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"Tyranny" from Shadow Gallery is defenitly one of the past years’ masterpieces of the prorgressive genre. The music theacher, guitarist, keybordist, composer and prodcuer Gary Wehrkamp took some time answering my questions. |
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| Mark: |
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Even though you’re a not an original member of the, I would like you to sum up the history of the band? |
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| Gary: |
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Carl Cadden-James and Mike Baker played in a metal cover band which did everything between Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Queensrÿche and Ynwie Malmsteen. A guitarist by the name of Ron Evens was a part of that line-up. I think he played some keyboards too. Brendt Allman became the other guitarist. Chris Ingles started playing only keyboards and the band started writing own material. This happened at the end of the 80’s. The drummer sended a demo cassette to Mike Varney who showed an interest. Chris left the band because of studies. I had a progressive rock band around 30 miles north by the time, and by the time of 91-92 Ron Evans quite, Chris came back and the band got the name Shadow Gallery. They signed a deal with Magna Carta and during a period of one year recordings were held in the basement of Carl Cadden-James’s. Magna Carta decided to use that material and released it as the debut album "Shadow Gallery". After that, I got into the band and we started recording the follow up "Carved In Stone". We recorded it, just as before, by ourselves after we’ve gotten some in advance money and buying some studio equipment. Some of us contributed to the Magna Carta tribute albums. We also worked on a live set but because of some problems, one was that the drummer quit, it never happened. Once again too much time passed so we decided ti invest in a new studio eqipment and start working with "Tyranny" and here we are! |
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| Mark: |
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How would you like to compare "Tyranny" with your previous albums? Personally I think it is a natural continue to "Carved In Stone", only better. |
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| Gary: |
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I agree with you that it’s a development of something better, and I hope we can do the same thing next time and make an even better album. I think it’s a question of hard work. We deveope all the time,both as individuals and as a band, and as I mentioned before: As soon as we make any money we put them into better equpment. The reason is that we take long time to make an album. We put, I would say, a lot more time on some of our songs than other bands maybe do. We need an own studio to do this simple. We wanna improve our sound alla the time. Of course we can’t measure to an album like Pink Floyds’ "The Wall" where they use incredible studios, instrument, people spiced up by a major budget. We don’t have $600 000 to make an album with so we’ll have to do the best out of the situattion, I think. |
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| Mark: |
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Isn’t it time to go on tour this time. To see you together with Angra, Rhapsody or Royal Hunt wouldn’t be all wrong? |
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| Gary: |
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We have, as I said, had problems in the past resluting that we haven’t been able to come out and done anything special. Of course, we hope that it will turn out better this time (Shadow Gallery was actually about to go on tour with Gamma Ray during the Carved In Stone era). |
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| Mark: |
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You use a lot of keyboards in your music. How will you solve it in a live situation? |
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| Gary: |
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Both me and Chris play keyboards and live we both have several keyboards that we switch between. Brendt and Carl do some keyboards live too. Especially me and Chris run around a lot and change keyboard quite a lot, since he also plays plays guitar. In "Don’t Ever Cry Just Remember", I play the piano and he lays the strings but in the chorus he plays acoustic guitar just to later on come back to the keyboard. After that he plays a lead guitar duel with Brendt. "Darktown" is also quite fun where Carl has to change to flute. That means that I have to play the keyboard with one handto cover the base notes, and guitar with the other hand. After a while, Chris switches to lead guitar so I’ll just play the guitar. The hard thing with all this is that it all happens at the same time. |
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| Mark: |
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Classical music seems to be something that you like. When will we hear Shadow Gallery use an orchestra? |
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| Gary: |
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I really want to. On "Tyranny" we have at least taken a step in the riht direction bu using a real violin, mixed with samples. If it turns to reality I would like to write the whole thing on my sequencer instead of letting a small orchestra take care of it. We have already dicussed it, but then just as a temporary. We’ll see what will be written first. |
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| Mark: |
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You have some quite interesting guest musicians on the album. Why are James LaBrie and D.C Cooper on the album and who is Laura Jaeger? |
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| Gary: |
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Already from the beginning we decided that "Tyranny" should be a concept album. As it turned out we knew that the story would have some different characters., just do make the story more understandable – having some parts in first tempus. We had a long list of people we wanted to work with, and more important who’s voice would be appropriate for the right parts. For some time it looked as if Ronnie James Dio would do the part in "New World Order" but it was an impossibilty to find time where both parts were able to. Carl acted as a vocalist technichan on the project "Age of Impact". There he met LaBrie, who got interested after Carl telling him the story of the concept. After the finish up of Dream Theaters’ tour he recorded his part. Short but effective – he’s such a natural talent. It felt really good to have his special voice on the album. The same goes for D.C Cooper. We had almost given up on "New world Order" when it came to finding a singer for the part. Magna Carta suggested D.C Cooper. We met him, told the story and he did a very good job.He really succeded in getting the evilness in his character, even better that we thought he would. Laura Jaeger was the singer/guitarist in a band I played in at the end of the 80’s/beginning of the 90’s. She did her part when she was 8 months pregnagnt which was really hard for her. If we hadn’t been so delayed already, we could have waited three months. We made the thing easier for her by moving our studio to her basement so that she could record her part in a safe environment close to her doctor and hospital. |
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| Mark: |
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You just don’t play instruments, you also teach. What do you think is the most important to do for developing as a musician? |
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| Gary: |
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Personally I have no proeblems, I love music. Improvisation is very important but also to really understand music. It’s important to not just understand your instrument. Feel free to try one or two more instruments after one or two years. Then you’ll also understand the other instruments role in any kind of music that you like. Also, be 100% broad-minded. Variation is something you really learn from. If you analyze some rock, then some classic and then understand the basic structure of jazz, you’ll get a very steady base. It will help you in your playing, performance and composing. |
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| Mark: |
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Name three inspriations? |
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| Gary: |
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The shower. I get a lot of ideas there. It not unusual that I run out, with my hair dripping, to my sequencer and try out the ideas. Good new music – progressive music – especially very talented guitarists and keyboardists. Nowadays, I look at myself more as a producer than musician which results in that I really appreciate good production. Albums that I thought was crap ten years ago, I can love just because of good production. Just to name a few that I really respect and admire : John "Mutt" Lang, Jim Steinman (Bonnie Taylor, Meat Loaf), Trevor Horn (Yes, Seal), Bob Ezrin for his work with Pink Floyd. All these productions have such an important role get way to little attention for it. |
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| Mark: |
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Three favourite albums? |
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| Gary: |
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I don’t think I can. Everything by Pink Floyd during the whole of their career. I have verything including solo albums and similar. Van Halen was my original inspriation. Now my taste has changed but they deserve to be mentioned. After Eddie, artists like Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai inspired me. If I have to choose some albums it would problably be "The Wall" (Pink Floyd), "Dream" (Kitaro) and "Images & Words" (Dream Theater). |
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| Mark: |
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You latest album purchases? |
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| Gary: |
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I rarely buy albums. I got Van Halens’ latest when it was released. I didn’t like the production. I also got "Liquid Tension Experiment" which I like a lot. I say that John Petrucci plays much better on it thatn "Falling Into Infinity". It’s great to hear him together with Jordan Rudess, who is incredible. I need two hands to do what he does with one. I buy a lot of cassesttes on out-sales. Most of them, I don’t even listen to. It doesn’t matter what music it’s on them, since I only get them to listen to the production. |
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 Comments, remarks or ideas? Please mail us. |
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