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THE JOURNEY ZONE
http://www.journey-zone.com
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THE INTERVIEWS
March, 2003 |
Neal Schon Melodic.Net Interview.
Jrnydv.Com Exclusive Interview with Worlds Apart, The Journey Tribute Band
Date of Interview: February 28, 2003
Date of Publication: March 6, 2003
Interviewers:
David Hamilton Golland
Svetlana Rogachevskaya
Location: Rohdes Ringwood Inn, Ringwood, New Jersey
Transcription Method: A hand-held tape recorder and a laptop computer were used. All five band members and their manager were interviewed simultaneously. Questions are as written, not necessarily as asked. Stammering, expletives, and unintelligible words in answers have been omitted. In all cases we have tried to make this as accurate a representation of the interview as possible; Jrnydv.Com apologizes for any unintentional errors but cannot be held liable for any indemnity resulting therefrom.
Worlds Apart is:
Lead vocals: Dan Gagliano
Lead guitar: Kevin Bryan
Keyboards: Kevin Thomas
Bass guitar and vocals: Steve Gerraputa
Drums: Tim Szlosek
Click HERE to view the Picture Gallery.
Jrnydv.Com: We’re speaking with Danny Gagliano, Kevin Bryan, Kevin Thomas, Steve Gerraputa, Tim Szlosek, and manager Frankie Poli of Worlds Apart. You’re all die-hard Journey fans?
Kevin Bryan: Yes.
Jrnydv.Com (to Kevin Thomas): I’m looking at you because I’m waiting for a “no.”
Kevin Thomas: I’m not a die-hard—I like Journey. When I first met these guys I knew about three songs. I knew “Don’t Stop Believin,” you know I could play that one—
Jrnydv.Com: “Open Arms” and “Faithfully.”
Kevin Thomas: Yeah—those three. And “Lovin, Touchin.” You got it. I was more into heavy metal when I was growing up. You know like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. Billy Joel is my idol.
Jrnydv.Com: Okay. Hometown hero.
Kevin Thomas: And I was like a big Journey fan. Not a fanatic but—I liked their whole thing.
Jrnydv.Com: And now? How do you feel about Journey now?
Kevin Thomas: I like when we play. When I hear a song on the radio I go “OK, I’ve heard this song already.” But when I do it here, we make it so good that it’s enjoyable.
Jrnydv.Com: So it wasn’t enjoyable on Escape back in ’81?
Kevin Thomas: No, in ’81 it was enjoyable. I wore out the Arrival tape on my Walkman.
Jrnydv.Com: Steve, tell me how you came up with the name “Arrival” for your band ten years ago.
Steve Gerraputa: Well, OK, the keyboard player and I came up with it at the same time, which is weird. He was going by—there was an ABBA album called “Arrival” and I had just written down like 20 different names, and that was one that I thought was cool, and it was on my list, and he was like “Arrival! I came up with the same name!” And I’m like “I like the name” and he said it was an ABBA album and I went “Awwww…”
Jrnydv.Com: You had no idea of course that Herbie Herbert had always planned to name a Journey album “Arrival.” But this was back before you started your band—
Steve Gerraputa: It was ’93. ’92 we actually started.
Jrnydv.Com: How’d you feel in 2000 when they released it?
Steve Gerraputa: I was like “they stole my name! That’s my name! Holy crap!” I actually thought it was great. You know here I am in a Journey tribute band and my old original band was called Arrival. So it totally made sense.
Frankie Poli: Steve of course is the webmaster—he can put anything and everything on that website!
Jrnydv.Com: I noticed! Five pages of pictures! Nearly wore out my printer when I was printing out my notes today!
(Laughter)
Steve Gerraputa: Well I offered them all to do that, but they didn’t send me any pictures.
Danny Gagliano: I’ve been a big Journey fan since I heard “Don’t Stop Believin” way, way back, and the look fit, and I’m also a big Hugo fan. I mean, he came out to one of our gigs, and—
Steve Gerraputa: We were listening to his CD on the way to the gig!
Danny Gagliano: Yeah, on the way to the gig!
Steve Gerraputa: And I was like this guy’s great! And they told me he was in Valentine and I was like I remember those guys! They were from Long Island, and I grew up on Long Island.
Danny Gagliano: Yeah and we’re at this gig, and we took a little break, and this guy comes up to Kevin and says “Kevin, there’s a guy in the corner over there who looks just like Steve Perry!” So he comes and tells me and I’m like standing thirty or forty feet away and I’m just like “That’s Hugo!”
Jrnydv.Com: You’ve met Steve Perry?
Danny Gagliano: Yep.
Jrnydv.Com: How was that?
Danny Gagliano: That was great. A friend of mine said he was gonna’ be at a radio station by my house, and I’m like “Oh, so what?” you know? “What’s the chance of us getting down there?” So we showed up, and he was in there getting interviewed, and he came outside, and signed some autographs, and I was speechless! It was like meeting Santa Claus or something!
Jrnydv.Com: And you were already fronting a Journey tribute band at the time?
Danny Gagliano: No, back then I wasn’t. I was looking, searching, I couldn’t find a band. You know I found a great guitar player but I couldn’t find anybody else. And then one day a guy calls me up and says “I’m in this Journey tribute band, and I’m not really into it, it’s not my thing, but if you want, I’ll give them your number.” So I’m like, “Would you please?” And he gave Tim my number and Tim called me up and he was like [in falsetto] “Yeah we got this Journey tribute band!” He said come down at 9:00, and I showed up at like 8:30.
Jrnydv.Com: Let’s talk about your technique. When you guys do your harmonies, as it says on your website, you actually do all of the harmonies that Journey does, you don’t skip on the harmonies. Is each of you doing the part of the harmonies that your corresponding Journey band member sings in Journey?
Kevin Thomas: Actually, no, it’s just whose range fits the actual line. We’re not emulating Jonathan Cain or Neal Schon or Ross Valory, we just take the part where each of our ranges lies.
Jrnydv.Com: Wherever the part fits for the individual?
Kevin Thomas: A lot of times I sing the one above Dan, Steve goes one below, and Kev[in Bryan] goes one below that.
Jrnydv.Com: How many hours a week do you practice?
Tim Szlosek: In the beginning, we practiced individually and together for hours and hours. You know like every day it was—
Steve Gerraputa: We were practicing twice a week for a while.
Tim Szlosek: We would practice twice a week together, and then personally I was playing every single day.
Jrnydv.Com: How many years ago was this?
Tim Szlosek: A year and a half. And before you can even get together, put things together, you have to spend all your time at home—
Danny Gagliano: It’s about eighteen years for me.
Tim Szlosek: —before you can even get it together. You have to know what you’re doing before you can even walk in that studio.
Kevin Thomas: Yeah we wanted to make sure that everyone knew their part first. Then when we got to the studio, it was just a matter of putting it all together and pulling the strings together rather than “Oh, I don’t know that song yet,” you know, that would’ve wasted time. We had homework assignments, basically. We started going over this song, that song, this song next week—go over that part.
Jrnydv.Com: When it happens that somebody comes back and hasn’t done their homework, who judges?
Kevin Bryan: We judge ourselves.
Kevin Thomas: No one is slacking.
Tim Szlosek: We all want to do it. That’s the key. The key is we’re motivated and if you wanna sound good, you have to do your homework. Now it’s not like in grade school where you have another 7 or 8 tests coming up, where you can make up for it—you can’t make up for it. So you have to be ready when you come in because you’re disappointing the other four guys.
Steve Gerraputa: And we’re paying for the rehearsal studio. Twenty-five bucks an hour.
Danny Gagliano: The journey tribute should be able to rehearse for free, you know?
Jrnydv.Com: Who decides what songs you’re playing this week? Who decides the repertoire?
Kevin Thomas: We decide before the end of the rehearsal—next week we’re gonna try this, we’re gonna try that—you know. A lot of the homework was not so much the parts but a lot of the harmonies. Because that’s like one major entity of Journey is their wall of harmonies.
Steve Gerraputa: Kevin would write out each part you know, note-wise for each of us to sing, and we could practice that part at home.
Jrnydv.Com: You would have a vocal rehearsal as well.
Kevin Thomas: We’d do it like, alright, let’s do the vocals, and we’d turn our instruments way down just so we’d just have a reference point, and we’d sing the parts over and over again.
Jrnydv.Com: When you had a rehearsal, who would work as the coach?
Kevin Bryan: Kevin is the harmony guru.
Jrnydv.Com: So you all read music?
Kevin Thomas: I read music a little bit mostly, by ear, you know I read the notes. I used to a long time ago but now I don’t anymore.
Frankie Poli: Danny reads comic books and coloring books. (laughter)
Jrnydv.Com: You guys have some gripes with Danny?
Worlds Apart: Naah! / [jokingly] Wouldn’t you?
Jrnydv.Com: Danny, are you the youngest guy in the band?
Danny Gagliano: I don’t think so! I just look young.
Jrnydv.Com: So Kevin on keyboards is the youngest. Kevin on guitar, what’s your real age?
Kevin Bryan: My real age? Oh you didn’t like the 38 with the question mark? [laughter] I’m actually 46.
Jrnydv.Com: So you’re younger than every member of Journey except Deen Castronovo.
Kevin Bryan: In some ways I’m younger than the guys standing in this room.
Jrnydv.Com: How has your life as a band changed since you met Frankie?
Kevin Bryan: We got a bunch more gigs. We can kick back and relax and not take care of the bar owners and club owners. What time we gotta be there—the correspondence, we can sit back and just show up and play.
Tim Szlosek: And he does a great job, by the way.
Steve Gerraputa: We wouldn’t be where we are now—definitely.
Tim Szlosek: Absolutely.
Jrnydv.Com: And you’re expanding into other states now—you were only in Long Island before you met Frankie?
Tim Szlosek: Well, we’re from Long Island, and we were just in Pennsylvania, and Utica—
Kevin Thomas: We were gonna be in Rhode Island next Saturday.
Jrnydv.Com: Yes, let’s talk about The Station tragedy in Rhode Island. Obviously it hit you like a ton of bricks like it did everybody else in the country—
Kevin Bryan: Absolutely. We were getting ready to do a gig that day.
Steve Gerraputa: We were playing that night—
Jrnydv.Com: You still played that night?
Steve Gerraputa: Yeah, we did. We wanted to try to play for a couple of hours and raise some spirits.
Jrnydv.Com: And how did you feel knowing that you guys could have been there performing, and then—not that you guys use fireworks or anything—and then the house comes down on you, I mean that thought probably really brings it home.
Steve Gerraputa: Watching on the news it just looked like every other club we played, you know it had the same feel, so to me personally, all day I was really just whacked out, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I was—
Kevin Thomas: Dan said something on the mike that night in dedication to Great White.
Jrnydv.Com: The guitarist passed away as well.
Kevin Thomas: Wow I didn’t know that.
Jrnydv.Com: Yeah, and I think it was 119 dead at last count.
Steve Gerraputa: But still it’s just—our posters were up in there and these people, the thought that the last thing they noticed was our poster it just—it gives me the chills.
Jrnydv.Com: And this is your first gig since then?
Steve Gerraputa: Second. We played that night.
Jrnydv.Com: But I mean your first gig since that night.
Steve Gerraputa: Yes. Yeah.
Jrnydv.Com: Did you look for the emergency exits when you came in here?
Kevin Thomas: Absolutely. Right by the keyboards.
Jrnydv.Com: And that’s not something that you used to do?
Kevin Thomas: No, not at all.
Jrnydv.Com: What do you think of the other tribute bands? Are you in competition with them?
Kevin Bryan: Yes, Yes we are. There’s other guys that are alright. Escape was nice, Separate Ways was a bunch of nice guys. The one band that gave us a lot of heat or a lot of competition was Evolution, cause they got hooked up with Hugo, and he knows a lot of people. He plays the big rooms.
Kevin Thomas: Yeah, cause he’s got albums out, and instantly it’s “Hugo is doing a Journey tribute.”
Steve Gerraputa: We’ve met with those guys, they come to our shows, we’ve been to theirs. We e-mail each other, you know, “How’s it going?” Real friendly as far as that goes. But on Back Talk, the bass player was trashing Journey, Joe Cumia—
Jrnydv.Com: The bass player of Evolution was trashing Journey?
Steve Gerraputa: Yeah—more or less Steve Augeri.
Danny Gagliano: He saw them at the Brookhaven ampitheatre and he said Steve Augeri was lacking the charisma that Steve Perry had—
Steve Gerraputa: And he went on to say like—“Not that Steve Perry was any prize on stage either!”
Jrnydv.Com: So why are we all here?
Steve Gerraputa: Exactly! And this was right on Journey’s website. So to me, being that we’re big Journey fans, also, we’re doing this as a tribute to Journey. That’s our goal. We’re doing it so people who love Journey who can’t see them all the time can come in and pretend like maybe we’re them for a little while, and it makes everybody happy.
Kevin Thomas: As opposed to Danny who acts like him all the time!
Frankie Poli: And we do it for the women too.
Jrnydv.Com: I know that you all have lives, you all have jobs—how important is this band? I don’t want you to rate this from one to ten, but how important is this in your life? If Frankie were to tell you “Guys, I can get you not two but ten gigs a week,” would you leave your jobs, would you—
Kevin Bryan: Oh, in a minute!
Danny Gagliano: For how long?
Jrnydv.Com: Well, let’s say for a two-week tour. I want to know how this fits into your schedule. How far do you wanna go with the band, that sort of thing.
Kevin Thomas: As far as Frankie wants to take us! It’s a weekend fun thing. You know we like the music a lot, we grew up with it. Right now it’s a weekend thing for us. And it’s just fun going up on stage. I mean we all have our jobs, we have families—I’m the only one who doesn’t have a family. And I don’t have any kids.
Jrnydv.Com: Tim is due in May, and his lovely wife…
Tim Szlosek: Tricia!
Jrnydv.Com: Tricia. Congratulations to Tim and Tricia.
Tim Szlosek: Thank you.
Jrnydv.Com: Those of you with families, how do your families react to everything you’re doing here?
Kevin Bryan: My daughters have encouraged me to get back into music.
Jrnydv.Com: How old are they?
Kevin Bryan: My two daughters are 21 and 22. They did nothing but encourage me to go back into it while they were growing up, and ever since I’ve gotten back into it I’ve enjoyed it and I haven’t put the thing down. I’ve been playing at least an hour a day.
Steve Gerraputa: My nine-year old daughter loves it. She came to one show—a benefit we played—and she learned every song on Journey’s Greatest Hits. She’s been playing piano for about five years now. And my wife is a singer, so she’s very encouraging. I have a studio in the house, a grand piano—my life has always been music ever since I was like 8, so it just fits.
Jrnydv.Com: What can we look forward to tonight? Any surprises? Anything like “Mother, Father?”
Kevin Bryan: You got it!
Tim Szlosek: Don’t tell him!
Kevin Bryan: What else do you want to hear?
Jrnydv.Com: Well, I’d like to hear some pre-Infinity stuff, but you’re not going to play any of that, right?
Kevin Bryan: No.
Jrnydv.Com: Anything from post-Perry? Frankie said you guys consider doing that sometime.
Kevin Thomas: We did “Higher Place,” but it was a room-clearer.
Danny Gagliano: I’d like to do “All the Way,” “With Your Love”—I mean, I love them, but—
Kevin Bryan: There’s a little surprise in there you’ll catch. It’s a non-Journey song.
Jrnydv.Com: “Oh Sherrie?”
Danny Gagliano: Yeah.
Jrnydv.Com: OK, well, thank you guys very much.
Worlds Apart: Thank you.
This transcript ©2003 Jrnydv.Com. All rights reserved. Special thanks to Frank Poli.
Up Close with Kevin Thomas of Worlds Apart
March 6, 2003
Kevin was kind enough to send us an e-mail updating us on his other work:
"As you could see from the bio on our site you could see I've been around music all my life, my mom was always playin music and my Dad has been a drummer since he was 16. I started playin in 2, 3 and 4 piece cover bands when I was 21. Didn't sing that much if at all (too shy) and knew a few tunes. After doing it for such a long I've learned tons of songs of finally came out of my singing shell. Now I'm singing half the night with songs ranging from Billy Joel (my favorite) to AC/DC to the Goo Goo Dolls. Thats my weekend fun !! Rock and Roll, tons of people, free beers......and you get paid!!
"As for the original project...I've been writing tunes with my friend/guitar player John for quite some years. We've played together or separately in many different cover/bar bands (and an original band years before). In the garage studio in Brooklyn we made a few demo tapes of out tunes, after our band Pangaea split up, never really went anywhere with it but we enjoyed, creating, producing and recording these tunes. After a while we amassed a bunch of tunes and decided to make a CD, calling our original self titled CD and our new coverband......27 WEST.
"We're still goin stong with the 27 WEST cover project but the original thing seems to be a bit slow due to lack of time cuz of the damn day job! I'm still tryin to make a new CD with some of our new and other tunes, if time wasn't so tight. Hey, check out the site for our dates....www.27westmusic.com.
"Thats all I could type, my fingers are tired from playing Journey tunes."
Last Updated 02 July, 2007 (DHG)
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