate guitar before.
KWS: Yeah, well, it really is. I don't know about those guys but there is a bond between me and that instrument. I feel like all guitar players have their go-to instrument and there should be a really solid connection between them and the instrument.
CB: Social media has become invaluable with marketing music and musicians. When you are on the internet, in general, where do you spend most of your time?
KWS: I am a creature of habit and repetition when it comes to browsing the web. I have a couple of sites I look at every day. I go online and get my daily dose of the news. I usually go to AOL, because half of their stories report the news and the other half are like looking at a tabloid magazine. They have some really weird stuff they put up there.
I have a couple car enthusiast websites, like there is a website called Moparts.org which is for all Mopart Car enthusiasts. I love the Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth brands, so I am a Mopart guy.
There are a couple guitar pages that I go onto to see what is going on in the world of guitar. I check in, there is a page called thegearpage.net, then I go to the Fender Forums and Fender.com.
I am also obsessed with the new Tesla Electric cars. I have been browsing their forums a lot educating myself on their technology and stuff. I am kind of a geek when it comes to cars and all things mechanical.
CB: Can you tell us what the fans can expect from The Rides' live show in Cincinnati?
KWS: We just rehearsed, we just had four days to rehearse for this tour and none of us had played any of these songs since we recorded the album back in December. So I guess with my schedule with my band and Stephen and his band, we had a very narrow window of opportunity to prepare for this tour.
We are basically going to do the album and throw in a few songs from my catalog and Stephen's catalog and stuff that Barry wrote that other people recorded. The whole goal is to be loose and have a good time and just play music together. They'll hear a little bit of my stuff, a little bit of Steven's stuff, a little bit of Barry's stiff, then they'll hear the whole (Rides) record.
Lightnin' Malcolm is an emerging driving force in the genre of underground Blues as a member of the North Mississippi All-Stars and also as a solo artist. Alongside counterpart Carl Gentle White aka "Stud" on drums, the dichotomy of their two styles produces a rough, soulful sound that reminds folks of Blues legends like Lightnin' Hopkins and Howlin' Wolf. Audiences should be prepared to dance, party and delight in Malcolm's deep Mississippi sounds tonight at the Southgate House Revival. Malcolm is opening for and playing alongside the North Mississippi All-Stars. Showtime is 8 p.m.
CityBeat: I know you have an album coming out on Sept. 10. Can you tell me a little bit about it?
Lightnin' Malcolm: Well, it is 14 original songs and they have quite a few different styles on them. It is all based on my style, which is based on the hard driving, raw boogie North Mississippi Hill Country style. It is mostly (the) guitar and drums duo but we add some horns on a few tracks. We have Luther Dickinson playing slide on a few songs. So it is a pretty good mix of stuff.
CB: I was listening to some of it this week. I love "My Life is a Wreck." Can you tell me the story behind that song?
LM: Well, that is a semi-autobiographical piece. One of my greatest influences was T Model Ford and he recently passed and that song was based on a style he had on the guitar. His grandson Stud is playing drums with me now. That was the first song we did in the studio. That was his first song recording and I thought it was a great way to feature it. My music depends on a great drummer. Drums are so important to the music and he is one of the best. I have known Stud since he was like 1 years old. He grew up watching me play drums with his granddad. He knows the style of drums that I like, the raw, four on the floor, predator style, no messing around. Just raw and making people dance. By us knowing each other so long, he is like my little baby brother. We have this chemistry together that works so well.
CB: I watched some videos of you two playing together. It is super high energy and looks like a lot of fun.
LM: Yeah, that is the key to it all. We don't have to hit a note exactly right or (do flashy) guitar solos. We just try to create as much … fun for the people as we can. We just want to see people party and have fun.
CB: How old were you when you picked up your first guitar?
LM: I was about 10 or 12. Before that, I really wanted to be a drummer. I used to beat on buckets and pots and pans, put the radio on and play along with them. I didn't have any actual drums and I finally got a hold of a little piece of guitar. I didn't know how to tune it or nothing, but I fell in love with the strings in my hand. It took a while to learn how to tune it because I didn't have anybody around me to show me at that time. Once I learned how to tune it, I started learning pretty fast. It just became everything to me. I look at the guitar like some people look at The Bible. It is like a vehicle for something later. I leave Earth. I can go on a vacation in my backyard with a guitar. I can escape to a whole other world with it.
CB: I know you eventually moved to Mississippi after growing up in Missouri. How did you hook up with some of these great guitar and Blues players in Mississippi?
LM: I just made friends with them. They saw something special in me, I think. I wasn't trying to blow them off stage. I didn't ask them many questions, like how to do things. They noticed whatever they played, I could play back. They hadn't seen too many white guys, or any guys, that could do that. So we just made friends. It was pretty easy. Those were the kind of guys I wanted to be around. They really took me in. They were really nice to me. They never said I wouldn't be able to do it. There was everybody else saying, "You won't be able to do it." They were the guys saying, "You got it. Stick with it."
CB: Alive or dead, what one person would you want to collaborate with if you could?
LM: That's a good question. I think, you know what's funny, there are a lot of people outside of the Blues I'd like to collaborate with nowadays. Of course, like, John Lee Hooker is one of my all time favorites, Howlin' Wolf, there are so many Blues guys. Out of living artists, I'll tell you a guy I love right now, two guys I love, they are more like R&B. (One is an) artist named Lyfe Jennings, I don't know if you've ever heard of him, he's fucking awesome, he's so sincere. Another guy is Anthony Hamilton who is a Soul singer. To me, even though their style is way different than mine, those are guys I really hear singing where I'm like, "Wow, they really hit the ceiling." You don't hear it that much anymore. Everybody is using effects. You really don't hear that wail in that voice. Otis Redding had that, you heard his voice and you just had to see him. You don't hear anybody like that anymore. I know people wouldn't expect that from me, but when I am riding down the highway listening to music, those are two guys I really listen to, that I look up to and would be great to collaborate with.
CB: That leads me into another question. There has been so much publicity recently around Pop music with Miley Cyrus and the VMAs. To me it shows how much more important it is to keep really authentic Blues music in front of people. What are your thoughts on that?
LM: I agree with that. I'm out here fighting the good fight doing what I can. It's not always easy. People have to support what is going on. If people start throwing their money at garbage, you're going to end up with a lot of garbage. I can't speak for the next person but I can say this — there isn't enough hours in the day to listen to great music. There is all the great music you can listen to. There is definitely no time for nonsense. I don't waste time listening to stuff that sounds like garbage. That's just me.
My drummer, Stud, he's young. He was watching the awards the other night and I was laying on the couch trying to sleep. I didn't miss much. The hours in the day are precious. I would use them wisely. You don't have to listen to garbage. That's about the best I can do. If anybody can make some money doing something, good for you, I don't mean it the wrong way. If you ask me about serious music, there is great music out there being made. It is just underground. Maybe it is too real for people. I am not the expert on this type of thing, I just know what I like, I listen to what I like. Even when I was a kid in school, I was listening to way different music. I was listening to Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker and would tell the other kids, "You have got to hear this. Check it out." They just said, "Whatever." I thought maybe when they grew up they would understand.
CB: What can the fans expect from you guys at the Southgate House Revival show?
LM: We are coming to rock y'all. We want y'all to come and have fun and dance and boogie. We want you to get in the groove and forget about everything in the outside world for a couple hours and get in the zone. We want to have a party for y'all. Being on stage can be the funnest thing in the world when it is going right. When it is going wrong, you just want to disappear. It is a funny thing. When it is right, it is right as a motherfucker.
Volbeat has been headlining huge shows in Europe for nearly a decade and now they are bringing their Metal sound to the States. In the position of up-and-comer again, they bring their high level energy to American, which has translated into sold out shows across the country. Currently Volbeat is touring on its new album, Outlaw Gentlemen and Shady Ladies.
CityBeat was able to catch up with new band member and former Anthrax lead guitarist Rob Caggiano in preparation for the band's upcoming show in Cincinnati to discuss the transition into a new band and his broad musical influences that have helped him evolve since childhood. He definitely has brings a strong, veteran presence to a band that was already rising to new heights. Check out Volbeat headlining the Rock Allegiance Tour at US Bank Arena this Sunday with HIM, All That Remains and Airbourne.
CityBeat: Could you tell me about the moment in the studio working with Volbeat on their new album that you realized you really could be in the band or it would be a good fit?
Rob Caggiano: They had asked me to be a part of it two weeks into the process of recording. So it was pretty early on into the whole thing. I think it really stemmed from the first meeting we had when they called me initially when I left Anthrax and put the press release out there. A couple days later I flew to Denmark and sat down with Michael and went over the tunes and then ideas for the new record. We ended up collaborating and making music together. It was such a fun vibe and such a great chemistry. I think that was kind of a catalyst for everything else.
CB: I saw you guys at Rock on the Range for the first time playing together. It was really amazing. What was your favorite Rock on the Range moment this year?
RC: We definitely had a really good time during our show. It was a lot of fun. Rock on the Range, to me, is one of the coolest festivals here in the States. It seems like America is catching up finally with what is going on in Europe with these outdoor festivals. Rock on the Range is very well put together, very organized, just very pro and well done. It's always a good time. I did get a chance to see Lamb of God play, about half their set and that was killer. It was great to see Randy back up on stage.
CB: Has there been any hazing or initiation since you joined the band?
RC: Not really, I was doing all the hazing. It has been pretty cool, pretty seamless, the whole transition. The way it went down, it was very organic and felt very comfortable from the beginning. It has been cool. We are having a blast.
CB: I know it must have been a difficult decision to leave Anthrax which had been your job for the last 12 years. What were the factors for moving on?
RC: I just had this feeling of being stuck. I just felt like I was on a conveyor belt, doing that for so long. I still love those guys dearly and they are like my family. I just wasn't happy. It got to the point where I just wasn't happy and I was questioning myself and what I am doing here. What are we doing? What's going to happen in the future? I just came to the conclusion I needed a change.
I think the main part of the problem was that Anthrax was never a creative outlet for me. By no choice of my own, that was just the way it had been. I think after all those years my heart wasn't in it anymore and I needed something different. It was definitely an emotional, difficult decision to make but it was something that needed to be done.
CB: What is your favorite guitar solo to play on the new Volbeat record and out on tour?
RC: I have two favorites. I enjoy playing the "Lola Montez" solo and the "Doc Holliday" solo.
CB: I know you have been producing for several years helping out bands and doing Anthrax and Volbeat records. Do you ever see yourself stepping out of Rock or Metal and producing other genres? There are a lot of collaborations happening right now with different genres of music.
RC: Absolutely. I never saw myself as a solely a Metal producer. To be honest, when I am at home, I don't really listen to Metal. It's probably because it is what I do all the time. My influences are really varied and I listen to so many different albums and genres of music. I just consider myself a musician. I put 100% of my heart into whatever I am working on. With all these different influences, I can definitely do a lot of different things and have done a lot of different things in the past.
CB: What are you listening to right now? What is influencing you?
RC: My favorite record right now, if we are talking about new bands and newer records, is this band called The National. I think (they're) phenomenal.
CB: They are actually from Cincinnati.
RC: Yeah, it seems like they are doing pretty well all over the world. Their new record is phenomenal. I think it is just great, the production is amazing, the songs are great. I have never met the band. I had heard the name but I had never heard the music. We were doing a record signing in Copenhagen and I asked one of the girls at the store what was her favorite record, what should I check out, what came in that is the new hot record. She said to get the new National record. I said "Ok, I'll give it a shot." She was right. I dig it. I like Lana Del Rey too.
CB: Do you ever plan to sit down and write your Rock biography?
RC: Maybe one day down the road. I don't know if I'm ready yet.
CB: I'm sure you have plenty of stories. What is your craziest tour story with Volbeat right now?
RC: It really isn't that crazy on the road with these guys. It's pretty mellow. It is a very focused thing. We do our show … the thing about being on tour, especially with Volbeat, we are headlining a lot of these festivals in Europe so we are going on late. We get there early at these festival sites and have a whole day of nothing. It is kind of boring just waiting to go on stage. Nothing really crazy has happened yet but I will keep you posted.
CB: I am shocked you haven't seen crazy things at the European festivals with fans.
RC: I guess it depends what you call crazy.
CB: Yeah, your idea of crazy may be different than mine. You may be like, "That's totally normal."
RC: Exactly
CB: What was the name of your first band?
RC: My first band ever was when I was 14 years old. We were called "Wild Heart."
CB: Do you keep in touch with those guys?
RC: Kind of. I saw the other guitar player recently in Florida. He has been a friend of mine forever. The rest of the guys I have not spoken to in a long time.
CB: Do you play any other instruments?
RC: Yeah, I play drums. I play keys. I do our programming when I need to. I just make noise basically. I can pretty much get anything to sound decent. As a kid, I started out playing drums so that has always been in my heart. I went to the guitar from that.
CB: Your parents were supportive of the drums in the house?
RC: Well they bought them. Yeah, my parents were huge supporters of my music. My Dad is really into the music thing. It was definitely a very healthy atmosphere growing up for creativity and inspiration. There was always music around which was cool.
CB: I started hearing about Volbeat and listening to Volbeat about two years ago when they were just coming to the U.S. Obviously they are huge in Europe, beyond headlining. What do you think is the biggest difference so far in the U.S. shows and the European shows?
RC: In the U.S. it is very much on the rise, the shows over here are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. With them, we did two legs, two U.S. legs and every show was killer. Back in 2010, that is when I first met these guys with my other band, The Damned Things, they took us on tour. That's when I first heard the music and met the guys and became friends. Even that tour was sold out every night. It was an awesome tour. Volbeat is definitely on the rise in America. In Europe obviously it is crazy. It is just a really good feeling all around. There is a lot of excitement about this band and the new record, just good vibes.
Shinedown has been touring on its most recent album, Amaryllis, for the last two years and has just started its Carnival of Madness tour to complete touring on the record. It is the band's biggest, brightest and loudest tour yet. With each album, Shinedown's rocking sound shows bigger energy and different sides, as well as different looks.
CityBeat was able to catch up with bass player Eric
Bass to discuss life on tour and the close bond the band members have,
even after all these years. Shinedown will be tearing up the PNC
Pavilion at Riverbend on Saturday night on its Carnival of Madness tour
stop with Papa Roach, In This Moment and Skillet. (The concert is sold out.)
CityBeat: You guys have really been successful with the last couple albums. You have been on the Billboard charts for over two consecutive years. Did you ever expect that would happen?
Eric Bass: Did I ever expect it? I always hoped it would happen, I guess. You work really hard. We have this thing we say: "Keep your head down, stay humble and move forward." We are blown away by the success. To be honest with you, if you had told the 17-year-old me this was what was going to be happening, he'd be ecstatic. I can't say that I expected it to happen. We wanted it to happen. We worked really hard for it. We are not surprised, I guess you could say, because of the hard work. It is a true blessing to be able to do what we do and have the success we have had.
CB: The band has been touring constantly. How do you make time to write new songs on the road?
EB: We actually don't write on the road. We like to separate the two. We go home when we are done with this tour. We will lock ourselves away for a year and write as many songs as we can. Then, when we are done with that, we will go out and tour again and complete the process. We wrote "Diamond Eyes" on tour because it was for a movie soundtrack. That was the first experience we had with that. It worked out and everything went well with it. We work really hard when we are on tour. We are a go-go-go all day long band with interviews, meet and greets and that sort of thing. So there is really not a lot of time to get in and be creative like that. We prefer to separate the two and that creates the situation where each record is pretty different from the others because they are different times and you are not overlapping time periods. You are separating into blocks. It makes the records really interesting.
CB: I have photographed you on your last couple tours. Your shows have grown larger and larger with more pyro and turned into huge Rock shows. How did you guys prepare for Carnival of Madness?
EB: Well we started talking about it two or three months ago and we said, "It's not going to be small." That was the whole thing. We were going to make it as big as we could possibly make it. We are bringing our whole sound system with us. We are bringing our own lights. We are bringing our own pyro. We basically have carnival performers that are out with us. It is just a conscious, concerted effort to, every time, step your game up. We have sort of become known for that when we do these big headlining runs. We don't want to disappoint anybody. People paid good money and want to see a great Rock show and that's what they are going to get.
CB: You actually have carnival performers on stage with you?
EB: We actually do, yes. It's going to be fun. I think everybody is going to really enjoy the show.
CB: The first show was this past weekend. How is it going so far?
EB: We are one down. We have the second one tonight. The first one was great. Internally, we found a couple things we could do differently, do a little bit better. We are definitely going to do that. The first show was great. The crowd was very receptive. It was awesome. I think tonight is going to be even better. Then the Cincinnati show, by that time, we will be well-oiled machines and veterans.
CB: Shinedown has a huge social media presence. Why is it important for you guys to stay connected to your fans in that way?
EB: Because the fans are the reason we get to do what we do. We never forget that. The fans are the boss, the most important thing. The fans buy the tickets, they buy the records. I have to say, and it's going to sound cliché but it's not meant to be, we have the best fans. Our fans are ridiculously loyal. We like to keep up with them. We actually know … you would be surprised how many fans we know. I'll see fans at meet and greets that I will know from Twitter. We keep up with them and we know what's going on. We like to hear what they have to say. They are going to let us know if something is not right. They will let us know if they don't like something, if they like something. It's a great tool to utilize as well. You get instant feedback on what you are doing.
CB: What are your hobbies outside of playing music all the time?
EB: It's kind of funny. I say all my hobbies become my jobs. I produce records. I do a lot of songwriting. I engineer, mix records. A lot of my hobbies have become my job.
I am a golfer. I enjoy golf a lot. More recently, I have started building model airplanes. I needed a quiet hobby I can sit in my house and do. It is something I have found solace in. It may be a little geeky, a little nerdy, but it is fun.
CB: You actually co-wrote "I'll Follow You" correct?
EB: Yep
CB: I love that song. I know it is the new single and it is out, but what is the story behind the song?
EB: The story of the song is pretty interesting. The piano part I had for a couple years. I had been playing it in sound checks. We don't write on the road, but if it's something someone in the band hears, "Hey remember that. Record that." We are pretty in tune with that sort of stuff.
We were out on our acoustic tour that we did on the end of our last record cycle with Will Hoge, a great singer-songwriter from Nashville. Nobody had really said anything about the piano thing I had, so I thought maybe it will be good for Will.
So I hit him up and said, 'On the next day off, I want to show you this piano piece I have got and we can write a song.' He gave me his number and said to give him a call. I gave him a call the day of, I called him like three times, never went to voicemail, never picked up.
The next day, I was like, "I called you three times." He said, "It never came through. I don't know what happened." That day at soundcheck, Brent was like, "What's that thing you are playing?" I was like, "Man, I have been playing it for three years." He finally woke up to it. We actually had the recording that day at sound check kind of going through the song. Some of the lyrics are actually in there from that first time we ever played it through, he and I.
If you fast forward six months when we finally wrote it, finally sat down and wrote the song, it happened seamlessly. We wrote it in like two hours, the whole thing was done. Lyrically, it is about the person in your life who is your best friend, your spouse or your girlfriend, your boyfriend or someone really close to you, that person you will always be there for and they will always be there for you.
CB: The band took a different turn on the latest album, playing with the full orchestra. How did that concept come about?
EB: We talked about how Madness had a lot of string-sections stuff. We just talked while we were writing the record about how to make this record a little bigger and a little more grand. That was the first thing that came up, we need to do something with horns and full orchestra, rather than just string sections.
It was fun. It was a blast to be in there to watch that stuff be recorded, watching your vision come to life was amazing. There is very little that we do that is not a conscious decision. We kind of see what we want to do next. We were talking about our next record the other day on the bus. We will probably start working on that next year. We already kind of got an idea for it of what we want it to be. It is pretty phenomenal to have this type and level of instruments on something you have worked on. You pinch yourself every once in a while because it's so cool.
CB: You guys have been together for some time. Are you all still friends? Do you still hang out?
EB: It's pretty funny, we love each other so much. We all still ride the same bus even though we don't have to. We, all four of us, camp out in the same place. We work out together every day. We eat together every day. We really are brothers. We have our moments of getting agitated with each other and angry with each other. There is something different that I don't see in a lot of bands we travel with. There are some, but they are few and far between. You get a group of people that genuinely like each other and genuinely get along.
I can count on one hand the times I have been up in someone's face in my band, that I have been that angry with someone. We just don't get like that. We talk things out. If there is a problem, we sit down and we are very honest with each other. We don't harbor any animosity toward each other for anything.
"I'll Follow You" is out right now and is a song Brent and I wrote. Everybody in the band is happy as hell about that because it is doing well. "Bully" is a song Brent and Zach wrote, and I was happy as hell that was doing well. A lot of people get caught up in the unimportant stuff, like who makes more money or what's going on with this or who's more popular in the band. We don't care about that stuff. It's about the band, the entire group. We all really care about each other. We hang out when we aren't on tour. It is really a blessing.
CB: It is amazing you guys spend so much time together and it is still like that. There aren't many people I could spend 24 hours a day with?
EB: We see each other more than we see our wives and girlfriends and our families. We are married. We have to get along. There is no way around it. You can tell on stage. We smile at each other on stage. We joke around. We throw picks at each other. It's genuine. It's not an act. You can tell bands on stage that don't like each other, and you can definitely tell bands on stage that do, and we are one of those bands that really like each other.
Click here for a full photo set by Amy Harris of the Carnival of Madness tour stop in Cleveland this past Tuesday.
There is no denying the legendary status of Black Sabbath. They are all Rock & Roll superstars, defining Hard Rock and Metal, both as forms of music and lifestyles. Without Sabbath, we would not have seen the likes of the Metal acts of today, like Slipknot and Tool, or fellow legends like Motorhead and Megadeth, as well as much of Grunge (and all of Stoner Metal).
Frontman Ozzy Osbourne does not see Black Sabbath as a Metal band. At a pre-tour press conference Osbourne elaborated on this: "I've never really liked that—- using that word 'Heavy Metal' — because '80s Metal was all Poison, Motley Crue, Ozzy and so on, and the '70s was a different thing, you know? And it got different in the '90s. I mean, it's like it doesn't have any musical connotations for me."
The new Black Sabbath album, 13, is not a Metal album. It is more like their earliest work together, not the Paranoid or Masters of Reality years, but the time they were grinding it out as a heavy Blues band. This is, of course, not your typical Blues album, nor has Black Sabbath abandoned what made them the legends they have become.
What gave the band the inspiration to produce their first No. 1 album (yes, I repeat, first No. 1) was one simple concept, one simple word — freedom. Ozzy explains, "There's a lot of free spirit, which is what (producer Rick Rubin) was looking for, I suppose. It must have been. We did very well, his idea of a Black Sabbath album."
On Sunday night, Black Sabbath rolls into the Klipsch Music Center in Indianapolis. After nearly 45 years of Black Sabbath, a lot of lineup changes have been made. This is not a different lineup. This is the original crew (minus drummer Bill Ward).
This is Ozzy, clean, sober and still with that distinct sound that no one else in the business can touch. It is guitarist Tony Iommi, who beat cancer while the new album was being made, truly the "Ironman" of the band (as Osbourne refers to him). It is bassist and band lyricist Geezer Butler. Rumors are already flying that this may be their last tour together, so it will be a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience for many.
Here are a few more snippets from the pre-tour press conference to get you fired up. The humbleness and pride really shined through in all of Ozzy's answers.
Q: Hey, I remember back when Sabbath originally got back together in the late 90s and you guys did a lot of touring then into the next decade. The band had tried back then for a time to get a new record together and then it didn't materialize. Can you put your finger on what made things different this go around that did enable you to come up with some pretty raw material?
Ozzy Osbourne: You know what? I was doing this television thing with The Osbournes back then, and I had my own career, and I suppose it was a clash of egos and it just didn't feel right. We tried to force an album. In fact we did — we recorded a demo with a bunch of stuff, which is nothing like the way we used to do. We were forcing it out of ourselves. Whereupon this album, the 13 album (that) just kind of came out, we just clicked. I mean, you know when you're in a band and you go into something that is working. You know, we didn't have to force it. It just came naturally.
Q: When did you realize that?
Ozzy: There's no answer - there's no formula. There's no magic — it just happens or it doesn't. I wasn't really into it (during the earlier attempt). They weren't really into it and you can't force it. It either comes or it doesn't and I said before in the press that the reunion album was going to have to be something special, the most important album of my career.
When it comes out naturally and you get that tickling feeling in your spine and you know you're on a sort of that spiritual thing you sort of — you know that everything's working right, you're not forcing it.
Q: 13 has already proved to be very successful for the band. It's the band's first No. 1 album in the U.S. How does this feel after 45 years?
Ozzy: You know what? You're asking the wrong guy, because when it went to No. 1 in England, it just went No. 1 in England, America, Germany, New Zealand and I'm like, "What?" I mean, I'm still kind of pinching myself, like I'm going to wake up and it's all been a dream, because had this happened in 1972 after Paranoid, I'd have gone, "Oh, yes, OK." But now after 45 years up the road and we get our first No. 1, it's kind of a hard thing to swallow, you know? You just kind of — it's great. I'm not saying I don't want it to be No. 1, but I just don't understand why now, you know? I mean, we've been around for a long time, in one way or another.
Q: OK, so now you've got the album that you wanted. What's the live show going to be like?
Ozzy: You know, all I can say is a month or so ago we were in New Zealand, Australia and Japan, and it was astounding how the reception was. We're going to do some old and we're going to do some new and it's just kind of interesting to be able to do some new stuff because in the past I haven't been able to do a lot of new stuff because of the fact that my range is too high and I couldn't do onstage what I did in the studio.
But now on this, on 13, I sang it in a range that I could do most of them on stage so we did new things, "End of the Beginning", "God is Dead?" and a couple of others, but we couldn't do most of the cuts off the album, if you want to change them around and all. We're not going to go and just do new stuff with very limited old stuff. We're going to do "Paranoid," "Black Sabbath," a good mix of the old stuff as well as the new stuff.
Q: I wanted to see if you could talk about Tony Iommi, just how inspirational for you it was watching your friend battling cancer while making this album, and his courage.
Ozzy: You know, when he came down with cancer, it's been the way of Sabbath. That is, we'd try to get something going again, and the last time, (original drummer) Bill Ward had a heart attack and we couldn't do it then. The easiest part of getting back together with Black Sabbath and doing an album is just sitting down and just saying, "Yes, you know," but then all kinds of crap gets flown in the works.
And Tony kept going. He said, "I've got this lump," and I said, "You know what? If I were you, I'd go and get myself checked out, because you know in a way, it was what I said to Sharon — my wife Sharon went to get checked out early part of of 2000, and she found she had colon cancer, so she had to go and get it checked out." So he came back and he said, they've found I've got lymphoma, and I go, 'This is unbelievable.' Every time we start to get going -—it's like a curse, you know? And believe me, I know from firsthand with my wife that treatment for cancer is not like doing a line of coke and going to a disco. It knocks the crap out of you, you know? But fair play to Tony, it just came down to the studio.
The only thing we had to do was make it easier for him to get treatment. In other words, we started off at my studio in Calabasas, but we all moved to his studio in England, and we all stayed in a hotel for a while to accommodate him, and he would come down to the studio every day. I'd go, "Tony, you're sure you're okay to do this, man, are you ready?" And he goes, "No I'll do it," and he came down, he came up with the goods.
I thought my God, man, he is "Ironman." You know, I mean, my hat goes off to him, because I mean, believe me, I don't know if you have ever known anybody who had chemotherapy before, but that really knocks the life out of you, man.
Q: I'm just curious what the impetus was that — when you called Tony back in 2010 and said, you know, let's get the band back together, I want to make another Sabbath album, what was going through your mind at that time?
Ozzy: I can't really remember who called who. I think it originally was me and Tony doing an album and then we tried various bass lines and we tried the instruments out and we tried a whole bunch of people, and I don't know who said, what's Geezer up to and, you know, and it just kind of came together by accident and we all started to write stuff and it started to gel. Whereas we tried before and we all sat there and it just wouldn't —- it … just wouldn't work, you know.
But it came together very naturally and it wasn't too long to where it was like, 'I like that, that's pretty cool,' and so you can't force anything, right? You can just, you can try and be Black Sabbath, but we all knew that we didn't want to put an album out called Black Sabbath, just for the sake of us guys getting together and doing stuff together. At one point there was even talk like not calling it a Black Sabbath album, but eventually it rolled into itself.
Q: I wanted to ask about the lyrics on the album. Now I know Geezer has a big hand in that. How does the process work? Who create the lyrics?
Ozzy: Well, what happens is I get a melody, and I'll just sing anything, and sometimes it can be like a beginning or a hook line or a couple of words that he gets inspiration from. He's the main lyricist, although I wrote a couple of the sets of lyrics on the album, but Geezer gives Black Sabbath's vocal message verbally. I mean, over the years, he's given me some phenomenal lyrics, you know.
He's just one of these guys that can do that. I get an idea like "God is Dead?" for instance. One day I was in the doctor's office waiting room, and Time magazine was just sitting on the front with "God is Dead?" and I thought, 'Wow, that's a good idea,' and I started singing that on the track, you know, the "God is Dead?" bit.
You know, I thought, 'They've flown planes into the World Trade Center under the name of religion and God and all this shit, and that is not my idea of what God should be.' My idea of what God should be is a good guy, you know? I don't think there's any good in killing people in the name of your God. And so Geezer — that was my idea — and Geezer took it to another level.
Q: Did you ever have to have discussions about things that he writes that you might not agree with?
Ozzy: No, no.
Q: Is there ever a back and forth?
Ozzy: He's very careful. I mean, if you listen to the lyrics on "God is Dead?" at the end of the song it says, "I don't believe that God is dead." people just look at the face value of the title, and I know on this tour we're going to have Bible thumpers and people picketing us and people telling us that we're evil and all that. We kind of laugh at it, because people just go the face value (of) "God is Dead?" and it's all about Satan and it's just quite amusing, actually, because they don't really know what they're complaining about.
Q: This is just a little bit off-topic. In the movie God Bless Ozzy Osbourne, I noticed toward the end you were learning to drive. I just wanted to know what was going on with that.
Ozzy: See what happened, I got a driving license, bought a Ferrari, I bought an RA Spider, and the people would get out of the bloody road when Ozzy was driving, I'm telling you. I was always getting stopped by the cops or running into somebody else's car, so one day I said to my wife, "You know what? I'm 64. I don't really want to be found dead in a Ferrari." I've survived this long of all my trials over my life. I don't want to drive over a cliff in a car, so I haven't really been driving since I sold the Ferrari and the RA.
Peter Frampton is a true guitar legend, revered by every single one of his peers. As his Guitar Circus tour rolls into town this week, crowds will be amazed by the beautiful music from his catalog of 40 years of music, as well as performances by Blues legend B.B. King and special guests Sonny Landreth and Dave Hidalgo (Los Lobos).
CityBeat caught up with Frampton in advance of Wednesday's tour stop at Riverbend's PNC Pavilion and discussed how this tour concept came together and what it has been like working with one of his heroes on a nightly basis.
CityBeat: What has been the highlight of Frampton's Guitar Circus so far?
Peter Frampton: It is hard to say because we have had so many incredible guitar players play with us already. The list is growing every day. From the other night, Vinnie Moore to Vince Gill to Don Felder to Roger McGuinn. It is like every night is so different. Every night is a highlight with all of these amazing players. Sometimes we only have someone for one night because of scheduling, like Vinnie Moore was only one night. John Jorgenson was only one night from Elton John's band, who is also a wonderful Jazz artist (and) was with me on my Fingerprints CD. Some nights we get one, some nights we get three and sometimes we are lucky enough and we get Don Felder for six (shows) and Roger McGuinn for six (shows). They are all split up and don't happen at the same time. I can't really pick one.
CB: When did you come up with the idea and how did you bring it all together for the tour this year?
PF: It was last year after my little sabbatical, my year off after the Comes Alive (anniversary) tour. I was going, "What can I follow this with?" because it was a very successful tour and probably one of the most successful tours I have done in years.
It was one of those things where I said I have got to do something with other artists. We had been doing shows for quite a few years now with just me, "An Evening with," as it were. It was something I wanted to do with as many guitarists as I could, to have an opening act with a great guitar player and then have some guests. The idea was there. I sat down with my manager Ken Levitan and I said what I wanted to do. He said, "Why don't we call it something like a 'guitar circus'?" I said that was great. It was fantastic. I have to give him credit. He came up with the idea and then we have as many guests as we can along the way.
At that point, we decided we would try to have a three-act show, which is what it is in Cincinnati, where it is Sonny Landreth opening it up. He is not an opening act, he just starts the evening because he is a headliner himself. He is a phenomenal player and has such a great history. We have him starting the evening off for us with his amazing band and himself.
The person that when we first put our feelers out (for) who might be interested in coming along with us on the Guitar Circus and said yes was B.B. King, which blew me away. That set the whole tone for the whole Guitar Circus because everyone said, "If B.B. King is doing it, I've got to do it." It gave us great credibility right from the start. So B.B. King will come on. We played for the first time with him the other night. I got to sit in and jam with him, which was a dream come true.
After B.B. goes off we come on and do our hour and a half. During that period, David Hidalgo will come on, he is our guest in Cincy, from Los Lobos. He has played a couple dates with us already and it is incredible. We become Los Lobos and it is phenomenal. It is just great. It is very exciting every night. It is a challenge to be that person's band when they come on. I've got an excellent band so we do a really good job.
CB: You mentioned B.B. King, who is an all-time legend. What do you talk to B.B. King about backstage?
PF: Well, I went back and saw him when he arrived in his own bus. I thanked him for being the reason why this whole tour is being successful, because he was the first person to say yes. I said, "Not only is it an honor that you are on one date, but you are on nearly four weeks of dates with me, every night." I just couldn't thank him enough. He said he was thrilled to be a part of it. I think there is a mutual respect as guitarists, definitely my way. To be able to sit and play with him the night before last was incredible. He is going to be 88 and he is still doing it. It is absolutely incredible that he is, and we are all thrilled that he is. He is just the sweetest guy. You wouldn't think that someone as legendary as him is that nice but he is. He is a sweet, sweet man. You can't believe it. It is how you wish everybody could be when you meet them. He takes the cake that is for sure.
CB: I can hear you smiling through the phone just talking about playing with him.
PF: It doesn't get any better. It is one of those moments I won't ever forget. I am not sure I will be doing it every night. I hope so. He said I can tell him what I want to do and walk out and play. He means what he says. I am just getting to know him. It is unbelievable that we had never met before until the other night. Now it feels like we have known each other for years.
CB: I saw you recently perform this Spring on The Voice. You went on with Terry McDermott during the finals. A lot of artists are coming out and speaking negatively about shows like this that try to make people stars overnight because they don't have to pay their dues over years. Do you have any feelings about that?
PF: I am not a big fan of those shows in general. The part that I don't like is that it is this nationwide talent show. These people come on, and it's their fault, they put themselves in that position to have someone ream them on national TV. I sort of cringe every time I see that, (no matter how) rightly or wrongly how the judge is.
I have been asked to be a judge on those things. You will never see me as a judge. I would be saying everybody stays. That's not me. I know what I like and everything, and I will say it in private, but I am not going to say, "You suck and get out of here," which is basically what happens.
They asked me over a weekend, like two days before the show, if I would do The Voice. I asked them to fill me in and tell me what it was about. Then I listened to Terry and liked him a lot, all his clips and everything. I thought it was just excellent. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to go on there and do a duet. For me it was just a performance within one of those types of shows. I wasn't part of voting anybody on or off. It was something I enjoyed doing and I think it came off really well. We got such a demand for the song, we mixed it and released it as a single. So it is on iTunes as well.
CB: What is your favorite guitar to play?
PF: I just got my Phoenix back, that is what it has been called. It is the guitar that was supposedly lost and burnt up in the plane crash in South America in Venezuela. After having that back for a year and a bit now, it is definitely my favorite. I have other favorites, but there is something about that one and the history, you know of me getting it in time to play on Humble Pie's live record, Rockin' the Fillmore, and everything I did in the 70s, all my solo records. It was one of only two electric guitars that I had. To have that back, it has become my favorite again overnight.
CB: I own a few Jim Marshall photographs and one is of you at Oakland Stadium in 1975. Do you remember that day? Obviously that photograph is iconic itself, but is there anything special about that day in California? Did that photo change you in any way?
PF: In San Francisco and Detroit and New York, we were already pulling huge crowds just from word of mouth and the solo albums I had out, and obviously my time with Humble Pie. I think that was the very first time we did it at a stadium. There is nothing quite like looking out to 65,000 people … I think the biggest place we had played was Madison Square Garden. There is a huge energy-level discrepancy between an arena and a stadium. There is nothing quite like the adrenaline it gives you to see 65,000 people with their hands in the air shouting at you. You never forget that first time. There were many after that in stadiums, but that first one was pretty incredible.
CB: I speak to a lot of guitar players. I spoke to one the other day that said a guitar broke up his relationship. Have you ever had a guitar break up a relationship?
PF: No, but it has come really close. The guitar, she is the other woman, always. The passion you have for music is very strong and it does come with jealousy sometimes when you prefer to play the guitar than be with the woman.


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UK Software Chart: FIFA 14 takes another No.1 as Aliens stays afloat during week of January 18thWritten by: / / 1 Comment
It's a tale of non-movers and slight shakers this week on Chart Track's UK Software Sales listing as FIFA 14 (sales down 23%) manages to rack up an impressive eight weeks at the top of the chart – EA and EA Sports just have to hold on to the top spot for two more weeks to equal Zumba Fitness' amazing record of ten No. 1 placements.
Elsewhere, Call of Duty: Ghost (sales down 39%), Battlefield 4 (sales down 36%) and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (sales down 31%) all remain where they were last week, at No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 respectively. LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (sales down 12%) shakes things up a bit by stepping up one place to No. 5, while Killzone: Shadow Fall (sales down 6%) is up two places to No. 6.
Need For Speed: Rivals (sales down 28%) sits at No. 7 again, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition (sales down 7%) moves up from No. 9 to No. 8, Grand Theft Auto V (sales down 56%) slides to No. 9 from No. 5, and Aliens: Colonial Marines (sales down 10%) continues its Top Ten appearances this week.
Mario Party: Island Tour is the only debut title this week, showing up at No. 18 during its first week on sale in the UK.
The Top Twenty All Format UK Software Sales Chart follows below:
- 2.) Call of Duty: Ghosts (Activision)
- 3.) Battlefield 4 (EA)
- 4.) Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Ubisoft)
- 5.) LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (Warner Bros. Interactive)
- 6.) Killzone: Shadow Fall (SCE)
- 7.) Need For Speed: Rivals (EA)
- 8.) Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition (Microsoft Studios)
- 9.) Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games)
- 10.) Aliens: Colonial Marines (SEGA)
- 11.) Just Dance 2014 (Ubisoft)
- 12.) Forza Motorsport 5 (Microsoft Studios)
- 13.) Football Manager 2014 (SEGA)
- 14.) WWE 2K14 (2K Sports)
- 15.) Batman: Arkham Origins (Warner Bros. Interactive)
- 16.) NBA 2K14 (Take 2)
- 17.) Dead Rising 3 (Capcom)
- 18.) Mario PArty: Island Tour (Nintendo)
- 19.) LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (Warner Bros. Interactive)
- 20.) Dead Island: Riptide (Deep Silver)
You can read last week's UK Software Sales Chart over here.
Source: Chart Track
Tags: assassinscreed4blackflag, battlefield4, callofdutyghosts, fifa14, ukcharts

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Absolut Icebar Stockholm Review
On a recent trip to Stockholm, I dropped in to the Absolute Icebar Stockholm. It was cool, very cool! I had always wanted to stay at an ice hotel (and had read up on the one that is built in Quebec each year), but I didn't really know what to expect. It was far more than I expected, and honestly, much colder than expected.


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Kermit Gosnell, Nihilism, Tolerance, and The Evil of The Blur
She once had to kill a baby delivered in a toilet, cutting its neck with scissors, she said. Asked if she knew that was wrong, she said, "At first I didn't."
– Nurse Moton, Gosnell's Abortion Clinic (HT:NRO)
Wow! Mrs. Peacock, in the toilet, with the scissors. I don't think they have all the cards for that in your typical edition of Clue™. Should she not have done that? Let's stop and evaluate…Is the average American still decent enough as a human being to even figure that out anymore? I'm disgusted enough to have to stop and wonder. Is America still a civilized enough nation to teach its citizens that this is a bad thing?Read More »


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text: Follow the money: the world's sharpest fraudbusters Fraud 02 September 09 by Nick Ryan This article was taken from the October issue of Wired UK magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing onlineThe first sign of trouble was the 911 call from Susan Lok's Glendora home. It was March 2003, and the currency trader had just taken an overdose. The ambulance crew was greeted by a suburban Los Angeles house where Lok had been living with her Cambodian father - and secretly passing millions of dollars from a sophisticated Ponzi fraud through the family bank account.A month later, on April 21, a dozen individuals gathered on the 28th floor of a downtown Montreal skyscraper. They were investors in Tradex, an investment scheme which gambled on minute fluctuations in the currency markets. The most recent newsletter from Tradex's island-hopping president, Art Ferdig, broke the devastating news. "Tradex has been defrauded of $129 million - all the money has gone missing," he told them. His lead trader Susan Lok - by now recovering in hospital - had betrayed all 600-plus investors. And he was as much a victim as they were.James Lee, then 61, looked at his watch for perhaps the sixth or seventh time. He knew several of the others by name, if not sight. That didn't make him any more comfortable. Lee had travelled all the way from California to discover what had happened to his life savings. A technology consultant with clients across the country, he was, until a few weeks ago, comfortably retired. For several years he'd been receiving his statements showing he'd made fantastic profits - on paper at least - averaging 2.5 per cent a month. Now his life was turned upside down.At first glance he couldn't pick out Ferdig. Lee blinked in surprise. There was no towering presence, no swagger: the 63-year-old financial guru resembled nothing more threatening than a local pastor. Ferdig repeated to the assembled faces that his chief currency trader had indeed taken all their money. The well-trusted Lok, based at Tradex's sophisticated operations centre in Singapore - or so he claimed - had written him a note from which he now read, claiming she'd been "trying to make it work all along" but had ended up duping them. "Maybe me punished by God," Ferdig told them she'd scrawled in poor English.He then introduced them to a tall, pale woman, whom he addressed as "Rita" - a Montreal-based private investigator "of great repute". "I've given her $300,000 of my own money to start an investigation right away," he said. "We'll get to the bottom of this. Don't you worry." Rita's rambling, evasive presentation left Lee unconvinced.Most Tradex investors had met Ferdig, a self-proclaimed "man of God", through his extensive Christian networks - just as Jewish investors would meet Bernie Madoff. What most of his flock would not have known was that Ferdig had been involved for many years with a controversy-dogged Californian evangelical group, the Worldwide Church of God. Ferdig had worked as "personal assistant" to its founder during the 70s, a period when the church had been rocked by numerous sexual and financial scandals.Nor were they aware of the former Navy SEAL bodyguards now shadowing Ferdig, as his paranoia over assassination by Chinese gangsters or disgruntled investors grew; nor that several of his leading investors were actually "bird dogs" - people financially rewarded by Ferdig for championing his scheme and recruiting new investors. It went without saying that the investors had no idea that numerous organised criminals had been washing their dirty money through Tradex, nor that Rita - standing in front of them right now - was in fact a "reloader", a fake investigator working in cahoots with the con man.Road Town is a collection of low rises and shacks competing with palm trees and oddly-shaped office buildings. The capital of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) presses tightly to a bay clustered with the swaying masts and conning towers of billionaire yachts. It is also home to 800,000 offshore companies."Secrecy has been the key to our success. Secrecy - and surprise!" There is a short, puffy laugh. Dressed in a customary Savile Row suit, Martin Kenney pats his Afghan hound, Jackpot, and permits himself a smile. "The road is now running out for Mr Fraudster."It's spring 2009, and Kenney, a hot-shot Canadian lawyer who roams the world searching for economic crooks, has spent the past six years tracking the Tradex fraud. Now the strands are finally coming together.From his base on the island of Tortola, he runs a team of 17 specialists, plus freelance agents, working on this case alongside other multimillion-dollar investigations, ranging from telemarketing scams to $10 billion Madoff feeder funds. His colleagues include multijurisdictional lawyers, covert investigators, forensic accountants and IT specialists.By patiently following the money trail, they have gathered evidence exposing Tradex as a massive Ponzi fraud, with Art Ferdig at its helm. Tradex had been a classic example of an old-style confidence game, its operators right out of central casting. The "Ferdig gang", as Kenney calls them, had operated under various pseudonyms across the US and Caribbean tax havens, relying on flashy marketing material and its fabulous, entirely fabricated account statements. Spread before Kenney around the huge conference table today are affidavits about Ferdig's scheme, surveillance images and a screen lit with link-analysis diagrams detailing the numerous parties in the fraud next to times, dates and bank-account numbers. As regulation tightened, the Ferdig gang escaped by simply hopping from one West Indian island to another.As with many Ponzi scams, they had simply stolen investors' money and returned a fraction as fake interest/profit, keeping victims hooked. As frauds go, it's one of the classics.Ferdig himself had gone to ground - but by now Kenney's law firm, Martin Kenney & Co, Solicitors, had already frozen or liquidated nine properties and seized bank accounts controlled by Ferdig and his associates, with a total value exceeding $10 million. In addition, court judgments had awarded tens of millions more dollars against Ferdig and his close relatives.The Ferdig gang included Art, Art's wife Elaine and the couple's three daughters and their husbands. According to judgments awarded in the high courts of Dominica and The Bahamas, they flew in private aircraft and bought homes and estates in California and the Caribbean. After the Tradex party ended, they bought homes in Florida, Louisiana and Texas, as well as cars, yachts and a marina slip. (One daughter, Deborah, and her husband, Michael Elliot, escaped judgment by settling with the liquidator. A second daughter, Rachel, and her husband, David Riotte, settled with the liquidator after a Dominican court granted judgment against them.)In February 2003, a few weeks before the Montreal investors' meeting, financial investigators on the dirt-poor island of Dominica had stormed into a downtown Roseau building and ordered everyone to stand away from their desks, before changing all the locks. Banc Caribe, a money launderers' bank, was closed under pressure from the American authorities. It handled Tradex's Ponzi account, the monies constantly being recycled and sent back out to investors, to keep them on board while more funds were lured in and then stolen. With Ferdig's team having no access to the funds held in the Banc Caribe account, the fraud - which had been running since 1995 - was collapsing.Kenney's investigators had discovered that Susan Lok was operating from her house in Glendora, California, not Singapore: she was passing money through her father's personal account. The hundreds of thousands of dollars handled every month was only a fraction of the entire sum going to Art Ferdig - the rest was being recycled out as "fake" interest payments to investors, or siphoned off via a tangled web of offshore companies to the Ferdig family and associates.After pleading guilty to fraud, Lok - also known as Jessamyn Susan Chua-Lok and Susan Kheng-Lok - was jailed by a California court for ten years in 2006 and ordered to pay $27 million in restitution. Before going to prison, she testified under oath to James McGunn, Kenney's chief investigator, revealing that almost all of the monthly reports Tradex had sent to its investors had been false. Unable to handle the stress of Tradex's collapse, she'd attempted to take her own life. However, Susan Lok's overdose had presented Ferdig with the perfect opportunity to pin the blame for the crime elsewhere. He could get away scot free. Read page 2 1234 Read on one page Latest on wired.co.uk


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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) contains provisions
that are intended to boost economic activity and employment in the United States.
Section 1512(e) of the law requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to comment
on reports filed by recipients of ARRA funding that detail the number of jobs funded
through their activities. This CBO report fulfills that requirement. It also provides CBOs
estimates of ARRAs overall impact on employment and economic output in the second
quarter of calendar year 2010. Those estimates--which CBO considers more comprehensive
than the recipients reports--are based on evidence from similar policies enacted in the past
and on the results of various economic models.


text:
May 25, 2016
ALBANY, Ga. (AP) -- Albany State University has refunded a $3 million donation from the Ray Charles Foundation after failing to construct a performing arts center the money was meant to be used for.
The Ray Charles Foundation went to the Georgia Attorney General's Office for help to reclaim the money. A spokesman for the foundation says the money was supposed to be used to construct a performing arts center in honor of the late singer's mother, Retha Robinson.
Ray Charles, who died in 2004, was an Albany native and also donated $1 million to Morehouse College in Atlanta. The school built a 76,000 square-foot performing arts center in the singer's name at a cost of $20 million.
Click Here to access the online Public Inspection File
Viewers with disabilities can get assistance accessing this station's FCC Public Inspection File by contacting the station with the information listed below. Questions or concerns relating to the accessibility of the FCC's online public file system should be directed to the FCC at 888-225-5322, 888-835-5322 (TTY), or email@example.com.


text:
Got a 500-Square-Foot Patch? Rent It for a Cellular Tower
Do you have enough unused acreage on your homestead to accommodate the equivalent of two inflatable castle bounce houses? If so, you have enough space for a monopole cellular antenna tower, and the potential to collect anywhere from $500 to approximately $5,000 per month in rent.


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GAD is a Mobile Shipping Container Gallery For Traveling Art Exhibitions
GAD was built from ten normal shipping containers by MMW architects for a client who wanted a semi-temporary gallery space that could be moved to different locations. The whole project can be disassembled, moved and then reassembled in just a matter of days.
Read more >


text:
Hello everybody,
I'm trying to use this 'GetServerAggregateStatsRequest' Soap method to retrieve statistics from the server and integrate them with our already existent statistics page. But whenever i call it, the answer is always 'service.UNKNOWN_DOCUMENT'. As i understand, this means that Zimbra does not recognize this request (this method doesn't exist), but it is listed in the soap-admin.txt doc. Is this document up-to-date? If this method indeed exist, how is the right way of calling it? What should the parameters 'statName' and 'period' be? And if this method doesn't exist, as i believe, what would be then the right form of retrieving server statistics?
Hope someone can help me, i'm stuck in this problem since a couple of days already.
Thanks in advance,


text:
JENNA FRYER, AP Auto Racing Writer
Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti says doctors have told him he can no longer race because of injuries sustained in an IndyCar crash last month.
Franchitti fractured his spine, broke his right ankle and suffered a concussion in the Oct. 6 crash in Houston.
The crash occurred on the last lap when his car made contact with another car and went sailing into a fence.
WATCH: Dario Franchitti's crash
The 40-year-old underwent two surgeries on his ankle and recently returned home to Scotland to recover.
The four-time IndyCar champion has been the face of the series since he returned in 2009 following a brief stint in NASCAR.
He won three consecutive titles from 2009 to 2011. His 31 victories are tied for eighth on the all-time list.
Earlier this year Franchitti and his wife, actress Ashley Judd, announced their separation.


text:
Worked With:
Lynn Collins
Birth Name: Lynn Collins
Born: 06/01/1979
Birth Place: College Station, Texas, USA
Born: 06/01/1979
Birth Place: College Station, Texas, USA
One of the leading actresses of her generation, Lynn Collins was born on June 1, 1979, in Texas, but moved to Singapore at age four. When returning to the States, Lynn attended the Juilliard School of Drama, and soon after she landed a major role in the film "The Merchant of Venice." Some of her movie credits include "13 Going On 30," "The Lake House" and "The Number 23," a film starring Jim Carrey. Lynn has also guest starred on the television shows "One For The Money" and "Earth Angels" and made her TV debut on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." She presently divides her time between London and New York, and she significantly enjoys Astrology.
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text:
Jeffrey Ouellette

Beautiful hotel - beautiful rooms. Looked brand new when I visited. The location is great. Sorrento is a beautiful city, and the Plaza is located right in the middle of the main tourist area. Once you're at the main square, face the stairs that lead down to the harbour area (by all the flags). Now look directly behind you. Down that street with all the trees, on the right hand side is the hotel.
— on 21/nov/2008


text:
I am having a problem installing, under Debian, the new GA release zcs-3.0.0_GA_156.
Running the install.sh (as root) gives the following error:
ERROR: Installation can not proceed. Please fix your /etc/hosts file to contain:
<ip> <FQDN> <HN>
my /etc/hosts contains:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
126.96.36.199 niei.icehouse.net niei
I tried moving 127.0.0.1 to the second position but that did not help.
the hostname command returns: niei