BBF: On the new album, what did you do recording-wise, what kinda gear - you did that all yourself, right?

GREG: The new album Extraction? That album is a whole interview in itself, it was such a nightmare, this record. This album was supposed to have been released in 2001 - all the songs were written by February of 2001 and Dennis Chambers was scheduled to come up to my house and track the drums and immediately after I scheduled him I got a phone call to do the N*Sync tour and I had to be in Orlando [Florida] two days after the phone call. So I called Mike Varney [record label owner] and I said "We're gonna have to postpone this record till September of 2001, but the songs are ready to go, so let's pick it up, then." Well, Mike really didn't wanna do that so he basically said no... [laughs] And the way that I did it was I hired two guys, these really good players, John Doman on drums and this guy John Purtle on bass to do the demo for Victor Wooten and Dennis. So I had all the material, not only did I have it written but I had it recorded, and my thought process was that that would be the easiest way for them to hear what it was I wanted. Mike [Varney] suggested that I take the recordings, either in the form of WAV files or ADAT tapes or whatever, and send it to Baltimore where Dennis was and have him track his drums without me being there, while I'm in Orlando rehearsing with N*Sync. Dennis is a serious player, but there still has to be some kind of interaction, there has to be a conversation that comes before tracking the songs so he really understands what's goin' on. I didn't wanna do that, but we ended up tracking the drums like that..

So while I'm in Orlando I get the tapes, all kinds of WAV files and stuff of his drums, and even though his playing was great, just like I predicted there was a lot of stuff that was not what I had in mind. Not to mention, I didn't really like the way the guy tracked the drums, I didn't like the tones, there was an enormous amount of bleed, just a very flat, overly flat sound, it almost sounded like a garage kinda drumkit or somethin'. Then I had this to work with, everything he had sent to me from that studio was more designed for Mac, it was the AIFF files, the laptop I had was kinda kickass but nothing really that I would wanna track on. So the keyboard player of N*Sync who's like this jazz-head, this guy named Dave Cook, he offered to help me because he had a G3 at the time, I think, and he said "Yeah, I'll help line up these WAV's, I'll help do whatever I can if I can play on it" and I was like "Cool," 'cause he's a good player. So, we did that, and then Mike had this idea that we can track my guitars while I'm on tour. I'm like "How am I gonna, what am I gonna bring a 4x12 cabinet in my hotel room or somethin'?" and he's like "Well, get a Line6 Pod Pro or somethin'," I'm like ".......no." [laughs]

So, to make a long story short, I'm out on tour, I come back in September, and we haven't even gotten Victor tracked yet because Victor's always on tour, and here I am I haven't tracked my guitars, I gotta have my stuff if I'm gonna record. So I have these drums I'm not blown away by, no bass guitar, and no guitar, in September. So now, finally towards the end of 2001, which was around probably December, I get the tracks from Victor. Same exact problem - Victor sends me these tracks that are just a mess. I mean, he had gone to tape way too hard, actually he had ended up using a VS880 when he tracked, so first of all, the tracks didn't even line up. There was mad drifting goin' on, to the point where we'd start a song, I'd line him up, he'd be in with the drums, and then 8 bars into the song, he's either fallin' behind or pullin' ahead or something. It was a mess, not to mention a lot of the tracks that he had sent me were literally distorted, digital distortion, I don't know how he was tracking or who was helping him, but basically it was unacceptable.

So, 2002 comes along and I'm thinking, OK, let me just really work with the stuff, maybe I can re-amp his bass, maybe I can do this, blah blah blah. In the meantime, I've taken these drums, and it took me literally a month to make the toms sound cool, because I had to mute everything...

BBF: Did ya have to go through each file, and mute everything out except for the drums and fade off the ends so it sounds natural...

GREG: Each file, each drum, yup, exactly...

BBF: Oh, that's painful.

GREG: And the Dennis plays, he's nuts, he's doing a drum solo and I'm thinking, I've gotta listen to each WAV of each tom to figure out where the actual hit of that drum is.

BBF: [laughs]

GREG: Ya know what I mean? It's nuts.

BBF: Yeah... ya don't know if it's bleed from a tom mic right next to it...

GREG: Yup, exactly, that's exactly what I went through, so it was a nightmare. And then I'm shifting kick drum patterns over to try to match bass, and I'm cutting bass guitar all up to make it feel like it's in the song, it was a mess. So 2002 comes along, and I'm figurin' I'm gonna take a month to do this. Then I get another call from N*Sync, I gotta go back out again. I came back in April I think, April or May. And once again still, I'm stuck with this stuff that's not happenin' at all, so I start trackin' my guitars. The more that I'm trying to mix it finally, the more I realize this is just not cool. And now, at his point, everyone's expecting it's great because it's already a year overdue, I'm gettin' pissed-off fan letters from some people, like "When the f**k's this album comin' out, dude? What's up with this? Why is Greg out with this boy-band bullshit? What's he doin'??"

BBF: [laughs]

GREG: So now I'm like, this record's gotta be dope as f**k - how am I gonna do this? And no matter what I did it just wasn't really feeling like a great album. So, the end of 2002 goes by, I work on this thing from 8 in the morning till 2 o'clock in the morning every single day, mixing and mixing, trying to make it happen. Then I called Mike Varney and I just said "Look, we gotta re-track this stuff, we gotta do what we should have done two years ago, I need these guys in the room with me, we gotta track it. Because I'm not gonna do this. At this point, this record's gotta sound amazing, so this is it." And apparently, the phone call went down in history as as one of Mike's all-time best answering-machine messages he's ever received. He's gotten a couple from really pissed-off people but mine, I guess, made the list. 'Cause I was like, "That's it Mike, I'm done, I'm done with this, I'm f**king over it, I'm not doing this, I'm done mixing this, I'm not gonna sit in front of this computer one more day, I'm f**king over it, you're either gonna f**kin' come up with the money and re-track this shit, get these guys up here to do it the way we'd shoulda done it two years ago, or you can sue me for breach of contract - at this poit, I'd rather sit in a lawyer's office all day long for the next year and fight with you, then sit in front of my computer one more day..." [BBF laughs] And that was it, so he called up and he got them to come back and do it, then it came out cool, it came out the way I wanted it to. It was cool, Dennis came up, we tracked the drums, I went down to Nashville, we did the bass, I got to play with them a little bit while they were tracking, so it just ended up feeling more like a real record.

BBF: That's great, it captured the spirit of everybody.

GREG: Exactly, yeah.

BBF: Well maybe all the time that was spent in the prior two years, if anything it might have given you a greater insight into the songs and more ideas of things that, if it did happen two years earlier, it may not have been as cool as if it happened now.

GREG: Oh, definitely. Not to mention, yeah, just being able to hear the stuff as much as I did, yeah, that's exactly what happened. By the time Dennis and Victor actually did come back, there were some new ideas that I had, some different approaches that I had about things, it just felt fresh again.

BBF: Cool. Yeah, even when shit's at its worst, it's meant to be the way it all goes down.

GREG: Exactly...

BBF: So here's a question for ya. What do ya have to do mentally to shift from playing the pop gigs compared to doing a clinic? What kinda shifts have to go on in your head when you go from doing one to the other?

GREG: Yeah, that's an interesting question, definitely a good one, because there really is some major inner stuff that has to happen with me, because the problem with me now is that the whole spirit of "I can't wait to go downstairs and listen to the new Yngwie Malmsteen record, or the new Allan Holdsworth" thing isn't really there anymore. Ya know what I mean? It's not really about that with me, so it's very hard sometimes to feel like I'm obligated to live up to this "guitar hero" thing, 'cause I'm not really on that page. I just wanna make good music. That's all I'm tryin' to really do is just make music that people get into. The things that I look into now for inspiration are so drastically on the opposite side of guitar that it's really weird. It's way easier for me to become inspired about a song after listening to Method Man than it is for me to listen to some guitar record. So yeah, that mental thing is kinda strange, and the problem with the N*Sync gigs or any of those pop gigs is that it's not very demanding. I mean, some of it's fun to play, but it's not very demanding, so you become lazy, ya know what I mean? Ya figure, ya get up in the morning and if I can go do the tour of some famous city, Rome or somethin', why would I sit in my hotel room and practice guitar if I can do that? So you become lazy, then all of a sudden, like you said, yeah ya gotta shift gears, and really at this point for me to get on that page of guitar playing again, I'd have to almost pound myself with guitar stuff and try to reconnect with that youthful side of myself that used to really be into it and try to get that back again. I'm going through it right now, I'm leaving to go to Moscow in a few days, doin' a big seminar over there and this side of me is like, "Well, ya know I just play guitar to try to make good music and that's really what I'm gonna do there, and hopefully people won't be disappointed in the fact that I'm not on a complete super-chops demonstration, that's not where my head's at now. So yes, I don't know how to answer the question... [BBF laughs]

The cool thing about when you've been playin' for a long time, when you have ability, that doesn't leave, it's kind of like riding a bicycle, so luckily that's still there and if people wanna hear it it's there. Hopefully guitar fans have grown, which I think they have, and they're into other things like approaching playing through changes, approaching songwriting, what goes into writing a song, what goes into finding inspiration, and those are the kinds of topics that I'm more interested in talking about now as opposed to "Here's another crazy arpeggio..." [BBF laughs] Hopefully people are on that page more. I think they are actually.

BBF: Sooooo, as you were saying before about QUAKE...?

GREG: Oh, Quake 3 Arena, yeah, it's my addiction and it's definitely become a problem and I'm hoping that there's some kind of recovery program for that, because it's drastically cutting into my guitar time. [BBF laughs] It's way too much fun, playing online, the thought of some guy, some kid probably sitting in Michigan on a computer and I'm ducking and hiding from him and sneaking up behind him... and shooting him in the back of the head.... [BBF laughs] It doesn't get any better than that. That's what makes it, the games are cool, the theme part of the game, where you have to get through a mission and get to the end, that part's cool but it gets old real quick. What makes it, the whole thing about the interaction, the online thing, that's what makes it just... aah, it's...

BBF: Damn, I gotta check that shit out.

GREG: Ooh, don't...

BBF: No, ya know what? I'd better not check that shit out... [laughing]

GREG: Don't do it... Don't go there...! [laughs] My latest quest is to break free of that, and the problem is I have a computer in my studio that has a removable hard drive so I have my game drive and my music drive. I should have done that - what I should have done is kept my upstairs computer my game drive, and then anything in the studio is just music-related, not even connected to the internet.

BBF: So what do ya got studio-wise, in your own place?

GREG: I have Nuendo...

BBF: Yeah, me too. You got 2.0 ?

GREG: I do have 2.0 but I don't have it installed because there are so many projects that I started without it, everything I'm doing right now is still finishing up previous projects so I have to kinda stick with 1.5 I think I wanna jump up to the MOTU, MOTU's got that 24-channel thing. For this "Uncle Plum" project, I brought my computer up to Rochester and we ended up hooking up a firewire card up to my computer and then just using his MOTU and it was really flawless, there were just no glitches, it just seems like they really got it goin' on.

BBF: Isn't it great, the time we live in, if we were havin' this conversation in 1994 instead of 2004, we would just be like "Yeah, I'm thinkin' about maybe getting another ADAT," and now we got to see everything go from analog to digital tapes to all the hard disk shit, it's just great, we got to really see and appreciate the technology.

GREG: Oh, it's unbelievable. Sometimes I'm amazed. I was just real quickly trying to throw some backing tracks together for these clinics that are comin' up, and I'm... I don't know if you've ever heard of "Discreet Drums," have you ever heard of them? It's so nice to just be able to create these little backing tracks, literally in 45 minutes I can go from nothing to this cool loop that sounds like a high quality CD.

BBF: Yeah, isn't it sick?

GREG: It's crazy. Ten years ago it would have been a two day project.

BBF: The two things that I love the most about it. One, is plugins instead of racks and racks of gear, and just tryin' to find enough power strips to plug all that shit in.

GREG: Exactly, and some of these plugins are just off the chain, I mean they sound amazing, like the Waves especially.

BBF: Waves shit rocks.

GREG: Yeah, it does. It does rock.

BBF: The other great thing about this shit, is that when ya wanna remix somethin', ya just go File>Open, and ya don't gotta set up a board and try and remember all the exact parameters of the FX and all that shit...

GREG: Yeah, taking snapshots of the mixing board... There's kinda this mainstream act thing that at the moment I'm actually in, I don't know if I'm going to remain the guitar player or what I wanna do about this, but other than that, I'm the songwriter, and she's got this incredible voice...

BBF: So you write 'em, she sings 'em...

GREG: Yeah...

BBF: Yeah, doesn't that suck, ya find that once it's your baby ya just wanna play guitar in it and then it feels like ya shouldn't be, but ya want to...

GREG: I know, the original plan was I'll put this stuff together, I'll put the project together, and then hopefully see if we can get someone interested and we can get it picked up and we'll just send 'em on their way, but now I'm attached to it, so I'm kinda like, "I wanna play on this stuff, I wanna be out there playin' this stuff..." We'll see what happens. I got a good feeling about this, she's got a very cool like, it's weird, this girl's like 23 or 24 and when I first talked to her on the phone I said, "So who are you into?" and I'm expected to hear Christina and Maria, I was even asking her, "Do you like Vanessa Carlton?" And she's like, "I'm into Aretha Franklin..." She's into all this old-school shit, so then I heard her voice and it was just amazing, I mean she's like this young white girl from Texas and she sounds like a 40-year-old Baptist Church black woman. Yeah, it's serious. We're putting these funk songs together, they're kinda funky, funk rock, almost like a modern Rufus or somethin'. And she killed it, she's just killin' it.

BBF: Rufus - I think they're about to get inducted into the Hall Of Fame.

GREG: Are you serious?

BBF: Yeah.

GREG: No kidding. Yeah, that was some great stuff.

BBF: Oh yeah. That's pretty much all I listen to these days, just like old Motown stuff.

GREG: Yeah, it's just killa. It's amazing how it holds up, not only holds up but how it's still...

BBF: It's just some timeless shit. Great songs and they always will be..

GREG: Yeah, exactly.

BBF: Anything ya wanna plug for the interview, as far as any of the producin' stuff you're doing or anything like that?

GREG: Yeah, there's a band called Uncle Plum from Rochester, that I just got done producing, we're gonna try to see if we can get them hooked up, they've got a pretty cool thing - you can check them out at www.uncleplum.com They're cool, they're kinda like a Vertical Horizon meets Matchbox meets Live or somethin', they got some really hooky stuff, they're probably the number 1 band in Rochester at this point so we're gonna see what happens with them. We don't have a name for this band that I'm puttin' together [with the female singer from Texas], so if anyone has any suggestions...