You have to be a, "Jack of all trades" and it's hard to make it with one revenue stream," says Progressive Rock musician and violinist Joe Deninzon as he discussed being a diverse musician in today's climate, a new album and a CD/DVD set forthcoming from his band Stratospheerius. "For Joe and I both, this is a career and especially nowadays, things have changed so much where you don't just usually get lucky in one little band. You have to sort of do a million other things and everything spiders out to the next thing and you hope that everything sort of connects at some point in your career," added drummer Jason Gianni as the two of them shed some light on their September 28 show at The Debonair Music Hall in Teaneck, NJ and their September 30 show at Kennett Flash in Kennett Square, PA. as well as the paths which got them to where they are now.
Things are "Progressing" quite well these days for Joe Deninzon & Stratospheerius on both the band front and their personal music careers. Joe is on tour with legendary classic progressive rock act Kansas and Jason has spent time with projects such as "Rock of Ages," Queen Celebration, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Neal Morse Band and more. So, together, they and their band mates, guitarist Michelangelo Quirinale, bassist Paul Ranieri along with new addition Bill Hubauer on keyboards are ready to get back out on stage and show the masses what they've been putting together "Behind the scenes."
"We booked this show at The Debonair Music Hall for September 28 while I was on the road this summer touring with Kansas, so our last show together was at the Iridium back in May," began an excited Deninzon. "We've been working on a new album and we've been tracking and mixing the last few songs, planning the release and working on what the artwork is going to look like and videos and things like that. We've been doing that over the phone and through emails as well as preparing for the gigs we have coming up."
"Yeah," adds Gianni, "With Joe still on the road with Kansas which is going to be for a while, we are trying to wedge in Stratospheerius plans in between and we've been doing quite a bit of work behind the scenes getting the new record ready. Joe has put in a lot of time doing this double CD/DVD "Behind the Curtain (Live at ProgStock)" package that we have out now; we've been able to do quite a bit being at a distance from each other, it's been a good year and it will be nice to play a gig together again."
Putting out a new album, especially between hectic touring and gig schedules can be a daunting task but in today's technology driven world, some of the stress can be eliminated. One of the ways is to use recordings and email or some other transfer service to share tracks; something Deninzon says they prefer.
"The record is done, it's already tracked. We went in the studio at the beginning but then we just tracked the rest of the songs ourselves; we like working that way. We work out the songs in rehearsal and we all have our own home studios and it's a lot easier to record that way. So, we just add tracks and go back and forth and it works out. Rich Mouser is doing the mixing of the album. He is one of our favorite engineers on the planet and he has worked with Dream Theater and Tears For Fears. He is based out of L.A. and it's sounding beyond our wildest dreams; we can't wait for people to hear it; they've heard some of it because we've released some songs as singles but there is a whole other half that people have not heard that we're really excited about."
"Rich is predominantly Neal Morse's engineer," interjected Gianni. "He has mixed for everyone from Neal to Transatlantic and I had been playing with Neal Morse for a little bit and I introduced Rich to Joe and the band and it was a great relationship. I don't remember the first tune we had him do; I believe it was "Imposter." This record has been going at kind of a slow pace because we're making sure that we do this right and writing the music song by song. Rich has been involved from the beginning song by song instead of doing the whole record all at once and as Joe said, it's coming out just as we pictured it; everything Rich does is like gold. So, I think everyone is going to be very impressed when they hear the record as a whole."
"Up until recently, I was the primary writer but Jason and I have been co-writing a lot," continued Joe. "I'll bring in an idea and Jason will add a section that enhances the song that I didn't think about and we just kind of bounce back and forth. There is a 12-minute song that is pieced together from different sections we wrote; it's kind of like throwing a ball back and forth; here's something I came up with, well, here's something that will dovetail nicely off that; that's part of the process. Sometimes we write a five minute song and sometimes we write kind of an epic more progressive type of song but it can all work on one record I think."
Making progressive music is not something these gentlemen and their band mates take lightly but for Joe and Jason; it runs far deeper.
"I was always into Progressive Rock without kind of knowing it," laughed Gianni. "I grew up listening to Yes and Rush; my father had a couple of Kansas records and I started listening to them and it was just something that resonated with me. Years later, I realized that I liked music that was longer and more thought provoking, full of odd time meters; I think now, it has become more of a compositional thing for me. I listen to progressive music and I like the composing element of it even if it's not fully progressive as far as an extra long song or difficult to play; I love the chord structures and harmonies and lyrics that a lot of progressive composers end up coming up with. I like so much other music as well but to me, progressive music has always been kind of my mainstay since I was a kid. I was schooled in Classical music, I have two degrees in Classical and I think where a lot of my love of music comes from is a more arranged side of things; I'm a Jazz player too so, I like the improvisational aspect but I like the arrangement side of the compositional thing and that is why it has piqued my interest for so many years. "
"I grew up in a family of Classical musicians and I also fell in love with Rock 'n' Roll and later Jazz; progressive rock marries classical music with rock 'n' roll which are two things I love" said Deninzon. "I like the complexity of it and the challenge of playing it; it's funny, I wasn't consciously trying to be a progressive rock artist, that's just the music I was writing and that's the audience that was gravitating towards it. I realized, hey, these are my people (laughs); without setting out to do that on purpose, it just kind of progressed that way."
Let's face it, Progressive Rock isn't dominating the airwaves as it did in the early days of FM radio and through the mid-eighties but this doesn't deter the music's legions of fans from attending shows and supporting artists both old and new. Gianni has a viewpoint as to why some of the material "Resonates" and some, not so much."
"A lot of people want to write the next "Close To The Edge" but they don't have the compositional chops to do it. What makes great progressive music great is the 20-minute song where you don't notice 20-minutes has gone by and that's because every part grabs your attention. The melodies are so strong, it's so compelling as a piece of writing that you don't notice; if you find yourself zoning out thinking; when will this section be over? Then you know it's not a great song."
Music preferences and styles are all personal, we all unknowingly follow paths which we can not see at the time we are traveling them. Songs, events and general day to day life place us where we are meant to be through our choices or chance encounters and for Jason and Joe, their experiences are quite similar.
"Too many paths," laughed Gianni loudly. "Everything kind of spiders out from different things that you do, especially in the New York scene. You meet this one and that one knows this person and that leads to this; Neal Morse was a little bit separated from what I do here on the East Coast. I was working with Neal when Mike Portnoy was sort of in and out taking a break with a couple of other bands and Neal needed somebody to play for him when Portnoy was out on the road with the other bands. So, I filled in and played with Neal for a couple of years but Mike is now 100 percent committed to Neal so I've not, unfortunately, worked with Neal in a little bit but I was for a while and it was some of the best playing and memories of my life for sure. It came about when Neal announced on his fan page that he was holding auditions for an American band. The only caveat was that the drummer would be a sub for Mike Portnoy, it wouldn't be a regular situation but that was actually better for me because I had my hand in so many different things. So, I sent my stuff in, he picked me out of I don't know how many people but five people ended up auditioning and I won the spot after going down there. All of the other projects from the Steely Dan project to Broadway, to different things that I work on, again, it's just a lot of people you meet along the way. Joe is the same way, we meet people in certain circumstances and then you hear about an opening and then you submit something like an electronic press kit or a video and they say, hey, any interest in sitting in or whatever and it kind of goes from there."
"Tracing the threads of my life as a musician, all the different people you meet; one thing kind of leads to another," continued Joe as he explained how he found himself center stage with Kansas. "I had been going to festivals like ProgStock and Stratospheerius had been playing in that world for about six or seven years and I got to know Tom Brislin through that world. I played the Cruise To The Edge and he was there, we hung out, I've heard his band, he's heard Stratospheerius and so he knows about me and that I'm in that scene. Kansas had been looking for understudies because during COVID some band members had gotten sick and they had to cancel shows. So, they created a new rule that everyone has to have an understudy so that they never have to cancel a show and that was the original call I received. Then David Ragsdale had some personal health related issues that prevented him from touring and over the course of three months, I was in touch with Tom and learned the music in case I had to step in and it turned out that I did have to step in and I was ready when the time came. So, that's how it came about but more so through my friendship with Tom over the last few years. The lesson I've learned is to just put stuff out. Write the music you're passionate about and make videos and put them out there because you never know who is going to see it. Especially now, it's easier than ever. I think part of what clinched it for me was when they saw our video for "Imposter" because it was very Kansas influenced. I wasn't consciously thinking that this might come about, I was just writing music I love and putting it out there just because I was passionate about it and if you keep doing that, you never know. Sometimes the universe has a way of lining up for you; follow your heart, that's what I would tell people."
Live albums and DVDs require sifting through hours of recordings and videos; so what led to the decision to release this box set and will they be returning for yet another year of ProgStock?
"I think they changed things up; we've played there at ProgStock four times," laughed Deninzon. "They are our dear friends and we don't expect them to invite us every year; they need to change things up but I'll be playing Saturday night with Dave Kerzner Band this year. I usually end up playing with somebody in some capacity there every year but this year Stratospheerius is not performing there. We do have people like Rachel Flowers on our live DVD and she's also on the new album as well. The DVD decision was made because when you play ProgStock on the main stage, they give you an eight camera shoot and a multi-track recording. We've wanted to do a live record for a long time and what a great opportunity because we had really good lighting and sound and a beautiful area where it was filmed. So, we had the raw materials to make a good live record; it took a while to put it all together because it was from two different years but we finally got it done. So, it's two-hours of music and we're really proud of the way it came out. Friday September 22 we released the video for "Frame By Frame" which we're not releasing as a single because it's already out on Spotify within the album. We're releasing the video just to continue to whet people's appetites for the DVD and we want people to check it out because, as I said, we are really proud of it."
Tonight's performance will be the first for the band as a unit since May at the Iridium in New York City; so what will it feel like to headline after several months off and what can we expect?
"I guess you can say we are co-headlining," stated Deninzon, "The backstory is, through Jason's experiences with Neal Morse, we got to know his keyboard player, Bill Hubauer who has been recording on most of the songs on the new album. We invited him to play with us that night and his band will play the first set. His band is called, We Came From Space and they are based out of the Pittsburgh, PA area. So, they're going to open the show and share the bill and at Kennett Flash they are doing that as well and we're gonna try and premier a new song that we haven't played before; hopefully we can put that together."
"We have a tendency to have an overall framework of a set and then we insert some different songs that maybe we haven't played in a while or maybe try something we haven't done in a little bit but for the most part, a lot of it is going to be the new record," concurred Gianni. "We've been lucky enough to have people who have come out to see us several times and they will probably see some things that we've done before but for the new people, I think they are going to have a good experience hearing the new stuff live for sure because it has been very emotional to play live, very challenging of course but very cool too."
To discover more about Joe Deninzon & Stratospheerius, please visit https://joedeninzon.com/stratospheerius/
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
