Interview with Volaré – Exposé Magazine
Issue No. 14, Winter 1998.
Written by Warren Dale. Photography by Linda Shulman
I just barely caught up with Volaré after their very exciting set during ProgDay 97. They were very busy, not only helping out Finisterre with borrowed equipment (Patrick Strawser lent his Rhodes, analog synths, and vintage keys rigs, and Steve Hatch (guitar) lent his E-bow), but Pat and Brian Donohoe (drums) very capably sat in with French TV, and then Brian played with Glass Hammer during their respective sets. Elated after the warm reception the Prog Day audience gave their great performance Pat, Steve, Brian and Richard Mark Kesler (bass and sax) were in the perfect mood to talk about their music and their history as a band.
Pat: (motioning to my finneus gauge tee) Nice Shirt! I still haven't seen them yet; I'd really like to - I hear they're great.
You guys put on a great performance yourselves today. I really enjoyed it. The crowd seemed to especially like 'Blitz' - it was the song that received the most applause. Great soloing, Pat, on the analog synths - it was really cool.
All: Thanks!
You guys made a big splash at the Eclectic Electric Event (July 96) but that was the first time most of us had heard anything about you. Have you been together in various forms for a while?
Pat: I meet Steve in late Nov. of 93. He answered an ad I put up...
Steve: ...illegally...
Pat: Enough tragedy (to follow one band)...
Mark: Tell your British readers, ...we're very sorry...
Steve: We'll send you a card.
Mark: Yeah! No kidding!
Brian, you sat in for Walter (Moore, drummer for Glass Hammer) when he played acoustic guitar during their set today. (Later that day Peter Renfro dubbed Brian the 'Most Valuable Player' of ProgDay 97 - he got around...)
Brian: Yeah. We have a lot to thank the Glass Hammer guys, Steve (DeArqe) and Fred (Schendel) for. We recorded (our CD) at Sound Resources in Chattanooga owned by Glass Hammer. We think Fred has one of the great set of ears in Progressive Rock.
What happened to your Cellist (Rob Sutherland)?
Pat: He went to Oxford. He's a Rhodes Scholar actually. Well, really. we didn't agree musically with him on much.
Brian: He wasn't a rock and roller, he is a Classical musician. He wasn't cut out for it.
Mark: He left on good terms; there was a mutual understanding. This was a separation that was inevitable.
Pat: ...on the University of Georgia campus, so it's been a while.
Steve: I saw the ad before it was torn down two days later.
Pat: The three of us (including Brian) got together in February of 94. I guess the first incarnation was that March when we found Jon (-Fredrik Nielsen) our first bass player.
Brian: We tooled around locally; we basically sounded like a bad funk band. We took the summer off then got back together that Fall of 94 and kind of got serious. Jon was with us for another year maybe before our second bassist Dave Denkman joined us. It was really not until probably Fall of 95 that we started getting good gigs and real good tunes we liked a lot and we took ourselves more seriously. We found a cellist, then an another bassist, Mark, who plays saxophone also. Then we somehow nailed the Eclectic thing. I wrote (Steven Roberts) a letter when I read in a magazine that it was going on.
Richard M. Kesler
Brian: Yeah, he was going to leave anyway.
Pat: His main contribution was on last year's five song tape, (in an announcer type voice) which can still be purchased from Volare at P.O. Box 591. Winder, GA 30680 (laughter)
Mark was a nice addition on bass; he's a fantastic sax player besides. How did you find him?
Brian: How did we find him?
Pat: I meet Mark and Rob about two years ago or so in a Jazz class at UGA. Rob actually played trombone in the class.
Steve: And he sucked!
Pat: He was a terrible trombone player, but he a fine cellist.
Steve: He just couldn't play a variety of styles.
Mark: We got a lot of help from Mike Sary from French TV on that one. He really help hook us up with that gig.
Brian, you and Pat played during French TV's set today...
Brian: Yeah. Contrary, to what the program says....
Steve: The program's wrong; it also says we still have a cellist..
Brian: Their drummer lives in Nashville and couldn't practice with them. There was also some question about whether the guitar player was going to be able to make it, so Pat and I tried to learn as much as we could. It wasn't quite enough but hit it pretty close.
Yeah I think it came off very well. You fooled us.
Pat: (Laughter) Well that's good
I didn't think Louisville and Athens were that close?
Brian: They're not and yet this is the fourth show Volaré has played with French TV. They came down to Athens, then we both played at Orion Studios in Baltimore together.
Steve: They're "festival partners". This is also the second festival where some kind of ot disaster of some sort has happened.
Brian: The death of Princess Diana today and on the same day of the Eclectic gig was the Centennial Park bombing.
(" Twilight Zone Show" Theme sung.)
Pat: I was intrigued because I overheard him asking the teacher if he could bring his cello into class. Who the hell plays cello in a jazz class? I thought it's got to be better than his trombone playing. So, anyway, I called him.
Brian: Mark was in the same class playing sax.
Pat: Yeah. That's another twist to the story. There was another project we were involved in.
Mark: An interim band.
Pat: That's right, that I'm not at liberty to really discuss, 'cause it's kind of embarrassing.
Steve: (as a cough. hand over his mouth) Cover Band!! (Laughter)
Pat: We recruited Mark for that job in Fall of 95. About February 96 David left and I asked Mark if he'd like to play with Volare'. It took him about two weeks to earn the stuff and that was that.
Mark: A long road to get here.
So you guys play in (cough) other bands, what do you do to make money?
Pat: I just just got out of school about 2-3 weeks ago. I'm in a couple of other music projects, but I don't make any money as of yet. Right now I'm volunteering at the Food Bank.
Steve: He's earning Karma
Pat: I've got a BA...
Mark: (with a heavy Southern drawl) B-S! (Laughter) He's a BMF besides.
Pat: ...a BA in Sociology. so.. well... I don't have any experience to do really anything, but I'm looking into Social work.
Steve: I do contract archeology work now. I've worked at a lab the past two years doing analysis. I'm about to embark on extensive field work. Contract archeology is really fickle in this part of the world - the Southeast US. Coming up, as a matter at fact, I got a job on Bug Island in Virginia.
Bring repellent!
Steve: Actually, the first thing the guy asked me was "You're not particularly allergic to poison ivy are you?" (Cautiously) "No." (Laughter)
Brian: I am a professional locksmith by day for the past couple of years and play other music
Steve: (whispers, with a raspy) ...at night! Rock music!!!
Mark: I teach Elementary music including saxophone down in Hinesville.
Brian: He's was actually a saxophone education mogul these days.
Steve: (Muttering) Ahhh! Sax education.
Mark: Yeah. right!
You guys are all very young, comparatively, I'm amazed that you've been able to conglomerate so many of the older vintage prog styles: Canterbury East Coast Prog, and 70s Fusion, into a real cool mixture. How did you guys stumble upon your sound?
Brian: It took us a while. Basically, we had a really funky bass player at first so everything started out sounding like that for a while. Pat, one of the band's composers, embarked on a Fusion odyssey in his listening habits, I became a better drummer I guess, and Steve, the other composer, his tastes started to branch out into the more bizarre. It took a while. There was a few early song that were OK, but our compositions didn't really fall into full swing until the time we did the tape (June '96).
Pat: Yeah. That's when it improved the most. It started getting good around the time Jon left. The Summer of 95 we didn't have a bass player for three or four months but that's when we composed our first three good songs...
Steve: ...without killing each other, somehow.
Brian: It was a slow progression or evolution of what we were listening to, and what we could already play, falling together. We get a lot of Canterbury comparisons. In fact there's going to be a sticker on the CD saying (as if reading copy) "Essential to fans of National Health" or something. Hopefully when people see us they hear the heavier stuff the more bizarre, the more dissonant, that we incorporate into our sound.
So you've been playing in Athens regularly? How often do you play live?
Pat: About once a month
Brian: Athens has got a lot of clubs; an amazing number of bars per capita. There's always a place to play.
Mark: Athens is not necessarily a "hot-bed" of progressive music, but its very open minded to a wide variety of styles. We're accepted.
Steve: There's plenty of freaks in town to come to our shows. I mean we're weird enough, but... (laughter) For example, there's was one guy having some kind of spasm somewhere in the room. We noticed him during our show and he wound up on our video tape. (whisper pointing to the imaginary screen) Hey, what's that?
Mark: (dramatically, pointing to the imaginary 'hero') "It's Spasm Guy!" (laughter) Let's not forget "Intense Guy!"
Steve: And the guy that would shout: (in a disturbed voice) "That's for me to know and you to find out!!"
Brian: A barrage of unusual characters. (Agreement.) But really, anyone who likes instrumental Progressive/Fusion could find something about us to like. A lot of variety to please a lot of folks. The CD has ten new songs even stronger than the ones on the demo tape.
But unlike a 101 of Fusion its not improv-oriented. You don't play a head then go oft forever playing solos; there's all kinds of structural and meter changes.
Pat: Yeah. An example is Steve's three part song programmed as separate tracks spread across the CD (One Minute of Thought..., ...in two seconds of time... and ...(Incomplete, Broken, and Abstract)). Today we played them back to back - a total of 18 minutes.
Brian: (with a British accent) A jazz odyssey.
What's the next step for Volaré now that you've got the CD coming out on Laser's Edge.
Brian: We're going to cross our fingers and see how well the CD is received I think we're going to be less active on the live circuit at home. We'll keep our ears open for other festival around and big steps like that. We'll see if there's enough interest to do another recording. We got some stuff that could be in the pipeline. Just a wait-and-see attitude, basically.
Pat: For the time being we're going to take a little bit of a break. Hopefully continuing to go off on various directions, and growing more as musicians.
Postscript: Since ProgDay the boys have continued being very, very busy: The Volaré CD has been released on Laser's Edge; Brian has been recording and gigging with French TV; Pat played keys on four tracks recorded by the members of 'Always Almost' (formerly called 'Still') for a future release; Brian and Steve both plan to record with label mates 'Somnambulist' for their upcoming CD (recording early next year) and are creating more experimental Cunneiform-esque material (using tapes and samples) for some unnamed project. Rest assured that the Volaré boys plan to continue playing and recording as a unit. I for one can't wait to hear what they come up with next.
Copyright 1998 Exposé Magazine
Pat: (motioning to my finneus gauge tee) Nice Shirt! I still haven't seen them yet; I'd really like to - I hear they're great.
You guys put on a great performance yourselves today. I really enjoyed it. The crowd seemed to especially like 'Blitz' - it was the song that received the most applause. Great soloing, Pat, on the analog synths - it was really cool.
All: Thanks!
You guys made a big splash at the Eclectic Electric Event (July 96) but that was the first time most of us had heard anything about you. Have you been together in various forms for a while?
Pat: I meet Steve in late Nov. of 93. He answered an ad I put up...
Steve: ...illegally...
Pat: Enough tragedy (to follow one band)...
Mark: Tell your British readers, ...we're very sorry...
Steve: We'll send you a card.
Mark: Yeah! No kidding!
Brian, you sat in for Walter (Moore, drummer for Glass Hammer) when he played acoustic guitar during their set today. (Later that day Peter Renfro dubbed Brian the 'Most Valuable Player' of ProgDay 97 - he got around...)
Brian: Yeah. We have a lot to thank the Glass Hammer guys, Steve (DeArqe) and Fred (Schendel) for. We recorded (our CD) at Sound Resources in Chattanooga owned by Glass Hammer. We think Fred has one of the great set of ears in Progressive Rock.
What happened to your Cellist (Rob Sutherland)?
Pat: He went to Oxford. He's a Rhodes Scholar actually. Well, really. we didn't agree musically with him on much.
Brian: He wasn't a rock and roller, he is a Classical musician. He wasn't cut out for it.
Mark: He left on good terms; there was a mutual understanding. This was a separation that was inevitable.
Pat: ...on the University of Georgia campus, so it's been a while.
Steve: I saw the ad before it was torn down two days later.
Pat: The three of us (including Brian) got together in February of 94. I guess the first incarnation was that March when we found Jon (-Fredrik Nielsen) our first bass player.
Brian: We tooled around locally; we basically sounded like a bad funk band. We took the summer off then got back together that Fall of 94 and kind of got serious. Jon was with us for another year maybe before our second bassist Dave Denkman joined us. It was really not until probably Fall of 95 that we started getting good gigs and real good tunes we liked a lot and we took ourselves more seriously. We found a cellist, then an another bassist, Mark, who plays saxophone also. Then we somehow nailed the Eclectic thing. I wrote (Steven Roberts) a letter when I read in a magazine that it was going on.
Richard M. Kesler
Brian: Yeah, he was going to leave anyway.
Pat: His main contribution was on last year's five song tape, (in an announcer type voice) which can still be purchased from Volare at P.O. Box 591. Winder, GA 30680 (laughter)
Mark was a nice addition on bass; he's a fantastic sax player besides. How did you find him?
Brian: How did we find him?
Pat: I meet Mark and Rob about two years ago or so in a Jazz class at UGA. Rob actually played trombone in the class.
Steve: And he sucked!
Pat: He was a terrible trombone player, but he a fine cellist.
Steve: He just couldn't play a variety of styles.
Mark: We got a lot of help from Mike Sary from French TV on that one. He really help hook us up with that gig.
Brian, you and Pat played during French TV's set today...
Brian: Yeah. Contrary, to what the program says....
Steve: The program's wrong; it also says we still have a cellist..
Brian: Their drummer lives in Nashville and couldn't practice with them. There was also some question about whether the guitar player was going to be able to make it, so Pat and I tried to learn as much as we could. It wasn't quite enough but hit it pretty close.
Yeah I think it came off very well. You fooled us.
Pat: (Laughter) Well that's good
I didn't think Louisville and Athens were that close?
Brian: They're not and yet this is the fourth show Volaré has played with French TV. They came down to Athens, then we both played at Orion Studios in Baltimore together.
Steve: They're "festival partners". This is also the second festival where some kind of ot disaster of some sort has happened.
Brian: The death of Princess Diana today and on the same day of the Eclectic gig was the Centennial Park bombing.
(" Twilight Zone Show" Theme sung.)
Pat: I was intrigued because I overheard him asking the teacher if he could bring his cello into class. Who the hell plays cello in a jazz class? I thought it's got to be better than his trombone playing. So, anyway, I called him.
Brian: Mark was in the same class playing sax.
Pat: Yeah. That's another twist to the story. There was another project we were involved in.
Mark: An interim band.
Pat: That's right, that I'm not at liberty to really discuss, 'cause it's kind of embarrassing.
Steve: (as a cough. hand over his mouth) Cover Band!! (Laughter)
Pat: We recruited Mark for that job in Fall of 95. About February 96 David left and I asked Mark if he'd like to play with Volare'. It took him about two weeks to earn the stuff and that was that.
Mark: A long road to get here.
So you guys play in (cough) other bands, what do you do to make money?
Pat: I just just got out of school about 2-3 weeks ago. I'm in a couple of other music projects, but I don't make any money as of yet. Right now I'm volunteering at the Food Bank.
Steve: He's earning Karma
Pat: I've got a BA...
Mark: (with a heavy Southern drawl) B-S! (Laughter) He's a BMF besides.
Pat: ...a BA in Sociology. so.. well... I don't have any experience to do really anything, but I'm looking into Social work.
Steve: I do contract archeology work now. I've worked at a lab the past two years doing analysis. I'm about to embark on extensive field work. Contract archeology is really fickle in this part of the world - the Southeast US. Coming up, as a matter at fact, I got a job on Bug Island in Virginia.
Bring repellent!
Steve: Actually, the first thing the guy asked me was "You're not particularly allergic to poison ivy are you?" (Cautiously) "No." (Laughter)
Brian: I am a professional locksmith by day for the past couple of years and play other music
Steve: (whispers, with a raspy) ...at night! Rock music!!!
Mark: I teach Elementary music including saxophone down in Hinesville.
Brian: He's was actually a saxophone education mogul these days.
Steve: (Muttering) Ahhh! Sax education.
Mark: Yeah. right!
You guys are all very young, comparatively, I'm amazed that you've been able to conglomerate so many of the older vintage prog styles: Canterbury East Coast Prog, and 70s Fusion, into a real cool mixture. How did you guys stumble upon your sound?
Brian: It took us a while. Basically, we had a really funky bass player at first so everything started out sounding like that for a while. Pat, one of the band's composers, embarked on a Fusion odyssey in his listening habits, I became a better drummer I guess, and Steve, the other composer, his tastes started to branch out into the more bizarre. It took a while. There was a few early song that were OK, but our compositions didn't really fall into full swing until the time we did the tape (June '96).
Pat: Yeah. That's when it improved the most. It started getting good around the time Jon left. The Summer of 95 we didn't have a bass player for three or four months but that's when we composed our first three good songs...
Steve: ...without killing each other, somehow.
Brian: It was a slow progression or evolution of what we were listening to, and what we could already play, falling together. We get a lot of Canterbury comparisons. In fact there's going to be a sticker on the CD saying (as if reading copy) "Essential to fans of National Health" or something. Hopefully when people see us they hear the heavier stuff the more bizarre, the more dissonant, that we incorporate into our sound.
So you've been playing in Athens regularly? How often do you play live?
Pat: About once a month
Brian: Athens has got a lot of clubs; an amazing number of bars per capita. There's always a place to play.
Mark: Athens is not necessarily a "hot-bed" of progressive music, but its very open minded to a wide variety of styles. We're accepted.
Steve: There's plenty of freaks in town to come to our shows. I mean we're weird enough, but... (laughter) For example, there's was one guy having some kind of spasm somewhere in the room. We noticed him during our show and he wound up on our video tape. (whisper pointing to the imaginary screen) Hey, what's that?
Mark: (dramatically, pointing to the imaginary 'hero') "It's Spasm Guy!" (laughter) Let's not forget "Intense Guy!"
Steve: And the guy that would shout: (in a disturbed voice) "That's for me to know and you to find out!!"
Brian: A barrage of unusual characters. (Agreement.) But really, anyone who likes instrumental Progressive/Fusion could find something about us to like. A lot of variety to please a lot of folks. The CD has ten new songs even stronger than the ones on the demo tape.
But unlike a 101 of Fusion its not improv-oriented. You don't play a head then go oft forever playing solos; there's all kinds of structural and meter changes.
Pat: Yeah. An example is Steve's three part song programmed as separate tracks spread across the CD (One Minute of Thought..., ...in two seconds of time... and ...(Incomplete, Broken, and Abstract)). Today we played them back to back - a total of 18 minutes.
Brian: (with a British accent) A jazz odyssey.
What's the next step for Volaré now that you've got the CD coming out on Laser's Edge.
Brian: We're going to cross our fingers and see how well the CD is received I think we're going to be less active on the live circuit at home. We'll keep our ears open for other festival around and big steps like that. We'll see if there's enough interest to do another recording. We got some stuff that could be in the pipeline. Just a wait-and-see attitude, basically.
Pat: For the time being we're going to take a little bit of a break. Hopefully continuing to go off on various directions, and growing more as musicians.
Postscript: Since ProgDay the boys have continued being very, very busy: The Volaré CD has been released on Laser's Edge; Brian has been recording and gigging with French TV; Pat played keys on four tracks recorded by the members of 'Always Almost' (formerly called 'Still') for a future release; Brian and Steve both plan to record with label mates 'Somnambulist' for their upcoming CD (recording early next year) and are creating more experimental Cunneiform-esque material (using tapes and samples) for some unnamed project. Rest assured that the Volaré boys plan to continue playing and recording as a unit. I for one can't wait to hear what they come up with next.
Copyright 1998 Exposé Magazine