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FRIGHT PIG Barque At The Lune *** REVERSAL OF GRAVITY Scuba Gear ***

Interview with BRYAN BELLER by Hande BURDG

Bryan Beller has maintained a frenetic, multi-faceted career as a bassist, composer, writer and clinician for over fourteen years. On his own, Beller released his debut solo album, the jazz/rock-flavored VIEW, in late 2003. His second album "Thanks In Advance", a deeply personal narrative set to advanced jazz/rock compositional confidence, came out a few weeks ago.

The name Bryan Beller is no stranger to progressive rock and metal fans as he worked and toured with Steve Vai, Mike Keneally (Frank Zappa), Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa (Project Z), and played bass in Adult Swim's Dethklok.

HB: Let's start from the very beginning. How did you start playing bass?

BELLER: I actually started taking piano lessons, classical, when I was 8. Then at 10 I took up the acoustic bass in the school orchestra, mainly because I wanted to play the biggest, most obnoxious instrument possible. It wasn't until I turned 13 that I switched over to electric, just because I wanted to play rock music and the acoustic bass didn't really give me a chance to do that. But I did a dumb thing and stopped playing upright altogether. I could have been one of those cool "doublers" who plays electric and acoustic, but…instead I just played electric and spent my spare time screwing off until I got to Berklee College Of Music in 1989. Then I figured out what I was supposed to be doing with the instrument.

HB: Your second solo CD "Thanks In Advance" recently came out. This is an unusual album title. What is the story behind it?

BELLER: Thanks In Advance is essentially the story of a life-altering epiphany I had after the death of a close friend of mine. Most of the record deals with the months I spent in self-examination after the tragedy, which were pretty dark and painful times, and the musical arc of the record reflects that. But eventually I broke through to this new way of looking at life, and rather than living in the feeling of "life is doing these horrible things to me and isn't that terrible", now I find myself grateful for just about everything I experience, which is a much more powerful place to come from, I've found. That's what Thanks In Advance means, literally – gratitude for what's coming, whatever it is. It's a pretty heavy thing, and you can imagine the intensity required to create the music that tells that kind of story. But I'd like to think it can be enjoyed on a simply musical level as well.

HB: I think the best thing about your album is, coming from a bass player, it is not an album of "Hey look I am freaking talented" but instead this is an album with great balance between musicians, but of course you step forward when needed. Definitely not a work of "ego". Can you tell us a little bit about the song writing process?

BELLER: I'm grateful that you characterized it that way, because my intention for songwriting has nothing to do with the amount of "musical firepower" in any given song. I actually start with a list of song titles, believe it or not. If I'm telling a story throughout an album, the song titles are the only opportunity I have in language to convey what the song's meaning is. So I'll get a list of song titles, in rough album sequence, and then start writing music that "fits" the title. If it's mellow, it's mellow. If it's got "firepower", that's because the emotion I'm trying to convey requires it. As for the role of the bass in this process, it is what it is. Like with most composers, the bass doesn't show up all that often as the "lead" instrument. It has a role to play and it plays it. Plus, I write mostly on guitar and keyboards. I'm a bassist by trade, but in my own band, I'm just the bassist. I don't seek out a more prominent role for the bass just because it's my solo album. Whatever the right bass part is, that's what it is.

HB: You worked with big names like Steve Vai, Mike Keneally, Zappa brothers and more. Fresh out of Berklee you joined the project "Z". How did this happen?

BELLER: How I made it out of Berklee and immediately into the Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa project "Z" is quite a long story, which people really curious about can read at length by going HERE. The very short version is that I was friends and musical partners with drummer Joe Travers (who's now the drummer for the Zappa Plays Zappa live band) while we were both at Berklee. We were playing shows together and doing a lot of stuff together, and we really had something special going on as a rhythm section. So he moved to L.A. a year before I did, got the gig with Z, and then called me when the bass slot opened up. I came out and auditioned, and when I got the gig, I moved there right away. It all happened really fast. From there I met Mike Keneally, who was already in Z, and then eventually I met Steve Vai from being in that circle… and then there I was, one of "those" guys. I never set out to become one of the "name players", but I'm extremely grateful for the attention I've gotten for what I've done.

HB:Who were your biggest influences growing up?

BELLER: As a bassist, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin was the biggest and first, along with Chris Squire of Yes. Then there was Jaco Pastorius, my window to jazz and fusion, and Flea, who taught me how to slap like a rock player as opposed to, say, Marcus Miller, which is more of an R&B thing. John Patitucci (especially his work with the Chick Corea Electric Band) and Scott Thunes of the 1988 Zappa live band were also big for me. Finally, Tim Commerford of Rage Against The Machine was huge in helping me develop a good overdriven bass sound.

But as a songwriter, my influences are completely different, and more impactful. I am a huge fan of albums with some kind of narrative. Not flat-out concept albums, which can sometimes be over the top, but more than just a collection of songs. So I'm really into Pink Floyd and Nine Inch Nails in that way. But I also have a weak spot for fusion guitarists, especially Michael Landau and John Scofield. Scofield in particular is just about my favorite musician in the world – what a strong compositional and playing voice he has. And then there's my hard rock and metal influences like Metallica and Rage Against The Machine. So I find myself balancing rock and jazz/fusion, which ends up as a kind of rock fusion…which is very different than "instrumental rock," which Steve Vai does better than anyone around but is misdirectional as a genre in terms of where I'm coming from.

HB: A couple of years ago you relocated to Nashville, TN. While everyone else tries to be closer to Los Angeles you decided to get out of there. Why? And why Nashville?

BELLER: Well, I did it for love! Pure and simple, I moved there to be with the woman I just married, who's also a great musician (she played Rhodes on the album's title track) in her own right and was at Berklee College Of Music with Joe Travers and I. Her name is Kira Small, she's a session-quality pro singer in the Nashville scene, and she has two solo albums out as a soul/R&B artist. I'm glad she lived in Nashville, and not somewhere where there wasn't a music scene at all, but ultimately I was living in Los Angeles and traveling a lot already for work, and I wanted to come home to her rather than getting back on the plane to see her. It's worked out really well, actually, in unintended ways. Some of the folks I met in Nashville are on the new record as well, on the first two tracks, and you can hear a bit of the different southern R&B flavor come through. It's a cool scene, even though I still travel to L.A. a lot for work.

HB: What can you tell us about working with Steve Vai? Are there any plans of touring together again?

BELLER: Steve is very precise about what he wants from his musicians, which he learned from Frank Zappa, and it's a real challenge both mentally and physically to perform at the level he expects. But he's also a very generous guy, easy to hang with, and one hell of a musician. I find myself still in amazement not just at what he's able to do on the guitar, but that he can do it while putting on a show, dancing and twirling around and all that. Plus, he's got a very sharp mind for business, which is really important when you get to the level he's at. But more than anything, I've been a fan of his music and playing ever since Passion and Warfare came out, and even after months on the road with him, I'd look over on the stage and think to myself, "Wow, that's Steve Vai over there, playing 'For The Love Of God' right in front of me." Seriously, it still happens. I'm honestly not sure when we'll tour again. He's been working on a DVD of our last tour for a long time now. He'll go into seclusion for a while – he just does that. He'll re-emerge eventually and I look forward to doing more stuff with him.

HB: One of your passions besides music is writing. How did this start?

BELLER: I always enjoyed writing when I was a kid, but I never thought to do anything with it. Then along came e-mail! I got my first e-mail account in 1994, pretty early on all things considered. I was writing e-mails to other people and really putting time into it, getting off on it, trying to be clever and funny and what have you. Mike Keneally's manager, Scott Chatfield, was an early web advocate and already had a website up for Mike in early 1995, and he invited me to do a guest column on the site. One thing led to another, and someone from Bass Player Magazine eventually noticed it. Next thing you know I'm doing articles for them and other mags as well. I always wanted a column in Bass Player, but I never really thought it would happen. I certainly didn't go chasing it and didn't study writing in college or anything like that. But at a certain point, from 1996 to 1998, I got serious about my own writing and wrote a 600-plus-page manuscript, which I was hoping would become a published novel. That never happened because I don't know the first thing about writing a story that plays out over 600 pages, but I did get in touch with my own writing voice, and I got my craft together by going through that two-year process.

HB: Mike Keneally makes a killer guest appearance on "Love Terror Adrenaline / Break Through", which is a real kick ass song by the way... You guys worked together in other projects as well, what can you tell us about working with him?

BELLER: I've been working with Mike on his own music since 1994, and he's really taught me how to be a complete musician and songwriter by example. Playing-wise, in his band, he taught me to always be listening and looking up, never getting too caught up in your own playing, and to be ready for anything, because he'll change the vibe of a song in mid-performance and likes things to be unpredictable onstage. From a songwriter's perspective, he taught me about the overwhelming importance of melody, regardless of genre. You can write something really obtuse and dense, like "Love Terror Adrenaline", and as long as it has a melody, the song will likely work. Without a melody, it's just a groove, or a texture. I owe a great portion of my musical development, which is still and will always be in progress, to Mike. Plus we're great friends. We've been through a lot together.

HB: Are there any other projects in the works?

BELLER: I'd like to get my own band's live iteration up and running, which I've only done intermittently since the release of my first album View back in 2003. But the main new project I'm involved in is KMB, which stands for Keneally-Beller-Minnemann. Minnemann means drummer Marco Minnemann, the drummer on "Love Terror Adrenaline," and he's one of the most amazing musicians and drummers playing today. The KMB project reflects the fact that we're all songwriters, and we'll all be contributing material for a live set of intense, but uniquely-influenced music. We're working on a tour of Europe in 2009, and hopefully the U.S. will follow.

HB: What are you listening to these days?

BELLER: Honestly I've been in a bit of listening seclusion from the months working on the record, but Nine Inch Nails' The Slip is really turning me on lately. The new Radiohead album is great as well. And Marco has a new album out called A Mouth Of God which is really intense. And I never get tired of John Scofield's Bump and Michael Landau's Live 2000. Finally, I'll still sometimes spin Relayer by Yes, which is my favorite album by them.

Thank you Bryan for taking the time answer our questions! We wish you the best with your new album and all other upcoming projects!