Category : LATEST NEWS

DRUMMER MIKE PORTNOY DISCUSSES HIS BIGGEST INFLUENCES AND THE WINERY DOGS

Dennis Gast of Music Insider Magazine spoke with Winery Dogs drummer Mike Portnoy. Excerpts from the interview appear below.

Dennis Gast: I am a huge fan, so I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about what first inspired you to begin playing?

Mike Portnoy: Well, I was a music fan from the minute I was born. My dad was a rock ‘n’ roll DJ, and he surrounded me with music from the minute I was born. I grew up with The Beatles, The Who, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and all that stuff in the late 60s and early 70s. I think I inevitably became a musician, because I was such a music fan from the beginning.

It was probably Keith Moon who made me gravitate toward the drums. When I saw the movie The Kids Are All Right, when it came out in the theaters in 1979, seeing Keith Moon and how amazing and charismatic he was, I think that’s what made me become a drummer.

Gast: So would you say Keith Moon is your biggest influence?

Portnoy: He is certainly one of the “Big Four” for me: Keith Moon (The Who), John Bonham (Led Zeppelin), Ringo Starr (The Beatles) and Neil Peart (Rush). In the early days Keith was probably my biggest drum hero, but then once I discovered more progressive music, I went through a huge Neil Peart phase, and for several years he was my biggest hero. There are so many drummers who inspire me.

Gast: Considering how many musicians you have already played with over the years, do you have any bucket list artists you would still like to work with?

Portnoy: Sure, of course. I mean, the last five years, since leaving Dream Theater, I have been able to check off a lot from that list, because everyone I work with now is someone I have wanted to work with. Billy, Richie, Steve Morse in Flying Colors. I just did the Metal Allegiance album with the guys from Anthrax, Slayer, Pantera and Megadeth. So, I am slowly knocking off the bucket list.

Of course, there are those dream artists, the ones who I will probably never work with. For me, these guys are like Roger Waters (Pink Floyd), Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Pete Townsend (The Who) or Paul McCartney (The Beatles). These are the “dream guys” who I may never cross paths with, but to work with any of those guys would be an absolute check off of the bucket list.

Gast: Having played with so many great musicians over time, when did the three of you in The Winery Dogs first cross paths?

Portnoy: I first saw Billy play when he was in Talas back in the early 80s. They were a staple in the New York bar and club scene. I was still a teenager, and I would sneak into clubs and see Talas play, and I had never seen anyone play bass the way Billy does. That was the first I had seen or heard of Billy. Then, we first played together in the early 90s, while we were working on a Rush tribute album. That’s how my relationship with Billy began.

As far as Richie goes, I never really knew about his ability as a singer and guitar player, I just knew him as the replacement guy with Mr. Big and Poison. So a few years ago I was turned onto some of his solo material, and I was just blown away by what he does. Then, Eddie Trunk introduced the two of us, and that’s how that relationship started.

Gast: I read somewhere that you guys started your own “band camp” called Dog Camp. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Portnoy: We did it the last two summers in New York, and basically, it is like a rock ‘n’ roll fantasy camp kind of thing, where people from all ages and levels of musicianship are welcome to come. The last two summers we did it, and it was a lot of fun. The campers get to see us play in a very intimate setting, but we also conducted master classes and clinics and had guest musicians helping us out. It’s just a very intimate and cool learning environment.

Gast: Are there plans already in the works for a third record?

Portnoy: Yes, of course, but we are still at the early stages of support for Hot Streak, so this cycle will go until at least the end of next year.

Read more at Music Insider Magazine.

TICKETS FOR “THE BENEFIT FOR TONY MACALPINE” ON SALE NOW

Tickets for The Benefit for Tony MacAlpine at the Wiltern Theater on December 12th at 7 PM are on sale now. Please click here to purchase.

The Benefit for Tony MacAlpine features performances from John 5 & The Creatures, Zakk Wylde with Mike Portnoy, Billy Sheehan and Derek Sherinian; Steve Vai and band, and culminating in an all-star jam with house band Portnoy, Sheehan, Sherinian, and featuring special guests. Eddie Trunk will serve as master of ceremonies for the night. Read more about this event, here.

GUITARIST TONY MACALPINE ON HIS MEMORIES OF PLAYING WITH STEVE VAI AND BILLY SHEEHAN: “THOSE GUYS HAVE BEEN MY FRIENDS FOREVER”

Greg Prato for Guitar Player magazine spoke with guitarist Tony MacAlpine. Excerpts from the interview appear below.

[Dana’s note: This interview was conducted before MacAlpine announced that was diagnosed with colon cancer]

GP: Let’s start by discussing Concrete Gardens.

TM: I started the record in 2014, going through material that had been bouncing around in my head, and I got to the point where I felt I had a good 14 or 15 songs. I got to the studio and started recording those ideas, and the compositions came together quite naturally. I felt like I was in a really good groove. I thought about what musicians might benefit the record and be interested in doing it. Aquiles Priester, my wonderful Brazilian friend and touring mate, played drums. Pete Griffin, Lucky Islam, and Sean Delson all played bass on the record. From there, I really wanted to have a duet composition on the record. Jeff Loomis and I had been talking, so he played on Square Circles.

GP: Do you still follow a practice routine at this point in your career?

TM: I wouldn’t say scales and chord theory and things like that. Learning songs for a live presentation is really the extent of it for me these days, because that’s really all I have time for. It’s pretty much all I have to do to get into “player shape.”

GP: What are some memories of playing in the Breed a few years back, with Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan?

TM: Those guys have been my friends forever. Billy Sheehan played on my very first record, Edge of Insanity, with Steve Smith. We’ve played on so many things together and it’s such a great friendship we have. And playing with Vai was a wonderful thing, because he is also a great friend of mine. It was really tension-free. It was the kind of environment where we just got a chance to get up there and make his music come to life. It was a wonderful time for all of us.

Read more at Guitar Player.

In related news, a benefit concert for Tony MacAlpine is scheduled for December 12th at the Wiltern Theater. The benefit will feature performances from John 5 & The Creatures, Zakk Wylde with Mike Portnoy, Billy Sheehan and Derek Sherinian; Steve Vai and band, and culminating in an all-star jam with house band Portnoy, Sheehan, Sherinian, and featuring special guests. Our very own Eddie Trunk will serve as master of ceremonies for the night. To read more about this event, please click here.

source: guitarplayer.com

KISS’ PAUL STANLEY DISCUSSES GAY RUMORS SAYING “I NEVER SAW A GUY WHERE I SAID, ‘GEE, THAT’S A CLOSE SECOND TO A WOMAN'”

KISS frontman Paul Stanley recently spoke with Robert Scott of New Zealand’s The Breeze. The interview appears below and the text was transcribed by blabbermouth.net,

When asked what the craziest rumor he ever heard about himself was, Stanley replied,”Well, the oddest, to me, was always — and it’s always persisted over time — is that I’m gay. And it’s an interesting thing, because if I were, I’d be proud to be whatever I am. As long as you’re a good person, sexual orientation and stuff like that is totally irrelevant. But, that being said, besides having four children, honestly, I never saw a guy where I said, ‘Gee, that’s a close second to a woman.’ Honestly, I never looked and said, ‘You know, if I can’t have that girl over there, I’m taking the bloke,’ you know what I mean? So that’s always been really interesting — that some people can’t find a way to take my comfort with sexuality to misreading it as something it’s not. But, that being said, I more scratch my head at that. So that’s always been something that was, and is, persistent. And I just kind of go, ‘Well, the boys may not understand, but the women always did.’ They got it in more ways than one.”

W.A.S.P. RELEASE LYRIC VIDEO FOR “GOLGOTHA”

W.A.S.P. have released a second lyric video from their album Golgotha which was released on October 2nd. Watch a clip of the title track below.

W.A.S.P had previously released a lyric video for the song Scream, which can viewed here.

To read more about the album, and to view a track listing, please go here.

EDDIE TRUNK ON BEING TRUTHFUL ABOUT MUSIC: “EVERYONE SHOULD BE ENTITLED TO HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT THINGS THEY LIKE AND DON’T LIKE”

Kelly Frazier of the HuffPost Detroit spoke with our very own Eddie Trunk ahead of his appearance, alongside his That Metal Show co-hosts Don Jamieson and Jim Florentine, at the Token Lounge in Westland, Michigan on November 7th. The interview appears in its entirety below.

Q: When you do these live gigs, what do you do at them?

ET: They are loose interpretations of our TV show, although they are not and we are very clear about telling people this so they are not surprised in any way, but they are not tapings of the TV show. They are not based on guests or musicians or anybody playing. They’re more like a stand up comedy show. Don and Jim both do, as many people know and some people maybe don’t, but Don and Jim are stand up comics for a living. That’s what they’ve done their whole career. They will do sets of stand up comedy that some of it is loosely revolves around the show and about music, some of doesn’t, but it’s a little bit of a mix. I come out and host and tell some funny stories. Then we all come out together and do Q&A with the audience and then we end with Stump The Trunk and give away prizes. So, its kind of a loose version, there’s elements of the TV show in a sense that its all three of us and that we are all kind of out there together at times and we do take questions from the crowd. It’s a lot of fun. We’ve been doing them for a while. It’s a good way to get out and connect with people while the show is on hiatus. It’s very natural for Don and Jim obviously being comics. I’ve actually been doing these myself as well for a long time. I even do a version of it by myself, which is more of a speaking show. Its fun when we do them altogether because obviously, we are all friends and it brings more of the spirits of the TV show to what we’re doing.

Q: Throughout all these years, you’ve interviewed a who who’s of music artists, producers, and musicians. Has there been anyone that has eluded you over these years?

ET: Sure. Jimmy Page for one. I was close to having Jimmy Page on That Metal Show, the last season that we shot, but he won’t do anything that has the word “metal” in it. He doesn’t want any association with the word “metal” or the genre, even though That Metal Show is way more than just metal as anyone who has seen that has watched it, he refuses to do anything that has the word “metal” in it. That’s eluded me, even on that radio side of things. Eddie Van Halen has eluded me. I did interview him once. That was done when Van Halen III came out, the record with [Gary] Cherone. It was done on the phone but I would love to have a real in-depth interview with him at some point, but that has not taken place yet. He’s incredibly difficult to nail down. When the last Van Halen record came out, they turned down a ton of major press, so I’m certainly not the only one when it comes to that category, outside of a guitar magazine here and there, that seems like pretty much the only stuff he does. So yeah, there’s a couple guys, but for the most part just having been in the business so long, I’m pretty much checked off just about everybody else I could think of that’s still alive.

Q: Listening to your shows, I love that you always give the artists that you are talking about or interviewing the credit they deserve, nothing more, nothing less. You don’t kiss anybody’s ass nor do you hate on them. Talk about that view of the music industry.

ET: I think that you have to be honest with your audience. There’s a strange thing that’s happening in the world right now where everything is so insanely politically correct, that if you say the one slightest thing that differs from what anybody else feels, there’s always going be somebody out there that’s going to come after you and pounce and blow it out of proportion. I’m just not going to fall for that. I just think that’s ridiculous. I think the audience I have, the people that care what I do, listen to my interviews, they do it because they know it is going to be pretty straight forward, its going to be pretty upfront. I’m going to pretty much [say] it like I see it. I have people all the time, fans or what have you, that will say to me “I really need to know what you think of this band” or “I really need to know what you think of this album” or whatever the case may be. I’ll tell them and if it doesn’t agree with what they think, they go crazy and say that I’m s–t talking a band. It’s amazing to me that an opinion in this day in age gets turned into somebody talking down about something. Everyone should be entitled to have an opinion about things they like and don’t like. It’s fine if you disagree, but there are a lot of people, everyone is so PC now that they actually just get mad and blow it out of proportion. I defy people all the time to honestly tell me is there a band, I don’t care if its your favorite band ever, you can’t honestly sit there and say that you like every single song, every single note, every single record they ever created. That’s just not being honest with yourself.

Q: Early in your career, you worked at Megaforce Records, and you signed acts like Metallica, Anthrax, helped revive Ace Frehley’s career. Looking back, how do you feel about that time?

ET: It was great! I was young. I was just a kid. To have done that at such an early age was pretty amazing. Again, it was just a combination of having been in the business for so long, already. I had already put five years in the business on various levels and started building a name back then. That led to me getting offered a job with a record company and getting involved at a very early stage like that. It was a great time. It was a lot of learning. It was great to be part of an emerging record company that was distributed by Atlantic. It was great to sign an artist, KISS was an enormously huge band in my world and to be able to sign their lead guitar player to his first solo deal was a huge thing. It was a crazy surreal thing. If you look inside my first book, there’s a photo of me signing Ace Frehley. That’s kind of crazy to think that 8-9 years earlier, I was at my first concert in my life and it was a Kiss show. It was a lot of fun. It was a great experience. I’m kind of glad now, when I look at what’s happened to the music industry, that I got out of that end of it because it’s hard to make a living there now because the labels are so fractured. I enjoyed it and it was a great experience that I still call from time to time and I wouldn’t rule out doing it again at some point if it was the right situation, but the business has changed so much, I don’t know what’s left of it anymore.

source: huffingtonpost.com