First Solo Concert Singing!
CHRIS: Hello.
DAVE: This is Dave and Ann Marie from BeyondEarCandy.
CHRIS: Hey, how’re you doing?
AMBR: Great. Is this Chris?
CHRIS: Yea, I’m just getting up and trying to make sure I can still talk.
AMBR: Actually, same here. We didn’t get in until 2 in the morning last night.
CHRIS: Well, at least you had a better rest of the night than Ken Pierce. Do you know Kenny at all?
DAVE: No. Don’t think so.
CHRIS: He killed a little bit of brain cells, got on the wrong train and lost his tote bag and someone was using his credit cards this morning….
AMBR: Oh no!
DAVE: Great concert last night! Had a great time.
CHRIS: Well thank you. You know, it was the first time and I think it went really well. There’s so many things that go through your head when you do the first show of any tour, whether your singing or not. It’s the first time I ever sang and played guitar ever in my life except for a couple of songs here and there. It’s just a lot to absorb and it was difficult to relax, but it was definitely fun.
AMBR: What sort of things go through your mind as your trying to prepare for this first show?
CHRIS: Well, you know, the only thing I was really concerned about was hoping by the end of the show would I be able to make it through all the songs singing. The most difficult thing was I couldn’t get to my water. They tried to rig something where I could drink it from the mic stand, but it wasn’t working.
DAVE: Yea I saw that with the hose.
CHRIS: I was just sucking air. My head was about to explode. (laughter) So that didn’t help, and the water bottles they had on the drum riser were closed. I was thinking, “Couldn’t you take the cap off for me?!” I was trying to figure out chords where at least I could hold the guitar playing and grab with the other hand but then the cap was on and I was going, “This doesn’t work at all!”
DAVE: That’s a good point. If you’re playing guitar AND singing, where’s the other hand for the water?
CHRIS: Yea, you got to think about that, like “Wait a second, I gotta drink when I’m singing.”
DAVE: Yea, well someone’s got to rig up a better water bottle idea.
CHRIS: Yea, exactly. There’s gotta be a better way. I think I’ll go to Modell’s (Sporting Goods Store) today and see what I can find.
DAVE: Well, it sounded great. Your voice made it through.
CHRIS: Every time I was able to get the water to it, it was fine. There were certain ones, where I didn’t necessarily fell like I was straining. It was just dry. There were things you knew you could do, but couldn’t because there just wasn’t enough moisture. It’s a learning experience with all this stuff right now.
DAVE: I did hear Mark Wood , the violinist (Trans-Siberian Orchestra) was going to be there. That was a real treat.
CHRIS: He’s great. I was happy he volunteered to come down here and play. I asked him to show up and he was more than happy to and he’s gonna go again Saturday.
AMBR: In Long Island?
CHRIS: Yea.
DAVE: Well, it’s great you get to start out in your own stomping grounds. You’ve been in New York pretty much most of your life, right?
CHRIS: Yea, in this area. Within and hour, hour and a half of the city.
DAVE: Perfect place to develop the attitude for hard rock songs.
CHRIS: Yea, exactly.
AMBR: So, you think last night was a good warm up for you then?
CHRIS: I think so. A lot of people would consider me nuts for warming things up in New York City! (laughter) Why not?! It was kind of neat to walk down the street and look up and see the marquee up on Times Square.
AMBR: Yea, we got a shot of that. There it was B.B. Kings and there it is, Chris Caffery right up there!
DAVE: Yea, we actually got quite a lot of photos!


Headlining BWBK 6-Pack Festival:
AMBR: So, you’re going to be headlining the BWBK Six-pack weekend. How’d that come about?
CHRIS: Actually, they contacted me in January. We said if I don’t do any other shows around the Cleveland area and really, like any of the other big U.S. metal things before that, they wanted me to go in and headline that. I thought “Great”. That was actually suppose to be the launching show for my solo thing, was suppose to be next week, but when we were looking to book these shows with all the TSO bands, we were actually gonna do a full on tour but logistically there were a lot of things to get together between the five bands scheduled and politics and stuff like that and I just canned the idea. I thought, let’s just do this weekend and see how it goes and maybe will book some shows later in the year if it works well. And I still think there could have been a little bit more of a channel getting out to the TSO fans, because I know the Savatage fans were well represented there last night but I don’t think the majority of the TSO concert going people had really gotten to know that that was going on. There was a lot of different music. I think it’s something we can get working on and developing in the future, but the Brave Words people wanted me to play and I’m going to be happy I have a few shows under my belt before I get out there. I wouldn’t want to have the jitters in front of that kind of a crowd. It definitely has the potential to be more hostile. (laughs) The bands I’m going on after in Cleveland, like Soilwork and Dark Tranquility, I mean those are metal touring bands. You know, there’s nothing against the bands I played with last night. They’re all great bands, there’s just an attitude and thing between those bands and their fans and if you go up and you’re anything short of that, their fans are gonna let you know it. Last night they were a little more polite. If they had hated me, they would have just walked away and these other people would say like “Fuck you!”
AMBR: Yea, last night the fans for the earlier bands (Z02, Katrina Chester, Steve Broderick, Alex Skolnik Trio) were kind of a mellow group.
DAVE: I hadn’t seen Alex play that kind of music before. I remember him from the day when he was doing the heavier Testament stuff, he’s really talented, no doubt about it.
CHRIS: Yea, everyone was great last night.
 

Faces CD:
AMBR: When we talked to you in Atlanta, that was before Faces and Goddamn War had come out.
DAVE: Yea, you gave us some burned copies that were just fresh off the press.
CHRIS: Yea, actually I had just gotten from the Greeks (record label, Black Lotus in Greece) the finished copies just then for the first time.
AMBR: Well, ever since you gave us the two cd’s in ProgPower, we put them up in the power rotation on our internet radio and we’ve been getting a really good response on them. What sort of response have you been getting since they came out?
CHRIS: It’s been really good. The fan response has been 100% positive, that’s the one thing I really liked about it. The press has been probably 90% positive. I’m ok with that. Every once in awhile somebody didn’t get what I was doing or didn’t have the time to give the record a good listen, because there is a ton material, so I think it can become a little overwhelming. But I’ve been happy with it.  The record’s selling and people are liking it, so I mean, all the people that I saw up front last night knew all the words to the songs, they were singing a long so that was really cool.
DAVE: You really had two different types of releases off of Faces with The Mold and Music Man, two different styles of music. What was the thought process there to have two diversified releases.
CHRIS: I don’t think there was really a thought process. There’s a lot of different music that’s inside of me. I don’t want to stereotype myself. That’s kind of what I did with the show last night. It’s real difficult when you have so many different types of fans. You have the heavier ones with Savatage. With TSO you have all different kinds. It’s not like I was shooting for any one. Me, personally, I don’t feel like listening to the same song everyday. I get a lot of people’s records that are great. I put it on and they’ll have 10 or 11 songs on it and 10 of them will sound exactly same or be in the same style and they’ll throw one ballad on there, so people will go, “Ohh, they have a ballad!” (laughter) Just leave the ballad off. I mean, what are you trying to prove with it?
DAVE: That’s so true! It’s like, oh it is POSSIBLE for them to do something else.
AMBR: A lot of angry lyrics in there. Where you trying to get some stuff out?
CHRIS: Yea, in someway. There’s a lot of frustration along the road with things that are going on here. I mean, I love TSO and I love what’s going on with that, but my life blood and my job and what I’ve actually been living for a large percentage of the last 15, 17 years has been Savatage and that band has been sitting idle and really wasn’t playing. You know, at any given time, Savatage could turn around and book a tour and play for people anywhere around the world. That’s what could happen. And for me, I found that very frustrating. I love to play for the fans. I love to travel. I love to see the people. I love do eat the different food. I love to move. I love to see the tour dates. When I’m not doing the band thing, I’m not doing anything and for me that’s really destructive.  The situation I’m in, I didn’t want to join another band. Another band is not going to understand that October, November and December do not exist for me. It’s going to be really hard to explain that to somebody if you were to join a band with a famous singer or a famous band that needed a guitar player, they’re gonna say “We gotta tour. It’s gonna happen in November.” and I gotta say, “Well, I can’t do it.” They’re not going to understand that. I’m in a position where I needed to something that my time is still my time. This is just building and I hope I get to a point where I become completely self sufficient with it and no matter what happens, I always have this. And that’s a lot of the reasons for a lot of variety in the music, is I don’t want to age this thing. The one thing I always can be is me. That’s one thing in the future, if I wind up just writing and playing I can come out and say, “Hey, I wanna do a tour and play my songs.” because I do enjoy doing the songs, like the Music Man and stuff just as much as I do the heavy stuff and that was apparent last night with myself and the people that were watching, they appreciated just as much both sides of it.
AMBR: That was great, when you switched into the different style, it was like a real treat.
 

W.A.R.P.E.D.  CD:
DAVE: Now Damn War is gonna come out as a full release, right?
CHRIS: Yea, that’s gonna come out actually in June in Europe and September in the states. And the full name of that is W.A.R.P.E.D.  I change it because it was just politically it was a little bit weird with the use of the “G-D” word and I just decided it kind of focused more on the story and what I was saying. The W.A.R.P.E.D. song is about watching the war on TV and it stands for actually Watching Rape Peace Expect Delays. It’s one of those things where it kind of fits the story more. And the stuff I had on stage, those scrims, that’s the cover of it.
DAVE: I was wondering about that imagery. Now the full release is going to have more tracks than the bonus cd, right?
CHRIS: Yea the original European one only had the nine songs including Amazing Grace. The full on one has 15. The original European one had Fright Nights, the song W.A.R.P.E.D., the song called Home is where the Hell Is, Election Day, a song called State of the Head, which is about the beheadings and an old Doctor Butcher song that Jon Oliva actually sang on called Iraq Attack that’s on it too. Yea, we wrote it back in ’91 when the other war was going on and it stayed pretty much right in hand with what’s going on right now.
DAVE: Kind of ironic.
AMBR: War situations never really change. They just keep repeating.
CHRIS: Yea, exactly. In case you haven’t noticed. Things are getting any friendly in Iraq. It’s way worse than the picture they try to paint here. They try to make it seem like we made everything nice and rosy over there.
AMBR: And it doesn’t look like we’re leaving any time soon.
CHRIS: Well, you know, if we were to leave that whole place would just erupt. Now, more than anything, we’re more or less peacekeepers and it’s not even working out that well.
DAVE: So I guess you had a lot of material for the War. I remember even back in Atlanta when you had the bonus cd, you said you’d written a ton of material.
CHRIS: Well, I could keep writing for that.
 

Doctor Butcher CD:
DAVE: It’s like never ending material there. You mentioned the song with Jon, now I heard there might be a bonus song on the Doctor Butcher release, is that it?
CHRIS: There is. It’s another old song that we just recorded for the first time in the studio, called Inspector Highway, that we did in January, actually February we recorded it, and the Doctor Butcher release is two cd’s and the second cd has got that and some of the stuff from the demo cd on it.
DAVE: That’s coming out real soon isn’t it?
CHRIS: Yea, absolutely.
DAVE: I hoped maybe they’d have it last night.
CHRIS: I was actually suppose to have it last night and my shipment is somewhere lost in UPS hell. (laughter) I was suppose to have it Tuesday then they said it was gonna arrive Thursday for sure, and I don’t have it. So, Thursday was NOT for sure. I have to give them a buzz today and see what the hell happened with it. I’m hoping I’m going to have it for sale tomorrow, but I don’t know.
 

Circle II Circle Writing:
DAVE: I see you also wrote some for the new Circle II Circle album.
CHRIS: I did three songs on Zak’s new record. For his next record we talked about it. The last couple things I did with him, I sent him music and he developed it. I think the next time I’m going to go and spend a few days and write with him on it. I think if there wasn’t so much confusion in the Savatage camp and uncertainty about things, I may never even have done the solo thing, I may have just played with Zak. You know, if I’m doing that, that’s like the equivalent of another Savatage, you know, where you have a lead singer and a lead guitarist playing together. That’s kind of why I’m not on Jon’s record, though I did write with him. I think if you stick me in either one of those two things, together it’s too much of a Savatage thing.

 

 

Savatage Band:
AMBR: There’s really nothing solid in the works right now to get Savatage doing something in the near future is there?
CHRIS: You know, I’d like to say yes, but I just don’t know. It’s kind of up to Jon. I know Jon, since he’s not actively involved in the touring role of TSO (Trans-Siberian Orchestra) , and he enjoys playing his Jon Oliva’s Pain thing, until he decides to fire up the engine with Paul and get Savatage going, we’re kind of in this holding pattern. We have an anniversary coming up, I just don’t know if our 25th anniversary is going to happen in the 25th year or the 30th year. (laughter).
DAVE: I’m rooting for 25th. Jon’s just kind of busy with his solo thing too.
CHRIS: Yea, exactly.
AMBR: But you’re right, if you put that together again and you guys got going, you’d instantly sell out places all over the world. I have a friend, Ester, in Italy and she said, “When you talk to Chris, tell him to come back to Milan. Italy loves him and Savatage!”
CHRIS: It’s frustrating for me. I miss that. I really do. Even getting out and playing for the people in the clubs again, I wanna go and I was thinking the other day about the Dead Winter Dead tour in Europe and we were playing in these little 4 or 500 seat clubs in Europe where they throw 8-900 people in the club and you can’t move and people were sweating and there’s one little dressing room and you may have been bitching about it at the time and I think about it now, and you know, man, I miss that little club. I miss the people. I miss the band all complaining together because the air conditioner broke down on the bus and we’re pulled over along the side of some canal in Italy and we’re just sitting on a river bank, and I miss that. That’s I think the thing that gets a lot of that frustration and anger going is that I want to get back on the road again.



   TSO Band:
I love TSO, but TSO is a machine. It’s the same show every night. It’s a sell out every night. It’s the same clothes, it’s the same wrap, it’s perfection. It’s a show. It’s every bit of the spectacle and grandeur that’d you’d expect of ANYTHING, but it’s so…musically it’s the same. You don’t get as rush out of playing it. Everything about it is almost like (the movie) Ground Hog’s Day. You can just go up, you’re there, the caterings there, the hotel rooms are there, the dressing rooms are there, your tuxedos are there. You put it on. Right before the show, I do a check presentation. I go up on stage, I play, I do the same introductions, I say the same thing. After the show we go and do our autograph signing then we go to sleep. I miss the X-factors. Going to the one venue that’s got like eight lights and half of them don’t speak English and your catering’s a fricken bunch of little sandwiches with cucumbers and tomatoes on them with flies. Hey! Rock and roll! (laughter)
AMBR: It’s like a Spinal Tap moment.
CHRIS: (laughing) Yea! It’s what I miss! The rock and roll band on the road. I really do.

European Touring:
AMBR: I see that you’re going to Germany in July.
CHRIS: I think I’m going to Germany in June too. I’m in the process of confirming it now. I know it’s almost last minute, too. I think I’m going to do some dates with Metal Church. I’ve sold a lot of records in Germany, you know, with Faces, I’ve sold I think like three times more than I’ve sold in the U.S., and Germany’s the size of Texas, so that should be good. That should be a lot of fun, because if I could go with them and bring an extra 3-400 into the room where they’re playing and just let people see what I’m doing. Because nobody’s seen what I’m doing! They’re still people out there thinking the singing thing is something I’m doing with mirrors on the album. That’s one thing I’d like to show, no it’s not. I can do it. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think I could do it. That’s wasn’t the reason why I did it.

Recording for Next CD:
AMBR: You said in Atlanta, that you had a lot more material written, do you have plans in the future for another cd, or is it too early yet?
CHRIS: I’m going to the studio in January. I’ve been mapping it out now. Out of the ones I had left, I think I had 15 that were still living as far as I’m concerned and I’ve got another five or six that I’ve written recently and tentatively, I already have a name for the record, which I’m either calling Pins and Needles or Needles and Pins. Maybe both. It’s kind of…after awhile, I’m becoming numb to a lot of things and that’s basically what with the record’s going to be about. You know, after a while you start to feel like a human Shmoo doll. (laughter)
AMBR: So that’s sort of the theme of this next cd?
CHRIS: Well, there’s no theme really. I think the next record’s just going to be really extreme. I think that you’re going to see me go violently heavy with some of the stuff to a point where it’s going to be extremely experimental. I think I’m just gonna stretch myself musically and stress myself emotionally on the next one.
AMBR: You plan on working with the same guys for recording?
CHRIS: I’m planning on it. I’m still gonna have to deal work with our schedules. Hopefully, me and Nick are gonna work together. I really like working with him. We have a lot of fun. We just sit there laughing the whole time. He’s really fun for me to sing to and I’d really like to do it with him again so we’re planning on that. We’re just getting it all together right now. I’m actually trying to find some time where I pencil out some weeks in the summer where I’m just gonna bunker myself in to my mom’s basement and do some writing, ‘cause that’s where I usually do my best stuff. I just go up there and I’ll do yard work until it gets dark and then I’ll watch television with my mom for an hour, then I’ll disappear into her basement. Usually, I’ll just kind of try to get one idea that night. Then I’ll take that the next day and I’ll listen to it and I’ll develop it during the day and then I’ll feel from that and I’ll, that night, come up with another idea and then maybe if I do that for about … a couple weeks might be too much of that, but a lot of times I was leaving with two or three songs, or three or four from there and then coming back to the city and go to the studio and finish them. It’s been pretty productive that way.
DAVE: That’s cool, pretty wild.
AMBR: Well, we’ll be looking forward to hearing the new stuff.
CHRIS: Me too. (laughter)
AMBR: Well, when you’re ready, we’ll definitely put it up on the radio. Like I said before, we’ve had the other stuff on the radio in power rotation since you gave it to us in Atlanta and there’s been a lot of good feedback.
CHRIS: Well, there’s enough tunes!
AMBR: Yea, it seems to be, besides, Pisses Me Off, everyone has a different favorite.
CHRIS: That’s what I’ve heard from the beginning. Everyone’s favorite song on the album was Pisses Me Off AND something else. I try to sit there and figure out what songs I should have and should not have on the album, and every once in awhile, I’ll talk to someone and they’ll say, “I like every song on the record but… Peace Be With You and Sodomize” and then I’ll get like someone who goes, “I like every song on the record but Never and uh….Remember.” Then I’ll get somebody who goes, “Man, my FAVORITE songs are Peace Be With You and Sodomize!” or “My favorite songs are Never and Remember.” and I’m going, “This is fricken weird.” (laughter)
DAVE: That’s a good sign of variety there!
CHRIS: Yea. I look at it this way, if I had left any one of the songs off, somebody’s favorite song would have been gone. I could have narrowed….I could have done last nights set. It could have been an album. A real precise, to the point, record with still some variety, but, you know, but a pretty decent showing of different faces, like ten or maybe if you added a full (form?) and maybe like one other song, that could have been a full record and maybe I would have been better off with that. Maybe I would have confused people a little bit less in some ways. But, you know, I had to do what I wanted to do with this and no matter what happens you only get your first chance to make your first solo record and I didn’t want to compromise, that wasn’t the reason I was doing it.

Wrap-up:
DAVE: Well, it was fun to see it live and we appreciate you using some of your voice for us today. (laughter)
CHRIS: It actually seems to be pretty good. I don’t even feel hoarse.
AMBR: You sound better than we do! (laughter)
CHRIS: I was laughing, because the week before I was rehearsing, singing five hours a day and I was like, yesterday, “Wow, I only have to sing an hour and a half.” Except for the water problem it was pretty easy. I was a little worried about the wind and being up on stage and all those things were really like a non-factor. The only thing that I had with the singing was getting enough liquid.
DAVE: Yea, that’s something you gotta figure something out with. Well, thanks for doing the interview with us today.
CHRIS: Yea, well thanks for calling and coming out last night.
AMBR: We had a great time any time you perform in this area, we’ll be sure to come check you out.
CHRIS: Thanks!
AMBR: Thanks to you, Chris. Take care and best of luck.
 

More Chris Caffery concert photos at B.B. King's, click here!

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Hear Chris Caffery CD's on BeyondEarCandy radio!

Find out more about the Chris Caffery on his official web site

Thanks to Betty Dworatschek of Metal Queen Management for arrangements!

Thanks Chris for the interview, always a pleasure...you rock!