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(Summer 2005) by George Dionne
Journey is celebrating their 30th anniversary this summer with a U.S. tour
and a new album. The tour is described as ‘the concert that takes you
back…and into the future”. Fans will be treated to Journey’s
past, present and future with Journeyville; a festive area at the live shows
where fans can experience classic Journey clips and videos, sign up for their
fan club, and enter to win an exclusive Journey motorcycle.
Once the show
starts, fans will be treated to three hours of Journey material from their
very early beginnings to their latest album Generations. Each person that
attends the live shows receives a copy of the new disc (in most markets).
For those of you that can’t make the show, Generations will be released
in the U.S. via Sanctuary Records in October and is already available via
Frontiers Records overseas. Longtime Journey bassist Ross Valory took time
off from the band’s busy schedule to fill us in on the whole Generations
concept and what it means to the band, and what the fans will get out of
it.
Rock Is Life would to thank Barb, Valerie, Tammy, and Kenneth from the
Official Journey Message Boards for helping with the questions.
RIL: Journey has a brand new album titled Generations,
what’s the significance of the album title?
RV: Well there’s several aspects; one is that fact that the mainstay
of our success in these later years is due to the fact that the people that
grew up with the music in the eighties and seventies, that graduated to it,
or got married to it, had been bringing there children, and in many cases
there grandchildren, so there’s sometimes two maybe three and in some
cases four generations of Journey fans attending the show. There’s
a whole new demographic slice of teenagers, both male and female, that have
nothing to do with their parents liking the music. They’re showing
up in the front row yelling, ‘you dudes rock’. They’re
discovering the band also on the album.
There’s the song called “New Generation” by Jonathan Cain
which reflects pretty much what I’ve been talking about. The lyrics
of many of the songs reflect the lives of the fans, the lives of everyday
people; it’s about them, it’s not about us. That sort of reminds
us of what we did with Escape. Musically [the album] is definitely
a departure from what we did in the last two or three years. Arrival,
the album from 2002, was specifically written to try and get the themes and
signatures from the eighties. In spite of how well it was written, preformed,
and recorded, it didn’t make much of a dent. You can’t add to
the past that way, so we said let’s just play what we want to play.
So the Generations album represents a lot of material
and styles that you never ever heard the band do before. Some of the songs
may
not be recognized as Journey unless you were told beforehand; “Gone
Crazy” for instance, the song I sing is a good example. Introducing
other singers into the mix…it’s been happening in the last year
or more…all of us singing songs. I began singing “Walks Like
a Lady” and I’m still doing that one. As of last year, Jonathan
has been covering the Greg’s parts to “Feeling that way”, “Anytime”,
and “Just the Same Way”.
Neal’s been singing “Voodoo
Chile” and of course he sings a re-recording of “In Self-Defense” from
the Schon/Hammer album on the Generations album. Dean Castranovo has been
covering some of the early period material that appears in our first set,
and of course is singing one song on the CD. They’ll be another CD
released after the tour is over which will be more extensive; words, pictures,
liner notes. At that point you’ll hear two Jonathan Cain songs and
two Dean Castranovo songs. RIL: Why did you decide to split the vocal work?
RV: That’s what I was mentioning…we started doing this last year.
I think it’s a great approach. Spread the talent out. Steve Augeri
still sings the majority of the songs. He’s got his work cut out. That
carried over the tradition to record the album that way.
RIL: Journey decided to give the new CD away with the price of admission
to the live shows. How did you come up with that idea?
RV: The idea came from what Prince did last year. He
was quite successful with it, even despite the fact that his tickets are
far more expensive than
ours. We decided to try that deal and took notice this year. We have a general
agreement with the promoter with most venues. Some venues that’s not
possible. The politics of the economics are not setup for that, so just to
let the fans know that it has to be advertised that way so there not hoodwinked
or disappointed or upset if they come to a show were there isn’t a
CD. The ones that are advertised with the CD/ticket are the [venues] that
actually have it. If it’s not advertised that way, usually a festival
or fair, maybe other acts are included; the politics do not work well that
way.
For the most part we are playing a three hour show
with an intermission and a CD offered free with a ticket. We have near
the entrance of most venues
a place called Journeyville. The fans can go there and check out all kinds
of footage, current and past, and have a chance to win the Journey motorcycle.
Tickets are three dollars each and all the funding goes to the T.J. Martel
Foundation, which supports research for children with leukemia, cancer
and AIDS. You can buy as many tickets as you want and at the end of the
tour,
we’ll pick the winner and fly them out to LA to pick up there motorcycle. RIL: We’re you afraid after the first show that people would
put the new CD up on the internet for download, or possibly eBay?
RV: No we’re not afraid. They’ve tried to put it up on Ebay and
it gets pulled off immediately. We got our eyes open. How we are getting
around that is, people are coming to our show and getting the CD for what
they pay for a ticket. Once the tour is entirely over, we’ll have a
retail offer of a bigger package for our internet store and for retail stores.
RIL: At the events that you’re not giving the CD away, Are
you selling them at the merchandise booth?
RV: Sometimes. It’s all up to the logistics and the politics of the
venue and promoter. I would assume that if it not offered with the ticket,
then it’s offered individually.
RIL: How are the live shows going?
RV: There going great
RIL: I’ve heard mixed reviews of the first couple of shows.
RV: If at all, the crowd was not prepared. We dragged
out some old material which includes six years of work. Its three consecutive
releases of albums
from ‘75 to ’77, but as the word spreads, people understand
that no you don’t have to leave…there’s two sets. Don’t
leave after the first set. That material you heard in the first set is
not the new material, that’s the new/old material. We’re playing
at least three to four songs from the new album in the second set, along
with all the ‘dirty dozen’ as we call them. You know, the hits.
There are some in the first set, but the majority of what most people come
to hear is in the second. A whole demographic of people who’ve stayed
away for years are hearing songs they haven’t herd for twenty years
or more.
RIL: When you guys wrote the new album, I know you shared the vocals, but
did you write together, or did each guy bring their own songs that they wanted
to sing?
RV: We had a song writing session where everyone that
had something jumped in there and threw it on the table. You may not recognize
it, but Steve wrote
a significant
number of songs that made it to the album. It’s basically a ‘may
the best song win’, not the best man of course. We recorded more songs
than we ended up mixing, but there’s quite a variety. There not only
in the source of writing, but in the source of lead vocals as well. “Gone
Crazy” was written by Neal himself to sing. He thought I’d do
better at it, because I became the blues man after “She Walks Like
a Lady”. That’s how that worked out. Neal ended up singing the
song that he brought back from the Schon/Hammer album.
RIL: Will any of the songs be released to the U.S. radio market?
RV: Yes, and I can’t comment on that yet, but there are plans. We’re
figuring it out right now as we speak as to which songs, in which order,
and come out as singles. It’s kind of exciting. We’ll have to
wait on that one, but there’s defiantly a plan for the fall.
RIL: I’ve read that you guys are not doing any songs from
Trail by Fire on the current tour. Why not?
RV: Were not, because in spite of the popularity of
one song like “When
You Love a Woman”, you only have so much time when you do a seventy
minute set [as with the second set].
RIL: Were you asked to join any of Neal’s side projects, like
Soul SirkUS?
RV: I helped him with that Pirana Lounge, that was
fun. It was Neal, myself, and a blues singer on Shrapnel Records. Other than
that, I wasn’t asked
to do Soul SirkUS. That’s okay, he’s got a whole other menu going
there.
RIL: He has a side group going every couple of years.
RV: This one I think is a little more prominent. I
wouldn’t have had
time to do it as I have my own solo career at www.rossvalory.com. I decided
to put out [at the website] music from numerous projects, either from a discography
standpoint or projects that I have been involved with over the years that
most people don’t know about. I would like to think people would want
to know about this material. If you go to my site you can check out stuff
from the late 60s, all the way to the present. That’s my efforts now
in my own realm, but I’m keeping pretty busy now let me tell you.
RIL: What do you do outside of Journey?
RV: I have the website and I’ve started two companies; one that has
nothing to do with music. It’s an apparel business called Mouthman.
Sooner or later you will know all about it.
RIL: Since you’ve been labeled the blues guy, is it going
to relate to the blues culture of styles?
RV: Just wait and see brother, that’s all I can tell ya. It’s
unique.
RIL: Would Journey ever consider releasing a DVD similar to VH1’s
Storytellers?
RV: I’m not sure about that, but we have something in the works from
a 1982 show in Texas that’s being produced right now for a DVD release.
We do and have released from time to time a documentary called “Fronteirs
and Beyound “which is not about how the songs are put together, but
how a show is put together. That may be re-released at some point in time.
RIL: Every band seems to be doing an acoustic set lately, has Journey discussed
doing one?
RV: We have tried it actually. We did an unplugged
section of our sets last year that might have been included [in the current
set] had we not decided
to go with a chronological look at our repertoire. We’ve done it before,
we did “Trial by Fire” and two others.
RIL: Have you thought about releasing them on CD?
RV: No we haven’t. It’s just one thing at a time. Representing
this band as it has existed for eight years [in it’s current formation];
by the way, the longest standing incarnation of the band. On the greater
picture, historically we have the Texas show coming up for a release. Those
are some interesting questions but we are not really an unplugged band. That’s
not high on the list right now.
RIL: A lot of Journey songs appear on television shows, movies and commercials.
I understand that it helps generate revenue for the band, but do you think
that sometimes it takes away the meaning of a song?
RV: I don’t think so these days. We’re certainly not the first
to do it, and for a long time we held out on that. I don’t really think
so. I don’t think it hurts at all.
RIL: Who are your musical influences?
RV: My musical influences stem from having learned, and being nurtured in
music by my mom; anywhere from Mozart to Fats Domino. She was into doo
wop and Ray Charles too. I learned classical music, church music, choral
music, barber shop music, Dixieland music, and symphonic music. Somebody
in high school talked me into this. Early influences in rock-n-roll at
that time would have been James Brown, Mitch Ryder, Paul Revere, and then
of course The Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. I think that
about states it.
RIL: I’ve read that you tune your bass to Nashville tuning? What’s
the purpose of that?
RV: I’ve been doing this since the 90s. It was a recommendation from
one of my guitar makers. We just took an existing bass that just had enough
string length to it to convert it. A lot people use five strings so they
can have the option of going under, but I have small hands and I don’t
like big necks. A five string just has too much mass, so I’ve actually
fooled a bunch of prominent bass players. They see a four string and come
up to me after the show and they go ‘whoa man deep tone’. I go
hey man, try it out. When they discover it I smirk, and they go, ‘you
bastard’. So it’s not uncommon, not in Nashville. I don’t
know anybody else that plays a B bass. I guess that’s become my trademark.
That’s how Dean and I get into that chunk style, peanut butter sound.
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