Filter

Richard Patrick is founder and frontman of the band Filter. He also formed the supergroup, Army of Anyone with the DeLeo Brothers, Dean and Robert, of Stone Temple Pilots, and drummer Ray Luzier.

The first Filter album was released in 1995. The current album “The Trouble With Angels” features tracks busting with honesty that has became a sort of Filter signature. We caught Richard Patrick and asked him a few questions.

Maximum Ink: What do you think led you to become a musician?
Richard Patrick: The first thing every musician realizes is that they appreciate music more than others around them. There is always a great song out there, you just have to find it; or write it yourself. 

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Bradley Fish

Bradley Fish has become the ultimate nomad. It makes sense though, he’s been perfecting it most of his adult life along with his passion, music.

A musical chameleon with a music degree to match, Bradley left his native Illinois for the much more liberal Madison, Wisconsin in the mid 1990’s and literally lived in a tent in a friend’s back yard while giving guitar lessons to local students. He also played many a night on State Street and could always be spotted with a guitar, head full of dreadlocks and a tie-dye t-shirt.

Eventually, the success of lessons, shows and street playing allowed him to set up his own place and live life from music. His solo shows were “one man band” style, and he wore bells, shakers and other noise makers on his legs and feet and play guitar, dulcimer, Chinese zither and whatever other instrument he could find. Bradley is also part comedian and his laugh is infectious. Some of his videos on YouTube feature this “humor” with his controversial song “Jewish Girl Blues.” Totally tongue in cheek, the song pokes fun at the plight of Jewish men who are pressured by old tradition to find and marry a Jewish girl, only in this video, he marries a few to cover the bases.

Besides playing as a one man band/comedian, Bradley has been in a ton of bands. In the mid-nineties, Bradley enlisted the help of a plethora of local Madison all-stars to play in his band, The Aquarium Conspiracy, and record on his first album. After some success it was hard to keep the “band” booked as scheduling of “all-stars” isn’t so easy.

The late nineties put the hippy in Bradley out to dry when he hooked up with Rökker, Philly, Mike McGinnis and Jeff Muendel to re-package the old Aquarium Conspiracy music plus new songs to a heavier format… a ROCK BAND called Bradley Fish’s Electrifried Band. Zany publicity stunts propelled his popularity, but something still seemed missing.

Following his mother’s advice to visit Israel, Bradley sold off most of his belongings, shipped the guitar and Marshall amp to his new home in Tel Aviv where he would work for the high-level audio software company Waves as well as get signed to Sony Records to sell CD’s full of loops. But Tel Aviv didn’t suit him so off to Jerusalem he went where he started a recording studio in his apartment just off the market. But the nomad in him would strike again.

Before he sold off all his belongings and shipped the rest back to the states, Bradley recorded his new album “Time To Rise”. Set to be released on October 12th at the High Noon Saloon in Madison, “Time To Rise” will take Bradley across the country as he promotes and tours in total DIY fashion. You see, Bradley purchased a big, purple van which you can’t miss. Instead of the tent, or an apartment or home, he has trimmed his possessions to the minimum and uses a fusion of old and new technologies to make the “Purple People Eater”, his fond name for it, into a mobile home/office, decreasing his lodging expense.

Bradley also went back to his one-man-band show but this time it’s a complete mix of analog and digital as he uses the laptop to control the layers of his improvisational playing on the many different instruments in his possession. Guitar and dulcimer remain his favorites while he incorporates bass, drum loops and “other” sounds into his repertoire.

Here is my conversation with adventure looping musician Bradley Fish. He is back in the Midwest after his 6 year residence in Israel and touring this fall with a new album.

Maximum Ink: Bradley, Are you a one man show or would you rather mash with others?
Bradley Fish: I love playing in bands. I must have been in a few hundred of them, practically every style you can imagine and have learned from a ton of great musicians over the years. The thing is, bands have a 99.9% chance of breaking up and solo acts are the inverse of that. So in a business that’s already known for being very unstable, being a solo act lets me enjoy a certain degree of stability. Plus, as a solo act, I can decide to rehearse spontaneously at 4 in the morning, make radical changes in a musical direction, or play a freaky gig for naked desert-trance-hippies for gas money and organic yogurt - without consulting or convincing anyone and still keep the act together for years on end.

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Four Twenty

420 is not a band with a story of California glitz and glamour. 420 is not a band recounting brutal management dramas or record label feuds. 420 is not about image. According to vocalist Mike Kerry, 420 is about limitless musical boundaries, finding truth in life, and following a dream out of the Midwest into the great beyond.

Formed in early 1998, Mike Kerry, Tom Parrott, John Pond and Mike “Bunj” Bunjan have been causing quite a stir in their hometown of Rockford, Illinois.  In 1999, the group won the Rockford Area Music Industry’s Critic’s Choice for “Composer of the Year” for their debut EP “In Four Twenty”. Another RAMI followed the same year for the song “Hands or Time”. Although the band is fairly new to the music scene, Mike and Tom Parrott have been expressing their passion for innovation for over a decade.  “The thing about the members of the band”, Mike explains, “is that we all either own businesses or have huge responsibilities to them. We want to succeed, but we have lives too.”  This has kept 420 fairly localized for 3 years.

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Gabriel and the Apocalypse

“Longevity comes from doing something different and having artistic integrity.” These words, spoken by Lindy Gabriel, lead vocalist of Minneapolis’ own Gabriel and the Apocalypse Lindy Gabriel explain her life surrounded by music and doing what it takes to make it in a music industry oversaturated with bands. Her voice and sound transcend a lifetime of musical, personal and intellectual experiences, accompanied by guitar drum and bass work that flows like brush onto easel painting a hard rock masterpiece. There are so many bands out there today, sometimes it’s hard to find your way through all the clutter, but Gabriel and the Apocalypse are definitely a diamond in the rough. Maximum Ink’s Aaron Manogue sat down with the band’s talented vocalist Lindy Gabriel to discuss their music, her upbringing and their experience so far in the crazy music industry.

Maximum Ink: Tell me about when you first started singing. Where and how did you get your start? Did you always know you wanted to sing rock and metal?
Lindy Gabriel: I started singing when I was six years old. I always knew I wanted to sing and be a performer. I grew up with it. My parents have been playing in rock bands for many, many years, even before I was born. I started playing bass and guitar at the age of ten and started my first real band at eleven, playing gigs and all. This is what I have always done.

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Ian Gillan

Ian Gillan is best known for his work in Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Over the years he has made several guest appearances with other artists. He has countless albums to his credit. Ian has also worked on four published books in his time. I recently caught up with the legendary frontman to see what fans can expect next.

Maximum Ink: Who where some of your earliest influences?
Ian Gillan: Well I grew up in a musical family so opera and jazz piano (boogie-woogie) were there from early days. Also I was a boy soprano in the church choir – yes I know!!! But it was really the young Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry that hit the spot.

MI: What was it that first led you to consider a career in music?
IG: I never really considered it to be a career, in fact I haven’t given it much thought; it just kind of happened. 

MI: You performed at the Jeff Healey tribute concert in Toronto in 2008. Did you know Jeff? Did you ever have the chance to work with him?
IG: Yes, I knew Jeff; he used to jam with us every time we played Toronto and he did me the great honor of recording a contribution to my anniversary album ‘Gillan’s Inn’. There’s some nice footage of him on the visual element of that record too.

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Goo Goo Dolls

The Goo Goo Dolls are back with a new album due out in July. The Goo Goo Dolls have remained a staple of alternative rock since they first emerged from the streets of Buffalo, NY in 1986. In the following interview with bassist Robby Takac, we discuss the new album and explore what has made them so perseverant over the years. 

MI: Tell me about this new album, “Something For The Rest Of Us”.
RT: It’s certainly been a labor of love man, we’ve been working on it for what seems like 80 years. We did the basic tracking in a studio in Buffalo, NY which is were Johnny and I grew up. It was at a place called track master back when we were kids, we cut our first few records there. We went back this time and basically redesigned the whole studio and remodeled and put in some amazing gear. That took a couple months and then we did some writing and recording, then we went out to LA to finish the record. We worked out there with a guy named Tim Palmer. Then we had a little bit of time to sit around and listen to the record because the release date for it got pushed back. So that was a luxury we never had before. Usually you turn your masters in and it goes right to the stores and you run around kicking yourself in the ass because you didn’t have time to change some things you want to change. But we had some time, so we went back in and fixed some things up before the record came out. And it turned out that we got a lot deeper than we thought we’d have to and we ended up doing some work with Butch Baag who actually worked with Soul Asylum for a little bit, and we ended up mixing it with our live sound guy who’s out on the road with us right now.

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The Good Natured

The Good Natured (aka Sarah McIntosh) is not the typical work you’d expect from a 19 year old, especially with songwriting that tends to lean towards the darker side. The band is also includes members Hamish McIntosh and George Hinton. The new single Be My Animal is due to be released on November 1st by the indie label KIDS with Prisoner being the B-side. Both tracks were mixed by Adrian Bushby, who’s also worked with Foo Fighters and Muse.

Maximum Ink: There isn’t much about you out there yet. Can you tell us a little about where you are from? How does coming from where you have impacted your musical style?
Sarah McIntosh: I’m Sarah, I am 19 and I live in a village called Highclere in Newbury, Berkshire. Highclere’s a nice little village. It has its own castle where Peter and Jordan got married. Nice. I wouldn’t say where I live impacts my musical style at all, it’s probably impacted more by the way I have been bought up around my grandparents and parents record collection.

MI: How would you describe The Good Natured sound?
SM: I would say its electronic pop with a darker element, that’s how I see it anyway.

MI: What led you to form this band?
SM: I have always enjoyed music, I used to play the violin, the drums and sang in a youth choir when I was younger. I formed the band out of a love for music, but also a need to express myself.

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