In 2017 I produced/composed and performed on an album called Band of Brothers which (in typical fashion for me) is dedicated to the American veterans who keep us safe and free! What was unusual for me was to incorporate vocal tracks on 80% of the album. I collaborated with singer Phil Naro from Billy Sheehan’s former 80’s band Talas on 7 of the 10 songs and even got Jeff Scott Soto to sing on a track. For those of you who are not in the know, Jeff was the early singer with Yngwie Malmsteen and later went on to sing with Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I welcomed the change and it turned out to be a great experience and a new way of looking at music. It was a very different process for me because I have done mostly instrumental music my whole career.
Considering that Santana & Greg Rolie were only 22 years old and drummer Mike Shrieve only 19 years old, it an incredible show of great talent. The band has intense energy that is felt through the recording of the festival. Santana was one of the shining acts of the festival, which is saying a lot considering how many incredible artists performed at Woodstock. Carlos played a Gibson SG Special with P90 pickups which accounts for his partially clean tone, as P-90s Lock & Loaded is the one of the two instrumental tracks on the release and I recruited my old friend and guitar extraordinaire Gary Hoey. We had a blast recording the song and even manage to trade solos at the end. I even broke out my old talk box on the song to emphasize the melody during certain sections. There are a lot of fantastic guests on this one including Steve Morse (Deep Purple), Tony Franklin (Jimmy Page), Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal (Guns N Roses), Joel Hoeckstra (Whitesnake), Trey Gunn (King Crimson), etc.
you can learn more about gary hoey here
