*...So about a year ago I was asked by a friend of mine named Justin to play a guitar solo on a song he was recording for a double album by his band Liberty n Justice.
This album features a lot of my favorites artists from 80's rock bands that got me into music and who I still love to this day.
I was pretty blown away when he asked me. I've never met this guy in person but we became friends out of a mutual love for the same music and both being fans of this singer named Jamie Rowe. So this double album was going to have one album of cover songs and one album of originals. He asked me to play on a cover of MmmBop, which is not my favorite song in the world but I do remember how big it was. The cool part was that Jamie Rowe was singing on it and this guy is one of my idols from his work with Guardian, Andriangale, and his solo music.
I never dreamed I'd get to record with someone I've probably lost a lot of hearing too. I've spent so many nights listening to his music. I did my best to lay down a really kick ass guitar solo and outro as there are a lot of my heroes on this CD and I wanted to both pay tribute to them and to show people I can hang with these cats.
Today has been a tough one. It gets harder and harder to make a living doing music. I feel sad, not for myself, but music in general, as more and more people who do music are being forced to seek other lines of work. This results in less people getting really good and less people to pass on that knowledge. The music world in general suffers. I know a lot of really good players who have hung it up, and I don't blame them. I'm just stubborn but even my stubbornness has a breaking point. But moments like this keep me going...
Anyway, I don't wanna dwell in the past but this was a cool moment for me and thought you might wanna check it out. It was mixed by CJ Snare who is the lead singer of Firehouse (they rock and theirs was the first tape I ever bought). The mix is not exactly how myself or my friend Anthony would have done it (He's awesome) but it's still cool.
If you do work hard enough you can achieve some pretty cool things. And if it's music you do, maybe, just maybe, you can one day be on a CD with a bunch of your heroes and one of your favorite singers.
Here it is in all it's 90's goodness. For guitar I was listening to lots of Paul Gilbert even though I could never pull of anything close to that man. Enjoy!