Ep 290 Altered Root

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Coming to you from the studios at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66, it's the Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast. Hey everybody, it's Ray the Roadie. And Hollywood Mike, one more time.

This week. And calm again. I'm calm again.

You are calm again. I am, I don't know what it is. Man, are you on drugs? No, I'm not on any drugs.

No drugs? No, nothing like that. Did you drink bourbon before you came here and didn't share with me? You have to be a little more specific when you say before I came here. I mean, because, I mean, it could be, I mean, yeah.

I mean, you know, you can't drink all day unless you start in the morning. That's true. That's true.

Yeah. No, but I'm just, I don't know. I'm just kind of laid back and... Cool.

You know, whatever. That's cool. Summertime.

Summertime. Yeah, I love summertime. Yeah.

Gotta get that pool warmed up so I go in it because I'm a wuss. I don't want to go in the cold water. Brand new pool and I can't step foot in it.

I don't know what to tell you, man. I know. I know.

Maybe I should do some, have some bourbons and then I'll have the balls to get in there. Yeah, we got some guys in the studio tonight. We do tonight.

I've been looking forward to this for quite some time. It's Altered Root. Altered Root.

Oh, come on. There it is. There's their fans.

It took them a while. So my question is, are you guys a bunch of botanists that genetically do stuff to plants? That's the Altered Root thing or... Crazily enough... We are. I am onto something.

Holy cow. Crazily enough, that is not the source of the name. But I do have some crazy history in that area.

But nothing to do with Altered Root. The name came from a club that I started 15 years ago, maybe. And it was a club.

It was for recreational musicians, for people that don't have time to be in a band. You know, Patrick was one of the original inspirations for it. And people that didn't have time to be in a band or couldn't find people to play with or who were just starting out.

You know, it's like, man, I'm not a golfer. I'm not a tennis player. And hanging out with that kind of crew doesn't at all interest me.

But creating a community in Chicago of people that they can gather and just really gather around music. And we all of us met through that club. Sean, I met you before that.

Yeah, we were friends before. But I got tagged in. That's right.

So that was that was the way to do it. Right. And so that was called Altered Stage.

And when you look back, that Altered Stage is really the root of, you know, where we all started. And as a bass guy, aside from playing the root notes, you know, it's kind of like, I kind of, I learned guitar a little bit, enough to write music and give it to Patrick. And, you know, some of the notes that I created are kind of notes.

They were a little bit more altered than that. So we figured it was kind of a cool name for the band. It is.

Did you meet at a club? You said this club kind of, you started a club. Where'd you meet? So Patrick and I met beforehand. We played together.

We were in a, we had the same guitar teacher, actually. And, and he said, man, you got to meet this guy, Patrick. He's like you, he even wears Iron Maiden shoes.

And so. Wow. It's true.

Yeah. And so I met Patrick and he and I just started playing together. Yeah, we were taking guitar lessons and he brought us together.

And at that place, we could, every six months we would do a show at the House of Blues. Okay. And then both me and him and I love Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden.

So we played one song and then wait another six months to play the next song. And it was like, well, I'm not a full-time musician. I need to do something.

I want to keep this going. Like it's such a big adrenaline rush. And so he had this idea to start this club and get a whole bunch of people that are, you know, full-time workers, but, you know, want to be full-time rock stars.

Right. And then, so we all got together and this is kind of like the root, like, Sean was a singer for us. But where'd you get together though? Yeah.

I mean, hang out in somebody's garage. Oh no, we had a space in the West Loop. Well, it started in your garage, right? Metal Church was your basement.

Metal Church was the basement. And then it was the, what was the place in the city that you guys would, the music garage? Music garage. We went to a music garage in the beginning.

Yeah. And then, and then he went big time and he built his own space out. Yeah.

And then that's where it felt like really real at that point. And so I guess a bunch of people just would get together and- What, it was a membership? No, it was a membership. It really was.

It was almost a country club. If you can imagine a gym membership. Right.

But a rock musician oriented, it was like that. So like people could come as much or as little as they wanted. Okay.

They got key cards. There was a monthly fee, you know, that kind of thing. And so you go in, you walk in and there's other people there.

Now what do you do? You jam. I mean- So it was set up. There was a, there was a backline set up the whole bit.

It was just kind of like an open jam going on. We had two different studio or jam studio rooms and three different rehearsal practice rooms for lessons. And we had a nice sort of open space for connective.

We had free beer for everybody. Wow. Surprisingly, it didn't go as quickly as I thought it would.

People were trying to like keep their skills. That is kind of shocking that a room full of musicians and the beers. Very unexpected.

Your mistake was you weren't growing weed in there. I know. Well, that was in the way back.

We don't talk about that. Right, right, right, right. Guys, that's an interesting concept.

So that's not going on anymore. No, I shut it down after COVID. We made it through COVID and it was pretty beautiful how the community came together.

You know, Nick was one of our instructors who was mostly drums, but he did, you know, a little bit of keys. I thought he was about to say mostly drunk. He was mostly drunk.

That was me most of the time. Yeah, he was mostly drunk. Yeah, okay.

Interesting. Wow. So how much was this membership? 200 a month.

Wow. And how many people were members of this club? But you got a few lessons every, depending upon how, whatever your skill level was, you got a certain number of lessons. So to help out, you know, people that were more advanced would want to get a little bit more technical help.

You know, some of the beginner people, they just wanted to play and we got everybody up on stage eventually. You know, you know, I'm just going to be a shameless plug, but, you know, you need to meet Ron Romero. Who is Ron Romero? The founder and CEO of this museum.

Sweet. Because what is going on downstairs, which unfortunately we can't bring you downstairs because there's construction and stuff going on, but there is a, there's an entire rehearsal space downstairs. In fact, we are, we are pretty much sitting over it right now.

The stage would be located back in this area over here, but, and it's a small enough venue you could put, I don't know, 50, 60 people in or whatever. There's even chairs and everything set up down there. There's a, there's a full back line down there.

Drums, the whole bit. Right. And he was renting it out for people like my, my band rented it out a couple of times just to have a place to rehearse.

There's lights in the ceiling. There's even a control room off to the side where you can record your rehearsals if you wanted to and everything, but the whole thing is set up and ready to go. And there's also classrooms and everything down downstairs.

Right. And because the ultimate plan and dream is to have this to be almost, almost kind of like a lack of a better term, a school of rock where people can come and learn how to play, learn how to play with each other, learn how to be in a band. And it's all set up down there.

It sounds like exactly what you kind of had going on. That's where I got the idea. My son was in school of rock and when I pull up to drop him off for the first day of camp, I see this battle of the school of rock bands and it was Judas Priest versus Iron Maiden.

And I'm like, is this school for me? I'm like, no, it's just for kids. What it made me think though, is kids don't usually just find music like that. It comes because somebody at home is listening to it.

Right. And I'm like, so many parents, I went for their recital and we heard like, oh, I wish there was something like this for adults. I'm like, yeah, me too.

Okay. Let's go start it. And they stole your idea because now every single school of rock has an adult class.

Right. And it seemed that that didn't take it first when we, when we got rolling, because it really isn't cool. We created a cool place for people to hang out and it truly, it was just a, just for adults.

Yeah. Right. And it worked out real well.

Wow. That's interesting. Yeah.

Mostly because I just didn't have time to run it. And, um, it was, it was a real beast to keep that experience what we wanted. So shut it down and really started focusing on creating this concept album drone that we released in March.

And so we sort of got the band back together as Jake would say over there and, um, and started working through and finishing up this project. We started a bunch of years ago. Right.

Right. Right. And how long has the project been going on then? We wrote the first song.

We wrote drone probably 15 years ago. It wasn't Tuesday. Yeah.

Before we started altered stage. Yeah. We met, we would meet in his basement, which we call metal church meet every Sunday morning.

You guys remember that band, right? Not because of the band. Yeah. And then we wrote this song together.

And then from there, it spawned this whole, there's more to tell this story from just this one song. And then, you know, every time, every time we meet, we've always come back to, it's like, Oh, when are we going to do this? When are we going back to this? Like, let's continue the story. Then he actually, Jeff just took it as our, as our, um, as our guiding light wrote down the whole vision of how this whole album was going to be, how it was going to sound, the story it was going to tell, um, all the, all the musicians he wanted to reference in it and just laid out this whole metaphor for all of us to gather around and really, uh, craft.

And now it sounds crazy 15 years later to have it like a concept album with how music has changed. But it was like, I mean, once you start something, we got to finish it. And we're talking, we're talking metal.

It's, um, you know, we, when we wrote it, we wanted to explore a bunch of genres. We don't consider ourselves metal. We are more melodic, hard rock.

We're, we're sharing a stage tomorrow with pretty crooked. If people haven't heard them, you got to listen to them. They're pretty intense and great, but, um, you know, they're more of a 90s grunge with a metal flavor to it.

We're more of a classic hard rock, you know, with an Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Pearl Jam kicker type of, you know, underpinning. But we wanted to really explore different genres with the hard rock core and heartbeat, but really the different genres for a different section of the album for different songs to tell a different story. Right.

Right. You know, the, the, the real blues based one strange passenger fits the man meets girl. Doesn't have a great experience.

Man leaves girl. So that's kind of the blues way. I feel like, I feel like I've heard that story before.

Once or twice. So why are you an accidental singer? So when, uh, when Jeff got this thing going, uh. You know, his voice went so high.

It's so now. That's right. He's like, oh shit, I gotta sound like a singer now.

They had people who played drums and they had people who played guitar and they had nobody that would get up and sing. And, uh, so Jeff and I, a mutual friend of ours, that's a, you know, once you do it, right. It's good.

But a mutual friend of ours, Murad, uh, he had seen me late night at Trader Todd's singing some, some drug karaoke. And he's like, man, you can sing. And I was just like, I don't know, I guess.

I don't, I don't know. And I was probably 25 years old at this point. Okay.

Right. Right. Wasn't a spring chicken.

And he's like, no, no, you got to talk to Jeff because he's doing this thing. And, uh, that thing just, just kept morphing and changing. And it was, it was really casual at first.

But I would say like in the altered stage days, right. Like the goal was like, we're doing a, we're doing a show every month. We're getting out there and we're doing it.

So you went from one show and then it's like, let's start planning the next one. And when, when it first got going, it was hilarious. Cause I think like I would sing.

And then every now and then one other person would jump in and do it. But it would be like a, we played 22 songs and I'd sing 21. And we all had to learn 22 songs sometimes in like three days.

Yeah. If that, you know, Nick, especially sometimes the morning of you're like, oh, I better work. Yeah.

But like the way it worked was each member would pick a song. And so it's not like everyone's trying to make all songs that he can sing. It's like, he's going from green day to ain't no sunshine, um, to like, Black label society.

Like we did, we did, uh, what was it? Uh, one of the Beach Boys songs, uh, good vibrations. And it's like, I'm the only one that sings. How are we doing? Good vibrations.

Like how is this going to work? And we, we, we did it, but I guess I'm buying a harmonizer. Frankie Valley, Frankie Valley. Negative falsetto.

Yeah. Wow. Interesting.

And what are you doing in the band? Uh, well, I'm tomorrow. I'm going to be tonight. I'm going to be, I'm going to be the percussionist tomorrow.

I'm going to be the keyboard player. I guess I'm the auxiliary kind of bench player, right? He's an all-star all positions player. He plays every instrument and while he doesn't admit to play them well, he's more than proficient.

I met these guys as I was one of the instructors at the SED stage club. I was the drum and keyboard instructor, um, and made lifelong friends with these guys. So yeah.

We're going to catch Nick a few times a week at Gibson's or Hugo's. Yeah. I have a piano bar gig weekly for several, several of them weekly.

Yeah. That's, that's fun. Um, on Rush? Gibson's on Rush.

No kidding. How long have you been doing that? Two or three years. Okay.

So before I was hanging out down there, that's that Hugo's Frog Bar was my favorite place in the city for a long time. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm there three or four nights a week usually. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Interesting.

Wow. That's interesting. Well, I mean, normally I don't do this this early, but I want to hear you guys.

Normally, normally we talk a little bit more on bullshit a little bit, but I don't know. No, I guess I think I want to hear you guys play a little bit. Freshly practice so we can do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

We're going to take a break and we're going to come back. Be right back. You're listening to the rock and roll Chicago podcast.

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Check out the bus stop blues podcast at the bus stop blues.com where you can listen on Spotify, I heart apple podcasts or any other major podcast platform up on board. The bus stop blues where the blues never stops rolling. All right, everybody for the first time I saw her face.

Okay. It's red. It's red.

Yeah, we're good. All right, everybody for the first time tonight. Altered route.

I'm clean and free. Don't know my own man. ♪ Gotta interfere, a plan ♪ Drone no more, I'm clean and free ♪ The man ain't got his grip on me ♪ Drone no more, I'm my own man ♪ Getting out, I know I can ♪ Rolling to the main ♪ Times are moving faster ♪ Cube sits and waits ♪ There to please the master ♪ Drone no more, I'm clean and free ♪ The man ain't got his grip on me ♪ Drone no more, I'm my own man ♪ Gotta interfere, a plan ♪ Drone no more, I'm clean and free ♪ The man ain't got his grip on me ♪ Drone no more, I'm my own man ♪ Step on out if I still can ♪ No more, no more ♪ I'm for a change ♪ The bells are ringing loud ♪ His grip on me ♪ Drone, I'm clean and free ♪ Don't think I can Outstanding.

Everybody always brings the dudes with them. Nobody brings any girls in the crowd. Yeah, I know.

What the heck, man? I thought you guys do this for the chicks. You know? What the heck? You know, somebody, you know, these things are all mislabeled again. I missed your guitar solo.

I'm so pissed off at myself right now. That microphone is actually wired into two. Other people use the studio way.

You move stuff around. You want to roll it again? No, that's all right. You're going to play some more, so don't worry about it.

Okay, cool. So tell us about that song. Who wrote it? Patrick, so this... Oh, I better put my headphones on.

Sorry. This was the one that Patrick came to my house one day for Metal Church. Yeah.

And he came with this riff. I mean, it was just like this, like... It just sounded like a train rolling through. And then so I really like songs when it makes you... It doesn't sound exactly like a train, but I wanted you to hear and be like, oh, there's this train and like this idea of the commuter that's going to his day-to-day job droning through life.

And so to have it be like this train chugging along, because that's what you feel like when you get up every day and then like commute down to... I had to commute down to Schaumburg every day out of the city. And so I'm just like, oh, I'm like trudging this along. And so it was like this idea of this train that doesn't stop and then it has this like feeling of like I can't get out of it.

And so I just wanted to make like this riff that just felt like it cycled kind of like forever. Yeah. And then keep it basic.

And then kind of call out kind of songs that, you know, reference trains or... And so that's where it came from. And then he put the whole story together of the, you know, the drone man. Yeah.

And so this, that one song became like the blueprint, the skeleton for the whole album. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think the lyrical idea just kind of came after we were jamming through that riff from when I remember. And it's like, you know, all the words just sort of materialized. And once we started playing with this concept, we really got to realize that, hey, we write this one song, the lyrics came out.

I'm like, it was based on a story I had written in college. And just to keep it as abbreviated as possible, when I was going to school, I was probably a sophomore in college living with my grandma and grandpa, taking the train from Arlington Heights into the city. And after a while, you know, I was going into the city two or three days a week, but it doesn't matter.

Whenever I was there in the morning, there was this one cat well beyond retirement age, still trudging into the city and never said a word, but who was always there at exactly the same time. Always had the sun times under his arm and a donut and a cup of coffee. And I started watching this guy and like he knew exactly when to get up from inside the station to go out.

And he knew exactly where the train was going to stop. The doors would always open as if the train stopped for him. Right.

And I started watching this like, like, fuck, this is a drag, man. Why am I going to school for this? This is miserable. Maybe he was a ghost.

Maybe. From the 1800s, maybe, because he could have been around that long. A computer ghost.

That's right. And so it started to, the story started to unfold a little bit, thinking about the idea of people just going through life on autopilot, not ever stopping to kind of wake up and look what's going around. But then you find yourself, that guy's age, just carrying this square briefcase in, you know, for 50 years.

Like, I don't want to do that. And I almost dropped out of school. You know, I saw these cats putting up a sign over a Dunkin' Donuts.

And I was working in hotel maintenance at the time. And I saw these guys, it was cold out and, you know, I'm getting ready to commute into work and all that. And this, these guys were just having the best time and I'm wearing a suit.

This is now, I'm going out of that same train station a few years later. And I see these guys just enjoying themselves. Like, I want to be those guys up and on.

I don't care if it's 30 degrees out. They're actually outside having fun. I stuck with school, but here I am now.

Long story short. But the whole idea of the album truly is a concept record, which like Patrick said, is unheard of in today's world, in streaming world. So we had this idea of building this record.

And one of the songs that we're going to play, yeah, we're actually not going to play that one tonight. But there was a, there was a very, I don't know. The last guy, we had to waterboard the last guy.

We did. We did. Yeah.

Oh, really? I can get the waterboard out again. We can get the waterboard again. Yeah.

Oh, we can play any of these. Actually, this is fourth in our idea of what we wanted to play today. So that, so I guess that was, that was my next question.

You kind of hit on it. Why a concept album? Because I mean, let's face it. Nobody's really interested in a concept album right now.

And that's why. Yeah. Because we want to make something that nobody's going to listen to.

Yeah. Hell yeah, man. We want no one to hear this music.

Well, you said you started this 15 years ago. Yeah. And they still weren't going around that.

I mean, it's like, if you think about it, the idea is we always looked at this, or at least I did, you know, as a true expression of creativity. And it, it was less about notoriety and, and getting recognized. It's more about the, the, the beauty of making music to begin with, and the beauty of the listener actually being focused on the music.

So if six people listen to our album from front to back, sweet dude, did you hear the message? And if not, it's like, I didn't know Pink Floyd, The Wall, my very first album was a concept album until, you know, I was only 11 or whatever. So I kind of figured out later, you know, late night, like, oh, I get it. Yeah.

I don't think anybody realizes that their concept album is a concept album until somebody tells them. That's right. That's right.

Unless they set out to create one. Roger did. Yeah.

Yeah. Like I had, somebody wants to tell me one time that Def Leppard pyromania was a concept album. And I was like, you know, I mean, you look at the cover art on it and you look at the songs, right.

And then you look at all the music videos, all the music videos from the, from that album were about somebody on fire or walking through hell fire and brimstone and the whole bit. And then the song pyromania, right. Well, I guess it is a concept album.

Yeah, man. The reason is truly that, that people don't stop. And I think in this world, there's probably, you know, five single digit percent people that take the time to stop throughout the day and taking an hour to actually actively listen to an experienced music in whatever state of mind your head is at that time.

Um, is really what we were going for. And vinyl is making a big comeback and has been for a while. Younger kids are listening to the old music on vinyl.

And we wanted to do something a little bit different than just crap out a bunch of singles. And no offense to anyone who's doing that. I don't mean to say crap them out, but to just do a bunch of singles and to, you know, and our next album may just be that, but for this one, we wanted to tell a story.

And we wanted to tell this story that is meant to help people wake up a little bit. If you hear the lyrics and feel the vibe of the actual music underneath it. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I, I gotta give it to you for that because I mean, I guess if you're going for something that's going to be a little more commercial, which you've already said you're not, I mean, that's definitely what the streaming services aren't looking for concept. The next, you know, they're not looking for the next, uh, you know, a paradise theater or whatever, which is one of my favorite albums.

I don't care. Anyway, thanks. That's a, that's a great concept album right there.

Well, interesting. Um, I mean, did you do it also maybe more so for you want to, you know, like you said, you don't want to put together an album of singles where everything sounds different. Are you going for like a certain continuity? Is that kind of a, kind of the method behind it or the thought process behind it? Well, I think like, um, when Jeff set out the vision, he put, he put this whole document together, like a book.

And before each song, he would say like, this is where the, the journey is for the, for the drone man. This is what it should sound like. And he'd list off like three to five other songs that for references.

So it wasn't like this was, it's a concept album because it all kind of sounds the same or is in the same genre. It's more of like, this is the story of a person going from the, the very start where they've realized like, I'm on this journey and I don't want to be on, I want to get off the train. And then each stop is like, well, I want to get off, but I'm introduced to like this strange passenger.

Who's like this, you know, he, he can speak to it better than I can. Um, you know, people that bring you down or try to take you off this path to creativity. And then, then you deal with insomnia, you deal with depression, you deal with all these things that get in your way in life that prevent you from going down a creative path.

And so it, it really wasn't like we're doing this one thing about, you know, pyromaniac, everything is about fire or it was more of just like, this is a journey of a life. And we can't tell that in one song. And we like all these different types of music that are, you know, leaning towards hard rock.

And so it was just more of like, just pulling up all of the favorite stuff. Like we like Alice in Chains. So we have a song that sounds like Alice in Chains in there.

We like Pearl Jam. So we referenced that we like Iron Man. So we're referencing that.

And then we kind of like merge them together for, for us. Cause we like it, but also, you know, we're all kind of, you know, same age have gone through that same journey of life. And so we can kind of like talk to each other musically.

And we played these things all together with altered, altered stage. So like, we can talk to each other in the same language to build an album that we would like. And so that was kind of our goal.

Not really sticking in one genre, but really focused on the stuff that we think we're decent at, I guess. All right. So hear me out.

We call Rob zombie. Yeah. We've got this album, right? We need to create the character of the drone man.

And the train is like his own personal purgatory. Yeah. You don't know if he's good.

You don't know if he's evil. And every stop he gets off, he has a different experience. And at the end of the train ride, he has to decide what he's going to do.

Now we can do it. Let's sign the contract. I get 10%.

I've reached out to Rob. Don't worry. Have you really? No.

We were waiting for this podcast to get credibility. Our next step is, you know, our next step is horror movie. That's right.

Well, you're going to do the score for it. That makes sense. Yeah.

No, you know what? I'm into it. I, you know, I get it. It's, it's, it's interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty cool.

And a lot of genres get touched. I mean, that's the thing we, like Patrick said, we didn't want to just have something that sounds the same. Actually, every song is very, very different.

And we worked with a record label executive to help us sort of refine and get it, get the story and the promotion done. Right. Right.

And he's like, you know, the thing that is really interesting that I love about it, it's very different from anything that's out there. Right. And it does touch on so many genres.

And in that document, Patrick talked about their references of music from everything to, you know, Buddy Guy to Madonna to everything in between that we talked about with Pearl Jams and Maidens and Sabbaths of the world. Yeah. I don't want to say it's a little all over the place.

Right. Because it is the mood of the drone man. Like, yeah, it's just like, there are days that he's down and there's days that he's up and he sees light at the end of the tunnel.

And there's times that it's like, Oh no, no, I don't. Dark. So like the, the, the songs, the, you know, we've got elements that continue throughout the album.

Like the train is obviously there and a lot of different things. And, but it's just a, you know, really it, it all kind of hinges on kind of what's going on with the drone man and his, and his, you know, his world and his life at that time. And that's what that song kind of, kind of will say.

So yeah, we're, we're all over the place really with it. When you look at the different kind of genres that we touch. Yeah.

Well, I think it's time to hear another one. Okay. Running from thing to thing What's to show Searching for life Between life And so Try to find time for me But in the flow There's no life Between life Lost in a fantasy There I go Looking for life Between life And so I step back to reality Feeling low Don't see the life Between life I can't see What's in front of me Oh, even though It's all I know I can't see What's in front of me Oh, even though It's all I know Oh, it's all I know There isn't my memory Oh, watch it go Seeing there's life Between life Feeling there's no such thing Oh, cause I know My whole life Is just life I can't see What's right in front of me Connectivity Between me and me I can't see What's right in front of me Connectivity Between me and me I can't see What's right in front of me Connectivity Between me and me Alright That was, that was a mild ending I didn't put any words Cause it was mild Very mild I'm all, I'm all tranquil I'm just snapping my fingers There we go Yeah, that was pretty good It's good Uh-oh Crickets We summon the, we summon the crickets Yeah So peaceful Yeah, that was good Interesting guys So how far, so how far are you along with this? I mean, is it, is the album done? Album? Yeah, we released, we released the album Okay In early March But nobody's, nobody's heard it though No Nobody You've heard the whole thing? Wow, nice Excellent We have some good YouTube numbers Yeah, we got some, actually for, in our record label guy said that Actually we've done pretty well for a new band with not a huge following That we're getting a lot of great data from all the streaming services We've got a lot of great feedback Yeah And it is, hopefully it's just a function of the music instead of mistake But we've gotten a lot of good feedback from it Oh, that's good, that's good I think the crazy thing is, is like just geographically, right? Like it's one of those things where you're like, okay, we're putting this thing out there And then we're going to, you know, see where it goes And then, you know, some of the statistics that Jeff is pulling back And he's just like, you know, we're really popular in South America right now Like there's some stuff kind of popping right there Big in Brazil Big in Brazil, real big in Brazil But it's like, it's crazy to even think that And I think like, you know, with YouTube, that's not really your concept album kind of thing Like, so you're taking down the video and then, you know, it's song by song But, but with Spotify, I mean, I kind of feel like, you know, there's some traction, right? And it's, yeah, it's been fun to watch like that stuff build Yeah, yeah, that's, that's interesting I'm kind of, I'm sitting here just kind of dumbfounded Because to, to make a concept album these, these days And it goes back to something that we, we, we talked about on a podcast a long time ago now, actually And it was something that Ray said, and I love the fact that he said it I'll remember this till the day that I die Yeah, we were talking about, we were talking about bands that use a lot of backing tracks And you go out and you see a band and people go out and they like them Because they sound exactly like the original recordings They, they sound exactly like the bands that they, that they knew and loved, right? And on a certain level, those, I mean, God bless them They're going out, they're having fun It's like what you guys were talking about They finish their work day on Friday, they go out, they have a few beers, they hang out with friends They, you know, they're, it's stress release, they're having a good time But on some level, if that's the type of music that you prefer That makes you a lazy listener Agreed It makes you a lazy listener You have to, you have to be attentive Yeah If you go out and see something that you've never heard before Certainly something that is not popular Something like if you go out and perform a concept album, it's in its entirety, right? It takes effort and energy to sit there and, and be engaged as a, as a listener Yep Right? This is, this environment currently is fun in that regard too Yeah Because these are not what they sound like on the album So we Right We were referencing like Tiny Desk a lot Yeah, yeah You know, it's like how can we, how can we keep the essence of these songs alive But in an intimate one room recording Right Recording environment, you know, so And Zeppelin was notorious for, and I'm really air quoting the disappointment For those people that are looking for the album experience, they never got it And their live experience was its own experience Right So, yeah, there are some layers on the studio album But we're really excited about performing it start to finish tomorrow night at Livewire And we're going to do just that So it's, it's going to sound really cool Yeah You know, it won't have all the sound effects and all that And that's pretty much by design And honestly, we didn't want to get into that complexity Yeah, yeah And you'll get people out there that will catch a little bit of the song And they'll say, oh, oh, I've heard this before And you're like, no, you didn't You have never heard this song before And we're living in a, I mean, we're living in the crappiest market for original music We really are We shouldn't be You know, you think being in Chicago being arguably the second or third largest media market in our country And Chicago, when it comes to original music The venues are not, just not receptive to original artists I mean, I travel all over the world for what I do for my day job, right And every place else has better original music than the city of Chicago Yeah And I hope we can, I hope that changes Yeah You know, so I give you a lot for, for doing that I mean, we're, we're losing, we're losing clubs every single year that Right That cater to and welcome live music But you go to places like the Twin Cities or you go to Madison, Wisconsin Or, you know, you go to other areas around here They've got clubs everywhere where you're hearing original music Right But not here, and I hope that changes Well, you guys are helping make that change And, and, and Chicago is one of the better rock cities in the country And just for, you're right about original music across genres But in terms of rock, it's, you know, I'm proud to live in Chicago And have the rock community we have Absolutely Absolutely The only, the only negative thing you can say about it is we are the tribute band capital of the world Oh my God, yeah That's right We are the tribute band capital of the world here Yeah Totally And there's, and there's, but there's other cities are like tribute band No, we don't want that here in our part Save that for the amphitheaters or whatever it is Right So that's awesome So what else you guys got coming up? Where can people see you? This is the only gig that we have right now Okay It's, it is from a, it's an organizational nightmare Because there's a lot of planes that need to be caught Yeah In order to make, and a lot of schedules to be massaged In order to make it all online So, you know, it, that, that's kind of a work in progress It's why we're pretty excited about the gig tomorrow night For people that have wanted to come see us And to see the whole concept performed live It's a, it's going to be a cool experience So Yeah, yeah We expect it to turn out It's an event It's an event It doesn't happen every week One time only Yeah, one night only That's what we're saying, right? Wow To do it in its entirety in order And, you know, again We're also pretty excited to play with Pretty Crooked They're really good guys Yeah, yeah So, so you're on Spotify You're on all the streaming services Yeah Basically What about webpages or anything like that? Can people find you socially? All, yeah, all over Okay We're all over Our YouTube channel is pretty robust We've got, I think, five official videos out Or six official videos out And we get a lot of action on YouTube People just playing YouTube playlists That we've been popping up to We get a lot of listeners through there Yeah But, yeah, Spotify We released three singles in advance It was three, right? Three Yeah, three singles in advance And then we released the whole album And we've been sort of featuring different tracks since March Nice Yeah Nice Excellent It seems like everybody does that now Single, single, single Yeah And that's what's nice about having somebody Putting out an entire album Yep Exactly Yeah We wanted to tease the whole album And it was really a way to start to build listenership Instead of just dropping an album And have nobody know You know, a lot of the playlisters picked us up You know, ironically Like Sean was saying That people from all over the world have heard it Which, to us, really pleases the crap out of us Because, you know, it's a global story About losing oneself through life Right And the music of hard rock Yeah, South America is big with hard rock You know, Maiden will pull in 300,000 In some of those football stadiums down there Yeah You know, and so it's like Football Football Football Football Football Football Yeah Yeah Well, gentlemen, it's about that time Thank you so much for coming in Thanks for having us Thanks a lot We enjoyed meeting you guys and listening to you Thank you so much Thank you for having us Appreciate it This was great Great Awesome The Rock & Roll Chicago Podcast is edited by Paul Martin Theme song courtesy of Eminar Rush The Rock & Roll Chicago Podcast Does not own the rights To any of the music Heard on the show The music is used to promote The guests that are featured Rock & Roll Chicago