GLASS HAMMER
Questions asked by Jon Wilde, added to Rock Realms 25th January 2010.
Glass Hammer are a progressive rock outfit from the lyrically famous Chattanooga in Tennessee, USA. They released their latest album, Three Cheers For The Broken-Hearted in November 2009.
Main-men Fred Schendel and Steve Babb answer questions.
Hi Guys, thanks for taking a moment to answer these questions. Hope you are well?
Fred: Doing great, thanks!
Could you give us a brief history of how Glass Hammer first came to exist?
Steve: Fred and I met in the mid-eighties. Wow, that suddenly seems a very long time ago! We were both aware of each other’s love for prog-rock and determined that one day we’d try to write or record together. We both had bands that were chasing major label deals, so that had to come first. Both bands were nearly signed, and in my case, the band actually landed a major deal. But as was frequently the case in those days, lawyers became involved and the whole thing exploded in our faces!
Within two years of that debacle, about '92 – Fred and I began to plot anew. My wife Julie laid down the money for an 8-track analog recorder and some great monitors. We certainly couldn’t have done it without her. After that, we spent around one year tinkering with “Journey of the Dunadan” and managed to complete it and finance the pressing of CDs. We sent the CD to Bob Katz of Digital Domain for mastering; and that is the point where things began to look up for us. I can’t even remember how I chose Bob for the job, but he was good friends with Ken Golden of the Laser’ Edge and told him all about us. That led to our introduction to the very small world (at the time) of prog.
It seems that our timing was perfect – all this happened around the same time that other well known acts were cropping up around the globe. We rose to the top of the heap with a few others, and have had the good fortune of recording many Glass Hammer cds and dvds since.
How did the band’s sound come about? Was that simply how it evolved, or was there a conscious decision to head in a very specific direction?
Fred: Both, really. We knew from the start that we wanted to do 70's style progressive rock. The specifics of our writing style and vocal sound has certainly been evolving though. Plus, we've never been self-conscious about making radical shifts in style and sound from one album to the next.
We'll say, "Hey, let's make this one more retro," or "Let's make this one a little heavier." We think of Perelandra as the first album where we started to show the kind of direction we really wanted to go in. The next album that really worked for us was Chronometree, where we started to embrace the older keyboard sounds completely.
The obvious influences for your sound are the big progressive groups like Yes, ELP etc. Are there any other major influences on your sound or style people wouldn’t initially recognize?
Fred: Probably, though I don't really know if they show up in the music we do directly. You can hear different influences in Three Cheers for the Broken Hearted, like The Beatles and Todd Rundgren. I like a lot of 70's funk; bands like Parliament and Ohio Players. We like King's X a lot. We both like Rush. I like some alternative bands like Verruca Salt. I even listen to punk stuff like Sex Pistols and Fear when I'm in the mood. I like some softer vocal bands like America and CSN&Y. Working with newer people we produce forces us to listen to newer pop like Pink and Taylor Swift. So yes, our listening is varied.
Steve: I can name a few of the proggier acts that have definitely had an impact on us, though some would be on the fringe of prog. Camel, Jethro Tull, Genesis – certainly are the more obvious of the group. But also artists like Tangerine Dream, Mike Oldfield, and Fire Ballet come to mind. We’re both fans of Black Sabbath, and that shows up on Three Cheers. Other influences for the songs I wrote for Three Cheers include Hooverphonic, Portishead, Bird and the Bee; along with David Bowie, The Zombies and Brian Wilson. So there are some modern Euro-pop / trip-hop influences at work on this latest release to contrast the older psychedelic inspirations.
Ever since your first release your albums have often referenced epic stories or poems, and generally they’ve had a strong narrative to them. Where did that interest come from, and do you find those sort of albums easier to put together than those without an overriding concept?
Fred: Well, I don't know if it's easier but it's not generally harder either. We both seem to work well in a strict structure, both musically and lyrically.
Steve: Between the two of us, I’m the story teller. I’ve always had an intense desire to write allegory and fantasy, and Glass Hammer has been a great vehicle for that. I grew up on a steady diet of Tolkien, Lovecraft, Moorcock and Edgar Rice Burroughs. In recent years this has led to a love of authors like Lord Dunsany, George MacDonald and William Morris. I’m going through all the Norse sagas too. I read constantly.
Early on, fans came to expect us to write concept albums. The most frequent question was, “What is your next album about?” as opposed to “What will your next album sound like?" It adds some pressure – because it’s not always an easy thing to do – making the music work well with a storyline. But it worked out perfectly (IMHO) on Chronometree, Lex Rex and finally The Inconsolable Secret; the latter being my favourite.
Is there any book or writer or you’d still like to build an album around?
Steve: We’ve managed to make friends with a few authors because of Glass Hammer. I recently wrote a fan email to Scottish author Robert Low who turned out to be a fan of GH. He sent me a bit of Viking verse that he’d composed. We may take a stab at putting that to music one day.
Of course we’ve done the Tolkien albums; “Journey of the Dunadan” and “The Middle-earth Album”. We might do another one of those as I don’t think I’ve exhausted my love for Tolkien or for Celtic / folk music. Beyond that, nothing comes to mind.
Have you thought of reversing the process, and writing a book based on one of your albums?
Steve: The Inconsolable Secret was based lyrically on “The Lay of Lirazel” which I wrote specifically for the project. It came in at just over 19,000 words of rhyming verse – no small task! Since then I have written about six chapters of what could become my first novel – all based entirely on the music, lyrics and poetry of that album. I haven’t had the luxury of making this a priority, due to the various commitments of studio, Glass Hammer and, well, life. But I work on it every chance I get.
Onto the latest album, Three Cheers For The Broken-Hearted. Were there any stories in mind during the writing of this one, or is it more of a compilation of standalone tracks?
Fred: It's a collection of standalone tracks, but we discovered a theme anyway. It's probably not surprising but it turned out to be a group of rather personal songs that's very much about where we both are in life right now. Which is a very good place, but it's a melancholy album because there are reflections of what we've been through and what the alternatives could have been.
How long did the album take to create – from the initial writing until the final mastering?
Fred: Well, it started with songs Steve had been tinkering around with on his own for a long time. If you don't count that, it went really fast for us - maybe only 6 months or so.
How does the writing process work?
Fred: We usually come up with ideas separately and then put them together. Then we work out the final versions of things together. We generally write music first and words after. Three Cheers is a bit more melodic because it has a lot of songs where words and music were done at the same time, or even words first. I'd like to try and do that more in the future, even for the big epics.
Was the studio recording hard work, pleasure, or a bit of both?
Fred: It's always fun. The only time it gets at all tough is when you've been working on something for months and you're sick of it. Usually at the end of a mix you never want to hear any of it again. Three Cheers is interesting because we never got sick of it. I think we both still like listening to it.
Steve: There’s always that point, usually in the mixing phase, where you can no longer tell what you’re hearing. It’s like repeating the same word over and over a thousand times till it ceases to resemble a word at all. Then comes the burn-out and then comes despair! But we’ve done it so many times now that we’ve come to expect those kind of days – so we get over it pretty quick and get back to work.
Three Cheers has definitely been the easiest to write, produce, record, etc. Even the mastering house loved it and did a great job adding the final polish. Lucky for us, this one was pretty much fun from start to finish.
Did you try out any new techniques or instruments?
Fred: Only a little, at least this time around. I played more guitar than in recent years, which always feels a bit odd to me. There's some more modern aspects to the production, especially in the addition of things like beats and loops behind the drums in places; along with distorted vocals. The next project has already started and I hope we'll really be able to try a lot of experimental sounds on it. It's going to be very proggy again; longer songs and odd sounds, next to organ and mellotron.
Steve: On Three Cheers, I worked out a lot of the vocals with Susie as the songs were written. Normally we just hand the lyrics to the singer and they work with a nearly-complete version of the song. She was in on this from the beginning, and that helped her a great deal. I tried to use a Wurlitzer a good deal on this album, which was kind of new for us.
We’re very much into soft-synths, and especially software versions of the old analog keyboards we grew up with. Those were put to good use on Three Cheers. I’ll try different recording techniques with the bass now and then. But mostly I stick with what I know works. On Three Cheers, I just turned it up as loud as I could stand it, then stuck a mic in front of the cabinet. That seemed to get the job done!
In style and content, how does the album compare to previous album Culture Of Ascent, and to your earlier work?
Fred: It has the best production we've had so far in the drum sound, in my opinion. Song-wise, it actually is a throw-back to things we were doing in the 90's but I think we're much better at writing good shorter songs now, and vocally we're much better. It also relates to our earlier albums because it's essentially a duo album; just Steve and I with the help of Susie on vocals.
Steve: In many regards it bears little resemblance to Culture. David Wallimann is AWOL for most of the album and Matt Mendians and Carl Groves are missing entirely. We remain good friends of course, and hope to work with them again some day. There is certainly some psychedelic influences at work on Three Cheers; and over tones of trip-hop. Even considering all of the lighter songs on the album, it’s probably the heaviest album we’ve ever done – and certainly leans more toward metal than previous albums. I think the Yes influence was very obvious on Culture (of course Jon Anderson even appears on it), and that is pretty much non-existent on Three Cheers. It’s a different animal in my opinion.
Three Cheers For The Broken-Hearted has a good mixture of styles on it, all held together with the Glass Hammer vibe. Do you make a real effort to keep your sound fresh rather than rehashing the same formula?
Fred: Well, we are always conscious of not doing the same album twice. We do try and go for a fresh sound every time. Sometimes that "new" sound for us is a very retro sound. This time the style of the songs dictated what the sound of the album would be. We can't say it very loud because it's kind of a dirty word in prog circles, but Three Cheers is our version of a pop album filtered through what we do as a prog band. Now that we have it out of our system we really feel the desire to go back to classic prog for the next one. But, it probably won't sound like any of the earlier albums, at least not exactly.
Steve: Yes, the dreaded ‘pop’ word! But your readers need to know we’re not talking about Lady Gaga or Fergie here. If anything, we mean The Beatles, or bands like Hooverphonic. We aimed to make music tastefully concise, melodic and memorable – not accessible or commercial. This isn’t our ‘sell-out’ album; though two tracks will be on The Rock Band Network for the XBOX and other gaming systems this year. And I’ll not apologize for that bit of marketing! Of course those tracks are two of the heavier ones on the album; influenced more by bands like Kings X and Rush.
After The Inconsolable Secret, there could have been an immense pressure to follow it up with something even ‘bigger’. But thankfully, we knew better. You either move on and try new things or you end up beating your head against a wall. Art doesn’t work that way, at least for me.
However – give yourself a break from the ‘epics’ for an album or two, and the muse will come calling again. So I think we’ll head back down the symphonic-prog road on the next album and see where we end up; but it won’t be a follow up to Three Cheers or any other album. It’ll just be a new Glass Hammer album; and as our fans have learned, that could mean anything!
Were there any guests featured on this release? Your last album obviously featured the great Jon Anderson.
Fred: I think this time just one rhythm guitar track from David Walliman and a couple others from another local guitar player who's a friend. This was a very do-it-yourself project for us. We wanted tight, tight control on this one!
Do you have any favourite moments on the album – any that really sum up what the album is about?
Fred: Wow, hard to say. I really like the ending section of Schrodinger's Lament. It has a very Scandinavian vibe to me, I'd like to do a whole album like that. I think the remake of A Rose For Emily is really good and really shows a great classic song in a new light. I really like Mid-life Weird; I think it's a great example of a fun direct song. And I like Lure Of Dreams because GH actually can rock and we don't always get to show that. And of course Falling means a lot to me because I don't think I've ever done a love song in the context of GH before. There was “The Way To Her Heart” a long time ago but it wasn't so good and it's not actually about anyone! This one is.
Steve: Fred wrote the music for Lure of Dreams; and to me it just slams. Love that tune! Sundown Shores is very personal for me – (and it’s allegorical by the way – not in anyway suggesting problems between me and Mrs. Babb!) – but I finally trusted myself enough to sing lead on that track, and it didn’t come off too shabby (or so I’m told). The Mid-Life Weird is the most ‘sonically’ pleasing of the album – very clean – lots of space – fun to listen too. “A Bitter Wind” is probably my favourite however, and neatly sums up everything I wanted to write or say; everything I was shooting for with Three Cheers.
You’ve released a number of live albums over the years. Is hitting the live stage something you love doing?
Fred: We love it and hate it! I love playing live but we always feel under-rehearsed so it's scary. To really get tight a band needs to go on the road and play every night. We rarely play more than about three times every year or two. If we went on the road and played back to back shows we'd be scary tight. But playing live is the best. It's really great to have a crowd's feedback.
Steve: We love meeting the fans. And I really love playing the actual concerts – being on stage and all that. It’s an incredible rush. But the rehearsals always take us away from what we’d rather be doing – which is recording.
What is a Glass Hammer live show like? Do you really manage to capture the feel of the albums, or is it a different experience?
Fred: It's different. We try and capture the arrangements from the albums to what degree we can but there's always a different energy live, tempos are different (some times too much!) and there's room to improvise a little. Again, if we had more time to play live we'd take more risks. As it is, we have to be pretty careful.
Steve: Adding the 150 member choirs to the material from The Inconsolable Secret actually topped the original recording I think. The live versions are probably closer to what we’d have preferred on the album itself. We did that for two shows, both of which are on DVDs (Live at Belmont and Live at The Tivoli).
Have you shared a stage with any of your heroes? I see you have performed with Rich Williams from the mighty Kansas.
Fred: That was fun. It all happened by accident. We never even met him until 5 minutes before we walked out on stage at NEARFest! Luckily, it went great. We've met quite a few of our musical heroes through the years but we haven't dragged any of them on stage yet!
Steve: Not to sound silly, but I’m proud to have shared the stage with the likes of Fred, Walter Moore, Susie Bogdanowicz, David Wallimann, Matt Mendians, Carl Groves and many of the others who we’ve worked with. They’re not ‘heroes’ per say, but I’m an admirer of each of them.
Are you planning a big tour on the back of Three Cheers For The Broken-Hearted? Any chance we’ll see you in the UK?
Steve: No US tour for certain. Beyond that, we’re waiting for the right promoter or the right opportunity. If there are any UK prog festivals that would like an appearance by Glass Hammer – we are easy to find! Shoot me an email! We’d love the chance to play the UK.
The track you've had included on the video game ‘Rock Band’...have you had any positive feedback from that – and any new fans coming your way?
Fred: Two tracks, Sleep On and Hyperbole. It hasn't launched yet, but we hear the beta-testers really loved playing them. We have hopes that we'll get a lot of new fans from the exposure, but we'll just have to wait and see. Rock Band Network is set to launch at the end of January and we'll be in the initial batch of new bands available. Bill Bruford's Earthworks is going to be in there too, so we have some great company!
Any question you love being asked that I’ve missed? If so, what’s the answer?
Fred: No, you've hit a lot of good ones!
What are you up to once you’ve finished answering these questions?
Fred: Off to the studio to record country and pop for other people, and then work on the remake of Inconsolable Secret.
Steve: Well, I have to run spell check on all of Fred’s answers. After that, it’s off to Toys-R-Us because my 7 year-old is turning 8! Musically speaking however, we’ll be working on that aforementioned remake, and hoping to get some time to write new material within the next few days.
Anything else you would like to mention?
Steve: Come join our forum at http://www.glasshammer.com/ or join our Facebook group here. That’s the easy way for your readers to find out what’s going on with GH. Fred and I are both active on these forums and are more than happy to answer questions and meet the fans; many of whom become friends.
There will be plenty of news to share in the coming months about our new project, as well as the work we’re doing on the reissue of “The Inconsolable Secret”.
Thanks again to Steve and Fred for their time. Their latest album, Three Cheers For The Broken-Hearted is available from CDbaby and other online retailers including iTunes.
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