Posts by Leslie Michele Derrough

Pat Travers has been flying just under the music equator for many years now and the big question amongst his peers and his fans, is why? He ranks up there with Steve Marriott and Alvin Lee and Robin Trower, and like them, despite the immeasurable talent they possess and a few big hits in their repertoire, they still have managed to never hit that superstar echelon of contemporaries like Jeff Beck and Joe Perry.

“Joe Perry is in the house,” announced wiry frontman Steven Tyler after Aerosmith’s guitar slinger finished up a lead vocal and riff-laden “Combination” from the band’s powerful 1976 classic album Rocks. Perry wasn’t the only one burning down the soon to be Pelicans’ house on a humid Thursday night. Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton, Joey Kramer and the other half of the infamous Toxic Twins were all ready to rock & roll, bluesy-Boston style.

Rival Sons is a band on the borderline of a breakthrough here in the States. Yet across the pond they have already been embraced, kissed and welcomed aboard the rock & roll freight train. With the recent issue of Classic Rock magazine pondering on their cover whether they just may be the hottest band in rock, this California quartet are reveling in some big time British love. Their most recent album, Head Down, is afire with psychedelic soul based rock & roll tunes that have become all too uncommon in an industry that swears they love rock & roll yet continues to prop other unworthy genres high on their charts.

Richard Fortus has been around the block a time or two in music but has settled in nicely with this supergroup. But it’s not his only playground. He loves to sit in with other bands when time allows him to do so. He added stripped-down guitar attitude to The Compulsions, a New York based bluesy-rock-with-punk-undertones band whose most recent CD is called Beat The Devil and features his GNR bandmate Frank Ferrer. He sometimes tours with the legendary Thin Lizzy, one of his favorite bands. And he recently hooked up with Norwegian musician Lasse Kvernmo for Saivu.

The thing about DJ Bonebrake that you immediately notice is his sense of humor. He laughs a lot and could have a second career as a stand-up comedian if he ever grew tired of playing drums. So while he flips through hundreds of CDs he really doesn’t want to part with, many of them jazz and big band era treasures, Bonebrake talks about his years in X, his love for jazz, his tragicomic youth and his new adventures with a band called The Stripminers.

The holidays are upon us and everyone is out there searching for perfect stocking stuffers for friends and family. And what would be more perfect than a new album by a kick ass band from Boston. Music From Another Dimension is Aerosmith’s 15th studio album and features rockers like “Luv XXX,” “Legendary Child,” “Beautiful,” “Street Jesus” and the Joe Perry foot stomper “Freedom Fighter.” Hell, there is even a duet with country’s Carrie Underwood on “Can’t Stop Loving You.” Leave it to Aerosmith to always throw in a little head jerk surprise on an album that has to be their best since the hit-laden late-80’s and early-90’s.

Born and raised near Philadelphia, Keifer has always been drawn towards the bluesy side of rock. Forming Cinderella in the very early 80’s and breaking wide open with 1986’s Night Songs, the band is still alive and kicking almost thirty years later, still touring actively on the circuit to sold out audiences; all without a new band album in sight. Their reputation of good songs in an electrifying live set is what keeps fans coming back time and time again.

This is not your old school GNR. Those days are gone and need to be put aside so that you can enjoy what this band has to offer. If you live in the past too headstrongly, you will miss the finer points of the musicians that Rose has assembled and what individual nuances they bring to such songs as “Sweet Child” and “November Rain.” They are not automaton players set up on stage to reenact the classics note for note, although they do try to keep the originality and integrity of said songs. I

Mick Jones is the only remaining original member but guitar/sax player Tom Gimbel is right behind him at almost twenty years. Having traveled with Aerosmith and Jon Butcher, Gimbel still carries the smile of a newbie looking out at a sea of screaming fans for the first time. It is his enthusiasm that helps catapult Foreigner to the heights they go to each time they jump onto a concert stage, making this ensemble perhaps the best line-up in Foreigner’s career.

He is standing on the edge of a stage, long dark hair swirling around him as he rips his guitar strings into a pathological scream for mercy. Being the latest in a respected line of guitar players that Ozzy Osbourne has discovered and bred in his fertile solo band, Gus G is playing his heart out. But what some fans don’t realize is that Gus is not a virgin ingénue. He has been playing guitar since a little kid and in more bands – at one time – than most musicians play with in their entire careers. And now one of those bands is starting to cause a ripple outside of their native Greece with the release of Few Against Many.

Building his reputation playing guitar – he now plays alongside Axl Rose and Nikki Sixx in two of the most popular bands in rock & roll – Ashba is now making his name on the other side of plucking chords: as a businessman. I sat down this past weekend with Ashba during GNR’s current Vegas residency and talked to him about this part of his life … after I asked him about those crows that decorate his chest.

Jack White closed out the festival with an enormously simple set of tantalizingly spirited music with minimal frills. At almost twenty songs, White, in pinstripe suit and fedora, smoldered and chased the rock & roll dragon, proving once and for all that he is one of the maestros for all others to emulate and aspire to.

Down-to-earth better describes Jeff Ament than hero, a term he would shrug off with a hearty laugh. He was a music fan who became a music maker. That his music became one of the voices of a generation was a nice surprise that has enabled him to make even more music … and continue to skateboard and play basketball instead of punching a time clock every day of the week.

Patterson Hood had something he wanted to say. He just wasn’t planning on contouring those words into melodies. Instead, the leader of the Drive-By Truckers was making alliterations the old-fashioned way by putting pen to paper and allowing his imagery to tell a story that was painstakingly close to when his life wasn’t so easy

“There’s really not much to say,” Geoff Tate politely says when asked about the Queensryche drama of a few months ago. It’s understandable that the voice of the thinking-man’s metal band would now rather talk about things of a more up-beat nature. The separation from the band he helped mold has been a painful trek and he is more than ready to turn his attention to the more positives in his life.

Brad Gillis is one of the reasons Night Ranger has chugged along with the kind of energy you mostly see in bands twice their age. However, on the day that he called in to talk with me about his career, he was enjoying a lazy, beautiful day in the East Bay, “home for eight days so it’s kind of nice,” Gillis laughed.

It must feel good being Mark Tremonti right about now. Among the 20th century’s most respected guitar players, he is sitting on top of the world with not one but three bands: Creed, Alter Bridge and his new power trio Tremonti. Not bad for a heavy metal loving math nerd who once worked at Chili’s.

Whether you were a kid in the 60’s or the 80’s, you probably at some point caught a TV show about four fun-loving hippyish musicians who were always getting into some kind of hilarious mischief. Known as the Monkee,  ith a new solo recording titled Remember, which debuted September 25, Dolenz found some time last month to talk with Glide about his new album, his days in the Monkees and how the upcoming reunion tour will not be a melancholy requiem.

You may have thought that Joe Walsh has led a very exciting life. Rock stars have all the fun, right? But living the rock star life finally takes it’s toll and one day you wake up and realize that life hasn’t been so good after all.

Steve Vai’s brain must be such an interesting place to explore. The music he creates from looking inside swirl around in a universe full of light and spirituality. From discovering keys on a piano at a very young age to falling under the spell of an electric guitar a few years later, Vai has taken transcendental meditation to an all-new arena.