Interview with James Byrd ( www.lionmusic.com   ) by Johnny C of www.loudmetal.com 

Please talk a little bit about your new album Anthem...

BYRD: I had begun writing my follow up to ‘flying beyond the 9’ in the summer of 2001.  The events of September 11^th changed everything in America, and that included my own perspectives on life.  I tried to go on with the as-yet untitled album, but I just didn’t feel any more connection to the content of what I’d written.  In all my musical life, I’ve never had “writers block”, but I was starting to wonder if I had it after 9/11.  Each time I’d go into the studio I’d feel a sense of futility and disconnection with what I’d begun.  Finally in November, I threw in the towel with regard to the words and music I’d written over the summer.  I just took some time away from even trying for a few more weeks and then finally, I began again.  ‘Anthem’ had to deal with the events around me.  The only difficulty was in understanding that these events were unfolding and changing rapidly, and I could not “envision” the album from start to finish lyrically not knowing where things were headed.  So I took what for me, was a leap of faith in terms of just allowing myself to work “in the moment” with each track.  Although the album seems “conceptual”, the concept was one I trusted to develop naturally, along with world events. 

Which guys would you consider to be your main influences?

BYRD: That’s very difficult to answer.  I know that as a player, I have things in common with other guitarists, some of whom were actual influences, some of whom were not, but were influenced by the same players I loved.  I’ve listened to so many different musicians, but were one to limit my reply to a handful of guitarists, they would be Hendrix, Blackmore, Frank Marino, Schenker, Al DiMeola, Brian May, D’Jango Reinhardt, Uli John Roth, and Paco Delucia. Of course there were many others who I learned from in my youth, but these were some important ones.  And these are only a few of the guitar players, but I learned so much from other instruments like piano, violin, even clarinet.  

How would you describe your music to someone who is not familiar with it?

BYRD: It’s truly a melting pot of influences, most of which come from the 1970’s, many of which have little to do with so-called “guitar dominated” music.  I enjoy good song writing whether there’s a guitar featured or not, and I also enjoy “larger then life” production values.  I enjoyed the band Styx, even though I learned nothing new from the guitar playing, and I enjoyed Jesus Christ Superstar even though the guitar player used on the record I have was bloody awful.   I liked The Beatles too, and Pink Floyd –Gilmore was great-.  My music is a “soup” of guitar virtuosity and pop, with a lot of classical influences.   If forced to give a very short description, I’d say that if someone liked Deep Purple and Styx, they’d probably enjoy what I do.

How did you develop your own style of playing, did you take any lessons?

BYRD: Just a handful of lessons –maybe 6 or 7- to learn how to tune the guitar and play a few chords. Beyond that, I’m self taught by learning solos from albums note for note.  I used to play along with records and learn every nuance of the guitar solos.  I played along with records by Hendrix, Robin Trower, Johnny Winter, Al Dimeola, even Peter Frampton –who was actually a pretty tasteful guitarist before his management turned him into a poster boy for 10 year old girls.  I learned all of Schenker’s solos on “Strangers in the night” and the solos from “Tokyo Tapes” by Scorpians.  I did this with everyone I enjoyed until I formed my first original band in 1980.  If I have a style, it’s really much broader than one can pin down on ‘Anthem’ or ‘Flying Beyond the 9’.  You really have know my whole catalog well to understand that for me, “style” is not something that I’m “stuck” with, it’s only dictated by the forms which surround me as a writer.  If you listen to –for example- “why have you forsaken me” on my instrumental album “Octoglomerate” you’ll understand that in terms of “style” it has nothing to do with the solos on ‘Anthem’, yet it is still very much me.  People always want to define artists and I will admit, I am difficult to define.  I could easily make an album that fell into line with something D’Jango Reinhardt might have written and performed in the Hot Club in 1930.  I’ve got that in me as a player.  So as a guitarist, I place myself in the service of whatever music I am presenting and my “style” is more the result of that, than any limitation in my musicality.  ‘Anthem’ is a very classical album, there is a certain way to approach that music as a player which serves it well, yet is entirely passionate.  For me, it’s all about “feel” and energy, and even within a given album, each track dictates my entire approach to the instrument really.   Blackmore was a player I greatly admired because of this same ability; he could play all kinds of stuff one never expected if they based their impression of his “style” only on Deep Purple.  I admire that multi-dimensional ability, and my goal as a player has always been to become truly free of the limitation of what might be deemed “style”.  Angus Young has a “style” –and I think it’s quite brilliant too-.  If wanted to play the type of music his band plays, and if I wanted to play like he plays, I can do that extremely convincingly.  He’s one of many players I used to play along with on my stereo as a kid.  But my “style” is just so broad in terms of different approaches, it’s really derived from my musical surroundings more than anything else. 

What is the most important, feeling or technique? can you survive with only one of them?

BYRD: You definitely need both, but it’s not a black and white question.  How much technique does one need to effectively communicate the ideas one wants to communicate is a far more appropriate question.  David Gilmore is an excellent example of what I mean by this.  Within his own range of expression, his technique is entirely brilliant.  What many people fail to understand about real technique on the guitar, is that the ability to play quickly is only one small aspect of technique.  Gilmore may not play fast, but he plays well, and there is a vast difference in this.  There are  many players who play fast and in my opinion, also very poorly.   Phrasing, pitch control, touch, dynamics, musical content, all of these things constitute a much more important definition of “technique” than how fast someone can play a series of notes.  So many of these “speed players” loosely labeled “shredders” have absolutely no feel, no phrasing, no dynamics, no actual talent for expressing music, the term “technique” has become a loaded and misleading term.  Knowing how to repeat a rapid “motor skill” in numerous positions on the fret board again and again has nothing to do with genuine technique on the guitar or any other instrument.  If you can play triplets at a thousand notes a minute, it doesn’t make you a musician, it makes you guy who can play three notes in a row very quickly, nothing more.   “Feeling” for music is a gift and I really don’t think it can be “learned”.  What it really is, is being concerned enough about genuine communication from the heart, that whatever it takes to communicate, the artist disciplines himself enough to first learn the myriad of techniques required to communicate, and then has the good sense to further discipline himself to telling a cohesive story he really believes.   How few artists really do this!  Jimi Hendrix did not have the technical skills required to play a thousand notes per minute, but it just doesn’t matter.  His actual content and it’s execution was sometimes so utterly brilliant, it’s irrelevant.  It’s like literature really.  If you can create a great story, no one’s going to give a damn how “fast” you can tell it are they.

What kind of equipment are you using live or in the studio?

BYRD:  It is the picture of simplicity; I use a stock 50 watt non-master volume Marshall 50 watt plexi amp, one very old (1966) Marshall cabinet with eight ten-inch Celestion speakers, a DOD250 overdrive pedel, and an original Jim Dunlop Cry Baby wah pedal.  I play guitars I designed and built with my own two hands.  They are patented and have three single coil pickups.  They’re called Byrd ™ Super Avianti ® guitars.

How was the album recorded?

BYRD: This is the first album that I’ve made without “tape” and it was great from an engineering perspective.  Like most albums made now, I made the move from tape, to recording on hard-drive. The orchestral sounds were recorded in MIDI –musical instrument digital interface-.  A lot of people don’t understand what MIDI is, but no, it’s not a “machine”, nor does it involve “pre-recorded sequencing”.  It’s just another way of storing sound, or it can be, and on this album, this is how it was used.  All the performances are real-time recordings of the various parts, the only difference between this and analogue being that instead of the orchestral sounds being stored as magnetic information, they are stored as ones and zeros.  There has been some debate and even some criticism –though not much- about this approach, and all of it is based on misunderstanding.  When you hear –for example- the grand piano on my album, Brian was not playing an actual grand piano:   The keyboard he was playing was generating that timbre.  The dynamics between soft and loud, the “touch”, the feel, and the recording of the performance are in no way “synthesized”, “sequenced” or “mechanized” in any way, but rather, the performance comes from the hands and heart.  It does frustrate me when people mistake the use of a technology to improve or facilitate art, for the art itself. 

As for my guitar, this was recorded with one very fine tube microphone, a tube pre-amp, and that’s it.  What you hear is what came from my amp and my hands, nothing more, nothing less.  During mixdown, a little reverb and delay was added for depth, but there is no “processing” of any kind on my sound. 

The vocals also were recorded the same way, and there is no “autotune” (a software program in rampant use to correct “bad” notes) used on the vocals.  I may use new technology, but I am very insistent upon not using it to fool or mislead people regarding the basic nature of a performance.  There too much of that going on I think.  I can not turn on the radio anymore without hearing a “synthesized” (artificially digitally “corrected”) vocal performance.  Some day, a lot of albums are going to be looked back on, and regretted, I think.  Once you know what these “correction” programs –like autotune-  do, and sound like, it moves beyond just being able to hear them, and it moves to finally not being able to hear anything else.  Listen to the latest album by The Red-hot Chilli Peppers;  this is what I’m talking about.  No human being can generate that kind of unwavering “fixed” pitch in a vocal performance.   And if you’ve heard the vocalist live, and have ears, you’ll rapidly understand that what you’re hearing on the album, and what you’re hearing from him are just not the same.  Hey, I’m not trying to sling mud here, God bless them.    But people need to know that technology is creating an impression, and sometimes it’s not very accurate.   We all use technology to improve our albums, but where does one draw the line?  That’s really up to the artist.   For me, I have no problem putting over 100 tracks of orchestration on my albums even though we’re only three guys.  Is this “reality”?  Of course not.   So I make my choices and where I happen to draw the line is in the actual nature of the performances, not the number of instruments used.  So before anyone gets “up in arms” here, it’s their choice to use the technology the way they do, and it’s my choice to use it more conservatively or differently.  But people should, at least understand enough about the art they enjoy, to care how it’s made, I think.  The “sound” of the vocal pitch correcting technology I’m criticizing here for it’s overuse/abuse, is similar to the way that chorusing was so blatantly abused in the 80’s.  Today all anyone who loved his sound on the first album can say about Eddie Van Halen’s sound during the Hagar years is “what the hell happened”?  “Cheeze-whiz”.  Just my opinion.

So in one way, I’m moving forward with the technology of improved audio quality, but I’m also intentionally going back, to very pure, natural sounds, for the guitars and vocals.  To me, it’s the best of both worlds; direct to hard-drive recording sounds infinitely better than digital tape.   The separation and control offered during mix-down is also fantastic, and without this technology, artists would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of just thousands, to create the same result with analogue decks and mixers.

Which musicians would you like to play with some day?

BYRD: Well I don’t spend a lot of time wishing about this, I am so pleased with things as they’ve been.  But the one guy who does come to mind is Ronnie Dio.  To my ear, he is not only the best vocalist in rock, but probably the best male vocalist who’s ever picked up a mic.   

What kind of music do you like the least?

BYRD: Rap.   Sorry, It’s not music to me.  I’m especially irritated when some idiot drives through my neighborhood at 4am with his sub-woofers rattling my windows. 

Do you ever listen to music that is very different from what you do, if so what?

BYRD: I only listen to music that’s different from what I do.  I seldom do listen to music actually.  When one spends hundreds of hours producing and recording their own music, silence is valued at the end of the day.  But the few times I listen to music, it’s classical, jazz, song writer oriented, really anything but classically influenced progressive rock. 

Are there any plans to tour?

No, touring is extremely expensive and unless one is willing to contract for tour support, and is willing to go into debt in hopes of mainstream “commercial” success –like Backstreet boys type “success”-, creating music with a widely spread but hardly dense demographic does not foster any logical reason to do so.  I could never make the albums I’m making without the reach and cost effectiveness of the internet.   The internet has allowed artists like myself, to reach tens of thousands of people around the world and make a profit at the end of the day.  But an audience of fifty thousand is nowhere close to enough to sustain a tour on, if that audience is globally spread out.   It means you’d have to travel the globe at no small expense to reach a hundred here, a hundred there.

What other plans do you have for the near future?

BYRD: Just to continue to do what I do, I really find it rewarding.

How is the musical climate for hard rock in the States at this moment?

BYRD:  I’m probably not the right person to ask.  There is still a small but fiercely loyal group of melodic progressive hard rock fans, but the parameters of the question need to be defined.  “Limp Biscut” -or what ever they’re called- does really well, but that’s not what I’m about.  Some of the classic period bands are still touring in small clubs on reunion tours, and of course there’s always Las Vegas too.  But that also is not what I’m about.  I’m trying to actually move forward and progress in an arena that’s been long abandoned by most, and I do so because I believe in it.  To me, this is what the “progressive” in progressive rock ought to mean.  Some people consider “prog” a style.  That’s fine but not my definition.  Evolving, refining, innovating within the framework of rock, this is what the term means to me.   Not that it’ll ever be “huge”, but that for me, as art, it is utterly honest in it’s reflection of who I am.  That is my satisfaction, and that there are enough fans to buy enough albums that I’m asked for more, I count this as a personal blessing.  

What are your feelings about the world we live in and how do you look upon yourself in 15 years from now?

BYRD:  I am anything but optimistic to be honest.  These are dark days and I fear the loss of democracy on all levels.  God only knows really.  I hope we’re all still here in 15 years, and that we are free people.  I only know that while I am here I have to communicate within my own realm of effectiveness, and I do hope that whatever someone expects from my music, I am able to give it to them, whether comfort, distraction, or reflection of their own feelings. This is how I see my job.