Shaw*Blades Press Release

Shaw Blades: Warner Bros. Media Information

Reprinted with permission from Bullet Entertainment

It must have been quite a sight: Jack Blades and Tommy Shaw, accustomed to the nightly roar of 20,000 fans, recording an album in the sunlit serenity of a country cowbarn-turned-studio, where the occasional stray dog might wander in to pee. For the two veterans of megabands like Night Ranger, Styx and Damn Yankees, the pastoral setting may have been atypical. But HALLUCINATION, Shaw Blades' Warner Bros. debut, only confirms the sweeping musical instincts of these two master songwriters and performers.

With their band Damn Yankees on a one-year hiatus, Jack and Tommy were anxious to explore their more off-trail musical ideas. "We wanted to try something we'd never done before," says bassist/singer Blades, at whose Sonoma county spread the album was cut. "Up here, we could experiment and not worry about the clock ticking." To help capture the mood, the two enlisted the aid of co-producer Don Gehman (R.E.M., John Mellencamp) who brought a rustic funkiness to the proceedings.

The results may come as a surprise to long-time fans of the duo's more familiar hard-rocking style. HALLUCINATION does recall the acerbic wit of Blades' work with Night Ranger and the social skepticism from Shaw's tenure with Styx. Yet Shaw Blades struck out on a new path with the richly melodic collaboration.

Not only was the album written and co-produced by Shaw and Blades, but it was almost entirely performed by them as well. Former Journey stalwart Steven Smith and Damn Yankees colleague Michael Cartellone platooned on drums, but otherwise, this was the Jack and Tommy show. Blades played bass, harmonica and some acoustic guitar; Shaw handled guitars, mandolin, pedal steel and keyboards; the two shared all lead vocals, harmonies and percussion. "Truth is, we're very cheap," laughs Shaw. "Don would say, 'Tommy, go play the organ,' and I would, figuring sooner or later we'd get a real organ player. We just never did."

"We're big Beatles fans," adds Jack. "On a lot of their songs, there's often one or two guitars and the rest is tambourine, shakers and bongos. So we figured, if it was good enough for them, why can't we do it too?" Indeed, without treading on blasphemous ground, many of the eleven tracks on HALLUCINATION do draw inspiration from classic Lennon-McCartney song structure and arrangements. Matching the timeless setting of the barn, Shaw Blades also relied on vintage instruments, from Jack's 1952 original Fender Precision bass and Tommy's classic mid-70s Les Paul, to a marvelously jangly acoustic Gibson with an electric guitar neck. "We even trotted out an old two-inch tape machine," says Jack. "Old gear, old everything."

From the opening title track, Shaw.Blades establish their boundaries: wall o' guitar (acoustic and/or electric) and pristine harmonies, leavened with the pure joy of music making. A cynical survey of the social and cultural landscape, "My Hallucination" is one of the albums most hard-rocking tunes. Things settle down with "I'll Always Be With You," an acoustic love letter sung by Jack, with an expansive middle section. "It came together in just a few minutes," recalls Tommy, who plays dobro on the track.

Come To Be My Friend" begins with a snarling blues intro and moves into a hard boogie with a coy lead riff by Tommy. The song takes a swipe at the phenomenon of therapist-as-confessor. "People these days pay a shrink $110 to listen to them for an hour," notes Jack. "In the old days, you could go to your best friend and say, 'Man, do I feel bummed.' We need to get back to that." The beautiful Caribbean flavored "Don't Talk To Me Anymore" follows, exploring one of the album's recurring themes of regret and recrimination in relationships.

"Stumble In" gets three or more guitars going in one of HALLUCINATION's most buoyant tracks. "It's the kind of song you roll down the window and sing bad car parts with," says Tommy. The hymn-like "Blue Continental" is a reverential paean to the mythic American open road, while "Down That Highway," with its lilting Appalachian feel, takes a long look back. Tommy pulls off a tasty slide guitar solo here.

The crafty "How You Gonna Get Used To This" is another of the album's epics, with sly Jaggeresque harmonies and sublime guitar shading by Shaw. As the only all-acoustic song on the record, "The Night Goes On" is one of the most intimate and reflective tracks on HALLUCINATION, while "I Can't Live Without You" provides a thunderous climactic moment. "That song came straight out of experience," says Jack. "We all get hung up in living and making money. Once there was a time when these responsibilities didn't matter so much. So what happened to our lives? The song should be subtitled 'The Yuppie Blues.'" The album ends with, appropriately, "The End."

The road to HALLUCINATION began in the bars and haunts of the far west and the deep south. Alabama born and bred, Tommy Shaw cut his teeth on local Montgomery R&B bands before moving to Chicago to join MS Funk. There, in 1976, he was asked to join Styx, which had released several prior albums to little fanfare. Shaw's trenchant guitar style and songwriting skills provided the fuel that propelled Styx to international stardom. Albums like Crystal Ball, The Grand Illusion, Cornerstone, Paradise Theater and Kilroy Was Here sold in the many millions, led to SRO tours and smash hit singles like "Come Sail Away," "Babe," "Mr. Roboto," "Don't Let It End," and Tommy's own "Fooling Yourself," "Renegade," and "Blue Collar Man."

California native Jack Blades took a similar route. In the mid-70's, he founded a Bay Area funk band called Rubicon, which gained some local notoriety. In time, the band morphed into a new ensemble, Night Ranger, which prominently featured Jack's gritty vocals and sharp-edged songwriting. The band won the support of the late great Bill Graham, and soon Night Ranger was opening for the likes of the Doobie Brothers, Santana and Judas Priest. The band's metal power pop found enthusiastic audiences and headline status, thanks to platinum-selling albums like Dawn Patrol, Midnight Madness, 7 Wishes and Big Life, and hits like "Sister Christian," Jack's own "Don't Tell Me You Love Me," Rock In America," "Four In The Morning," and "When You Close Your Eyes."

The two had long admired each other's work by the time they joined forces in 1989 to form Damn Yankees, along with rock legend Ted Nugent and power drummer Michael Cartellone. The band enjoyed immediate success with their double-platinum self-titled debut Warner Bros. album, chart-topping premier single "High Enough" and a fifteen-month megatour of the planet. With the release of the band's hit 1992 platinum follow-up Don't Tread, the band found the album's title track and video used extensively in network coverage of the Olympic Games in Barcelona, and they later headed back on the road for the most exhaustive tour yet.

That's when Damn Yankees decided to take a little time off. Jack and Tommy seized the time to plunge into their own project. "When you're in a band, you're around certain people twenty-four hours a day," says Jack. "After a while, you either really get along, or you wring each other's necks. Tommy and I just clicked right away. We always enjoy creating together. It's never a struggle."

So, making fine music, whether before millions on the world's concert stages, or just for themselves in the solitude of a northern California barn, remains the once and future thrill for Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades. "Between us we've made about 20 albums and sold over 25 million," says Jack. "Eventually, you reach a point where you just want to do something from the heart." And that's no hallucination.

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