Posts by Leslie Michele Derrough

For a man who has been out on the concert trail for a number of months, Richard Fortus is feeling surprisingly invigorated. The guitar player for Guns N Roses and The Compulsions, has been rocking across the country but he is finally home in St Louis, happily surrounded by his family and far away from the lights, the fans and the long bus rides.

Jack Russell had the world in the palm of his hand. Then poof – it disappeared before his very eyes and he found himself on the outside looking in. And outside was not a safe place to be. Waking up to the hum of machines and a voice whispering that a friend had died is a cruel reality check. Jack Russell needed to wake up before it was too late.

Probably one of the most popular young bands out there today, Art Of Dying has become the darlings of rock & roll. Last year they traveled the country as part of the Uproar Festival and rode a big kahuna wave right up the charts with their first two singles “Die Trying” and “Get Thru This”. And with their fan base growing larger every day, they are certainly feeling pretty good.

So what exactly is Rebelution? Glide decided to find out with a phone call to lead singer and main songwriter Eric Rachmany, who was home in San Francisco enjoying some nice weather before his band went back out on the road. Formed in 2004 while all four band members were attending college, Rebelution first hit big in Hawaii, releasing their first album in 2007. They have been growing in popularity ever since, selling out more and more venues as they travel the country spreading their reggae.

This past November, Megadeth released their latest musical endeavor, aptly named TH1RT3EN. Chock full of the snarls and shreds that fans are used to, it also hums with a new energy that has been building since the addition of guitar player Chris Broderick in 2008.

Having spent quality time with both David Bowie and John Lennon providing inventive guitar sounds to such albums as Young Americans and Double Fantasy, he has never stayed satisfied. Instead, he keeps chasing the rock & roll dragon, developing new projects that fill him with that tingly excitement that a new band chemistry naturally provides. He is currently reviving Phantom, Rocker & Slick and they are hitting the concert trail with their brand of rockabilly rock, while over these past few weeks he has been spending studio time with a local punk band. And on top of all that, he has recorded a few songs with his Dolls bandmate David Johansen and Motley Crue guitarist Mick Mars.

And what exactly did Megadeth give to the loud and excited crowd? One hell of a show. Getting all riled up over some fan’s stupidity only invigorated the band to play a balls-to-the-wall locomotive set, culminating in a masterful fire-breathing dragon of an instrumental orgy of “Holy Wars/Silent Scorn”. Proper credit has never been given to this band, much less for their guitar onslaughts, grown ever more vigorous with the addition of Broderick in 2010. There is definitely a new fire in their soul, which is apparent on old Megadeth standards “Peace Sells”, “Symphony Of Destruction” and “A Tout Le Monde”, which saw Lacuna Coil vocalist Cristina Scabbia joining the gravel-voiced one for a duet.

Sometimes we all love a good no-brainer rock song to get us through our day.  But then there always comes a time when too much rhythm partying starts to fray the stem cells and you find yourself craving Bob Dylan or Neil Young or Peter Gabriel; music that injects a few bars of powerade Einstein into those cavities in the brain.   Since about 2006, the San Francisco band Howlin Rain has been feeding the hungry with an alternative intelligentsia to the souls weakened by Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

is not easy being the musician who takes over for a popular member of a superstar band; to come in and try to fill those shoes all while attempting to put your own personal spin on the music that millions know word for word and note for note. But this was the situation that Lawrence Gowan found himself in when he replaced Dennis DeYoung in the vastly popular Styx in 1999. Since then, he has put his stamp on the Styx catalog, adding a bit of Scottish-Canadian wizardry to their American classics such as “Renegade”, “Crystal Ball” and “Blue Collar Man”. But what some fans may still not know is that Gowan was pretty popular on his own in Canada, nabbing awards and hit records and successful tours. He just never had the chance to see what he could do in the United States until he joined forces with Styx.

“They had me looking at things differently than I usually would. Ideas started to untangle and we got into areas of writing that seemed fresh and exciting,” Nikki Sixx wrote in his photography book This Is Gonna Hurt, referring to his collaboration with Sixx:AM bandmates Dj Ashba and James Michael. “Their talent inspired me like nothing else had in years."

Jaimoe is quite proud of his band and has been traveling the country playing in small jazz clubs and opening for the Gregg Allman Band during their spring tour. But more new music is in the offering. “We’ve got five more songs in the can that didn’t make the album so we’ve got a good place to start from”.

Mike Portnoy is laid back,  cool, and relatively calm despite all the hysteria going on around him. When he called to talk with Glide last month, he was holed up in a recording studio in Nashville doing a new album with Neal Morse.   That's in addition to his new album called Omerta with his band Adrenaline Mob and another new album with his other band Flying Colors.

Lonn Friend did not set out to be a journalist. It was not embalmed in his membrane when he first heard The Beatles or Genesis or Madman Across The Water. Music was just something that infiltrated his pores and ran screaming & shouting in gleeful playfulness through his veins and imploded in his soul like that first taste of a minty ice cream. He did not take courses in college or pray to the altar of Lester Bangs’ Creem rantings in hopes of one day becoming the superior voice of rock & roll adjectives and verbs. He did not plan on talking to rock stars about their creative process. He did not foresee hanging out with Axl Rose. It just one day happened.

Nils Lofgren has his hands full. Not only has he recently released a new solo CD called Old School but he is preparing to hit the highway with his E Street band-mates on a highly anticipated tour. “We’re starting rehearsals,” Lofgren said before our interview last month while he was in New Jersey.

Chock full of rockers that got the heart pounding as well as the fists, 38 Special appeared to be having fun. Vocalist Donnie Van Zant roamed the stage with a noticeable hitch in his giddy-up, playing around with Chauncey and flashing a million watt smile. Barnes was more the calm-cool-and-collected guy, unlike his 1980’s persona, but his playing was not cold by any means. For his spotlight solo that kicked into “Trooper With An Attitude”, he led the audience on a finger-tapping scatfest. “Oh man, I love this job”, he said midway through.

Don’t let the name fool you: Hank3 is not your average country music singer. The grandson of the country legend has many facets to his musical rhythm, from twangy country laced with metal to his speed-bullet punk-influenced Attention Deficit Domination. He is not who you think he would be

“I’m sitting on the beach and it’s fantastic,” says Phil Collen  feeling like a kid again via a new album he has out with his trio Manraze, featuring Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook and Collen’s former Girl bandmate Simon Laffy. Called FunkPunkRootsRock, the CD features such rocking songs as the first single “Over My Dead Body”, “All I Want To Do”, “Bittersweet” and “Closer To Me”.

There is a certain excitement that comes when you accomplish something that you have been striving for. It’s part relief, part genuine euphoria, and definitely part panic. Because now that you have reached this well-fought-for goal, what do you do next? The Sheepdogs are a Saskatoon band that have been playing around for approximately seven years. It has been a long hard haul, but the light at the end of the sweaty, small, dark music clubs through the Canadian heartland came quite unexpectedly via Rolling Stone and a whole gaggle of music fans that voted for the band to be on the cover. And it wasn’t only Canadians that boosted them above their competition.

You may not know his name but I can bet that you have heard the man play drums. Remember that drum beat in John Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane”? That’s Kenny Aronoff. In fact, he played with the Indiana rocker for over fifteen years. He has played behind Bonnie Raitt, Lyle Lovett, Bob Dylan, Melissa Etheridge, Stevie Nicks, Elton John, Santana, Ray Charles, Jon Bon Jovi; the list is endless. How in the world does one man accomplish so much?

The bad ass in the top hat is busy. He is hunkered down in the Barefoot Recordings Studio playing guitar, as his crackerjack band-mates – Todd Kerns on bass, Brent Fitz on drums and Myles Kennedy on vocals – surround him as they record the old-fashioned way: on two-inch analog tape, a wet dream to those who love the pristine sound that comes from using this method over pro-tools modernity.