As one of the most gifted bass guitarists to ever grace this planet Fabrizio Grossi has worked with the likes of Slash, Glenn Hughes and Steve Vai, but even he was afraid to take that next stop and release a debut album.
Recently Subculture’s Dave Griffiths sat down and chatted to Fab about his musical journey from Italy to New York to Los Angles and about how his music has involved to the funk rock sound that we now hear with Fabrizio Grossi & Soul Garage Experience.
Take a listen to the interview below and grab his new album Counterfeited Soulstice Vol 1 which is out on September 10th.
Disney+ revealed the official trailer and key art for “Stuntman,” streaming on Friday, July 23. The documentary film follows legendary stuntman Eddie Braun as he attempts one of the most dangerous stunts in history. Contemplating retirement and having survived over three decades of hellacious car crashes, explosions, high falls and death-defying leaps, Eddie decides to complete what his childhood hero never finished – the infamous Snake River Canyon rocket jump – an audacious televised event that almost killed famed daredevil, Evel Knievel.
“Stuntman” is executive produced by Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia and Brian Gewirtz from Seven Bucks Productions. Producers from Driven Pictures are Steven Golebiowski, Eddie Braun and Kurt Mattila. Mattila also directed and edited the feature documentary. Kelly Knievel serves as executive producer. “Stuntman” includes music by Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators.
When it comes to music Brian Tichy has drummed for Ozzy Osbourne, Slash, Whitesnake, Billy Idol, Foreigner and The Dead Daisies just to name a few. Now he has teamed up with Pete Shoulder from The Union and Winterville to form a new rock band called Silverthorne.
With Silverthorne now releasing their debut EP – titled Tear The Sky Wide Open – I decided to sit down and have a chat with Tichy about the band in general and what fans can expect to hear on their debut EP.
“It actually all came about back when I was touring with Whitesnake,” says Tichy when we first begin to talk about how Silverthorne came about. “It was 2011 and we were touring in the UK and we had this opening band called The Union. I went and saw them open up and I noted that the lead singer was killer. They had this great singer and I met him and he was a really nice guy. We didn’t keep in touch or anything and that was that. Then flash forward a few years later and I had this new project going with the brothers from Stone Temple Pilots. We hadn’t recorded anything but we had a bunch of music and some great ideas but we needed to find a singer for this thing. Then they heard about Pete Shoulder and they sent me little snippets of him singing and they were like ‘I think we have found our guy, this guy is great.’ Then we realised that I knew him and then we just all got together and made a record.”
“Now we’ve made the record and we are already thinking about the next step,” continues Tichy. “We are already looking to move forward and now Stone Temple Pilots have their brand new lead singer so they had to make a decision, whether to go ahead with STP or us and they made their decision and I am okay with that because they have a great career and if they keep that band going then all power to them. So we were put on indefinite hiatus and that could have gone on for years so I asked Pete to come out to LA and do some recording because he was a great musician, great lyricist and great guy all round. We have very similar interests with what we like in music and stuff and with what we wanted from an original band.”
It turned out that Pete Shoulder’s trip out to Los Angeles really kicked off the start of Silverthorne. “We wrote a lot of stuff then,” says Tichy. “We had a bunch of fun and recorded a lot of stuff and then 2018 went by and then we signed up with Golden Robot in 2019 then we had everything done by the end of spring and the first single came out in the summer and now the EP is out and we are ready to go.”
Signing with Golden Robot was also a big step for the band, and it is one that is not lost on Brian Tichy. “When we signed with Golden Robot it was just Pete and I doing all the writing,” he says. “But then we were able to bring in Daniel Spree on bass and we all loved what he loved in music and loved his style and that was it… it was all pretty simple and now here we are.”
With so much of making Silverthorne work resting on finding the right lead singer I ask Tichy what it was about Pete Shoulder that made him so sure that he was the right pick for the band. “Oh man I don’t know how to describe it,” he says. “You just listen to his voice and you know. Some people just seem to have that quality that you gravitate towards and I just saw that he had qualities of some of my favourite singers – some of the best singers in rock n roll. I’m talking about everybody from Paul Rogers, Coverdale, Chris Cornell right through to Jeff Buckley. I heard all of them in his voice and I think it is so rare to find somebody like that – especially when it is somebody that is not completely busy doing their own thing. I could see how amazingly talented he was and it was just such a rare thing to find. That is the biggest battle when you are starting a new band – finding the right singer. It is one thing if he is a great singer but he may be hard to get along with or he may have an attitude or a drug problem. But with Pete it was none of the above he was a straightforward guy who loves music and loves being creative and he just happens to have a bad ass voice.”
For anybody who saw the last tour of Slash, Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators one thing lingered in their mind after the show. Sure we were all thinking about how amazing the main act was but we were all expecting that – the other thing in our mind was just how impressive the opening act were. For many that was the introduction to Devilskin – a four piece hard rock outfit from New Zealand, fuelled by the amazing vocals of one Jennie Skulander who can only be described as one of the best female vocalists in the heavy music scene today.
Now for all of those that fell in love with the music of Devilskin that night the band return with their brand new album, Red, and we recently had the privilege of being able to chat to Skulander while she was caught up in the current Covid-19 lockdown in New Zealand.
“We really just wanted to make a kick-ass album,” says Skulander with a laugh when I ask her whether or not the band had any plans of wanted they wanted to achieve with this album. “We really thought the best way to achieve that was to make sure that every song didn’t sound the same. We’ve got our heavier songs and we have our ballads and then we have our emotional songs and that really is our formula. We like to mix it up a little bit and I think we really achieved that once again with Red.”
As the interview goes on I also learn that there is no set writing process for the band either. “We’ve kind of been working on these tracks since our last album, Be Like The River, so we ended up with quite a lot of songs” she explains. “We also had some older songs that didn’t make Be Like The River that we had kind of forgotten about as well. So we had those that had to be completely re-written. We had done some song-writing weekends though where we had just gone away to the beach and try to come up with some stuff.”
“But a lot of the time it would just start with somebody having a riff,” she says continuing. “Or sometimes Nic (Martin – the band’s drummer) would have a whole song because he can play everything, and he would sometimes present us with a whole song without vocals. But it is always different – I always have lyrics and Paul (Martin – bass guitar) will always have lyrics. But yeah it isn’t always the same – we all have different approaches all the time.”
One of those song-writing weekends also resulted in one of the most heartfelt tracks on the album – but not in the way that anybody would have expected. “We were coming back from one of those weekends and out in the middle of nowhere we came across a car crash,” she says sadly. “It had just happened and there were two kids laying on the road because they had been thrown from the van. We were there before any of the emergency appliances could arrive and yeah that took a toll on everyone. Everybody was affected by that and in the end we ended up writing about it.”
There is no shortage of personal lyrics on Red. On the track “Endo” Skulander talks about suffering from endometriosis and she says it does help to put such emotional lyrics into a song. “Sometimes I will just put lyrics to a song and not tell the rest of the band what it is about,” she says as I ask whether that kind of song-writing leads to it feeling like the band is reading her diary. “But then they will be like – what are you saying there and I will be like ‘oh blah blah.’ Or they will be like ‘what does that mean’ and I’ll tell them and they will be like ‘woah, woah, okay.’ But everybody is really supportive.”
“I mean there is also our song “Sweet Release,”” she says again talking to me about one of the most personal tracks she has written. “I came up with some of the lyrics and that made it really sad song but then Paul came up with the rest of the lyrics which was about this guy here in Hamilton named Matthew Stevens who was under mental health care in a hospital. He was let out for an unsupervised smoke break and he pretty much took off and killed himself. His family have been trying to get an apology for five years because what happened is wrong.”
If you a lover of hard rock then Devilskin is certainly a band that needs to be in your album collection. Start with Red and then work your way back their back catalogue and you certainly won’t be disappointed.
I still remember the first time I saw Devilskin. It was before a Slash, Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators show in Melbourne. This band came out before them called Devilskin that I had never even heard of before, then they hit with such power and intensity they not only won over the crowd but threatened to blow the roof off Margaret Court Arena. My question at the time was whether or not they brought that some intensity to their albums and after listening to their latest offer, Red, I have to say – yes… yes they do.
Taking a listen to Red and you can see that Devilskin is not a band that is ever likely to die from wondering. The album sees the band not only try different styles but also genre hop from time to top as well.
Opening track “Do You See Birds” starts with a dirty hard rock vibe before the brutal vocals of Jennie Skulander hit showing why she needs to be considered one of the finest female vocalists going around in the heavy music scene. Then comes “All Fall Down” a more melodic track that feels like Evanescence with grunt.
“Corrode” and “Eyes Red Heavy” are smooth hard rock tracks that are lifted higher by the sheer brilliance of Skulander’s vocals, and then her harsh vocals return on “Same Life” – a track that is reminiscent of early Tura Satana.
Then it is Tony Vincent’s time to show with some epic guitar sounds on “The Victor” while “Blood & Bone” has a haunting opening until his guitar screams to life early on. The bands willingness to try things differently is also present on “Sweet Release” which has a distinct blues guitar vibe to it.
Slower tracks like “Endo” reveal a more personal side to the band that will really strike a chord with their fans while it is very obvious after just one listen to “Everybody’s High But Me” that the track is destined to become a live favourite.
After big tours overseas it is clear to see that Devilskin is maturing more and more every year. Red shows just how far they have come and tells us all that this is a band that has reached a stage where they don’t mind trying to be a little bit experimental.
The unstoppable DEVILSKIN unveil “CORRODE,” a monstrous new video, single and details of their long awaited fourth album.
The New Zealand four piece–who have toured with the likes of Slash, Halestorm, Motley Crue, and Disturbed–have announced their new album, titled RED, which will be released worldwide Friday April 3 on all formats across all platforms.
RED is the universal colour of passion, vitality, blood, danger, romance, anger, horror and love. Everything evocative. Of all the colours, RED is a warning and a statement.
“We wanted to reflect the diversity, strength and depth of the songs on the album with an undeniable declaration.” Says Devilskin bassist Paul Martin. “We are so very excited to share these songs, we are extremely proud of how far we have come and what we have achieved with this recording.”
The single “Corrode” encapsulates the red theme perfectly, its angsty lyrics tell of being completely overwhelmed and submerged in grime and stress. Fighting your way through it all and rising to ask for help. Directed by Alex Hargreaves (Alien Weaponry, Beastwars) filmed and edited by DOP Piotr Ziomus (Kwasnik Pictures) the video is powerful, confronting and evolves to show the bigger picture that we don’t always see in our own lives. Martin continues, “Perspective is so important, more-often-than-not, the difference between our happy places and our darkest spaces is just the angle we are looking from. This song is about the journey and the challenges you need to face when you feel lost. It’s saying it’s fine to ask for help.”
“We really took our time with RED, “Martin enthuses, “we had the vision and we knew it had to be done right. The songs each have so much life and we felt a real duty to do them justice. There are some really personal and very real moments on this album. We absolutely did not hold back, there are songs about struggle, depression, suicide and loss and there are songs about strength, hope, victory and love. We demoed almost 30 songs for this album so we had a lot of work to do to narrow the list down. One of last songs we wrote, it almost missed the cut too, but the throat punch we call Do You See Birds opens the album and sets the tone on a real rollercoaster of a ride. We felt it was especially important to give the listener a total immersive experience from start to finish. There’s lots of mood, colour and texture in the songs as well as between them. It’s a trip.”
The amazing response of the first two singles “Endo” and “All Fall Down” show the promise this album holds. Both songs receiving high rotate radio play and amassing serious numbers online.
From the epic moodiness of “Blood & Bone,” the caged rage of “Same Life,” the visceral impact of “The Victor,” to the poignant beauty of “Sweet Release,” the resplendent grandeur of “Bright Lights,” right through to the swagger of “Be Like The River” and the manic fury of “Everybody’s High But Me,” Devilskin have bared their soul with their finest performances yet.
The album will be released digitally on all the usual formats, physically via CD and LP and there will be a limited edition deluxe box set.
The iconic, GRAMMY-winning guitaristSLASH and his band SLASH FT. MYLES KENNEDY AND THE CONSPIRATORS have released their brand new live video, Boulevard Of Broken Hearts.
The Boulevard Of Broken Dreams video was recorded at Slash’s SOLD OUT live performance at The Eventim Apollo, London on Wednesday 20th February 2019. The stunning video features the album version of the song overlaid with intimate backstage footage and live footage from the Eventim Apollo and shows why SLASH FT. MYLES KENNEDY AND THE CONSPIRATORS are such an incendiary live draw. The track is taken from the most recent studio album Living The Dream. The video was shot and edited by Dan Sturgess.
The live performance video acts as the perfect precursor to SLASH FT. MYLES KENNEDY AND THE CONSPIRATORS remaining tour dates throughout 2019. May and June sees Slash tour South America, before returning to Europe though June and July. The band then play Israel, Canada and the USA through July and August 2019.
Living The Dream (Snakepit Records/Sony Music Australia) is the third full-length offering from SLASH FT MYLES KENNEDY AND THE CONSPIRATORS. The Los Angeles Times described the album as,“his best work since the demise of Velvet Revolver. …full of “unexpected funk, boogie, blues and garage rock influences.” While Rolling Stone declared the album, “a biting blues filigree at the end of a riff, weeping solos full of long notes, boogie-woogie riffs.” Elsewhere, Classic Rock hailed, “the bands third and Best Album, ‘The Great Pretender’ is the album’s masterpiece and one of the best things Slash has ever done.” Fans can purchase or streamLiving The DreamHERE. Fueled by the Top 5 rock songDriving Rain, its live-action, animated video as well as the best critical acclaim of their career,Living The Dream debuted with 10, Top 10 chart placements around the world and #4 on the Australian ARIA chart. The first single Driving Rainwhich jumped to #5 this week and climbing–marks the band’s 6thconsecutive, Top 10 single at radio and SLASH’s fastest-rising single ever in his solo career.
When we had a chat with Slash, Myles Kennedy + The Conspirators about their brand new album Living The Dream we were expecting a pretty laid back chat about their new music… what we go was some exciting news about them heading to Australia.
Take a full listen to our Slash, Myles Kennedy + The Conspirators interview on our Spreaker channel below.
