Third Gear Scratch

Somewhere in the late 00's, drummer Chris Enriquez felt the familiar and invetible societal pull of many artists to finally "get a real job" after over a decade with his bands On The Might Of Princes, Long Island hardcore/emo heros, and Gracer after Princes disbanded. He left it behind and began working as a brand rep for PBR at a time when that brand was making a major push to become indie-rocks beer of choice, which largely came to pass. But much was missing from his life at this time and he held that tide back with alcohol and cocaine until it became untenable at a certain point. It was near the time he joined with the band Spotlights in 2017 that he came out of his self-imposed "retirement" and reentered the rock world with a force. But he took what he learned from his time as a brand rep with PBR and has put it to great use as a Brand Partnership Director with Brooklyn Vegan, Alternative Press, The Hard Times and Revolver Magazines, respectively. As he restarted this life his rock life also got back in to top gear he's now drumming with not only Spotlights, but also Julie Christmas and Orange 9MM, not to mention his pandemic solo project called Light Tower. In the last couple of years there's been much excitement around On The Might Of Princes, and they had great success with a re-release of their final album, in addition to a sold out live performance on Long Island earlier this month. 

There was a point maybe 10 years ago give or take, in which bandleader, frontman, guitarist, singer songwriter, podcaster and outsized personality Conan Neutron had a reckoning or awakening of sorts in regards to his bands and the dynamic within, which had taken a not-good turn. The Conan Neutron of today reflects on those regrets and missed opportunities and how he turned that into his successful podcast Conan Neutrons Protonic Reversal and his band since that fateful about face, Conan Neutron and His Secret Friends with Dale Crover (Melvins) on the kit and Tony Ashe (Trophy Wives/Coliseum) on the bass. This band and larger touring collective that he curates is the result of his embrace of who he is now vs back then. Their new album Adult Prom (Learning Curve) is a split LP with their friends in the band Lung and provide more proof that he's making the best music of his life. His bands Replicator and Victory & Associates, Mount Vicious and Household Gods set the stage for who his today, 380 episodes deep on Protonic Reversal and 7 albums deep making music with his best friends and musical heros, but this time sans drama. 

Deep into the pandemic, drummer AC Paterra and his musical partner in Zombi, bassist-keyboardist Steve Moore also went deep; deep into the sounds and songs that created who they have become today as a pillar of Relapse Records, a label often associated with noisy artists. However the songs that moved AC and Steve over these covid days were the yachti-rock based sounds of Gerry Rafferty, Paul Davis, Steely Dan and Barry Gibb. So faithful were these renditions that many assumed they were singing over the original tracks. This attention to detail doesn't escape their own original music they make as Zombi, a band releasing it's 7th album, Direct Inject, again on Relapse in late March '22. Sure, their band reflects the sounds of the 90's Pittsburgh heros such as Trans AM and a dash of Don Caballero, (to wit Phil Manley of TA guests on Direct Inject) but it would be short-sighted to assume this band is a cookie cutout of those giants. AC goes out of his way to avoid math in his deep grooves. In fact, Zombi continues to expand their sound and even include a touch of the yacht into their songs with Steve Moore's sax. AC is also busy as keyboardist for Grails and tours with them as well. He is living his best life as a full time musician who also happens to be making the best music of his life. 

Putting a band together for a younger Tristan Shone 20 years ago was not as easy as he thought it might be, so he used his knowledge of mechanical engineering and sense of tenacious autonomy to create his own instruments that would allow him to make live music on his own; Music without the use of traditional instruments like guitars and drums and backingtracks a single musician might use to fill out the sound. Nope. Tristan and his fellow engineers created a few different unique tactile tools that he could oscillate in a live setting for different sounds, explosions and deep tones. It became Author and Punisher and is now 7 records into a 20 year career with his most recent records being released on noise-centric Relapse Records and touring with the likes of Tool. To wit: Justin Chancellor and Danny Carey both play on A&P's most recent release, Krüller. Tristans dayjob as a mechanical engineer with The National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research at UCSD dovetails perfectly with A&P as both concentrations are using his knowledge of machines for use in more delicate forms with scientists and musicians. Indeed, he and his fellow engineers are now creating unique instruments (dronemachines.com) for different artists like ARCA for use in her experimental performances. He's a dedicated San Diegan now and also devotes time with Border Angels who make "water drops" in dangerous desert regions for migrants seeking asylum in the states. 

Singer/songwriter/frontman Tim Kasher has been such a prolic maker of music over the past 25+ years with his bands Cursive and The Good Life and his solo records as his vehicles and conduits of creativity, so busy in fact that he has released a new album almost every year since 2000. Tim traveled from Los Angles to Chicago on Wednesday January 31st 2024 to spill about all of the "hows, why's and what in the world are we doing here" questions in front of great and responsive crowd at historic Fitzgeralds Nightclub in forever sunny Berwyn, just south of Chicago. We talk at good length about growing up in Omaha, The Saddle Creek Records era, which bunk is best on the tour bus (he likes the top), Taco Bell or Del Taco, which is his favorite record he's ever made, God, sportsball, some of his influences and what goes through his mind in the middle of the night. It was a fantastic evening all around for audience and performer and interviewer. One for the ages indeed. 

Multi-instrumentalist/producer/mixer Jordan Zadorozny created his one man band Blinker the Star in the mid 90's and made a huge splash with his 2nd album August Everywhere with Ken Andrews (Failure) behind the mixer. 28 years and 12 full length albums later JZ has released Animal Math (self-released), a highly enjoyable, forward-leaning and ambitious record that has hints of Jeff Lynne, Rush and a new wave type vibe that is unexpected and yet fits perfectly. Jordan is a producer and mixer with his own studio in rural Canada called Skylark Studios and gives him a literal playground to make his music and follow his muse while also double-fisting as a producer and mixer for hundreds of other artists. Our reluctant hero and host, Allen Epley, was invited by JZ to add vocals and lyrics to a song on this album entitled Throwing Dice that turned out amazing and it was a giant honor all the way around. This is Jordans' 2nd visit to the Third Gear Scratch studios, on December 16th, 2019 for our 28th episode. 

Artist and musician Jay Ryan remembers the moment that he began to create the animal-based characters that inhabit his hand-printed concert and event posters that have become ubiquitous in the rock world; he was just out of college at U of I in Champaign and was bogging down and unable to finish a painting because of undiagnosed ADHD, so he began to draw his living room automan, over and over from different angles. At a certain point he just added a pair of wide-set eyes that instantly imbued the automan with life for him. Since then, in his shop called The Bird Machine in Skokie IL, using his fatigue of seeing the usual rock posters using skulls and evil imagery, Jay has created a world in his posters involving squirrels, toasters, teddy bears, bicycles, rhinocerous in a kaleidascope of colors, all with his trademark wide-set eyes that is at once mystically sweet and ethereal. His band from Champaign called Dianogah became a huge outlet for him in other mediums and they went on to release 5 full-length albums on Southern Records with John McEntire (Tortoise) and Steve Albini as producer before calling it quits in 2009. They continue to play occasionally today and give this inspiring creator another avenue to spread his unique vision of the world. 

Episode 170 of Third Gear Scratch, in which our hero, Alien Epilepsy waxes and wanes about this year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Twenty Three. It's been a year of triumphs and struggles which has seen AE release his first and only solo record 'Everything' (Spartan) and tour on it, create a new record with his band Shiner, their 6th, tour with his friend Ian Prince and their band Birdhands with amazing bands Russian Circles, Spotlights, Jawbox and Pelican. But it was in the mother of all coup attempts that saw AE join Sunny Day Real Estate onstage in the role of guitarist in his friend Greg Suran's absence for 10 shows this summer and fall of '23. Growing older as an artist presents its own challenges and those showed up this year too. However, it is the continued support from the Third Gear Scratch faithful that give so much back and help to steady the ship for this long-time artist and maker of things. Huzzah!!

Being a body-builder and MMA fighter, Eugene S Robinson was a bit of an anomoly as the charismatic front man for the band he founded OXBOW, and before that in Whipping Boy, a more traditional punk rock outfit in the early 80's. It's in his new book, A Walk Across Dirty Waters and Straight Into Murderer's Row: A Memoir (Feral House) that we learn how he navigated these sometimes murky waters with braun and confrontation, a style he had had time to perfect as a black man in the world of punk rock. He's a direct and brash writer with a penchant for vivid story-telling of his often turbulent life. He's been a contributing writer and/or editor-at-large for GQ, Vice, Hustler and many more magazines and continues to spill his musings on his different platforms; his vlog Show Stomper with Eugene S Robinson allows him a place to air politics and MMA issues, and his blog Look What You Made Me Do, is an often personal, moving and funny account of his life and times. The new OXBOW record Love's Holiday (Ipecac) features the song Lovely Murk which was recently nominated for a Grammy, a first for this human who continues to expand his brand in brilliant ways. 

In 1993, Rob Zabrecky was certain he'd seen his future and that future was as a rockstar and frontman for local LA rockers Possum Dixon, his band that had just been signed to Interscope Records for a 3 record deal. But life is complicated. Indeed they had, by all accounts, a pretty great career as an "alternative" band with big tours and big producers like Rik Ocasek of The Cars. But like many other rock stars he fell prey to drugs and all the other issues that can derail a career. So he pivoted, as one does, to auctioneering, a fascinating career path over several years that eventually allowed him the time and resources to begin practicing a secret love; comedy, magic and sleight of hand. He's a handsome man, funny with a charismatic onscreen presence, having acted in commercials, TV and several feature length films in the post rockstar years. That charisma directly aided his new career path into a one-man show made of mentalism, magic and comedy that he has honed over the past 15 years. He now travels the world and has made quite a name for himself in this new career as Zabrecky and is deeply immersed in that distinctive niche, mingling and sharing the stage with some of the biggest acts in comedy and magic. 

The 18 year old version of a now grown Tony Higbee would surely be pinching himself for who he shares stages with these days. As a highschool rocker from tiny Monmouth IL, he was a bass player and had evolved into a serviceable chording guitarist in college. It wasn't until he began writing songs in Atlanta with his band Simple Sick Device in the early 2000's that he began to play guitar with more authority mainly because writing songs on guitar was so much more fluid, and that translated into becoming a real guitar powerhouse. He moved to Nashville and started his own band Caprice which begat East Side Gamblers, but it was his ability as a great singer that sealed the deal and he's ended up as an in-demand touring and session guitarist for Tom Keifer, lead singer of the 15x platinum hair-farmers Cinderella. Tom's solo albums have been a huge success and led to their collaborating for more than 10 years now and traveling the globe. That work also helped connect him with Brother Cane whom he also tours with as lead guitarist. He's a cancer survivor and an animal rescuer along with his girlfriend and is most certainly living his best life. 

When heavier-than-anything Louisville band Coliseum began to sense their time together was coming to a close around 2015, band leader and seed-writer Ryan Patterson started to get some glimpses of his next move but was struggling to find his voice within that sylistic change. It was a move from guitar-bass-drums based pummeling into synth-synth-bass-drummachine based songs that were much more mid 80's Dark Wave than Coliseum's post hardcore earth-rattling. Turns out he found his voice in what would become Fotocrime with the help of producer J Robbins (who also produced several Coliseum records) and since 2017 has released a growing catalog of these darkly powerful analog synth-based records, their latest ACCELERATED (Artofffact). Ryan decided to take the Fotocrime recording process into his own hands for Accelerated in his own home studio which has grown to where he can record other projects as needed. It's a huge growth for this seeker, and one consistent with how he has chosen to exist with the help of his own business, SHIRTKILLER.COM which is quite successful in it's own right and gives Ryan an endless supply of subjects to create for and with. 

Writer / actor Ryan Raddatz has spent the last 20 years in LA carving out a career in TV and film, first briefly as an actor, before realizing that writing was his true calling. He spent years writing on show for CBS like the recent reboot of The Odd Couple and The Neighborhood with Cedric The Entertainer and dozens more that may or may not ever get made, and has written over 5 seasons of episodes for PBS WordGirl. He's had a great career that has allowed him to raise a family in LA and live at a reasonable middle-class existence. But now the current writers strike is reaching into the months with no end in sight and issues of pay increases and the looming advent of AI and it's ability to pop out scripts with a few prompts can end careers for not only writers but many others in the food chain of the biz. Actors are fighting for Image Privacy as studios will use AI to lift their faces in crowd scenes. Fantastic insight from this great writer. 

Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Niko Wenner has been seeing life through a very different lens since the pre and post pandemic years brought him loss and big gains; his father died and went through a job change and saw some very tough times. But it also brought him a newborn child, his daughter, now almost 3 and has changed how he sees the world and makes music with his long time cohort OXBOW, who have a new record Love's Holiday (Ipecac Recordings). It's a record that is surprisingly straightforward, especially for a band that has been in the middle of the ven diagram between noise, punk, art rock and music concrete. Working with producer Joe Chicarelli (Strokes, Oingo Boingo, Michael Bublé, U2) over the pandemic brought out the rock band in them as he gently suggested that maybe going a little more traditional might in fact be the thing that makes this record stand out for this celebrated experimenting band of over 30 years. Niko is a highly educated and trained classical and jazz player, but can also throw it down with the best of the rockers. It's another brick in the fantastic wall of music that OXBOW has been making for their entire career. 

In it's infancy, drummer Jason Gagovski's band Sweet Cobra, was always a 4 piece unit; a giant, crushing, throbbing and roaring missive of urgent importance. The move from 4 to 3 piece however was not their decision, as Matt Arluck had cancer that ultimately took his life, leaving them at a loss for a moment until deciding to move forward as a trio. Sweet Cobra's sound has historically been a highly evolved echo of the giants that came before them. And they are still are that, albeit one that has grown it's sound exponentially on their new record Threes (Hawthorne St), where melody and nuance and reverb state their case boldly and successfully. Jason is the engine behind the band and is not only a talented drummer but a gifted graphic designer who freelanced for a long time before landing his current gig at the Field Museum here in Chicago. In addition to maintaining Sweet Cobra, Suicide Note before it, touring with Cloakroom, creating a side project with Sarah Olmsted called Rows Arc, he's also a proud father of young man that has highlighted and augmented his entire reality and that clearly is evident on this new record of his. 

When Vinyl Emergency podcaster Jim Hanke was in school at UW Milwaukee with a double major in Communications and Journalism, he probably never dreamed that one of his future endeavors would be an answer to a question on the famous game show Jeopary. But that's what happened with Biscuits and Jam, a podcast he was producing for Southern Living Magazine. He spent a couple of crucial years there and helped to transform that show into a Jeopardy-answer-sized-pod, but only after producing his own beloved pod called Vinyl Emergency. This podcast has been a labor of love over the past 5 years and has grown from interviewing nobody's like Allen Epley to rapping with somebody's like Adam Duritz from Counting Crows, Benmont Tench of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Chris Shifflet of Foo Fighters about what vinyl has meant to them. Jim has moved from Southen Living on to the Audacy company where he now produces many shows for them in addition to VE still going strong, and raising a beautiful family in the Chicago burbs.

Travis Talbert has made the music biz his living, or maybe it's the music that made him do it. He's a touring and session pedal steel player and guitarist for other touring artists like Arlo McKinley but has also busied himself with his band Frontier Folk Nebraska and now more recently with his solo music as Mavis Guitar. He's been releasing music under that moniker for some time now but his most recent offering, Tony Delks' 53 Point Game (self-released) is an expansive and eclectic mix but still stands as cohesive and focused. It's music that uses traditional instruments phrasings but has a kind of meditative ambience to it that transcends the trappings of folk or rock. He's doing all this while teaching guitar/piano/pedal steel, touring at length, working at his fave record store Shake It Records and raising a beautiful family.

Chris Neville is a busy man;  As the core member and founder of Tributosaurus, a collection of session killers from Chicago that regularly honor a certain artist or band with sold-out highly perfected tribute concerts featuring almost granular details of that artists recordings (i.e. 6 people to play a proper Rush concert), as a composer for a huge gaming platform called Everi Holdings, as a longtime venue owner whose club fell victim to the pandemic, and as a weekly performer in various ensembles including but not limited to his newest band of assassins, The Meadowlark Lemons.  Chris has remained humble and driven to make his life revolve around his strongest skill set as band-leader, keyboardist, singer and all-around show man. He's also found time for the most important parts of life, being a dad and husband while following his dreams. 

Tim Rutili is not only from the influential and highly regarded art folk skronk rock band Califone, he in fact is that band. Certainly not to say he's not the only person who makes Califone Califone, indeed that band is more like a collective, often made of 15 humans or more for any given record, and it continues to involve many of the same talented humans he's been making music with for the past 30 years including his time as the main maker in 90's SubPop heros Red Red Meat. So it goes with Califone's new offering, Villagers (Jealous Butcher) due May 19 2023, and follows the theme of these friends exploring new sonic territory, widening their scope of influences and finding lyrical themes of seemingly mundane moments which slowly unfold into profound epiphanies. It's a giant record; a huge step forward but also on par with his best offerings. Tim Rutili is a person with a complusion to create, whether it's composing for film scores, directing and scoring his own films, working on his own paintings, or riding the Califone machine into a new record for the 15th time in 23 years, he will happily continue to satisfy this need as long as he is able. 

Both Sarah and Mario Quintero of the post-everything band Spotlights have been guests on TGS previously, but never at the same time. It is clear that regardless of the music that they make together, beautifully crushing songs that push sonic boundaries with every release, these two are best friends and would be together even without this music. They're deeply in love and have a connection to being the best fucking band they can be and are proving it with every new release. Their newest, Alchemy For The Dead (IPECAC) is another perfect cog on Spotlights gear but sees them grow their brand in very big ways; the vocals and lyrical content on this record has pushed them beyond their post-post-post roots into territory relatively uncharted for them. They've always had singing on their records but it's a big jump for this band. They're embarking on a 9 week tour and explain exactly how they do it and how they make sure their children (aka their dogs) are taken care of while they're out proving it.