Posted in Whathaveyou on March 13th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Set for May 18, the inaugural Ripplefest Boston is announced as a new joint effort between Ripple Music and Grayskull Booking, and the lineup is quality front to back. King Buffalo will headline at the Middle East Downstairs — which, in a victory for Beantown weirdos of all stripes, has apparently not yet been turned into condos doubling as luxury dorms — and they’ll come from Rochester, New York, to do so, but lest you worry about homegrown representation, between Blood Lightning, Mother Iron Horse, Kind and Cortez, they’ve got it covered. Curse the Son (new album when?) will head north on I-95 from their home in Connecticut to lead off what I have no doubt will be a rager to remember and hopefully the beginning of a new annual tradition.
Ripplefest of course has long since joined the city-as-franchise model of heavyfest curation. Ripplefest Texas in September has a multi-day assemblage that’s among the finer lineups I’ve ever seen in the US, but they’ve also been doing it for a few years now, so give Boston time to get sorted and see what the response is to this initial edition before scaling up your expectations. In other words, worry about 2026 when we get there. For now just be stoked a thing is happening and don’t forget to actually show up so that it can happen again. I’m still not sure why nobody’s set up one of these in Parsippany, New Jersey, but I guess that’s just me.
The announcement was short and sweet and came from social media:
How much goodness can you take? Been keeping this under wraps, but now the kids gloves have come off. Get ready for RippleFest Boston!
Here’s where we tear it up Ripple Music-style with King Buffalo Blood Lightning Mother Iron Horse KIND Cortez & Curse the Son! Tickets on sale this Friday at 10 AM:
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 24th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Look at the blue text below and you know what you’re gonna see? Yes, a whole lot of skull emojis. Like a lot. But it happens that each individual one corresponds to a demonstration of the labor of love and community that is the Maryland Doom Festival. From Abel Blood through Zekiah, Maryland Doom Fest 2024 celebrates its 10th anniversary edition with its standard sans-bullshit glut of heavy. Once more the Frederick-based event looks your square in the eye, drops for absolutely immersive days on you and asks if you’re up for it. Well, are ya?
I’m not sure what my summer travel plans are yet — this and Freak Valley have overlapped the last couple years for me — but it’s been since 2019 that I was last down there and oh I’d be so eager to show up and have the three or four people who recognize me (and thus make it feel like an absolute family experience; love love love everywhere you go down there) quietly think to themselves I’ve gotten older and fatter en route to obliterating myself with volume for about 96 hours straight. Fuck. King. A.
Oh, and I hear Thunderbird Divine have new stuff in the works and it’s amazing. So that’s a thing too.
Social media had it like this:
We are super stoked to share with you the Maryland Doom Fest 2024 rosters, schedules, and lineups!!!
#4daysofdoom
THE MARYLAND DOOM FEST 2024
✝️Thursday June 20
Cafe 611-
💀 Thunderhorse 1115-1230 💀 The Magpie 1010-1055 💀 Born of Plagues 905-950 💀 Stone Nomads 800-845 💀 Pyre Fyre 700-740 💀 Dirt Eater 600-640
Olde Mother Brewery-
💀 Spellbook 920-1000 💀 Strange Highways 820-900 💀 Bailjack 720-800 💀 Stone Brew 620-700 💀 Abel Blood 520-600
💀 Ten Ton Slug 915-1000 💀 Thousand Vision Mist 815-855 💀 Crowhunter 715-755 💀 Asthma Castle 615-655 💀 Bonded by Darkness 515-555
✝️Saturday June 22
Cafe 611-
💀 WHORES. 1150-115 💀 AGE/S 1040-1130 💀 Bloodshot 935-1020 💀 O ZORN! 830-915 💀 Double Planet 730-810 💀 Sun Years 630-710 💀 When the Deadbolt Breaks 530-610
Olde Mother Brewery-
💀 Black Water Rising 915-1000 💀 Switchblade Jesus 815-855 💀 Wyndrider 715-755 💀 Indus Valley Kings 615-655 💀 Vermillion Whiskey 515-555 💀 Doctor Smoke 415-455
✝️Sunday June 23
Cafe 611-
💀 Cirith Ungol 1200-110 💀 Mythosphere 1055-1140 💀 Conclave 955-1035 💀 Compression 855-935 💀 Sons of Arrakis 755-835 💀 Curse the Son 655-735 💀 Kulvera 555-635 💀 Old Blood 500-535 💀 Cloud Machine 405-440
Olde Mother Brewery-
💀 Thunderbird Divine 920-1000 💀 Black Manta 820-900 💀 High Noon Kahuna 720-800 💀 Unity Reggae 620-700 💀 King Bastard 520-600 💀 Zekiah 420-500
52 bands over a 4 day weekend at 2 venues across the street from one another!! #4daysofdoom
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 1st, 2023 by JJ Koczan
With headlining performances slated from a soon-to-retire Cirith Ungol, noise crushers Whores., mostly-local melodic heavy proggers Mythosphere, Switchblade Jesus, Conclave, Ten Ton Slug (from Ireland; I got to see them one time; way burly; they’ll do well in Frederick), and plenty of other returning acts and newcomers alike, the lineup for Maryland Doom Fest 2024 could hardly be more appropriate a celebration of the annual Chesapeake gathering’s 10th anniversary. Based in Frederick, the four-day ultra-consuming sensory assault of volume will once again take place at Cafe 611 and Olde Mother Brewing, and if you’ve never been, I’ll tell you outright there’s nothing quite like it.
I mean that. Maryland Doom Fest goes harder than the average festival. A day might start at 1PM and not end until 2AM. And now more than ever, as the fest has grown with the two venues running alongside each other, the bill is packed. I think this year was 50 bands? Well, they’ve got 52 for 2024, and while next June is a while out, there’s a tradition to uphold of Halloween announcements, and festival honcho JB Matson (Bloodshot, War Injun, Outside Truth, etc.) pays tribute to his regulars — Shadow Witch, Bailjack, Thunderbird Divine, Thousand Vision Mist (congratulations to Danny Kenyon of Thousand Vision Mist on recently kicking cancer’s ass), among others here — while also giving showcase to outfits like Pyre Fyre, O Zorn! (whose very moniker heralds weirdness), WyndRider and more.
Congrats to Matson and all at Maryland Doom Fest on their 10th anniversary. To do something of this scope once is a lot. To do it across 10 years, well, aside from being fucking crazy, it’s also deeply admirable.
The aforementioned announcement — brief as ever; the poster lands heavy enough to cover any lack of verbiage — follows, courtesy of socials. Ticket link is there too:
WE ARE EXTREMELY PLEASED TO PRESENT TO YOU, THE MARYLAND DOOM FEST 2024 LINEUP!!!!! THIS WILL BE OUR 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION!! (#128128#)(#129304#)(#128128#)
52 bands over a 4 day weekend at 2 venues across the street from one another!! #4daysofdoom
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 31st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
It’s a big ‘un. And if you’re like me, there are a couple names that stick out from the poster below, particularly Earthride and The Skull. Both are tribute sets, of course. The Skull frontman Eric Wagner passed away in 2021 after complications from a covid-19 infection and the loss of Earthride‘s Dave Sherman just a couple months ago continues to be keenly felt in and beyond the confines of the scene he called home. Karl Agell (ex-C.O.C.) will step in for The Skull, while Scott Angelacos of Hollow Leg is set to front a rotating cast of players for Earthride. You would be hard-pressed to find a more fitting occasion for honoring one’s own, except perhaps this gig in a couple weeks.
Plenty of familiar, returning acts as well as newcomers. Hippie Death Cult and will travel from the Pacific Northwest, Switchblade Jesus and Doomstress make an appearance (not the first for either) from Texas, and Red Mesa come straight out of the capital-‘desert’ Desert. Meanwhile, Faith in Jane, Black Lung, Bloodshot, Mangog, Mythosphere, Thonian Horde, Spiral Grave and plenty of others represent the Maryland home team, High Leaf and Thunderbird Divine trip down from Philly, Curse the Son (CT) and Guhts (NY) come from farther north, Hollow Leg make the trip out from Florida, and Lo-Pan, Doctor Smoke and Brimstone Coven head over from the Midwest. That’s just off the top of my head. I’m not sure there’s ever been a MDDF pulling so many bands from different parts of the country, though of course international bands have featured in the past as well.
There are always some shakeup between the first announcement and the final lineup, but so far so good here. Any way it works out, Maryland Doom Fest has nothing to prove at this point. Guaranteed banger.
Here’s the poster (oy) and the lineup, the latter in alphabetical order:
Maryland Doom Fest 2023
June 22-25 – Frederick, MD
We are proud to present to you The Maryland DooM Fest 2023 lineup roster and 2023 promotional art!!!!
We showcase over 50 kickass bands bringing you heavy riffs over these #4daysofdoom!!
The centerpiece art was created by Joshua Adam Hart (Earthride, Unorthodox, Revelation, Chowder, Stout, to name a few).
Josh is a career tattoo artist and is currently scheduling appointments at Triple Crown Towson Tattoo. Schedule to get ink from him at info@triplecrowntowson.com
The incredible flyer layout, coloring, and design is by our very talented Bill Kole (make sure to check out his band Ol’ Time Moonshine)!!
Above the Treachery, Akris, Black Lung, Bloodshot, Bonded by Darkness, Borracho, Brimstone Coven, Cobra Whip, Conclave, Crowhunter, Curse the Son, DeathCAVE, Doctor Smoke, Doomstress, Double Planet, Dust Prophet, Earthride, Faith in Jane, False Gods, Flummox, Fox 45, Future Projektor, Gallowglas, Grim Reefer, Guhts, Helgamite, High Leaf, Hippie Death Cult, Hog, Hollow Leg, Hot Ram, Las Cruces, Leather Lung, Lo-Pan, Mangog, Mythosphere, Orodruin, Red Mesa, Severed Satellites, Shadow Witch, Smoke the Light, Spiral Grave, Switchblade Jesus, The Skull, Thonian Horde, Thousand Vision Mist, Thunderbird Divine, Unity Reggae, VRSA, Weed Coughin, Wizzerd
Some records you just keep going back to. This year marks the 10th anniversary of deep-riffing Connecticut trio Curse the Son‘s second full-length, Psychache (review here, interview here, vinyl review here, also discussed here), and the band are celebrating with a well-earned remaster/limited reissue out Sept. 23 through Salt of the Earth Records. They’ve also got a new lineup around founding guitarist/vocalist Ron Vanacore and plans to record a new album for release next year.
That’s not irrelevant, as Curse the Son look back on Psychache‘s six songs/31 minutes, it’s easy to hear both how they’ve grown in the years since and why they’d look to strip back and re-simplify their sound — the album at 31 minutes and six songs is everything it needs to be. Released first by the band in 2012 as the foll0w-up to the previous year’s Klonopain (review here), it was pressed to CD in 2013 and vinyl in 2014, the latter through STB Records — they were ahead of their time in staggering formats, but also it was very much an organic, word-of-mouth kind of growth — and Psychache continues to resonate to a rare degree these 10 years after the fact with its red-eyed sludge rock, encompassing fuzz and languid rolling grooves. It was everything it needed to be and nothing it didn’t. Most bands never get to put out an album like that. A rare achievement of nigh-on-infinite listenability.
And no, I’m not just saying that because I’m hosting the stream — as you can see in the first paragraph’s many links, I’m not hurting for having covered the album — or because I wrote the intro to the liner notes (shout to Billy from Doomed & Stoned, who did the notes proper) accompanying this reissue. The truth is I do return to Psychache on the regular in my own listening, and at this point it feels like visiting an old friend. Its riffs unfold themselves at the center of each song, and around them dance the hooks of “Goodbye Henry Anslinger,” “Spider Stole the Weed,” the lurching “Somatizer” and the even-slower “The Negative Ion,” that finale a more agonized row that, in hindsight, would preface some of the more doomed fare on subsequent outings, 2016’s Isolator (review here) and 2020’s Excruciation (review here), the latter representing their most complex work to-date.
Psychache — fleshed out via the atmospheric meds-pun interlude “Valium For” and its instrumental title-track, the latter of which closes side A, the former opening side B — is best heard rather than read, so I’m going to spare you the glut of blah-blah-blah in the hope that you’ll instead take the time to hit play below and experience it for yourself. Its intangible strengths are right there in the music. The interplay of would-be burl tone and Vanacore’s pattern-setting vocals was upon initial release a sans-pretense prediction of a decade’s worth of Sabbath worship to come, and looking/listening back on it now, the vanguard feel is like a proven theorem. How many ways are there to say they nailed it? Front-to-back, that’s all they did. And for an outing that’s as cannabinoid — we called it “weed” back then — as Psychache is, if you find a wasted second in its 31 minutes, you’ll have to let me know because I’ve been listening to this record for a fucking decade now and I’ve yet to find one that doesn’t serve either the purpose of the song itself or the album as a whole.
Dig in. Whether you were on board when it first came out or if it’s completely new to you — all the better, really — the best advice I can give is to just follow the nod and enjoy. This is a celebration of an offering that defines cult classic.
Enjoy:
Ron Vanacore on Psychache reissue and new lineup:
“We have been working extremely hard to recapture and revisit the “original” Curse the Son sound after some years of experimentation. Preparing to play ‘Psychache’ in it’s entirety has been invigorating for us all. Dan and Brian are very excited to be a part of this and their enthusiasm has been infectious. We have already begun to write new songs as well, prepare for the HUGE guitars, fuzzy bass and monstrous drums of the old times. We will be playing “Psychache” in it’s entirety live as a treat for everyone (including ourselves)! Plans are to write this Winter and get back into the studio by Spring ’23 to record the next record. Fans old and new rejoice – we are back!”
Doom metal stalwarts Curse The Son, based in Hamden, Connecticut, announce a new line-up and the tenth anniversary reissue of the album Psychache on Salt of the Earth Records!
Curse the Son has decided to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Psychache with a special reissue on Salt Of The Earth Records. Fully remastered by long-time Curse the Son engineer and co-producer Steve Wytas, the album sounds reborn.
This one-time limited run of 200 CD’s is packed with behind-the-scenes introspection into the songs, liner notes, photos, memories from the band, in addition to newly remastered audio.
“This is a labor of love,” frontman Ron Vanacore admits. “It has always been my favorite Curse the Son record not only due to the tunes and overall vibe, but also because it’s the record that truly put us on the map.”
Psychache is a reflective effort of the time and still feels as valid today as it did when it originally was released. Produced by Vanacore, the record was originally recorded at Underground Sound in East Haven, Connecticut, with engineer/owner Chris DelVecchio. Sessions began in December 2011 and mixing was completed in August of 2012.
The iconic photograph on the cover of Psychache is mysteriously haunting. Taken in the 1930s, this photo “spoke” to Ron Vanacore and was determined to be the album cover before a single note had been written for the record. “I love the menacing vibe as the masked kid walks towards you brandishing an unidentifiable weapon,” he says. The album’s central theme being fear, Vanacore felt it was the absolute perfect visual representation for the music.
Curse the Son live: September 23rd @ The Cellar On Treadwell (Hamden, Ct) CD Release Show w/Joetown and Fractured Reality September 24th @ Keegan Ales (Kingston, NY) w/Geezer and Shadow Witch October 7th @ New England Stoner/Doom Festival Prost Music Hall (Jewett City, Ct) October 29th @ Country Tavern (Guilford, Ct) w/ Alcoholica
More dates TBA
Psychache – 2012 Line-Up: Ron Vanacore (guitar, vox) Cheech Weeden (bass) Michael Petrucci (drums)
Curse the Son – 2022 line-up: Ron Vanacore (guitar, vox) Dan Weeden (bass) Brian Harris (drums)
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 24th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Psychacheis the kind of record that makes everything else seem needlessly complicated. That’s not to say it’s dumbed down. It isn’t. The melodies are broad, structures are skillfully applied, the overarching flow between the songs is well considered, and I’m sorry, but nothing with Michael Petrucci drumming on it is dumb. The end result of Curse the Son‘s intention, however, strikes right to the heart of what stoner metal is and can be. Riffs, groove, melody, hooks, thick and full sound, sometimes oozing, sometimes shoving, but always righteous in the going.
First released by the band in 2012, Psychache (review here) was the follow-up to the Hamden, Connecticut, trio’s 2011 offering, Klonopain (review here), and for the purposes of narrative ease we’ll call it their third full-length. They’d issue it digitally and on CD in 2013 before seeing it picked up for a deluxe vinyl treatment through STB Records in 2014. In the interest of honesty, I’m kind of murky at this point on the actual release date. I tend to associate the album with the band’s performance in New London, CT, at day three of the Stoner Hands of Doom XII fest (review here). Founding guitarist/vocalist Ron Vanacore handed me a CD at that show, and after a long day of bands — of which Curse the Son had been a highlight — I put it on for the car ride back to where I was staying and, even having spent all day being assaulted by distortion and riffs, found myself blasting it full volume for its 31-minute duration on that trip. Call it love at first riff, but Psychache has held a special place in my heart ever since, whatever one might consider the day it actually came out.
The band at the time was Vanacore and his former Sufferghost bandmate, bassist Richard “Cheech” Weeden, and Petrucci, and they made Psychache at Underground Sound in East Haven, mixing as well at Higher Rock. The lack of pretense remains staggering. If you pull back and look at it, there are really four full songs included, with the title-track an instrumental — albeit a crucial one — and “Valium For?” (get it?) a noisy minute-long interlude, but on vinyl, the total six split into an even three tracks per side, and the bookending effect of its two longest pieces in leadoff “Goodbye Henry Anslinger” (6:21) and finale “The Negative Ion” (7:22) isn’t to be understated when it comes to immersing the listener in the tone and groove that are so, so, so central to the entire proceedings. Again, this isn’t a dumb record. It is willful, however, in its primitivism.
Imagine a complex circuit with wires all over the place. You don’t know what the wires do, but there are a lot of them and they’re all different colors. You start ripping out wires at random and you find that the circuit still functions as it should, so you keep going. You pull and you pull and maybe even the circuit starts to function more efficiently for your efforts. And after however long repeating this process, you see the circuit doing exactly the thing it’s supposed to do and you find yourself looking at all the wires on the floor and wondering why in the first place you thought needed all this bullshit? Psychache is that. It has everything it needs and nothing it doesn’t, and even through the haze of its tone and the lumbering nod of “Somatizator,” it’s a moment of clarity.
Side A builds through the midtempo chug of “Goodbye Henry Anslinger” — named for the man who banned marijuana use; it’s worth noting that weed was made legal in Connecticut this year for adult recreational use — and the slower highlight “Spider Stole the Weed” en route to “Psychache” itself, which starts with Weeden‘s bass and moves into a shuffle that carries through most of its first half changes its central riff in the second. All groove, but a speedier pace that adds to the reach of the album overall in subtle fashion, which “Valium For?” answers with its there-and-gone moment of weirdness ahead of the closing duo “Somatizator” and “The Negative Ion,” the former of which mirrors “Spider Stole the Weed” in its memorable chorus while pushing the vocals into a lower register instead of a higher one, and the latter, which meanders for about two minutes before suddenly kicking in at full volume.
There’s a bit of feedback at the end, but the bass is ultimately the last thing to fade out, and fair enough for what Weeden has by that point added in terms of thickness to the procession. By then, if you’re left wanting, it’s your own fault. In 31 minutes, Curse the Son crush and compact the pivotal aspects of their style into a collection that makes its own depth feel simple and that has continued to make the band undervalued in my mind ever since.
They’ve done two albums after this, with 2016’s Isolator (review here) coming out through Ripple Music and The Company and beginning a collaboration with producer Eric Lichter at Dirt Floor Studios that continued onto 2020’s Excruciation (review here), also on Ripple. In the meantime, between the two records, Vanacore would see an entire swap-out of the rhythm section, with Robert Ives taking over on drums for the 2020 outing and Brendan Keefe donning the bass for Isolator and pulling that duty as well as adding vocals to the darker-in-mood Excruciation, building on Curse the Son‘s melodic growth and pushing their songwriting in new, exciting and still-footprint-on-skull-heavy directions.
But Psychache remains a one-of-a-kind outing. If Curse the Son had moved forward and said they were going to do the same thing twice, it wouldn’t have been the same as the moment they captured here, in these songs. I won’t decry the work they’ve done since. They’re a better band now. What makes Psychache such a standout, though, is how much it offers and how casually it does so, how easy it makes it all sound, and how it has managed to shift into a kind of timelessness that one expects will endure precisely as a result of the aesthetic truths it tells.
Thanks for reading. As always, I hope you enjoy.
—
I got a call earlier this week from the school nurse to tell me The Pecan had been falling asleep in class. Unheard of. He’d had boogers for a few days, but that kind of fatigue from him is a firm ‘never’. He got home about a half-hour later, was way out of it and feverish. You know where this is going: To the doctor for a Covid test.
We spent the better part of Wednesday and yesterday sweating it out before at about 6:30 this morning — right after I finished the above — I refreshed the page where his test results would appear and they were at last there and negative. He was better yesterday and — more alert, more of a pain in the ass — but still nice to have the assurance. He also yesterday had a 45-minute nosebleed in the morning, first thing. Compared to that, wrestling him into an outfit for school today was a walk in the park.
We are much relieved, though both The Patient Mrs. and I were also already in the midst of making kid-has-plague-antibodies travel plans for if he did have it and came through without serious complications — she to a conference, I to Maryland Doom Fest — but I’m prepared to call it a fair enough trade for him to not be seriously ill in the first place.
Off to school with you.
Obviously a fair amount was hanging on that precarious balance, all joking aside. The anxiety level was high in the house yesterday and since I couldn’t really take him anywhere and it was raining, we were stuck reminiscent of early lockdown. The Patient Mrs. went to a work meeting in the early afternoon, which I understand on multiple levels. Neither he nor I was easy to be around at that point.
So I guess today’s after-school activities will involve going to places and breathing on stuff. Sounds like fun, right? Should be a blast.
Whatever you’re up to this weekend, I wish you the best. Next week starts the Quarterly Review, so that’ll be fun. I’ve got seven days’ worth of stuff and I very purposefully scheduled a premiere after that so I couldn’t go any longer. Because I would, you know.
Great and safe couple days. Have fun. Hydrate. Watch your head.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 14th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Good bill here. I assure you, I’m just about the last person you want to ask concerning anything to do with craft beer — even when I drank I was never that cool — but band-wise, you’ve got a lineup for Doom and Brews III that spans a decent portion of the Eastern Seaboard from the Mid-Atlantic up into New England and beyond. Indianapolis’ Void King will travel the farthest, while Yatra, from Maryland, and Book of Wyrms, from Richmond, Virginia, are set to headline, and alongisde Connecticut natives Curse the Son, Pinto Graham, Afghan Haze, Entierro, Bone Church and Mourn the Light, Clamfight, Thunderbird Divine, The Age of Truth and Almost Honest will be up from PA and Mother Iron Horse and Conclave come south from Massachusetts. Mark it a win.
Goes without saying that everything in existence is tentative, but here’s hoping this one happens. If you’ve been sitting on tickets for the affiliated New England Stoner & Doom Fest 3, you get in free here as well, so, you know, bonus.
Tickets on sale Aug. 6. Here’s info:
SCENE PRODUCTIONS and SALT OF THE EARTH RECORDS are extremely excited to announce the full lineup for DOOM & BREWS III
Altones Music Hall (Jewett City, CT)
November 12 & 13 marks the return of the infamous New England tradition DOOM & BREWS, a gathering of heavy riffs and amazing craft beers… this is an event not to be missed!
2 Days of some of the Best Doom bands in the Northeast & some of the Best Beer New England has to offer!
ATTENTION NESDF3 TICKETHOLDERS!!!!!!
If you purchased tickets to NESDF3 before 2021, you will be on guest list at the door as a thank you for your support and patience.
LINEUP: Friday, Nov. 12: Yatra, Bone Church, Mother Iron Horse, Entierro, Thunderbird Divine, Mourn the Light, Almost Honest
Saturday, Nov. 13: Book of Wyrms, Curse the Son, Conclave, Clamfight, The Age of Truth, Void King, Pinto Graham, Afghan Haze
Posted in Questionnaire on March 16th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Michael Petrucci of Lord Fowl, Blue Man Group, ex-Curse the Son, King of Salem, etc.
—
How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
For income (and prior to this f’n pandemic) I have worked in theatre since 1989 either as a drummer or as a stagehand. Both gigs were offered by a friend who knew someone in the hiring position. I’ve been drumming all my life but first got paid to play at 14. I started becoming a stagehand at 16 at a (then) summer theatre; perfect summer job!
Describe your first musical memory.
I can remember being awestruck by a row of drummers in the back line of a procession. The church where I went to as a kid has a summer feast every year. The procession is for the patron saint of the name of the church. I can picture the parade now, looking down from the front porch of our third floor apartment, drum line echoing throughout the neighborhood.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
When I was seven or eight, my aunt let me go through her record collection. Without knowing who was what, I pulled out a cool cartoonie type cover of VH’s Fair Warning. You know the guitar at the beginning of that record, that song — “Mean Street.” Damn, I’ve been hooked ever since. Alex’s groove on that shit is killer and AVH has been one of my favorites for sure.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I honestly can’t think of a time a belief has been been.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
If you’re honest with yourself and your art is an expression of that then there is no limit to the progression of art.
How do you define success?
Success is forward progress. Accomplishing a goal is a simple enough explanation. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be financially wealthy but that isn’t success.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
A spoiled narcissistic game show host becoming the leader of the free world.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
A solo album.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Thought.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
