Razer Interview

HEY CHRIS HOW ARE YOU DOING TODAY?
It's been crazy Shauna, you have no idea.

CRAZY WITH THINGS HAPPENING WITH THE BAND OR AT KRANK AMPS?
Both

WELL THAT IS GOOD NEWS.
Yeah, it doesn’t suck, it’s just busy.

ON JULY 19th YOU RE-RELEASED DARK DEVOTION IN EXPANDED FORM. TELL ME THE STORY BEHIND WHY YOU ARE RE-RELEASING IT.
When we originally released Dark Devotion in the very beginning of 2010 it came out in a very limited capacity. Because it was such a limited release, a lot of folks didn’t get to hear it and also throughout the course of the year the folks that did get to hear it actually helped us increase and put into place the business elements that we needed within the band. We picked up management and a booking agent all within that time. One of the instrumental players in that was Jose Mangin at Sirius Octane. He kind of supported us from word go. Jose is a really good dude and he’s a little bit of a maverick when it comes to PD’s out there. He is willing to take chances. Of course, he has more time and space to fill up during the day being on a satellite radio entity. He really helped the band out and that is what got people interested in us. By the end of the year, we realized that we had picked up the pieces that we needed, but a lot of people still hadn’t heard our record. Management was talking to us about doing some new songs. After we all got together we decided that it might be a really cool thing just to do an expanded version of the record. That way maybe we could get more people to hear it because we were proud of the record. We wanted to get it to a broader audience. That is really where the whole idea of doing something expanded came along. Not to mention the fact that out of the new songs that we did, we had a couple of really strong songs for singles. It would focus a new light on it all.

HOW MANY NEW SONGS ARE ON THE RECORD?
There are four new songs. There is the single “Do You Want It” that I co-wrote with Marty Friedman, the ex Megadeth guitar player. He is playing the solos on it as well. We did a couple covers. One is Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” and the other is Hot Chocolate’s “Every 1’s a Winner.” If you are not familiar with Hot Chocolate, they are a late 70’s disco band. The song is one of those songs that everybody knows, but they have no idea they know it. We also did an acoustic version of “Frozen” which was originally on Dark Devotion. We just had a really cool, quiet acoustic version of it.

WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO COVER THOSE TWO PARTICULAR SONGS? WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE SONGS THAT YOU LIKED?
A lot of bands in the last couple of years have done covers of tunes and they tend to take hits of their generation and just kind of re-do it. Some do it well and some do it not so well. For us, we just wanted to do something that we could do well on our own and turn into our own thing. We didn’t really want to just cover something verbatim. Everyone in the band is Zeppelin fans, our singer Chris Powers especially. It was his idea to do “When the Levee Breaks.” One of the cool things about it was that the key in which it was originally recorded was a lot higher, like in F. In our band it is tuned down quite a bit, in the key of B. The nature of that riff made it sound monstrously heavy. We really liked the song. We took some liberties with it and shortened it. We changed some parts around and I added bass solos in. We just did some things that were different with that song and we have got tons of positive feedback. We have had some people say it is the best Zeppelin cover they have ever heard. That was a stunning thing to me, having heavy weight guys tell me this. I’m sure down the road it is probably going to be a single. The Hot Chocolate song is a love me or hate me song. It was pretty much me convincing the band. I think it turned out great. It was a song that I remember my parents playing and I really liked it because it has this really cool guitar riff. I again changed the tuning of it, added some extra parts and it turned out really cool. Songs like that can really shine with Chris’s vocals because he has a real, honest to God, true blue, 70’s style vocals. He can sing his ass off. Even though nobody knows him, he can smoke a lot of guys in really big bands. On that particular song it really played into some of the R&B stuff that he can do and it was really a fun song. It turned out to be a very rocking song at the end of the day. It also got to show Chris’s guitar playing a little bit because he was the one who played the main guitar riffs on all of them. Chris is a ripping guitar player and a lot of people do not know that. He was originally a guitar player to start off with who just happened to be able to sing. He is always chomping at the bit to play a little guitar here and there. This time it was right up his alley because he is a funky kind of player and the guitar lines on that are funky.

YOU SAID THAT MARTY FRIEDMAN DOES SOME GUEST SOLOS ON “Do You Want It.” DID YOU GUYS HAVE ANY OTHER GUEST SPOTS ON THE ALBUM?
No, just him, I have played in Marty’s solo band on and off for several years. He and I have been friends really since the time around when Megadeth was at their height. Getting to have him on it was pretty fun. It was a really weird kind of thing because he lives in Tokyo, Japan. When we were going back on forth on this, I got him to play the solos via computer in Tokyo, send them to me and then I re-amped everything here. It was kind of a weird process of getting him to do stuff, but it turned out really good. I liked what he played on it. The song is something that we had written a few years ago together. Here is the story on that song. I had gone up to his house when he was working on an album called Music For Speeding, which is one of his instrumental albums. He was playing me some of the songs because I had been helping him do a little bit of the engineering and he played me this song called “It’s the Unreal Thing” which is the riff of “Do You Want It.” The minute I heard it I was like “That’s a vocal song. You should be doing something with this vocally.” He was like “Go for it dude! Put something to it.” So, after the record was done, a couple months later he gave me a copy of it. I took it away, chopped the song up, rearranged it and wrote vocals to it. As Razer, we demoed it. He loved it, we really liked it, but it just got sat up on the shelf. We didn’t put it out as anything really. When we were going to do more songs for this expanded version, I thought “You know, I’ve got that song I wrote with Marty Friedman.” Management loved it and we went forth with it. It was a really odd co-writing situation because he did his thing and I took it and did my thing with it. At the end of the day we had a different song. Another fun thing is that we just finished a video for it. I got him to shoot some footage of him in Japan doing the solo. He appears in the video too. In the concept of the video he breaks in like news footage from Japan.

WHEN DOES THE VIDEO RELEASE? IS IT A PERFORMANCE VIDEO OR DOES IT HAVE A STORYLINE?
It should be releasing within the next week or two. It has a storyline and it is one that I came up with. It’s pretty funny. You’re going to laugh at it. It’s got a little bit of something for everybody in it.

THE ALBUM WAS PRODUCED BY OUR MUTUAL FRIEND CHUCK ALKAZIAN. DID HE PRODUCE BOTH THE ORIGINAL AND THE EXPANDED VERSION?
Chuck and I were actually co-producers on it. Chuck is the man. He and I work so well together. He is a good friend of mine and like a brother at this point. I’m the guy in the band who is the ringleader for the mutual vision. With Chuck, it was so easy to work with him on that. He is going to be an important producer moving forward. A lot of people are starting to get turned on to what he can do. He has his own sound in what he does. I think that is an important thing as a producer.

HE IS A SWEETHEART TOO. I’VE BEEN WONDERING THIS FOR THE LONGEST TIME. WHO IS THE GIRL ON THE ALBUM COVER?
That is an ex-girlfriend of mine. I guess you can say I know her. (laughing) Her name is Lane’ Richards, who does a lot of fetish modeling. We stayed friends long after we had broken up. I just thought of her because she does a lot of stuff that I thought was apropos to what we wanted for the cover. She used a connection of hers who has a name in the whole fetish photography thing. I thought it turned out really good.

DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELVES TO BE A HARD ROCK BAND OR A METAL BAND?
I consider us to be just a rock band. Let me explain that because we have elements of metal and elements of hard rock. We are one of those bands that harkens back to the days before everything was categorized. We didn’t really want to be labeled because we like a lot of different things. What we do is very much our own thing. One of the things I’m most proud about with the band is when we have people talk about our songs, the band, come see us live or whatever, they never say “You guys sound just like…” That never comes up. They say that we have our own sound and I’m proud about that. We don’t really sound like anyone who is out there right now. We are not on a trend. Even with our influences, we don’t wear them on our sleeve like other bands do. We tend to put everything together and spit it back out. We can do something fast and heavy with tons of double bass, but we can also turn around and do something really mellow if that’s what we want to do. That is by design. I don’t just listen to one type of music all the time. Having said that, everybody in the band has really diverse musical taste. It is all over the map. If one person has a wacky song idea that is normally something we wouldn’t do, by the time the four other guys in the band get their grubby little mitts on it, it’s Razerized. It will be something cool and it’s us. Our fan base goes from like 13 to 60. They talk about putting us as an active rock band. For people who do not know what active rock is, it’s the radio format that you hear with whatever is latest and greatest and most current in rock. Yes, we are in that category, but at the same time a lot of older bands that we play with sometimes, their fans appreciate us just as much. We might have an “active rock” sound, but if you delve into the music, there is a lot more going on than your typical radio rock bands. I think that rock music fans can pull that out of the music and they get that from us. If you like rock music then there is a chance you will like us.

WHAT HAVE YOU GOT PLANNED IN THE WAY OF SHOWS?
Right now the new single is getting ready to go to radio, so as far as shows go, it’s going to be a fluid situation with seeing how it does in certain areas and our booking agent rolling with it because we are a newer band. It’s harder to go out there and jump from tour to tour. The truth of the matter too, is that we are an independent band. We are not on a label that is funding all of this stuff. We are doing it, which we are happy to do because we can make money. I have a ton of friends in major label bands that are broke as a joke. It is because of the nature of the business now. The fact that we are independent is by design, but it also presents its own problems when you are funding everything yourself. We have a couple shows with Tesla coming up as well as possibly with Soulmotor ,which is Brian Wheat from Tesla’s side band that also has Dave Buckner the ex Papa Roach drummer in it. I know that our agent is just chomping at the bit and waiting for radio to hit. I know we will be out there fall and winter.

WILL IT BE DIFFICULT TO LEAVE AND GO ON TOUR SINCE YOU ARE HEAD OF ARTIST RELATIONS AT KRANK AMPS?
No because I can work from the road. That is one great thing about modern technology. It makes it so much easier to be able to handle your business from the road. As long as I have a laptop and a phone I’m pretty much good to go. We try not to stay out so long that I’m going to be out of the office for multiple weeks on end. You just work around it, but no it’s actually not a problem at all. I find that I actually get more done on tour then when I’m in the office. I don’t have anyone coming into my office bugging me for this or that.

YOU KIND OF HAVE AN ADVANTAGE WORKING THERE BECAUSE YOU GET TO MEET A LOT OF ARTISTS AS WELL AS INDUSTRY PEOPLE.
Absolutely, it is a weird time in the music business where you need every edge you can to move forward. Being with Krank, I do know a lot of people, a lot of artists, management companies and business people in general. The truth of the matter is that for the longest time I kept my band side of things and my Krank side of things fairly separate. I never really mentioned what I did much unless it was asked. I felt like I didn’t want to come off douchy in any way. Because I have played with Marty Friedman in the past, that was a good thing when it came to any of the artists because so many guitar players respect Marty. The fact that I play on and off still to this day in his band makes it so I don’t come off as this corporate schmuck that is trying to get people to play his amps. It adds a lot of credibility. Razer has really stepped forward and is in the national spotlight now, so now I feel that I can cross the two things together. It has worked out pretty well for everybody. I can go out and play the products and be an endorsee of the products as well as be the guy who is behind the scenes on it. I’m a pretty objective person, if we sucked I wouldn’t go there. I would know what it is. The fact that I know that we don’t suck because we have had so many of the guys that I work with tell me how much they like the band and have offered to help has made me feel more comfortable about going forth. When you spread good things to people, they spread it back to you too.

THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE INTERVIEW. IT WAS AWESOME TALKING TO YOU AS ALWAYS.
Of course, I’m glad we actually got to talk for a little bit and catch up.

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Tags:  Razer  , Chris Catero, interviews

Shauna O'Donnell    August 03, 2011