Description:
band was more of a project. In mid 1999 I received a call from Dominic Macrone. He & I had been playing music together since we were both 15 years old in high school. We had been in several bands together. Anyway, I remember this all starting at Dominic's wedding, of all places... He had invited myself and our friends Gene Conway, Todd Mossholder & Carl Swartz (all high school musician friends) to the wedding & it was there that the idea of a "project" came up. We sent tapes of ideas back and forth between New Jersey, Pennsylvania & California and the basics for what would become the "Game The
band was more of a project. In mid 1999 I received a call from Dominic Macrone. He & I had been playing music together since we were both 15 years old in high school. We had been in several bands together. Anyway, I remember this all starting at Dominic's wedding, of all places... He had invited myself and our friends Gene Conway, Todd Mossholder & Carl Swartz (all high school musician friends) to the wedding & it was there that the idea of a "project" came up. We sent tapes of ideas back and forth between New Jersey, Pennsylvania & California and the basics for what would become the "Game Theory" album were written. This went on well into 2000.... Logistically, Gene couldn't participate from California & Todd's schedule didn't allow for him to join us. Carl was going to be our web-master. I hadn't played drums in years so the first person brought in was Guy Alberts who we both had worked with in "DRIVE" & Dominic had also worked with in "RAIL". The 3 of us plugged away and decided that a 4th person was needed. Dominic has always liked the sound of a female voice in the band and his wife Katherine just happened to know Keyboardist / Vocalist Ellen Vargas. She had the chops and this was her first band. So we decided on the 14 tracks that ended up on the cd and just rehearsed the hell out of them for a few months. In the fall of 2000 we entered Stonecreek Studios (Owned by "Boyz II Men") and started laying down tracks for the album with engineer Jim "Jiff" Hinger (Boyz II Men, LL Cool J, Kriss Kross, Johnny Gill) who also sang great background vocals on "Close My Eyes" with Guy!! Money was tight!! So we had 2 days to record all the music, 2 days to record all the vocals & 2 days to mix the whole album. Six days for a 14 cut, 40 track digital recording!!! In retrospect, it's an accomplishment that it sounds as professional as it does, but I'm more of a perfectionist and I am not happy with the entire final product. We did a photo shoot for the cd, had it pressed at "Discmakers", and started selling it on Amazon.com (it actually sold out!). We were just getting ready to do some live shows when, as fate would have it, In August, 2001 I was called away for 4 months for my job!!! While I was gone, Ellen moved to Florida & was replaced briefly with Brett Robinson, plus we had vocalist Kris Ballerini sit in, before Guy dropped off the face of the earth leaving his drums behind!! By the time I returned that December...Red Sky was no more and Dominic was already in a band called "Road Trip".
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