An Interview
by L. Alexander

 

His work is billed as "Music for the 21st Century." He is a heavy metalhead turned serious composer. He melds classical, heavy metal, jazz and blues into a uniquely "StoneDragon sound."

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When I accepted the assignment to interview StoneDragon, little did I know that, rather than your typical young, dumb rocker, I would be facing an intelligent, intense and powerful personality who knows his stuff and has very strong opinions. ...But he grows on you. And he's friendly, just not a guy I'd want as an enemy. At all.

This interview comes in two parts because it wound up lasting over six hours.

Is all of it interesting? Yeah, it is.

Powerful music, powerful man.

________

L. Alexander,freelancer

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The Interview

 

What is the StoneDragon sound? How did it develop?
[The man laughs when I ask this.]

Can't you just ask me what kind of picks I use?
...Let's go to question number two.

Well, Didn't you start out playing heavy metal?
[Now I get a grimace.]

What's question number 3?

Okay. What kind of picks do you use?

Dunlap Jazz 3 with Stiffo -- the black ones.

[Now he's comfortable. I figure I'll have to keep it simple.]
Why?

Because they're pointed and hard as a rock.

Is that important to your playing?

I just thought that it was a neat idea.

[He smirks.]

No, actually, I had a guitar student who started using them for some reason. He gave me one, and I though it would hurt his feelings if I didn't at least try it. So I tried it. After a couple of hours I found that I could play more accurately and faster with it.

Precision and accuracy -- are these important in your music?

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that they're important to the music. That all depends. But, as a guitar player, they are definitely important qualities ... ones that I value.

And are you fast and accurate?

I think that's a pretty subjective quality.

So back to the music you create. What is the StoneDragon sound? How did it develop? ...You seem to mix classical with more straight up rock sounds in a very different way.

I haven't really been able to put my finger on exactly what the sound is, but there is a sound that I hear in my head that I'm searching for the means in which to put down on tape. It is a little easier to tell you how I got here than to tell you where "here" is. I started out listening strictly to rock music - mostly KISS. But my mother hated KISS, so she practically browbeat me into broadening my horizons and checking out other styles of music. Once that happened, I started listening to the music more than the style of the music. I guess you could say I started to become a musician. Instead of a rock 'n roll guitar player. Well, one thing led to another and after a while I found myself listening to a lot of variety, and it seemed only natural to want to incorporate what I liked into my own playing. This was long before I really started composing or started writing my own music. I was mostly just trying to figure out how to get some of the sounds that I liked out of my own guitar. I guess the real turning point was when I heard Frank Zappa. A lot of people like to say that they are a composer who just happenes to operate a guitar, but he was the first guy that I heard that I felt really lived up to the statement. That, and maybe Steve Morse, whom I heard at about the same time as Frank. Hearing those two guys really made me want write music -- music that was beyond three chords and singing "yeah, yeah, yeah." I hadn't heard any of Frank's strictly classical music, but I heard Kansas, and they had a violin player as well as two keyboardists. So they were getting sounds that were very orchestral. I was blown away by anybody who could compose music in that sort of vein. And I wanted to be able to do that too. Well, I think it is a natural progression that, once you start thinking in "orchestrational terms," you start wondering what it would be like to write music for a full classical orchestra instead of limiting yourself to the instruments in a rock band. So I started checking out classical music - Bach, Beethoven...all the regulars. I found most of it pretty hard to listen to...until I heard Stravinsky. Finally, I heard some sounds coming from an orchestra that were not unlike a heavy metal band. Hearing Stravinsky convinced me that the potential of an orchestra hadn't even been tapped. Now mind you that was years ago, and I was nowhere near being able to conceive of music that would fit the bill. But it gave me the idea that perhaps it was possible, and that, one day, maybe I could write music like that. I would say the ultimate catalyst was when I met my wife who happened to be a classically-trained musician. She showed me what to listen for in classical music, and that really opened up that whole area for me.

Mm-huh.

No fooling.

Okay. Frank Zappa and Stravinsky, huh? That explains some the "out-of-tune" dissonance I hear in your music?

You hear out-of-tune dissonance?

Well, not a lot, but there is definitely some, and it's startling.

Wouldn't out-of-tune dissonance be consonance?

Ah...well....
[Smart ass...but he does address my question...FINALLY.]

I guess my ears are pretty well stretched out. I think that comes from, not only Frank and Stravinsky, but I've listened to a lot of free-form jazz and world music. To me it's all beautiful. I even like the sound of Chinese Opera, but some of that stuff really goes against what the Western ear has learned to accept as "in tune." I guess what I'm trying to do is take some of the elements that I find interesting in different styles of music and combine it all into a form that's more like rock 'n roll. ...I mean Chinese Opera taken by itself is a little hard to swallow, but there are elements that are no different than what you would hear in a movie sound track and never think twice about. I think most people are put off more by the genre than the actual sounds that they are hearing. I suppose the opposite is true as well. I think a lot of people won't listen to, say, Country music, just because it's Country, yet they'll turn around and listen to bad rock 'n roll just because it's rock.

You just said a mouthful there. And what to you is bad rock and roll?

No comment. I don't want to start a war. Besides, it doesn't make any difference what I think is good or bad.

Are you using any of the traditional means to furthering your career, like shopping demos and going on the road?

I used to think that was the way to go about it, but six months in San Diego starving while I was looking for my big break kind of took the wind out of my sails. Call it inspiration or call it chicken shit, but after six months of stepping over homeless people just to get into the library, I just figured that there had to be a different way to go about it. It seemed to me that, from a distance a person could maintain a better overall perspective of the music scene than if they're starving to death and slugging away in a rock band in some dingy bar in southern California.

So how do you plan on marketing yourself and your music?

I think the internet is a wide open market. I don't think it is going to stay that way for long, but the possibilities are exciting. You've got worldwide advertising for the price of a computer and an internet connection. All it takes is the willingness to do the leg work and get people to check out what you're doing.

How is that going to get you a recording contract with, say, Columbia?

My priorities have changed over the last couple of years. I used to sit around dreaming that, one day, my big break might come. But now I see the possibility of doing it myself if I have to. Let's face it, the biggest thing that a record company has to offer is financing. It would be nice to have some capital with which to further my goals, but I find that I'm being able to further my goals now. ...Just a little more slowly. The other thing that a record company has to offer is marketing and distribution, and, with that, advertising, but I can't imagine a better means for marketing than the internet. There is a potential there that anybody online anywhere in the world can check out my music, and, if they're interested, they can get a hold of me. Compared to that, a full page spread in Billboard Magazine or a display in the local music store doesn't seem that exciting. Besides all that, I have a pretty firm idea of the type of music that I want to create, and the thought of some rep from a record company telling me how to write the music is not my idea of a good time. I think a lot of people have this fantasy that they are going to be discovered by some record company and then they're going to be famous and all of their problems will be taken care of. But I've heard a lot of horror stories regarding musicians under contract to a record company, and I've talked to individuals themselves in a position to comment first hand about the contractual bondage that record companies like to place "their" artists under. And not one of those individuals has spoken very highly of the situation. I think what we have here is a classic case of a buyer's market. There's no shortage of kids out there dreaming of becoming a rock star, so the record companies can pretty much afford to sit back and pick and choose who they want to invest in. I think this has created a situation in which the record companies have gotten out of touch with the mature audience. It seems that they're so busy trying to find the next great pop sensation, then having to turn around and create a market for this "rising star," that they're bypassing a very large portion of the population of the world. People are becoming disillusioned with the crap they're hearing on the radio. I think there's a lot of people who have stopped going to concerts and stopped buying music altogether because they grew up listening to music that had a little more substance. I think this is why we're finding more instances of classic rock radio stations and the like. It used to be that if you found a band that interested you, chances were that you could look forward to the next ten albums that they were going to put out, knowing that you would get to hear the band grow and evolve. Anymore, it seems like everything is a freeze-dried formula. I'm not sure that the record companies realize how easily the internet could change all that.

How do you see the internet changing that?

I think that if musicians and composers will take the responsibility and, therefore, the risk of putting their careers back in their own hands, they can begin to market themselves to the world without having to buy into the corporate reality as sponsored by the record companies. It reminds me of the old saying, "If we didn't have lawyers, we wouldn't need them." I think the record companies have built their empires on the backs of, not only the musicians, but the public as well. What I'm talking about here is the possibility of putting the music back in the hands of the musicians and composers ... instead of in the hands of some guy in a suit who's more interested in the bottom line and how much it is going to cost, or how much money they stand to make, instead of keeping music as the highest priority. I'll admit that I'm an idealist, but the potential is sitting right there. I'd like to see more people taking advantage of it before the corporations figure out some way to take over the web as well.

So if a record company did offer you a contract, you wouldn't sign?

A lot would depend on what was being offered. But I think that I would be less inclined to fall all over myself reaching for a pen with the potential I see for doing it myself.

Is StoneDragon a band?

StoneDragon is more of a concept than a band, but the name StoneDragon refers strictly to the music itself.

To the music, or to you?
[He smiles.]

The band, the music, and me. The band, when we get together, is StoneDragon. The music is StoneDragon...because the music is me.

[And this is a very good place to take a break.
See you in Part II where we begin to speak in depth about who influenced him and how, about his dreams, and about the reality of becoming a rock and roll star.]