September 17, Ann Marie and Dave of BeyondEarCandy.com teamed up with our friend Sean Q. of Metal-fan.net to interview Chris Caffery, before the first night’s performance of ProgPower V, in Atlanta, Georgia.  Since the interview was set up in the tiny computer room of the Granada hotel, Dave decided to graciously bow out of this one and just snapped off a few quick photos, before heading back to the sounds checks at the Earthlink venue.  Chris would be performing there in the headline spot that night with Savatage mates, Jon Oliva and Steve Wacholz in the one time project called “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

BEC: You’ve had a lot of interviews lined up. Are you getting tired of repeating yourself.

CC: No, I can’t repeat the same lies the same way twice. (laughter)

CC: You people obviously haven’t got the music yet. (Chris hands us copies of “Faces”) What I also did… since the cd itself I just got today for the first time. It has 2 cd’s in it. I’ve burnt the bonus cd (hands us “God Damn War”) because the promo didn’t have the bonus cd with it. So, you can have this, but I burned it.

BEC: I was going to ask you that, when does it actually come out?

CC: It is actually not out yet. The single is out, this thing is out here the single, and the record’s out in Europe next week. The U.S. release, we’re going to release the first single the end of November and January’s is going to be the release for the cd here.

BEC: So, it’s alright for me to play this on the internet radio now, right?

CC: Yea, anything you want. Go right ahead.

BEC: Excellent. Speaking of the internet radio, usually I do this at the end of the interview, but since we’re talking about it, I like to have people that I interview say something for the radio, because the listeners really like that.

CC: Sure, ok.

BEC: Just something like, “Hi, this is Chris Caffery and your listening to…” here, I should give you a key chain so you know what the hell I’m talking about. (Hands him key chain/bottle opener) Right there, BeyondEarCandy.com. It’s an internet radio and webzine. So, anytime you’re ready.

CC: Hey this is Chris Caffery from Savatage and whether you’re listening to Savatage, or my new solo record “Faces” or whatever else, it better be on BeyondEarCandy.com, Turn it up loud!

BEC: Awesome. Ok. We’ll just clip it out with the computer. So is this your first ProgPower experience?

CC: Can I keep this? (The key chain/bottle opener.)

BEC: Yea, sure we have tons of them. You’ll be seeing them all over the place.

CC: You can never have enough bottle openers.

BEC: (laughs) Yea, exactly. We’re giving out about a thousand of them. So what do you think of the atmosphere here? I know the show hasn’t actually started yet.

CC: It’s cool. It’s great. I love the venue. I think the people that are running it are great. It’s really cool to see that people come here from all over and just are having fun. You, know, everyone’s hammered and laughing and, you know, waiting for the music. I think it’s a great thing.

BEC: Did Jon (Oliva) tell you anything about it? I know he’s been here a couple times.

CC: I don’t think Jon remembers. (Laughter)

BEC: No doubt. I showed him a picture we had taken together last year and he was like, “Oh wow, I was there, wasn’t I?” I said, “Yea, dude, you were!”

CC: Kind of.

BEC: Sort of. Now you live in New York, right?

CC: Yea.

BEC: How did you get here? (Hurricane Ivan had hit Atlanta the day before and Hurricane Frances hit earlier in the month.)

CC: I actually drove to Florida to rehearse. Really, I’ve been flying… I think I flew over 30 times this summer. I was doing a promotion in Europe for like 7 weeks. I said, “You know, I want to drive to Florida.” and I’m getting ready to leave last Saturday as they’re predicting the hurricane to wipe out Florida and I just said forget it, I’ll drive anyway. Luckily it didn’t hit where I was. Then I drove from there to here. I’m glad I decided to drive down.

METAL FAN: Have you lived in New York all your life?

CC: Yea, on and off I’ve lived in Tampa, because that’s where Savatage was from, but the majority of my time has been in New York.

BEC: Now you wrote with Circle II Circle didn’t you? What was your contribution for them?

CC: I wrote three songs for the first record and three songs for the new one that he’s doing now.

BEC: Oh, ok, cool. They were at ProgPower IV. Real quick, how’s Zak doing? You don’t have to get into details.

CC: I can’t really put a finger on it, now.

(Everyone bursts out laughing.)

BEC: No! God, that’s terrible! Shit!

METAL FAN: That’s so bad!

BEC: I’m not including that! (Changed my mind.)

METAL FAN: Uh, rewind.

CC: He’s ok, he’s really, you know he feels terrible that he can’t be here, but of course the most important thing is his health. But the infection’s gone and he had three surgeries and he lost part of his finger. I was talking to him yesterday and I was making him laugh. I told him I was, “Yea, Zak, instead of saying ‘I can’t think about you, I don’t think about you any more’ I’m going to say I can’t signal “Fuck You” anymore. (laughter) He was actually sitting there and telling his wife about that and laughing. It’s one of those things where it’s terrible but it could have been a lot worse. At least he’s ok.

METAL FAN: He’s in good spirits?

CC: Yea, yea. He’s as good as he can be.

BEC: Yea, you know that fans really give a shit. They’re all talking about it and worried about him.

CC: I told him, “You know, Zak now when you’re jerking off it will feel like someone else is doing it. (laughter) And he also laughed at that one. I mean I just try to make him laugh a bit, ‘cause I really love Zak. He was my roommate on the road with Savatage. I wanted to make sure he knew that I was with him.

BEC: That’s good to hear. So tell us about this solo project. This is your first solo project and you’ve had a career that spanned over 15 years, so what brought you to this point? How long has this been in the works?

CC: Only a couple years actually. Savatage wasn’t really that busy. You know, that’s the thing that brought it into the works. I was at a point where I wanted to tour more and more and people in the band, their lives were at a point where they were having things tour less and less. Savatage put out one record in seven years. TSO (Trans-Siberian Orchestra) is touring every year and you know, financially, that’s great. But I was spending a lot of time destroying myself in between tours and getting really depressed about the fact that Savatage wasn’t playing.

So I started writing, and eventually started singing and I just really wanted to do this. I always wanted to get a record out of my music, where I could sit there and people could really hear what’s me. Because I’m always doing things with Savatage, but then it’s like “is this you? Is this Al (Pitrelli)? And Jon wrote this song,” and I’m always being compared to this that and the other thing. I mean, me and Jon did the “Butcher” record (Doctor Butcher, 1994) but that was still…you know, it was years ago and it wasn’t really a presentation of what I could do. I just wanted to do something that I could use my time constructively instead of destructively.

BEC: I know exactly what you mean.

CC: When I got the deal, this was a good opportunity for me to do that.

METAL FAN: Do you think Savatage fans are going to be receptive to it?

CC: I think so, yea.

METAL FAN: Does it have the same kind of feel?

CC: It’s got the same kind of feel in some ways but it’s a lot different too. I mean it’s definitely not a Savatage record. You know, it’s a little bit more guitar driven in a lot of spots and it’s got a little bit more of a variety. I think it’s heavier. Heavier than “Butcher” in a lot of parts. And slower than TSO in some spots. So you really have to listen to it. There’s a lot music there.

BEC: So, I guess that’s how you would describe it to a first time listener that wants to know, “What am I going to expect on these two cd’s?

CC: Well, that’s why I called it “Faces” because there’s so many different sides of me musically. It’s basically me and I had some things I wanted to say and some of them I wanted to say heavy and some of them I didn’t. It’s got a pretty wide variety. I’m happy with the way it turned out.

BEC: Now you’ve got two cds. One’s considered a bonus, but isn’t there like 40 minutes on that? It’s almost a cd unto itself.

CC: I actually had like another, I think 6 or 7 songs that I wanted to have on that cd, but my record label was like, you can’t give that much music, so I decided to hold that off and then in the end….

(Interrupted by someone bringing his room key back)

CC: I completely lost it.

BEC: You had about at least seven more songs that you wanted on it.

CC: Yea, I left those off and I’m going to release a full “War” cd later. The “War” music has a certain face of me that’s metal that I didn’t want to leave off the regular cd, but lyrically it kind of didn’t fit with the “Faces” stuff. And I wrote like 65 songs altogether.

BEC: Wow.

CC: And I couldn’t leave it down to one record. I couldn’t do it no matter how hard I tried. I was like, “I can’t leave this, I can’t leave that song off.” And the thing that’s kind of neat that I’ve seen when people listen to this, which is really funny, because every single person has got like different favorite songs. But out of all the songs that are here, I think altogether, there’s like 23 songs and maybe two of them would be considered not songs, but every one had been in someone’s top five favorite songs on the record. Every different song. So if I was to leave any of them off, I think I would have definitely missed something with somebody.

You know, there’s certain songs that people will tell me, “This is my least favorite song on the record.” and I’ll be doing an interview and somebody will say that. And I’m thinking like, “Oh, thank you.” (laughter) And I’ll do an interview with the next person and they’ll be like, “I just wanted you to know that’s my favorite song on the record.” and I’m like, “Thank you!” I’ve had that happen a LOT with this thing. Everybody’s got different musical tastes and I glad that I’m able to reach them with it. I mean, after all, in the end it is my time to be able to do me and I didn’t want to sit there and try to say, “Well, I should target all the heavy metal people.” I just did what I wanted to do and whatever happens with it happens and if I make the biggest mistake in the world by making it too much music or too diversified, I mean, that’s the two complaints I get, “It’s too much music and it’s too diversified.”, and I’m like, well if that’s my biggest problem, I can live with that. I really can.

METAL FAN: What about bonus tracks for like Japan and….?

CC: I have those too. I recorded over 30 songs, so even my first single, which is this thing here, (looks at cd in hand), “The Mold”, it’s got five songs on it and two of them aren’t on the record. The Japanese record’s gonna have three songs that aren’t on the record. An the United States record is gonna have other songs that aren’t on the record and I’m probably gonna record one more brand new one for it and it’s going to be a U.S. single that’s going to have a couple songs that aren’t on ANYTHING and altogether I think, by the time it comes out and I release the full “War”, there’ll be somewhere around 40 songs that will be available within the first year of this record.

METAL FAN: So you have two more albums worth of material.

CC: Yea, altogether.

BEC: Are you working with the same guys all the way through? I know you Dave Z on bass and Jeff Plate. Are you working all the way through with them on this?

CC: Yea, Jeff Plate did the drums. He was who I wanted to use the whole time because he and me have a very similar schedule and we need to have a little bit of stability going on with this thing. Dave Z, well, you know me, Jeff and Dave have been a rhythm section for years. And then I just stumbled into Paul Morris (keyboards) in a bar one night and he asked me what I was doing and I told him and he came to the studio and listened to the music and he said, “I have to play on this record!” I said, “Ok!” and that’s how he got involved.

BEC: Any tour plans?

CC: In January I’m going to start in Europe. Basically, going to Europe first. Then there’s the TSO Beethoven tour next year. So I kind of have to work around the TSO schedule, but I’m going to tour as much as I possibly can.

BEC: How about the U.S.?

CC: Well, I’d like to, (laughs), but the records got to…I’ve got to tour it to sell it, but then it’s funny, because you’ve got to tour to sell it but you’ve got to sell it to tour. I’m like, “All right, well. Let’s put it out and hope my core following is big enough to get it out on the road and see what happens with it.”

BEC: Now this is the first time you’ve actually done lead vocals all the way through. How was that, was it challenging?

CC: It was but it was a blast! I loved it, I thought it was so much fun. I had so much fun singing. It was weird, after about five or six songs of me singing lead vocals I didn’t want anybody else to do it. I was having fun doing it. I liked the tone of my voice and I’m like, “This is what I’m going to do.” So I was demo-ing the stuff. I sent it to my business partners and my friends and they HATED it! (Laughs) I was like, “Oh boy.” So, that was more of the reason for me to keep going with it because I’m the little kid that when it says, “Do not press that button.” then I’m like, “Ok!” (hits button on nearby computer keyboard.) That’s the worst thing you could ever tell me is that I can’t do something ‘cause then I’ll do it. And not only will you get me singing, but you’ll get me singing 40 songs.

BEC: So you plan on doing a lot more of this in the future, then, right?

CC: Yea, yea. That’s the good thing is that I can always be Chris Caffery. You can’t take that away from me. And that’s, I think, something I needed to come into terms with, as Savatage was starting to play less and less, I started getting really scared about being the old guy in the metal band. Not that I’m old but I’m just like, wow, watching time fly by. Seven years went by, we did one record and I didn’t want that to happen. So now, I can always be Chris Caffery and always do my cd’s.

METAL FAN: Who were your influences?

CC: Everybody. I love great vocalist. Dio, Coverdale and of course Jon Oliva was a big influence on me on the metal side. I was really heavily influenced by Ray Gillen because he was a good friend of mine. Steve Perry, Steve Walsh. I always wanted to sing really, really good and I always thought I sucked. But, you know, what I didn’t realize is that you have to warm-up. So, the higher notes I wanted to hit, that I couldn’t hit, you know straight out when your singing, you walk into the rehearsal room and you sing and your like “EEEE” (high pitched) and you sound like your cracking, I didn’t realize that if I warmed up I can get those notes. And that’s the thing that was really cool. As time goes by, my voice, every day gets better.

I mean, I was driving up to here from Florida singing to the first Boston record and 95% of that record I can sing now. 95% of those notes I can hit in my real voice. Some of the ones I wouldn’t even want to hit. But you know most of it, it’s like, you know, I was just singing it and I was like, “Wow, I didn’t even know I could do this.” And it’s really cool.

BEC: That’s fantastic. Now you’re with Black Lotus, right? They’re a Greek label. How did you get hooked up with them? ‘Cause they usually have darker genres.

CC: Yea, but they wanted…they’re kind like me, where I wanted get out there and let people see more of what I can do and they wanted to get somebody that was going to help them get to a different level also. So, we were kind of the perfect fit for each other. They were looking for something to move really far ahead with and I was looking for a way to get there. I wanted somebody that was gonna see me and go, “Ok, this is a great new record. What can we do with this record?”

A lot of labels I was talking to, even before they listened to the album, they were like, “Well, Savatage sells this. We think you can sell this.” This is before they heard a note. Or, “Nobody buys solo records.” And “People aren’t into projects.” And, you know, all the fucking excuses in the world I heard before they even heard a note of music. And Black Lotus was just like, “Well, wow, come to Greece and let’s see what you can come up with.” And I went and they heard some songs and said, “What do you want?” and I told them and they said ok and I was like, “Whoa” and we just moved with it and it’s been great.

And now it’s less than a year from when I met with them and I’m holding the record and knowing that tonight, people are probably going to hear it. And it’s a really good feeling. I’m happy about it. I’m proud of what I did. Because I did it all myself. I didn’t have any help with this. I had negative help with this.

METAL FAN: Do you think you may play ProgPower next year?

CC: I think so. There’s a good chance. I think that would be great.

BEC: So speaking of ProgPower, what can we expect from the set tonight?

CC: I can’t really put a finger on it. (laughter from everyone) Oh, I did it again.

METAL FAN: We’re going to send this to Zak.

CC: You have to.

BEC: And he’ll laugh his ass off.

CC: You know, we’re doing a lot, we’re just, doing a lot of Savatage stuff and a couple things we haven’t played before and a lot of stuff we have, and I’m going to sing a couple of songs. Jon’s going to sing the rest. So, it’s going to be fun.

METAL FAN: Any chance on playing “The Chance”?

CC: Actually, you know what, “Chance” was the one song that everybody was like… I wanted to do it, ‘cause I can really sing it well, but everybody was kind of nervous about it, so we didn’t work that one out. I was really hoping we did but that’s one we’re not doing, but it’s going to be alright. Everybody will be happy with the set.

BEC: Is it a mix of some of the old stuff and the later stuff?

CC: Some of the later stuff, but not as much as I think we would have done with Zak, but that’s because he’s not here.

BEC: So how did the set list get chosen? Was that a collaboration?

CC: Yea, it was basically, “Holy shit, Zak’s not around. We can’t do that. We could do this. You want to try to sing this? Yea, ok.” It was kind like that.

BEC: Now how much time did you have to get it together?

CC: We rehearsed, like, three days to get it together.

BEC: Wow, that’s incredible. And you really hadn’t played together as a group for how long?

CC: Well, this group that’s playing now has never played together. So, but, I mean me and Jon, and everybody’s played together in some way shape or form. (John) Zahner’s had been working on and off with with Savatage since the “Streets” tour. Wacholz been there of course for 25 years, so we’ll be fine. We’ll rise above it.

BEC: ...and rise above it they did, as all the fans can attest to that saw their amazing show later that evening!

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* Hear Chris's album 'Faces' & the recorded station id he did for us on BeyondEarCandy radio!

Find out more about Chris on his official web site