An Interview with

Jeff Kollman

(A Renowned Guitarist who has worked with Glenn Hughes, Edwin Dare, UFO and many more) which took place via telephone on 18th September 2007.

Jeff: Hi How you doing?

Glenn: Pretty Good.

Jeff: Cool, what do you wanna talk about for the interview?

Glenn: What were your influences as a guitarist, when you started?

Jeff: When I got started, my brother (Tommy) he always wanted to play drums and I wanted to as well but he beat me to it. My father had to bribe him to move into a certain neighbourhood he wanted to live in so he bribed him with a drum set.

(We laugh)

He asked me if I wanted to play something and guitar just seemed to be the obvious choice since he played drums so it grew up kinda like doing the Van Halen brothers thing – just jamming together, putting our heads together and recording together and as far as influences go it was just the guys that were popular at the time – I think my 1st concert was Kiss, Ace Frehley, went for Ted Nugentand then I got serious and discovered Randy Rhoads when he came out and that was absolutely life changing, Eddie Van Halen of course. So they were the earliest influences, then I started branching out into classical guitar players because Randy Rhoads was into the classical thing so I started studying that. That led to Jazz guys and then getting into Jeff Beck and (Jimi) Hendrix – them guys I followed.

Glenn: Got ya. Sounds Good. How did you get to form Edwin Dare? How did all that come about?

Jeff: We always used to record on 4-tracks and 8-tracks, my brother and I and we had a lot of original material without vocals and we were out kinda hunting around for singers in the Toledo area and saw Bryce – he had a band called Batallion and they played (in the area). They would do some MSG covers, they had a lot of original stuff and we were kind of looking for that 80’s operatic kind of singer and we loved Queensryche and Geoff Tate and (Rob) Halford. He sounded so much like those guys.

(We laugh)

We stole him from their band and formed… actually it was pre-Edwin Dare – it was a band called VXN, then we thought of changing the name – we did an album and a cassette under that name and then added a new bass player Kevin Chown and changed the name and we were off to the races.

Glenn: Excellent.

Jeff: So.. Incidentally Bryce had never even heard a Queensryche song.

Glenn: You’re joking.

Jeff: Everyone compares him to Geoff Tate back then.

Glenn: Wow!

Jeff: I think it’s probably just similar influences with guys like the 70’s guys like (Rob) Halford and other metal singers.

Glenn: Yeah. I know it's amazing. Bryce played me the ‘Can’t Break Me’ last May and it struck me so much how much it sounded like Queensryche.

Jeff: Yeah.

Glenn: He was just sat on the couch and he was singing along with it – it was like Jesus – the voice is still there, I was just in amazement at this voice.

Jeff: I’ve been bugging him to do a new record – we are ready to go on the West Coast – me and the bass player live out here and we’ve been kinda brainstorming it and trying to plan it in our heads. I should tell him after the interview – “Get off your ass and lets do it!”, because it’s interesting how much the name is kept alive. We came out a little bit late for the 80’s and when Nirvana came around it pretty much knocked everyone out of the game. So it was at that that point that, you know, either go to Europe or …

Glenn: You stop where you are or change.

Jeff: Yeah. But there’s still a lot of people that wanna see something new and I think, you know, Why Not?

Glenn: Yeah.

Jeff: It was like the music to play and we always had a cool chemistry together and it was always alright. Definitely we’d like to.

Glenn: I’ve seen some of the footage of that gig that’s on youtube.com and it's there ain’t it. In fact when I was there last I met Calvin, Edwin Dare’s Manager and he was really cool.

Jeff: Yeah, right.

Glenn: Have you got plans to fully issue that gig as you get ‘Feel The Power’ and ‘The Backburner’?

Jeff: That was a CD release show in Toledo but I’m not sure where the rest of the footage went. You lose track of all that stuff. Someone had it and forwarded it to me and if I could find any more… I don’t have anymore footage of that particular show. I have tons of shows on video but most of them were distorted because they weren’t professionally recorded.

Check out the Edwin Dare Footage that's featured on Youtube.com

Feel The Power The Backburner

Glenn: Got ya.

Jeff: On hand-held cameras you know?

Glenn: Yeah.

Jeff: And the quality back then wasn’t so good.

Glenn: That’s it.

Jeff: So I got tons – hours and hours of videos that are totally distorted. (Laughs)

Glenn: Yeah, that’s it.

Jeff: You couldn’t really release it but you could show it to your friends. It’s like a lot of the Youtube stuff – there’s a lot of Glenn Hughes stuff out there from shows we did with their cell phones but it’s completely distorted. If you are bored enough and have enough hours in the day…

Glenn: So where did the name ‘Edwin Dare’ come from because Kevin said to ask you or Bryce?

Jeff: Did he?

Glenn: Yeah.

Jeff: Edwin is a nickname – actually it’s Bryce’s middle name. He kind of created the kind of cartoon character based off of his personality (we laugh). It’s devious sort of Devilish, there’s nobody like that guy. There’s no major long thing, tale or anything.

Glenn: You released 3 albums, ‘The Unthinkable Deed’; ‘Can’t Break Me’ and ‘My Time to Die’, what would you say your favourite times are with Edwin Dare?

Jeff: I would say touring the ‘Can’t Break Me’ album – it’s great to get it out in front of an audience – we toured a lot around the US – we had a bus and all that sort of thing and turning new people onto it – it’s great. The studio experience is great and I’ve had so many, you know Bryce is just awesome in studio, he’s fun. He usually doesn’t have any lyrics, he just shows up amd then he b*llsh*ts – he’s a little bit like David Lee Roth like that but he actually doesn’t show up drunk so we actually get some good sh*t out of him. Between probably I would say in the process of making ‘The Unthinkable Deed’ in the studio is a big memory and then touring the ‘Can’t Break Me’ record like in 90/94.

Glenn: Yeah. Do you have any favourite songs from that album personally?

Jeff: ‘Never Had Time’ I would say is one of my favourites. I like ‘Don’t listen to your head’ and its got like cool harmonies like the slow heavy groove and I’ve always kinda liked lower tunings and kind of a darker side. It’s like when I heard ‘Diary Of A Madman’ (Ozzy Osbourne) for the first time - that song in particular – I just like that – a little bit of orchestral and operatic and gothic kind of metal but not towards becoming cheesey. I don’t want videos with swords and sh*t – it’s not my thing – it’s just the power of the music.

Glenn: Got ya, excellent. One of my favourites has gotta be the opening track, ‘Feel The Power’.

Jeff: Oh yeah, absolutely – that’s a fun one to play live.

Glenn: And another one like ‘End of the Story’ about the guy who’s like living towards the end of his days’ and ‘This Warrior’. Cool lyrics as well as being great songs.

Jeff: That was one of those that I probably wrote when I was 17.

Glenn: Wow!

Jeff: On the four track cassette machine (laughs) and we probably jammed that really early on and put it on that record because it had so much power live. Some songs you kind of revive that are old and that’s definitely one of them. Backburner’s one of them. Those are songs I wrote when I was 16.

Glenn: Yeah, where’s that picture from on the back of the ‘Can’t Break Me’ album where you are all stood and Bryce has got his posed and you’ve got a lake in the background?

Jeff: That’s a good question. I think that’s near my house in the south end of Toledo like in a church (area) or something.

Glenn: Got ya.

Jeff: I think that’s probably the Momi river back there.

Glenn: Yeah, it’s a simple picture but it’s a nice picture.

Jeff: Yeah (Agreeing)

Glenn: Yeah. Cool.

Jeff: Those were good days. I would like to and I’d like to do another record with him (Bryce).

Bryce Barnes

Glenn: Oh definitely.

Jeff: It’s feasible nowadays because everybody’s got a studio and we don’t have to go back and forth so much.

Glenn: Because Bryce is in South West Florida and you are in California.

Jeff: Yeah and I live like 15 or 20 minutes away from the bass player. He’s got a studio as well that he’s just finished and he’s been really bugging me to do a record with him and we really ought to do something. There’s always so much that comes at ya. It’s like 5 potential records on the plate right now and I’m just trying to decide what to do because you can only do so much. Like how much can I get done before new year – realistically – you have to pick your battles.

Glenn: Do you have any cool road stories from the Edwin Dare days that you are allowed to talk about?

Jeff: Oww …. Here’s a simple kind of a funny one – my father used to come out on the road with us and I’ll just tell the PG13 story because I can’t tell you the X-Rated one. I remember this girl, she asked me to sign her breast and so she pulled her shirt up and my fathers nickname was ‘Scene’ – like this is the happening scene and certain enough he already had his signature right over her nipple with a big sharpie and an exclamation mark. Brilliant – having the old man on the road with us.

(I laugh)

I love that.

Glenn: Nice One. What made you decide to set up ‘Marmaduke Records’ – was it basically so you wouldn’t have to go romping around all the labels and trying to ship your goods as such, so you though you’d do it yourself?

Jeff: You know from a financial standpoint, especially with the instrumental stuff, say you do an instrumental record, I could take it to ‘Inside Out’ or ‘Favoured Nations’ or Mike Varney and the thing I didn’t understand, Mike Varney understands it clearly – you know the advances that they are giving for records are so low compared to what you can make per cd. It’s just from a simple business aspect in a dollars and cents stand-point it doesn’t make any sense – you just give your records away to these guys. It’s not like they are giving you like 50 or a 100 grand for an instrumental record but they can turn around and sell ‘em – you can’t imagine what Mike Varney made off of Vinny Moore alone - $800,000 dollars off of that guy.

Glenn: Jesus – is that Shrapnel?

Jeff: Yeah.

Glenn: Yeah, I though it was.

Jeff: I mean it was like from that stand-point I kinda always viewed it my label in the same way that Varney does. You can get your distribution and everything in line – especially nowadays with the Internet. I mean, people know how to find the records and buy ‘em and why not make 10 or 12 bucks a record as opposed to 50 or 80 cents a record and recoup every cost known to mankind - it’s simple business.

Glenn: It makes sense.

Jeff: Unless you got a major that’s pouring a bunch of money into you which …

Glenn: these days it’s….

Jeff: Yeah.

Glenn: And if that do that, they want it all back so you become a loser everytime it’s just not worth it.

Jeff: Yep and that allows me to… it enables me to sell the catalogues with the guitar fanatics here. One thing - they might hear Cosmosquad, they might hear a solo record and they wanna buy everything you’ve ever done. So that’s those kind of those fans that are fanatical like that – they want anything you’ve ever played on so they’ll just write you a $300 cheque all day long, buy the whole catalogue – so that’s why I have Marmaduke Records.

Glenn: It makes total financial business sense doesn’t it?

Jeff: Yes.

Glenn: I can’t fault you.

Jeff: And your controlling stuff, you own it and you can sell it at shows, you can do whatever you need to do with it and you can still be doing licensing deals in like Europe and Japan and areas like that.

Glenn: Licensing stuff and that.

Jeff: Yeah, distribution deals.

Glenn: I noticed that you have worked with quite a few different people to say the least, what were the guys from UFO – Pete Way and Phil Mogg like to work with in general?

Jeff: They were great. I met Pete at a time when he was definitely having some battles going on with addictions and stuff like that. We started working together on the Mogg/Way record but he’s a really sweet guy and we made a great record with the Mogg/Way Chocolate Box. I became real close to Phil and still great friends to this day. I think on and off we will always do stuff together – he calls me to do stuff and he just called me to write for his new solo record. I’m not sure I have the time to. Again, it’s like there’s so many things on the table – it’s hard get it all together.

But yeah, that was a great process. We all went up – actually that was a Shrapnel release. That particular one worked out really good for everybody and made sense. I think Mike Varney was the one that referred me to Phil which was cool. He always kind of looks out for me. Phil’s a great guy – there always seems to be an awful lot of bad press that seems to go along with him but in his defence he has had to put up with Michael Schenker for years.

Glenn: But now they’ve got Vinnie Moore there, they can’t go wrong, I saw them about 2 weeks ago in Sheffield and they were faultless.

Jeff: I love that band, I’ve always loved UFO.

Glenn: Their current album ‘The Monkey Puzzle’ is a cracking album.

Jeff: Yeah. He actually called me and asked if he should do the gig – he goes, ‘You know these guys Jeff, What do you think?’ and I gave them the Pete Way warning (laughs). Pete’s a little wild and I’m sure he’s happy that he did it.

Glenn: I bet you’ve been asked this many times but how did you get the job with Glenn Hughes? Did Glenn Hughes notice you as such as a guitarist?

Jeff: It was a referral there – I think Shane Gallas referred me to Glenn. I had written a couple of songs then for him. I did the same thing with Phil (Mogg), somebody gave me a call, made the introduction then I said, “Oh, I should write a couple of songs and kind of seal the deal.” It’s one thing for somebody to hear you on your audition and go, “Oh I like your guitar playing” but if you come in with songs…

Glenn: You’ve got more to add to the table haven’t you?

Jeff: Yeah. I wrote like ‘Last Man in Space’ and a couple of other ones for Phil. Right there where I met him I had the tunes, I put in the songs and then it’s a done deal. I did the same thing with Glenn and I did a couple of records for ‘Songs In The Key Of Rock’ with Glenn and on the HTP 2nd Record with him and producing it and I ran over the last thing with him as well.

Glenn: That’s great. Excellent.

Jeff: I love working with Glenn because his music’s… it’s got all the elements – it’s funky, there’s times when it’s really just moody and layers and timeless and just rockin’ – he’s always improvin’ so you gotta watch him like some of those early black American band leaders that are cueing the band – you always gotta watch him – you know like Sly and the Family Stone – we got that thing but it rocks.

Glenn: It’s true.

Jeff: It’s really a fun live gig. Not just playing the same thing every night, you gotta really keep on your toes and watch him all the time.

Glenn: I saw Glenn Hughes about 3 or 4 years since at Bradford Rio and I think it was JJ Marsh on guitar.

Jeff: Yeah. Glenn’s worked with JJ for the last ten years and I think he’ll always work with him. Glenn’s a hard one to pin-point – he’s constantly changing band members like underwear. He always comes back to people. I’m working with him one day then I’m not then I am then I’m not then I am then I’m not.

(I laugh)

You just kinda hang out and wait for the call and if you’re available, cool. I think right now financially it makes more sense to do European shows with JJ and American shows with me because it’s hard to fly the American guy over. JJ and Glenn have always written great together and a phenomenal guitar player .

Glenn: I suppose it’s easier when it comes to work visas and all that sort of stuff because I bet that can be a bit of a pain at times?

Jeff: Yeah, it’s tough. We had to go through a lot of red tape for me to go over to Russia. Even just coming over to the UK and playing shows.

Glenn: Yeah I can appreciate it. It shouldn’t be like that and it is and we are allies to each other – it just doesn’t make sense to me at all.

Jeff: Yeah. I did a gig with Glenn like 2 weeks ago in New York and it was fun. We did like a private party thing.

Glenn: What’s your favourite sort of stuff that you’d like to work with when you play on with Glenn? Are there certain songs that stand out?

Jeff: I really like the stuff off his last 2 records like ‘Don’t let me Bleed’ – just powerful and dynamic. I really like the lyric of that song. It always seems to move the audience when we play it. I like playing ‘Soul Mover’ just for the sheer deep grooves – it’s kinda heavy – it’s somewhere between Hendrix and Rage Against The Machine kinda groove – I really dig that. I like playing the funky Tommy Bolin stuff like ‘Gettin’ Tighter’ – it’s great because there are a lot of improvisational moments where he’ll just take a solo and it’s open and its just guitar and drums and you go till the cows come home and hand it off to the next guy – I love that. Really I like the whole show, I mean, you know – all of the songs. I kinda tell Glenn the way it is – if there’s songs I don’t like I just tell him.

(I laugh)

Hey I think you should dump this one.

Glenn: Yeah – and does he?

Jeff: It’s - you know? I think his set list is really good on both the last two legs of the tour.

Glenn: Excellent.

Jeff: And I love doing the ‘Purple stuff. I get a lot of flack though on the internet from European fanatics who wanna hear the Ritchie Blackmore stuff note for note.

Glenn: Why? It’s just a song at the end of the day innit?

Jeff: The thing is, is from my point of view I studied Jazz for years so I like improvisation and I feel like Ritchie when he solos. I like ‘Smoke On The Water’ but if you listen to ‘Burn’ or ‘Stormbringer’ you can tell that he’s improvising in the studio. They are great solos but they don’t sound like pre-planned – solos that you are gonna sing note for note, therefore why feel like I have to play them note for note. I think some things, if you played ‘Smoke On The Water’ or ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ by Cream – those solos should be played note for note. But some stuff it’s not necessary – it’s up to the artist to decide.

Glenn: Well it’s true isn’t it?

Jeff: You are kinda damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you play it note for note you are a copycat. If you do your own spin on it you are not gonna get praise from everybody.

Glenn: You can’t please everyone can you.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly.

Glenn: If you can please yourself and please quite a few and get a good vibe from it – what the hell – all you can do is your best.

Jeff: Glenn’s really improvisational the way he interprets the old Deep Purple songs because he’s an artist and he doesn’t wanna do the same thing every night – he doesn’t want it so scripted.

Glenn: It gets boring doesn’t it.

Jeff: Yeah.

Glenn: You can never really show what you can do, it’s just like a script as you say.

Jeff: You’d never get to the next level musically if you’re always… everything’s scripted. You know, if you’re not improvising. ‘So that’s how you kinda grow’ like Glenn said to me. Like Dio who’s equally a great singer and probably the best singer for his age in Heavy Metal. You know the songs he sings and the way that he has to sing ‘em, he kinda has to stick to the plan and he can’t improvise them because it doesn’t lend itself to that. Glenn comes a little bit more from a funk place.

Glenn: So he can improvise a bit more.

Jeff: Well realistically yeah. He’s gonna put a twist on it every night – kinda see and take his voice to the extreme. They are both great but both different.

Glenn: It’s funny that you should mention Dio because I was watching the ‘Heaven and Hell’ DVD last night and he’s still got it hasn’t he?

Jeff: Oh Yeah, I saw him last week in New York and it was just brilliant.

Glenn: Yeah – Excellent.

Jeff: He’s perfect. Right up front I had my earplugs in and I could hear every note he sang. He sang absolutely perfect. He’s a guy I’d really like to work with actually and I haven’t gotten the chance to. We talked a couple of times about the possibility of something but its never quite, you know.

Glenn: He’s a perfectionist anyway. How would you describe your vocal style?

Jeff: Erm, just trying to get by.

(We laugh)

You’re not the Barnes/Hughes sort of calibre – you are just getting it together and pushing it forward sort of thing (I say jokingly).

Jeff: I just try to go for attitude. I’ve actually been singing a lot in the last few years doing a lot of film and TV stuff. I’m getting a lot of sessions doing vocals. It’s strange because I am getting hired a lot to do the kind of Jet kind of vocal or even Bono U2 kind of vocal and I get comparisons to all kinds of weird stuff like Radiohead and Jeff Buckley which, you know, like somebody comparing a vocalist to Jeff Buckley is like comparing a guitarist to Jeff Beck. You go, “Yeah, thanks for the compliment but come on he’s one of the great singers”. I’m just trying to get by, just trying to sing in tune (laughs) and just trying to have some character that tried to fit the mood of the tune.

Glenn: Yeah, got ya.

Jeff: Sometimes I like to try and be Ron, a little bit punk edge and if it’d the moodier thing – you know.

Glenn: Did you find that Bryce taught you quite a bit about vocals – because when I have listened to Bryce, you realise how to project your voice and everything else? Did you find that as well when you were doing the harmonies for the Edwin Dare songs?

Jeff: Yeah. He never gave me vocal lessons per-se but I was always with him for every note he sang in the studio because I was kind of producing and engineering it. So just to be around somebody like that all the time and watching him sing and the way he controls his air flow and that sort of stuff – he definitely has an effect on you.

Glenn: Have you heard Bryce make that sound that sounds like a wind turbine or a space ship (I demonstrate what I mean by it). It’s just amazing.

Jeff: (Laughs) He’s got a different kind of gift to other people – stuff seems to come naturally to him. He’s a great guitar player, he plays bass. He’s one of these guys who can just sit down and play piano and never even knowing how.

Glenn: Mmm

Jeff: For me, I have to work at it. If I’m gonna be a good artist strong I have to study it – I can’t just sit down and draw. I couldn’t just sit down and play guitar. I own a piano and I suck at it. You’d think I’d be able the damn thing but the fact is, I don’t believe that the natural talent thing comes to everybody. I think he’s one of those guys – I’m not one of those guys. I really have to work hard at something to be good at it.

Another shot of Bryce

Glenn: Yeah, I’ve seen him when he’s done a duo with Joey Monroe and he just talks about anything and he just puts it together bit by bit and it just seems absolutely faultless with him. He’s like you say, there’s no-one else like him – he’s one on his own.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, I miss having him around – he’s great – for sure.

Glenn: Yeah, just a bit. What would you say, you’ve had such a varied career musically – what would you say have been some of your biggest highlights so far?

Jeff: Erm, Let’s see – that’s interesting. I think definitely working with your heroes like Phil Mogg and Glenn Hughes because I grew up listening to those guys, so it’s great to have those experiences, you know?

Glenn: Yeah, got ya.

Jeff: Some highlights you view differently though. Like I always like doing my own things so I always think that no matter what I do, playing with like Edwin Dare’s a highlight of my life and I think Cosmosquad’s a highlight of my life. Not necessary playing the big places. I’ve played some huge arenas , playing with some certain people but that doesn’t get me off like just playing.. – it could be a nice packed house at the ‘House Of Blues’ or something and with the right songs, the right vibe that’s there…

Glenn: And it makes all the difference doesn’t it?

Jeff: Yeah.

Glenn: You can have a big shed like a big arena and there’s nothing there but you get a little club..

Jeff: That’s kinda like that playing big gigs sometimes. You’re not really connecting with the audience.

Glenn: No.

Jeff: But for me the biggest thing is the fact that I’ve never done anything else but play music. If there’s a claim to fame or a thank god I’m in this business, it’s that I’ve never done anything else. That’s my goal and that’s kinda my definition for success. In the business for myself. I don’t wanna be one of them ‘Where are they nows’? ‘Oh he’s got a job workin’. I mean that’s fine if somebosy decides that they don’t wanna be in the business anymore – maybe they are smart because it can be a real sh*t business. But for me, I’m gonna keep the tunnel vision of ‘this is all I’m gonna do, this is all I’ve ever done’ and more of a career as opposed to trying to just be some kind of roxk star or hit single kind of thing.

Glenn: Just keep on as you are doing.

Jeff: For the longevity. I kinda forced myself to learn not to do anything else.

(We laugh)

At least you got something to fall back on when you are dead. If I was a good electrician or something ten years ago I would have went and got a job. So I love it, I love the variety of it – the fact that every week or month I’ve got something different going on.

Glenn: When you’ve done different TV shows or for film, what’s been your favourites that you’ve worked on?

Jeff: You know, the favourite is getting the biggest paycheck – that’s all it is because a lot of times the films for song and TV unless you’re scoring a movie like John Waynes’ which I haven’t so I don’t have that kind of payoff – I mean that would get me off to have a major motion picture and you have the theme song for the movie or you scored the movie. But the kind of stuff that I’m doing it’s good paydays and it’s really about money.

Glenn: Yeah.

Jeff: I mean in the studio it’s fun and creative – it’s cool. But I kind of view it right now in my career as a residual income and I can get involved in a project. I don’t have to do it for financial reasons because I have already spent the hours hopefully doing enough of those where the cheques just keep coming in and then it allows me to make a ‘Cosmosquad’ record that’s maybe a real creative statement but the cash isn’t just gonna come right in – so I view it in that aspect. I did a Superbowl commercial last year and I think that was the most fun because the payday for one days work was more than some make in a year (laughs) – so that’s not bad – I wish I could get more of those.

Glenn: Yeah. Did you do well from ‘Ice Age 2’, I should have imagined that would have been a decent one.

Jeff: Yeah – you know what’s interesting about that is that these editors will keep using the same few songs over and over. So a lot of these films just keep spitting out the same cuts from the same songs – it’s great. We’re doing a lot of movie trailers as well and TV shows. I just wrote like 41 songs for that TNV tv show that just came out. But I tried to watch one episode but it was just horrible (laughs). So there you go.

Glenn: Excellent. You’ve got Cosmosquad ready for doing some gigs. What are you most looking forward to for the gigs?

Jeff: Well we have a new record ‘Acid Test’ so that’s kinda just been my total focus – it’s trying to get that band some international notoriety – really get the word out. We got a PR company working on it and everybody’s just trying to bang down doors. We got the ‘Fender Guitars’ that are really getting behind the band.

 

 

Glenn: So you obviously fully endorsed.

Jeff: Yes and they’ve been great. We’re just trying to get as much going on with that as we can. It’s tricky because everybody… like the drummer Shane – he plays with The Bees which is the equivalent of The Beatles of Japan so he’s working a few months out of the year doing that so we have to kinda get created and get stuff done and get out and get our shows going as quick as we can. So we are lookin’ forward to it – we are doing a couple of west coast shows - (they) are comin’ up and then some mid-west shows and sometime some European ones.

Glenn: Have you got plans to do any UK dates?

Jeff: Not at this time. We are gonna do some Japanese dates in February. We’ll probably have to wait to Spring or Summer to get some European dates goin because we are almost to the end of the year now. But I’m really excited because the record’s really dark and heavy. I love playing with Shane – he’s been kinda like my soul brother now of creating music – a perfect drummer for me.

Glenn: Do you have any preference of guitar that you like to use?

Jeff: It depends on the song and what fits with the song. Really I am playing Telecasters a lot, playing way down and getting a real heavy sound but kinda twangy and it sounds completely different to me. I’ve been really, since Fender’s have gotten behind me so much I’ve been really playing my Strat a lot, I play a Les Paul a ton and I still do. It just depends on the gig. On Glenn’s gig there’s a lot of funk so definitely to play the Strat. Typically like a Humbucker in the bridge – it works good so I can still get a nice warm lead tone that I’m used to but you go to the single choral pick-ups for the funky stuff.

Glenn: Which of your own material are you most proud of and for what reasons?

Jeff: Now that is a good question. I would say… well I’m certainly proud of the Edwin Dare stuff because of the heaviness and the power of it. Usually for me I look back on something and I’m happy when it turns out great and there was no preconceived ideas – it wasn’t contrived. Cosmosquad has never been contrived. In fact when we go in and record a record we don’t even talk about what we are gonna do. We don’t say, ‘Hey man, I like this band and we should do this sort of thing”, we never say anything like that. We actually don’t say anything, we just start playing and then we record roughs and go, “That was cool”. So it’s really like a musical journey where we don’t even know where its gonna be until we get together until we actually write it and record it. Certainly within that you get a few songs and you go ‘OK’ – it fits in with that, this fits in with that – wow check this record out.

Glenn: Nice One.

Jeff: The new record is completely different than the last record which is definitely a bit different than the 1st record so it’s kinda ever changing and I’m definitely proud of that because of the way we went about it and the response it gotten from people has been good.

Glenn: Nice One.

Jeff: They seemed to get it the way we wanted them to get it.

Glenn: Excellent. Hope all goes well with Cosmosquad. You know I’d love to hear the other Edwin Dare albums – ‘The Unthinkable Deed’ and ‘My Time to Die’. How did 'My Time to Die' come to be?

Jeff: Well ‘My Time to Die’ That record is a mixture of brand new songs after ‘Can’t Break Me’ – just like 2 or 3 and the other songs, it’s interesting because we had done a record called VXN prior to that and what we did was kept all the original vocals tracks. This is after I disbanded the group and I re-recorded the tracks to Bryce’s vocals. I kind of archived the songs to sound better so I think like 8 of those songs on the record are actually pre-Edwin Dare songs but there was a Japanese label that was prepared to pay a bunch of money for a record and I thought great – here I am in a studio and I can do this thing. So it’s a little bit of a falsehood because it’s not really the 3rd record. It’s not really the writing in the chronological order. The 3rd record is like re-releasing an old movie where you just re-overdub the lines (laughs). Some of them songs were actually his vocal tracks are from 1987 to be specific so you’ll hear his voice as cleaner, higher and younger but nobody actually knows that. It’s quite interesting.

Glenn: Excellent. That’s cool.

Jeff: Yeah, apart from the 2 songs ‘My Time to Die’ and ‘The Forbidden’ they are all songs from the late 80’s with our previous band ‘VXN’.

Glenn: Got ya. I'm looking forward to hearing that for sure. Okay, well I'll let you get off now. take care mate, it’s been awesome speaking to you.

Jeff: Okay, it’s been good talking to you and I appreciate the interview and we’ll catch up soon.

Glenn: Sounds good mate. See ya later.

A Big thankyou to Jeff for taking the time out to do a Tremendous Interview.