Portland, Oregon Rockers Veio just released their new album Vitruvian via Silent Majority Group last month. I spoke with Veio frontman Cameron Byrd shortly before the release, about Vitruvian, the Veio Legion, working with Sylvia Massy, their time at the Happens convention, and more.

So let’s dig right in, you’ve got the new album, Vitruvian, coming out this month – so I want to ask, how did you first approach following up on the Infinite Light, Desperate Shadows record?

So, we followed up Infinite Light, Desperate Shadows kind of with an approach that we wanted to write songs that were maybe a little more manageable to the average listener – and by that, I mean, on Infinite Light, we had a lot of songs that were super long, a lot of ups and downs, and a lot of songs that were fun for us to play, but didn’t really create a high-energy vibe between us and the audience as well, you know? So we set out to write some songs that were still very powerful, still very driven, but also almost, in a way, straightforward rock and roll, too. 

Makes sense, a little more straightforward, and maybe even a little more radio-friendly than you guys have done before. I notice you guys kind of cross the line between the rock and metal world, especially in radio – you know, you’re working Active and you’re working Metal at the same time – do you feel more part of any one genre than the other?

You know, I consider ourselves just a rock and roll band. Because so many people get so caught up in genres and subgenres and all that stuff, but we’re really influenced by a lot of Prog bands. A lot of my favorite bands, personally, are Progressive Rock, Progressive Metal bands, but that’s not exactly what we do. And I love a lot of stuff that’s more straightforward rock and roll, more traditional metal stuff, but that’s not exactly what we do either. So when it comes to people asking or talking about it, I say, we’re a Rock band, let’s not get caught up in all the genre hype, let’s just play the music that we love, play to people that love what we do, and don’t really care either, and just go from there. 

That’s good, because you’re not restricting yourselves in any kind of way – whatever comes out is what comes out. 

Exactly, we try not to be too snobby about it all. *laughs*

*laughs* Good attitude. So far, we’ve heard “Flare of Defiance” and “Crux” from the album, talk to me more about these tracks, what they mean to you and in the context of the album.

To me, “Flare of Defiance” and “Crux” are both songs that are pretty high-energy and good songs for a live experience. Really fun to play, and within the album, kind of unique thought process behind it where I took the lyrics of each songs and gave them a label – so “Crux” is a song basically about spirituality, it’s a song about finding you, finding your being, finding your soul, whatever way you want to interpret that, and then “Flare of Defiance” is a song about, basically, personal freedom, personal liberty, being able to do what you feel is right, being able to do what you want to do in your everyday life, and those were two themes that I put to these two particular songs, and the rest of the album has themes like that as well.

Good stuff. Now, to go along with the release, there’s also something else you just launched – can you talk about the “Vitruvian Experience”?

Yeah, so the Vitruvian Experience is an opt-in, sign-up experience that we’re providing our fans that is just an in-depth look into making this album over the last…I mean, we spent a good year, almost a year and a half, making this record. It gives you opportunities to see behind the scenes in the studio, behind the scenes on tour, exclusive other content, you can find some merch in there that we’re offering our fans that isn’t available just on our normal website. So it’s a fan experience, we call our fans the “Legion”, the Veio Legion, so when you get the Vitruvian Experience, you become part of the Veio Legion, and that leads to a bunch of other perks for future use as of right now, seeing how we’re not out on the road, like everybody else. We feel like it’s a cool opportunity for our fans to get to know us, us to get to know our fans, have cool interaction back and forth, being able to chat with people, and especially in this time, reaching out and making sure that everybody’s okay, everybody’s feeling good, and then hopefully when this new record comes out in a couple weeks here, that people will find some hope, inspiration and joy in that, as well.

So you guys probably have a good fan connection there. 

We do, our fans are awesome. We got a little crew, it’s unofficial, but within the Veio Legion, we’ve got people who we call our superfans, and they’re great, they support us in all that we do, they reach out, when we do livestreams, they’re in there commenting and we can have good dialogue back and forth with them, we really appreciate those people out there. 

You mentioned that it shows more behind the scenes about the making of the album, something I wanted to ask you about is to talk a bit about working with Sylvia Massy. Now, I happen to be a fan of hers, she’s known for her unusual and quirky recording techniques, so did you get to do any fun stuff behind the scenes with her? 

The time with Sylvia was cool. To answer your question directly, we did not do anything super quirky or crazy because we were on a pretty limited time constraint, but she has a very artistic, very creative, very…for lack of a better term, oddball approach to a lot of stuff, so one of the things that we found interesting that we’d never experienced before in our recording adventures in the past, was that she set up, I think it was 24 or 26 different mics on the drum kit, which is an incredible amount of mics for recording any drum kit, let alone the size of drum kit that my brother Brett uses. He doesn’t use a small drum kit by any means, but 24-26, somewhere in there, whatever that number was, was an insane amount of mics, and one of the mics was actually a cut up section of garden hose that she put around the kick drum, literally taped on to one end. So that was a funny, unique approach to capturing parts of the kick drum that probably otherwise wouldn’t have been captured. 

Wow, yeah, 26 mics, that’s pretty intense. But good results though, I’m sure you guys were satisfied with whatever those 26 mics made happen, because it’s a great-sounding record. 

Yeah, thank you, it was just awesome to be in her studio, it’s in Ashland, Oregon, which is the opposite side of the state from us, it’s about a 20-minute drive to California, and walking into her studio with Johnny Cash, Chili Peppers, Tool, and System of a Down plaques on the walls was pretty awe-inspiring. 

Yeah, that’s awesome! So, Veio also did a Facebook livestream for the Music Mayhem magazine recently, so how did that go?

That was really fun to do. So, Chris and I did a two-song acoustic performance, which, we don’t normally do acoustic performances, it’s kind of not part of our gig, I guess. And to be honest, myself personally, I don’t prefer to do acoustic performances. But we morphed two of the first songs that you guys have heard off this album, “Flare of Defiance” and then “Ascendancy” into acoustic songs. Kind of changed the tuning on them a little bit, played them slightly differently to make it more of an acoustic vibe – but that was great, I watched the livestream and all the other bands and artists that were on there were fantastic, and I’m a fan of some of the people that were on there that I’d never heard of before now. So it was a cool opportunity to see some other people, and a cool opportunity to approach two of our songs in a different light as well. 

Who were some of the other artists that you discovered that you dug?

I really dug the approaches that you could tell some of the more heavier, harder, more metal bands took but they approached the songs with more of an ambient, ethereal kind of vibe, real spacey sounding guitars, some of the keys that they added in that aren’t in their normal songs were awesome. There were several of them that did that type of vibe and I thought that was really cool.

That’s cool, well, you said you’re into Progressive stuff, so spacey and synthy definitely fits that category.

Definitely, definitely. 

Also, last year, you guys performed at the Happens convention in Las Vegas, so I’m curious what your connection was with that initially, and how the event was for you guys?

It was a great experience, super fun going down to Vegas for a couple days, especially in February, when up here in Portland, Oregon, we’re pretty grey and overcast, so it was nice to get down to the sunshine, but it started snowing when we were down there, which was crazy. But we got in through our management team at SMG, Silent Majority Group, Jeff Hanson and Mark Fischer, they’re our guys, they’re responsible for a lot of big names acts out there in the past, and they got us in, suggested we did it, so we went down, had a great experience with several other fantastics bands. Especially – I mentioned I’m a Prog fan – we played with The Contortionist, which is one of my favorite bands and I’d actually somehow never got to see them play a live set. When they’d come through Portland here, I’d either not hear about it somehow, or we’d be on the road, and I’d miss their set. So it was really cool to be able to play a set of our own, and then see somebody else that I’ve looked up to and listened to and admired. Those dudes were really cool, it was cool getting to chat with them afterwards and hang out for a bit. And then they actually came through Portland like a month or two later, I went to the show and caught their set and chatted with them afterwards too, so it was a cool experience.

Oh, that’s awesome! So it was like a little bonus for you there. 

Yeah, definitely!

Hopefully we’ll be getting back to actually seeing people live again in the near future, I know there’s no way to say anything about that, but it’s cool that a lot of artists are doing these livestreams, and even if you have to push your music into an acoustic version, it’s still providing an experience of some sort. All just doing what we can, right?

Oh, for sure. Trying to stay moving forward even though things are a little slow right now, and just hanging in there. 

Exactly. Well, on that note, you’ve got the release of Vitruvian this month, and I know people are already excited about it, so what’s on the horizon for Veio? I know it’s hard to say anything about touring, but any new music in the works, or anything else you’re thinking about?

Yeah, definitely. It’s kind of funny that we’re releasing a brand-new album in a couple weeks, but we’re already looking forward to new music. We have a little bit of a fan vote going on our Facebook and Instagram with suggestions for cover songs, because we thought it would be cool to approach somebody else’s song in a different light. We’ve done one before, and we were just like, hey, this would be a cool thing, people are bored at home, and not having a whole lot to look forward to right now, so let’s get their ideas on what a cool cover song would be. But then, also, we’re just slowly continually writing new riffs, new ideas, new licks, I was just working on one for three or four hours yesterday, and yeah, hopefully even if touring doesn’t happen…it’ll be strange, we might have two new albums out by the time we get out and play live again. It’d be strange because you’re supposed to put an album out to tour, right? We’ll see what happens, but maybe this fall, we’re going to get back in the studio and record new material. So we don’t have a plan for that yet, but that’s what’s on the horizon for us right now. 

That’s awesome! Stuff to look forward to, and you know what, when you get back on the road, you’ll just make your set doubly long, right?

Hopefully! That’d be the ideal situation. 

Good stuff. Well, thanks for taking the time to talk with me, Cam, Vitruvian’s an awesome record and you guys rock, looking forward to hearing more.

Chelsea, thank you so much, we appreciate it.

Find Vitruvian and more on Veio at: https://veiomusic.com/.

New Zealand Hard Rockers Devilskin released their new album Red via Devilskin Ltd. this spring, and I recently had the chance to talk with bassist/songwriter Paul Martin about the record, and his background as a musician and radio personality.

Just want to make sure, first of all, Paul, that you and your family are safe and healthy during these crazy times.

Yes, pretty crazy times, we’re all well, thank you. New Zealand’s been one of the luckiest countries over this whole COVID crisis, so far it’s pretty low. It’s been crazy, been locked up and just the way things are going, no gigs, of course – that’s a big thing for us musicians and our associated industry is that we can’t go out any play gigs.

Definitely, that’s been one of the biggest problems for musicians, I think, and of course you’ve got the release of the new album, Red, I’m excited to start talking about it, but I imagine it’s a bit bittersweet. If it were me, I know I’d be excited that it’s out, but feeling weird that you can’t promote it and tour it in the traditional way, so maybe just start with how you guys are feeling about the album being out, but also how you’re making do with what you can?

I think you pretty much nailed it, Chelsea – weird. The whole thing feels really weird, when we released the album, we still weren’t allow to mail anything over here, so we could release it digitally, on Spotify and all the digital platforms, but we couldn’t get physical copies out to people until the government legislation, which was only this week. So, we’ve been bundling up CDs and LPs and box sets. It’s a crazy time, and you know, no one saw this coming. Right now, we should be driving from Italy to Spain *laughs*, on a nice tour bus for the next gig, but we had to cancel the UK tour, European tour, and the New Zealand tour, that’s the way things have been going. 

Yeah, it’s just a waiting period for a lot of artists, but that might turn out to be a good thing, because everyone’s got all this pent-up energy of just wanting to get out there on the road, so it’ll just be like unleashing all the bands once everybody can get back out there. So, let’s dig into the Red album a little bit and I want to start off with the writing of it. Do you all contribute to the writing together, how does your system for Devilskin work?

There is no one way of writing, sometimes it’s really organic and I’ll just start playing a bass line, sometimes Nic or Nail or myself comes up with an almost-finished song and we’ll go on with it. Lyrically, it’s either Jennie or myself that writes the lyrics to the songs, and I’ve always written lyrics in songs that have got hooks and…I think we’re quite different songwriters doing lyrics, Jennie’s probably get more personal, whereas I tend to be a little bit more ambiguous with my style. But I think it all works well together and really, we write when it’s the four of us in a room together just sharing ideas.

That’s cool, that’s usually the best way is when it’s organic – in this case, you got some awesome results, because Red is a killer album.

Thank you. We’re just so happy with it, it’s been a long time coming for us, there’s a couple of songs we initially wanted on our last album a few years ago, but we sort of hung onto them and nurtured them, and we had like 30 songs for this album and had to narrow it down to 12. A few moments where it’s kind of like letting go of your children, you know? It’s like “ah, man, that song’s going to be amazing if we get to record it”. And one of the songs that almost got cut, but I pushed and pushed for it, and so did our producer Greg, a song called “Do You See Birds”, I had written the lyrics over a year ago now, but it talks about loss of freedom, looking out the window and thinking of flying away stuff, and a year later, we record the song, and as soon as Jennie came out of the vocal booth from doing her part, she goes, “I think we should probably start the album with this”. We’re all sitting there with our jaws on the ground going, “Yep, yep. Let’s do that”. It’s a bit of a throat punch, you know? But yeah, the irony is the lyrics.

Absolutely, what timing for that one!

You know, the same with “All Fall Down”, I wrote the lyrics to that about a dystopia, an Orwellian sort of theme that kind of fits as well.

It sounds like you secretly made this all happen, Paul. Or you saw it coming, how about that?

*laughs* I did nothing, I saw nothing, I swear!

Well, you just mentioned some songs that you had such a big role in writing, but is there any one particular track standing out to you that you’re really proud of?

Yeah, at the moment, it’s a song called “Sweet Release”. It’s number 10 on the album, that’s a real soft ballad, and I wrote the lyrics about a young man who was 21 here in our hometown of Hamilton, New Zealand. And he was on mental health care, and they let him outside for a cigarette when they shouldn’t have, he was supposed to be on suicide watch, and he took his own life at the river. And that was 5 years ago now, and it’s been in the papers almost every day or every week, and his poor parents are trying to get some sort of closure and try to get the hospital to own up to it, and to change the policies and stuff like that. His poor parents are being tormented, it’s such a really sad story, and this poor young boy, only 21 and took his own life. It hit us and we basically wrote the song on the spot, rehearsed only once and kept it pretty much organic. Every time I hear it now, I get chills and I get a little sad about this young man, you know?

Absolutely, that’s an awful story and so sad. And it’s interesting how you guys channeled that into music, sometimes that’s where the best things come from in terms of music is when it’s something that’s from real life that you or somebody else really connects with.

Oh, definitely. There’s another song on the album, called “The Victor”, we’d just been away for a songwriting retreat, and we’d written the music for that but we didn’t have lyrics to it, and we were driving back home and out in the middle of nowhere we came across this really, really bad car accident. We went to provide support to these people before the ambulances could come, and there’s children, and man, the whole lot of us were all traumatized by it. And we wrote the song on it because it helps us process it, and we can sort of pay our tribute to the people that were in the accident, thankfully no one was killed, but it was just such an ugly thing to come across. And there are people who see that all day, every day. There’s so much tragedy going on, and when they happen to you, it’s really close to home, and we’re lucky that we can write songs about it, people can pick up on the same feelings and vibes and we address them, you know? 

It’s that connection, yeah, whether it’s a tragedy, or it’s something inspiring, whatever it may be, there’s something to connect with that makes it really important.

Exactly, and these songs are real to us. And the four of us in the band, we’re all huge music collectors as well, so we’ve got our favorites and we’ve climbed inside our favorite songs and get as close to them as we can, so for us to be able to evoke feelings in other people, it’s pretty special.

That’s what it’s all about. Now, Paul, you’ve always had a lot going on outside of the band as well – you have a background in radio, which is awesome, and you’ve started a record label, you’ve done DJing…what was first for you, was it radio or playing in bands?

Playing in bands. I lied my way into a band when I was 17, I told them I could play bass and I couldn’t *laughs*! I was like, learning on the spot, but I really wanted to be in a band. It’s freaky because my very first band, we were good buddies for years, and we were doing our own versions of Judas Priest and Black Sabbath songs, we had so much fun – and it’s weird, because the singer has just written a book, and I’m reading the book and there’s all these things that I’ve forgotten that we did. We rehearsed five days a week for four years, and we worked really hard – it was all rubbish, but I’ve just always been this into it, it’s just what I’ve always wanted to do. The DJ thing, I was being interviewed on a student radio here in Hamilton, and I got on really well with the DJ who just happened to have a metal show, so he and I got together, and he left and I carried on his metal show, and now it’s been 33 years. *laughs*

You know, that’s how it starts! It starts for so many people with college radio, it sparks an interest, sparks opportunities – that’s where I started, too, was college radio – and that’s cool. Do you have a favorite interview you’ve done for radio?

That’d probably have to be Dimebag.

Nice!

I was privileged enough to get to hang with him on a number of occasions. Probably one of the worst interviews I ever did was Ozzy Osbourne. It was a phone interview and he was eating an apple, and it was really hard work, but there’s been some I’ve really enjoyed – Ronnie James Dio, Rob Halford, Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, and yeah, I’ve been privileged to speak to some of my biggest heroes. 

Total icons you’ve got on your list, that’s awesome!

Yeah! The last interview I did was David Coverdale, they were going to do a tour here a month ago but obviously that got canceled, too. But he’s a sweetheart to talk to, such a nice guy, really funny.

That’s cool. Now, since you started with the band stuff first and then went into radio, was it weird for you to go from the band member being interviewed, to the radio guy doing the interview? You kind of switched roles there. 

Yeah, it was – I mean, don’t get me wrong, Chelsea, but I just never wanted to be a radio person, because I used to watch WKRP in Cincinnati, and it was like “radio folk are a little bit funny, aren’t they? They’re a little bit weird”. So my whole thing was, I’m a musician and I’m just playing my favorite songs. Obviously, over the years, I’ve become this DJ – I’m starting to get the hang of it now. *laughs* But you know what it’s like, just playing great music to people, and then you’re introducing these bands, “I love them so much, they changed my life”, and it’s a great feeling when you’ve turned people on to a really cool band. 

That is funny you have that dual role of playing stuff on the radio and being in a band yourself, because then you can turn people on to your own band – just be like, “Oh hey, I heard this really great band called Devilskin the other day, you guys should check ‘em out!”, right?

*laughs* That’s the hardest part of the job – because I’ve heard DJs pushing their own stuff and it sounds awful, you know? – so I’ve always just talked about the band in the third person, and I probably don’t give us as much attention as I do other bands, just because I don’t want to be “that guy”. 

Well, that’s good then. *laughs* So you said when you started with your first band, you told them you knew how to play bass even though you didn’t, so how did you end up learning? Just along the way, you were winging it and just got the hang of it, or did you take actual, formal lessons?

I didn’t take lessons, I was too embarrassed, I just worked my ass off at home, playing along to AC/DC songs, and then the band was playing Iron Maiden songs and I thought to myself, “I’m mad”, but then yeah, I just watched and learned and practiced my ass off because I wanted to be good at it. And I’m still in that situation now, I’m trying to practice as much as I can, and I just love the instruments, I love playing guitar and I’ve got another band I play in called World War Four, and we just released a video and single. That keeps me busy, too, I play guitar and sing in that one. 

Oh, that’s awesome, tell us more about World War Four then!

I’ve had the band going for about 15 years or so, different lineups, different bass player and it’s always been a three-piece with myself on vocals and guitar. We’ve made different recordings of various qualities over the years, and it actually got cohesive enough to release an album, and I’ve just put them all together, and you can check them out online, Spotify and Youtube and all that. It’s a side project that’s a little bit heavier than Devilskin and it’s the classic power trio so I’m definitely very wary of my vocals after playing in a band with Jennie. *laughs* But it’s more about attitude and all that in that band, but it’s a lot of fun playing the guitar, which I love.

So you’re doing vocals and guitar? If you were doing vocals and bass, I would have said you’ve pulling a Lemmy there with that power trio.

*laughs* I wish!

I’m definitely going to check that out when we get off the phone. Devilskin, you’ve got great stuff going on, and you’ve got World War Four, still have your radio work, so it sounds like you’re still finding ways to keep busy even while the world’s on lockdown. 

Definitely, and I’m a motorcycle fanatic, too, so I make time each day to go for a ride on my bike. 

Cool way to pass the time. I know it’s kind of hard to project the future for any band right now, especially with everything that’s going on, but let’s think beyond the lockdown, when the world’s back open, what should we be expecting from Devilskin?

Well, we want to get to America. We’ve played in Hollywood twice and that was a few years ago, so we desperately want to get to America, get a decent tour and have a good look around, meet you folks, and have a good time playing rock and roll. For us, a couple of years ago, when we came to Hollywood, we got to play the Whisky a Go Go, bucket list stuff there, but now we need to get to the rest of the country. 

Well, America wants to see you guys, you’ve got this killer new record, you’re an awesome band, and we definitely want to see you in the near future. 

Definitely, thanks so much Chelsea, thank you for the support and I’m really glad that you like the album. 

Thanks so much for your time, Paul!

Find Red on all digital platforms and physical formats here, and keep up with Devilskin via: https://devilskin.co.nz.

Guitarist Sammy Boller just made his solo debut with the instrumental album Kingdom of the Sun today, on CandyRat Records. We connected for an interview this week about his new venture into a solo career, his time in Citizen Zero, connections with Joe Satriani, Guitar World, and Friedman Amps, background as a musician, and more. 

You’ve got the new album, Kingdom of the Sun coming out, and you have been a solo artist in your own right for some amount of time, so let’s talk about your first solo album, what are some things that went into it?

When my band got off the road a couple years ago, I started working on some new guitar techniques, and just came up with arrangements and melodies on the guitar, just for fun, and the more that I worked on it, the more melodies I came up with, and I started thinking I should really turn these into some full songs. So once I got a couple together, my best friend Steve Lehane is an engineer and producer and he works at Rustbelt Studios which is right by my house, and I was like, “Man, you want to try recording a couple of these, laying these down?”, so we turned a couple into full songs and we were like, “This is cool, we should finish this” *laughs*. So we did it kind of sporadically, wherever there was free time at the studio, we’d go in a couple of days at a time and lay some songs down. It took a while, but we finished it almost a year ago, I think we cut the last song in April of last year, and I’ve been sitting on it for a while, but sometimes when it’s your first album, it kind of takes a while to get all the finishing touches and everything lined up. So I’m excited to finally have it out, it’s going to be super cool. 

That’s awesome, and it sounds like it came about very organically, you weren’t like, “Okay, I’m going to venture out and make a solo album now”, it was more of, “Hey, you know what? I think I’ve got something here, I want to roll with this”. 

It was more for fun, yeah, but it’s one of those things where my old band was kind of ending when I started, so the timing just worked out. But for the first time as an artist and a guitar player, I feel like I’m at where I’m supposed to be in a sense, it’s a nice feeling, that you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, you know? It’s all good, it’s exciting.

And the band that you’re talking about, of course, would be Citizen Zero, so can you talk to me about that transition? You said the band was fading out while you were getting all this stuff into place as a solo artist, so how do you feel that band experience shaped you into moving onto the next step to do this solo instrumental work now?

I feel really lucky to have been in a band like that. I was actually just talking with a buddy of mine, David Black, he’s a phenomenal guitar player and an amazing musician. We were talking about how lucky we are to have been in serious bands that have toured and gone for it, you know, because it changes the way you play. I wouldn’t be playing the way I do now if it weren’t for being in a band for all those years. Also, just being in the music industry with them, putting a record out and touring and stuff, I learned what not to do and what to do when it comes to doing your own thing, you know? *laughs* It’s lucky I’m getting another go at it, because going into it completely fresh is tough, so I feel really lucky I’m able to navigate it a little bit easier than if, say, I would have done an album like this like five years ago.

What are some of the things you’ve learned not to do? 

Well, I mean, it’s one of those things…my old band, we went through a lot of tough music business stuff early on, like the record label we were on went under pretty soon after our album came out, we ended up on another record label. A lot of times in the music business, things are out of your control, you know? So I think more than anything, I’ve learned to kind of proceed with caution on certain things. But it’s also, the music business changed so much even — that was 2016 when all that was going on, so in the past four years, for rock, it’s even changed since then. But I feel like I’m in a place now where the path is pretty clear. 

That’s a good place for an artist to be, and that can be a difficult place, especially for new artists to navigate to, and I’m curious what kind of changes do you feel like you’ve seen, even in the last few years?

I think bands are starting to go a little bit more independent, depending on the genre, obviously – at least for straight up Hard Rock bands, just because a lot of labels are coming together. That was what was going on a few years ago, a lot of major labels were buying up smaller indie labels, stuff like that. Granted, what I’m doing now is different than what I was doing before, but I think, for me, the world I’m getting into, the scene I’m in, now it’s just completely different as far as being an instrumentalist. It’s a little bit more free to pave your own path, so it’s cool, but it’s kind of a challenge and I like that, I think it’s kind of exciting. 

It seems like it, because instrumental is not something people always go for, up-and-coming guitarists, they usually want to be part of a band, or…I just feel like instrumental isn’t always the first choice of genre, which makes it really cool and unique to venture in that direction, following the paths of artists like Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, you know, the ones that usually come to mind for instrumental guitar. A lot of people are, maybe, too intimidated to follow that path sometimes? So kudos to you for heading in that direction. 

Aww, thank you so much. I know you’re big on those guys, I am too, and especially when I was a kid, when I was trying to learn how to play, I really admired Steve Vai and Joe and all those types of players. Now, the electric guitar is so popular, it’s different than it was back then, obviously. Now there’s a lot more online, obviously that didn’t exist back then, but it’s a great time to be an instrumentalist now. 

And speaking of online, you do a lot with Guitar World magazine, on the online spectrum, you’re not only just a player, you’re a teacher too, so how’d you first get involved with that?

I’ve been teaching since I was really young, I started giving lessons when I was in high school, just to make cash or whatever.

Good way to do it when you’re a musician.

Yeah, a lot of musicians teach, and I really love teaching too, it can be really rewarding. Now, I teach a lot more online than in person – I still teach a couple of people in my apartment, but the Guitar World thing came about a few years ago. The original Chief Editor of Guitar World, Brad Tolinski is from Detroit, and that’s where I’m from, and his brother used to come see my old band, Citizen Zero, all the time whenever we played in town. And he told Brad about me and said, “Hey, you should check this kid out”, and Brad was super cool, I think it was the Detroit connection. But he said, “Hey, if you want to do a couple of lessons, go for it”, so I did a few, and then he said to keep it going, so it turned into more of a column. They’ve been really, really supportive, and I just did a bunch more, so there’s going to be some new ones coming out. I haven’t updated in a while just because I’ve been kind of busy. 

So for the column, how do you go about coming up with what you’re doing for the lesson, are there specific topics, or you just say, “You know what? I feel like teaching *this*”?

They let me do whatever I want, it’s cool. The majority of those are from a couple of years ago, but for me, I wanted to do more all-encompassing techniques, like things that you can own, maybe you can take it and run with it, as opposed to specific licks or something like that. It was more of a conceptual type of column. The series I’m doing now, since I’ve been doing more of the two-handed tapping melodies, I’ve been doing a couple of lessons on those, riffs from some of my songs, and just some exercises you can practice with that technique. Then, I’m going to show a couple of leads from the album too, sections of them. So it’s changing a little bit, but it’s all in the same vein. When I first started the column, it was more things that you can turn into your own, that’s a big thing with teaching for me, the goal is for the student to find their own voice, I think that’s really important. 

You were talking about record labels before, and I’m curious because I saw Kingdom of the Sun is on CandyRat Records, is that an independent label?

Yeah, CandyRat’s an independent guitar label out of Milwaukee, I just signed with them at the end of last year, but they’ve been awesome to work with. The owner, Rob Poland, is a really great guy and they’ve been super supportive and helped me finish the album and get it out, so it’s been really great to work with them. I feel really blessed because now I have a lot of great people helping me, which, that’s just a blessing to have anybody believe in you and help you with your music, you know?

So you had already started the album – like you said, you just started it for fun, you weren’t necessarily planning out labels and how it was going to be released, but then CandyRat just came up along the way?

Yeah, it was already done, I finished it first. I have a lot of kids that I teach ask me those types of questions, like how do you get a record out, stuff like that. But there’s no set path to do it, for me, I knew I definitely wanted to finish it first then try to figure out the release later, but not everybody does that – sometimes, bands get signed on demos, they’ll be doing it for five years, then they get to a record – but, there’s a million different ways to do it now. I just like to play, I focus on the music and write songs, so for me, if I have people helping me out with things like that, it makes a big difference.

Of course, the more you can focus on what you do best and what you want to be doing, the better. Now, let’s go back in time two months to NAMM, actually, which is where we met, and you were representing Friedman Amps.

Yeah, I play Friedman Amps, and actually Dave Friedman, he’s helped me out so much, he’s a well-known amplifier designer for Friedman Amps, he was really well-known even before that, because he’s worked with all the big guitar players, he’s worked with Van Halen, Slash, and all that, so he’s just a real connoisseur of guitar tone, so we’ve become really tight friends from doing guitar clinics together and stuff like that. We travel all around and hang out, he’s a super good guy, man. He’s taught me a lot about guitar tones and about music.

That’s awesome. So, that’s what your NAMM activities consisted of, the connection with Friedman, and you were doing some demos at the booth – talk about your overall NAMM experience. 

Yeah, we were playing two performances a day, I was doing some songs from my new album, and then my friend, Dave Black, who we were talking about earlier, did a couple of his songs, too. Dave Friedman introduced me to him, and we’ve become really tight friends, he’s one of my favorite guitar players, so getting to spend time playing with him is really fun. 

Of course, and you were telling me about the Detroit connection there with the classic Detroit band he was in —

Seduce! Great, great. They’re awesome, man, they still play a couple times a year in Detroit and they always pack it out. Whenever they play a show, it’s just slammed to the wall, I think they intentionally oversell the place, it’s pretty cool.

Awesome! I love when there’s that local celebrity status, especially with classic bands, wherever they’re from, the hometown holds onto them like that, I love that.

Oh yeah, it’s crazy, they definitely have that going on here. But I gave my buddy, Frank, who lives in Nashville, a Seduce shirt after I went to see them a couple of years ago, he’s a bartender and he wears it, and he calls me like, “Every time I wear that, somebody comes up to me like, ‘Dude, you know that band?’”. They’re kind of underground, they’ve got that thing going on. 

Underground legends, if that’s a thing? *laughs*

Yeah! Even after all these years, it’s really cool. 

Since we’ve been talking about NAMM, I do want to talk a little bit more about gear, do you exclusively use Friedman Amps, or do you have a whole array of gear that you use?

No, those are my main amps for sure. The amp that I use is the BE-100, on the record, that’s the main sound. And I’ve been using their guitars too, there’s the NoHo 24, it’s like a Superstrat-type guitar, they’re just an awesome company, man. All their stuff is top notch, and what’s really cool is it has really powerful guitar tones, but they also have super modern features. For me, I started using one of the amps because all the stuff I do goes from really clean to really heavy, really fast. So with them, they’re the only amps out there that have the versatility where you can set that all in one amp, you don’t have to use a lot of different gear. 

So is it a digital modeling amp?

No, it’s a tube amp, the one I use is a British-style tube amp. I’m more old-school, like a classic plug into a half stack and go, you know? It’s more rock ’n’ roll. 

Yeah, totally old-school rock ’n’ roll vibe! I mean, that’s what made me stop in at the booth you were playing, I feel like a lot of people were drawn by that too, it’s like, “All right, this sounds old-school, but he doesn’t look that old-school, so let’s check this out!” 

Ah, there you go! That’s awesome. Yeah, they’ve got a really neat setup because you can really crank up in the sound iso booth, crank up and wail and not get attacked by the NAMM police who walk around, I don’t know if you saw that.

Oh, yeah, that was happening so much in the drum room – actually, you know where that happened was at the Sawtooth/Chromacast booth, and Vinny Appice was doing drum demos there, but he literally kept getting shut down. NAMM police kept coming by like, “Hey, you’ve got to quiet it down”, he was like, “yeah”, then just goes back to playing full blast. 

That’s hard to tell him to play quieter, he’s a total legend. 

Exactly! So we’ve talked about some of your influences before, obviously in the instrumental guitar vein, the Steve Vai and Joe Satriani world, and actually, I heard that you were handpicked by Joe Satriani himself for one of his competitions?

Yeah, it was a few years ago. There was this Guitar Center contest for covers of Satriani’s songs, and I did a cover of “Satch Boogie”. It was cool because he picked ten winners, and we got to go to LA and watch him do a master class, it was really cool and I’d never been to LA before, that’s a crazy way to get out there for the first time. It was sweet! And just getting to talk to him for a few minutes was cool, he’s the nicest guy.

That’s a very rock ’n’ roll way to go to LA for the first time, too.

Yeah, it was awesome! It was a short trip, I think I was 19 or 20 at the time, and it was cool.

Aside from the instrumental shredding, what would you say some of your other influences are?

You know, I grew up a metalhead like you. I started out getting into rock with Van Halen, Ozzy, the classic stuff. And that’s kind of where I really started to learn how to play guitar was trying to learn some of that stuff, but after that is when I really got into more instrumentalists, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and…I really love Paul Gilbert too, if you’re into him.

Yeah, totally!

He’s a total badass. So those were the ones when I was really cutting my teeth, starting to play. Now, I listen to all kinds of stuff though, I listen to a lot of singer/songwriter type music. I do a lot of production stuff in Detroit, with my buddy Steve, who produced my album, but we’ll produce stuff together a lot. We don’t only do rock records, we just worked with this great folk band named Jackamo, they’re a local band. And we did all kinds of stuff, we worked with this great band from Louisiana called Whale, they’re more like Alternative Rock. So even though I’m definitely a metalhead at heart, I love all types of music, and I love playing all types of music. 

That’s cool, especially when you’re into production, you have to have that open mind to different kinds of music.

Oh yeah, and one thing when I’m teaching, I always try to tell kids, no matter what musician you’re playing with, you can always learn something from them, everybody’s got completely different backgrounds. There’s always something you can learn from other players, and working with other artists. It’s cool to work on a song and not just be playing guitar on it, too, you know? It’s exciting and fun. 

With your students, do you get a large majority of them saying, “I want to do heavy metal, rock ’n’ roll”, or is it just all over the place?

It’s a little bit all over. And lately, I’ve been doing a lot more of the two-handed tapping stuff, so I end up teaching a lot of that. It’s a lot of that and then a lot of shredding, which is fun, but it’s always changing. 

People don’t exactly become shredders overnight, so I know you said you were originally cutting in to Van Halen and Ozzy – were you more of the listen, play it by ear and try to figure it out type, or did you have tabs, formal lessons, or maybe a combination of it all? How did you actually learn?

Aww, thanks, good question. You know, I started before YouTube, so I’m really lucky I’ve been around music my whole life, my parents are both musicians.

That helps.

Yeah, it helps a lot. I started playing piano when I was 5, and I took lessons, but I started playing guitar when I was 10, and mostly learned by ear. I had this program on my computer that I still have, it’s called Transcribe, you can slow stuff down, so I’d just spend hours and hours slowing down stuff and trying to figure it out. Solos, whole songs, and albums, but I’m lucky because doing it that way when you’re that young, inevitably, you have some stuff you’re just not going to get right. So my dad would come upstairs and be like, “Man, you’ve got to listen to that again, that’s just…that’s not happening”. *laughs* But it helps, because now it’s so easy to just look it up online, but learning like that really forces you to just work on your ear. And it was the early days of tabs, like MXTabs, I used to use that a lot, and unfortunately, a lot of those tabs were totally off, so navigating through the sea of tabs online is interesting. 

That’s still a thing too, that’s difficult when you pick one out like, “Okay, this looks good”, then play it like, “Wait, that does not sound right at all”. 

Yeah, it’s crazy, so I was mostly by ear. When I got to high school, the orchestra director at my high school was formerly a classical guitar instructor at Wayne State, which is a big college here. His name is Peter Tolias, and he started showing me how to read music on guitar, and he got me into trying to play Jazz, learning the changes and stuff like that. I started studying my music theory with him, so I guess that was the initial way I got into playing. 

Jazz is tricky, man. When I was in college, I took jazz guitar lessons, and that was some of the hardest stuff I’ve ever done *laughs*. 

Oh nice! Awesome, that’s cool, yeah, I was like a jazz guitar major in college, too, I didn’t make it, I only did it for like three semesters, then I started playing in a band, so I split. *laughs* But, I feel really grateful for that time, I went to University of Michigan, and they have a really unique program called Jazz and Contemplative Studies, so for me it was jazz guitar, and the Contemplative Studies part was meditation in relation to music, which was super super great, I feel really lucky to have been in those classes. I think out of everything in school, that was probably something I got the most out of. 

Wow, I need to hear more about this, that is an extremely unique program in terms of incorporating the meditation. That’s really cool.

It’s really unique, I think the guy who started the program is a guy named Ed Sarath, and last I checked, he was still at the school. It’s really cool – more than anything, with music, in order to be playing from your heart, you’ve got to be totally in the moment. Music is a direct reflection of who you are, so the more you work on yourself, the better your music gets, you know?

Absolutely! Do you feel that you’ve continued to incorporate that thought and philosophy as you continue on?

Yeah, and I’ve especially delved back into it the past few years pretty hardcore, so I feel like now it’s a huge influence on the music I make for sure. 

That actually reminds of something you had mentioned before, about Ram Dass? Can you talk more about your connection to him with your music?

Oh, I love him, yeah, he’s one of my favorites. I was kind of going through a tough time a few years ago, and I read Be Here Now, that was his famous book in the ’60’s, when he just got back from India. That book just totally flipped my world around, and I started really getting into — he met an Indian Guru while he was there named Neem Karoli Baba, and that’s the big part of Be Here Now, and I started reading a bunch of books about him after I read that, and there’s actually a song on the album called “Cloak of Light”, which, that’s my favorite song on the album, I actually sampled that Guru chanting the Indian chant “Ram”, it’s at the beginning of that song, it’s actually at the bridge and the end, but you can hear him chanting, we tried to incorporate it in the melody, so it was kind of cool. That was my little tribute to him. 

That’s awesome, and also very unique, and I feel like that just ties right back to the unique program, unique perspectives, and that aspect of your life that you’re putting into your music. It’s good when there’s a very personal touch thrown in on an artist’s album, and that’s something that’s personal to you.

Aww, thank you so much. I don’t know, I feel lucky to be able to do something like that, it’s just fun.

So let’s get back to the album, then, Kingdom of the Sun, and what you’re looking forward to – you said you were booking some tour dates, so that’s going to be your solo work, and what else can we expect?

That’s pretty much it for right now, that’s what I’m working on. We just did a video for “Cloak of Light”, so that’s coming out the same day as the album. After that, we’re just going to be going on the road, I’m excited to go out with my band, my band are my best friends, so I know it’s going to be a blast.

How did you gather your current band, everybody that’s going to be going out with you?

Well, Steve plays bass, he’s my buddy who produced the album, and he’s like my best friend, so …

So he has to be involved, pretty much.

Yeah, of course. So even though the album’s under my name, he was a huge, huge part of the album. And then on drums, we have my buddy, Miguel Gutierrez, who I was just hanging out with earlier today, he’s a phenomenal drummer and another really good friend of ours. So it’s just a three-piece, and it’s killer, really fun. It’s cool being in a band like that where it’s just guitar, bass, and drums, it’s kind of like an open palette to work with, you can really take up a lot of space. 

Definitely, a lot of room for jamming there, I feel like when rock power trios happen, they almost recall jazz trios in a sense, with three instruments just going off.

Oh yeah, it’s really fun, and I’m lucky because the guys in the band are such amazing musicians, it’s just a real pleasure to play with people like that, you know? They hold it down so hard, I feel like I’m free to do whatever I want. 

Yeah, that’s awesome. It sounds like you’ve got a lot of great stuff going on, I’m looking forward to the album and I know it’s going to be a great debut solo record for you!

Thank you so much, Chelsea!

Keep up with Sammy Boller here: https://www.sammyboller.com/, and find his solo debut album, Kingdom of the Sun in physical and digital form here: http://smarturl.it/kingdomofthesun.