OZ KNOZZ
Questions asked by Jon Wilde, added to Rock Realms 15th December 2011.
Vintage U.S. rockers Oz Knozz have just released their 3rd album in 42 years, the excellent "True Believer". I caught up with drummer Marty Naul to find out what makes these so great.
Hi MArty, hope you guys are well?
Marty: Hi, yes thanks, we’re all doing fine!
Does it really feel like Oz Knozz started back in the late 1960’s? That’s a whole lifetime ago!
Marty: (Laughs) In one respect it seems like it was long ago, but in another it seems like only yesterday. Oz Knozz has had many Line-Up changes over the years and we had shut the band down entirely from 1987 to about 1996, when we decided to give things another go, but to take the pressure off of ourselves this time around. Because we did that, it has been lots more fun, especially since our music is being played around the world now.
What was the musical world like back then for you guys, and who or what were your original inspirations for creating the band?
Marty: Well, the musical world in the United States was much, much different from the way it is now. Back then, progressive bands like Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and others were making the charts on Mainstream FM Radio. That doesn’t happen in the US any more. Since Oz Knozz started out as a trio, albeit with a different drummer, we were heavily influenced by bands such as ELP, Trapeze, Cream, etc.
Did you originally see the band heading all the way to superstardom, or were your aspirations a little more down to earth?
Marty: I think we all had the dream of becoming “Rock Stars”, but the reality was, we were in Houston Texas, which was pretty much a musical backwater. If anyone wanted to be successful they had to leave and gain their fame elsewhere, and then the local radio and media would pay attention to you. We didn’t really realize this back then when we started, but it became more and more apparent to us. We never quit trying, and we did tour extensively, both as an opener for National Acts and as Headliner for some of our own shows.
We made it farther “up the ladder” than most other local bands, for a time during the late 70’s and early 80’s, Duane, Bill, and then-guitarist Rick Wheeler owned a Sound and Lighting company, and we would tour with a 30 foot truck that was chock-full of gear! We even toured with our own stage for a while, and had an eight or nine man road crew! We didn’t make much money with so much overhead, but we learned how to tour and I think that experience was invaluable.
What sort of music did you originally play, and how would you say that compares to the sound of the current iteration of the band?
Marty: As I said, back in the early days, the band was a trio, and we were heavily influenced by the trios of the day. When I joined the band in May of 1971, Duane and Bill were just starting to get into a really experimental period. At that time, Bill played a 6-string guitar, but he played it through a guitar octave synthesizer, which lowered the sound of his E-string and A-string an octave, so he could actually play rhythm guitar and bass at the same time. When it came time for him to play a lead, he hit a footswitch which cut out his octave synth and cut in a keyboard bass that Duane had on his keyboard stack! Then when the guitar lead was over, Bill stomped the footswitch again, cutting out the keyboard bass and cutting the guitar synth back in, and this was in 1971 and 1972!
The original stuff we played sometimes really got out in “La-La Land” and I’m sure the audience wondered what the heck we thought we were doing! We experimented with odd time changes, meters, different keys, and I’m sure some of our stuff sounded just awful, but we were learning the craft of song writing, and it got better! We also experimented with reworking cover tunes, and a couple of them come to mind. We did a cover of “Norwegian Wood” by The Beatles with ELP overtones, and we did a rocked out version of “Take Five”, the old Jazz classic by Dave Brubeck, so there wasn’t much that was off-limits for us in those days. Today, I guess our music is much more structured, but I sort of miss those early days when we just played anything we wanted.
What level of musical success and recognition have the band and individual members had over the years?
Marty: Well, I’ll start with the band first. We did release our first album on vinyl back in 1975, the title of the album was “Ruff Mix”, and it was aptly named! However, that album just won’t die, and it has become somewhat of a Cult Classic! As I mentioned earlier, we did quite a bit of touring, opening for bands like Supertramp, Kansas, Peter Frampton, Bloodrock, Mark Farner, Judas Priest, and the list goes on! When we were still a trio, Duane and I attended the same University where we both majored in music, Duane being good enough that he became the Student Teacher of the Lab Band, which consisted of 20 or 25 people, horns, guitar, bass, piano, etc. The cool thing about that is Duane would chart out Oz Knozz tunes for the Lab Band to learn and when we did our concerts, it was with Oz Knozz, playing Oz Knozz music backed up by a 25 piece horn band, and we got graded on the performances!
Individually, most of us have continuously played most of our lives. Duane is in huge demand in the Houston music community, as much for his Jazz Trumpet playing as for his keyboard skills. Robert-O also majored in music, and is now a teacher of music in the public school system here in Houston. He and I have also collaborated on many other bands over the years, and currently have a side project named Midnight Circus that we have worked with off and on since the 1990’s. Milton has had several projects including Funk, Salsa and Jazz bands over the years. Bill has chosen not to play music outside the context of Oz Knozz, but he has kept busy working as Crew Chief for a Top Fuel Drag Racing Team for the last few years. As I mentioned before, I work with Robert in Midnight Circus and some other projects. I have done some recording over the years, even doing a country CD back in about 1998! Needless to say, that was a very different discipline for me!
When did you start work on the excellent new album “True Believer”? Was it an easy or difficult album to create?
Marty: We started preparing for “True Believer” in January of 2010, as there were a few songs that neither Robert nor Milton had even heard before! We started recording the basic tracks in the middle of March 2010 and I think we did the basic tracks for all 10 songs in about three days. The process slowed down quite a bit after that, as there is a lot of multi-tracking and over dubbing on the album. I won’t say it was difficult, but it was tedious at times, because of the complexity of some of the music and the way we wanted everything to sound. The song “Kings and Treasures” has something like 142 tracks on it, and “Always There” has 151! So, it just took time, lots and lots of time to get things right.
How do you go about writing songs? Talk us through a typical example.
Marty: Ha ha! Well, what usually happens is someone, usually Duane, but not always, brings an idea for a song and presents it at rehearsal. It could be a complete song, or it could just be an idea or two. No matter what it is, the song, or idea goes into the band one way, and gets folded, spindled, and mutilated before it comes out the other end! Everyone has the ability to make suggestions, and we try all of them to see what works and what doesn’t. However, the original writer of the song maintains veto power over everything that everybody is doing.
For instance, if Duane has a song and he wants a certain drum part played at a certain point and I disagree with him, his decision takes precedence because it’s his tune! I’ll have to say, that has only happened a couple of times in all the years we have been working together.
Some songs are just “jam” tunes, they sort of fall together by themselves. The song “Fox Paws” comes to mind. That song really takes you back to the roots of Oz Knozz, as it was conceived over time during live performances. Someone (we give Duane the credit, but I think Bill may have actually come up with the idea) came up with the original riff at a live gig when we were running short of songs and still had some time left in the set. We just sort of built on it at gig after gig, keeping some ideas and throwing others out until we have what you hear on the CD. Incidentally the name “Fox Paws” is a play on the French term “Faux Pas”, which I think means “by accident”, which is how that song happened!
Do you do anything special in the studio or mixing desk to get the Oz Knozz sound?
Marty: What we did was to sort of marry new technology with old-school technology. We recorded “True Believer” at Sound Arts Recording Studios in Houston, using ProTools, but we ran everything through their analog mixing desk, which just happens to be the next to last British Trident 80-8 mixing desk ever built! The other really cool thing is Jeff Wells, who was the owner of Sound Arts at the time, was a huge collector of old gear, and it’s my understanding that when Abbey Road Studios upgraded a bunch of their gear a few years back, Jeff ended up with a bunch of the outboard equipment, and we got to use some of that gear! Tragically, Jeff passed away in April of this year, and never heard the finished product.
Brian Baker, who was our brilliant engineer on the “True Believer” project, has kept the studio open, which is what Jeff would have wanted. I’m sure that we would seriously look at going back into Sound Arts for any future projects. Brian was really easy to work with, and now he knows how we like to work in the studio. He was a very good fit with the band.
Do you have any favourite moments on the album?
Marty: There are so many things I like about the album, it’s kind of hard to decide, but I guess my favourite personal moment is the middle section of “Kings and Treasures”. That section is only about 2 ½ minutes long, but it took Duane and myself a couple of weeks to record it! The really cool thing for me is that I got to play all manner of percussion instruments on that section. If you listen closely, you’ll hear Tympani, Concert Bass Drum, Tubular Bells, Antiphonal Concert Snare Drums, Tenor Drum, Field Snare and Concert Cymbals, all played by yours truly! That sure was fun!
Who did the brilliant artwork?
Marty: A local Houston artist by the name of Dave Foreman (http://www.rebelriotconcepts.com/) did the artwork for us. He had done a CD cover for some friends of ours, and they recommended him. Dave not only did the front cover, but he did the back, the inside panels, and he did the art on the disc itself. Dave worked VERY hard at creating this , the cover art that you see is actually version 10.1!
Do you guys have any plans to tour?
Marty: We were planning to tour the UK and the rest of Europe in the late summer of 2011, but the CD needed to be out by March or April, and that didn’t happen. Now that the CD is out and seems to be gaining ground, we are definitely reconsidering coming over in the summer of 2012.
As far as I can tell, Oz Knozz have recorded three albums in 42 years. When can we expect the next one?
Marty: Hmmm, at our present speed, that would make it about the year 2027! Seriously, if “True Believer” gains the success that I think it will, I would expect us to be turning out something every two or three years. I wouldn’t look for anything faster than that, we just don’t work that quickly. Coming up with material isn’t a problem , it’s getting in the studio and recording it and making everything as good as we know how to make it.
Any question you love being asked that I’ve missed? If so, what’s the answer?
Marty: Hmmmm, I guess that would be people asking why we’re still doing this after so many years and relatively little success up to this point. My answer would be this; We’re all still having fun doing this. It wasn’t fun for a while in the 80’s and that resulted in the band’s break-up from 1987 to 1996. When we decided to put the band back together, we promised ourselves that we would not put any pressure on ourselves to “make it” like we did the first time round. This time, when it ceases to be fun, we will quit doing it. So far, I’m still enjoying myself and I think the other guys are too! The other reason is that, we have found that we still have an incredible fan-base out there, and when people find out Oz Knozz is still alive and well and making music, the reaction is priceless! We get emails all the time from people who were fans back in the 70’s and 80’s that just found out we’re still around, and those people just can’t believe it. You can’t put a price on that kind of fan loyalty, but you can continue to make good music for those fans, and that’s really what it’s all about!
What are you up to once you’ve finished answering these questions?
Marty: (Laughs), I’m going to bed! Don’t you see how late it is?
Anything else you’d like to mention?
Marty: I’d just like to thank all of our fans who have stuck with us all these years, and I’d like to thank all the people in the music business today who are finally giving us the recognition we’ve wanted for all these years. I would especially like to thank our Promoter and Publicist, Nicky Baldrian of Two Side Moon Promotions. Without all his hard work for the last three years or so, no one over here would ever have heard of Oz Knozz. And I’d like to thank you Jon, for giving me this opportunity to talk about the band a little!
Artist's website(s): Oz Knozz | MySpace | Facebook
