PAKT interview at Winters Tavern
they talk improvisation and how the band formed in the middle of the pandemic
This YouTube video includes chapter links. Interview transcript can be found below.
PAKT is Percy Jones bass, Alex Skolnick guitar, Kenny Grohowski drums, Tim Motzer guitar, electronics. https://pakt-moonjune.bandcamp.com/
Like a lot of people, I have a fear of public speaking. The few times in my past when I’ve had to confront that fear, I was always able to power through it and get the job done. So I was a bit surprised when I found myself on stage with PAKT in front of a live audience, and my brain froze … for a few interminable seconds I couldn’t remember the name of anyone in the band. And as David Byrne once suggested, I was indeed asking myself, “Well, how did I get here?”
The answer is pretty simple. I love improvised music and PAKT is one of the best improvising bands I’ve heard in quite a while. When I saw that they might have a couple of free days in the Bay Area on their recent west coast tour, I had to try and bring them to Winters Tavern (my local live music bar in Pacifica). I knew it was a long shot, but what the hell.
I contacted their manager, Leonardo from MoonJune Records, and he was open to my idea. He was also looking for a recording studio for the band. I thought I could help with that too. As things began to unfold, the gig at Winters seemed unlikely since the band already had a gig in Mill Valley that came with an exclusive contract for the region, and Winters was within the region. That’s when I came up with the idea to do a “meet & greet” and interview.
The day before the interview, the studio session happened at Radical Sound studio in San Francisco. This studio is run by two friends of mine, Ron Kukan and Jai Young Kim, who are dedicated improvisers themselves. You can find their work at the San Francisco Free Jazz Collective Record Label. I attended the session. It was my first time meeting the band in person. Everyone hit it off great and the band was set up and ready to go very quickly.
To witness these great players up close in the studio was fantastic. In between takes they talked mostly about technical matters regarding the recording process. Little if anything was said about what they were playing and how. After fueling up with some coffee they were soon back at it starting another tune.
Two days later I saw them play at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley. Would it sound like what I heard in the studio? It did not. Improvising for a live audience brought out a more intense energy in their music almost from the get go. We would talk about this dynamic a bit in the interview. All music is better live, but this is especially true with improvised music. Here’s some video I shot:
The day before this show, back at the Winters Tavern stage, my brain thawed and the guys in the band quickly made me feel comfortable. We had a great conversation about their path to PAKT including some of their past projects. I played music from those projects and they seemed genuinely excited to hear it. Apparently they have not listened to it since they made it.
We ended the interview with our DJ for the evening, DJ Bleeding Priest, aka Will Carroll from the band Death Angel, sharing stories with Alex about touring with Testament and Death Angel. You’ll want to hear how they nearly went down with the ship on an overnight ferry in rough weather somewhere on the North Sea.
Hanging out at the bar with the band and fans, I was surprised to learn that one fan drove over an hour for this opportunity to meet Percy Jones. You can hear this fan during the audience question part on the video rightly referring to Percy as “the master”.
In my own chat with Percy, knowing that he has been living in NYC for some time, I had to ask him if he knew Giorgio Gomelsky (the subject of my work in progress book The Gomelsky Recordings). Yes indeed he did. He told me a story about using a rehearsal space at Giorgio’s multi-story loft in Manhattan. When it came time to pay for the space, Percy and his bandmates wandered through the loft looking for Giorgio. Eventually, they opened a door and found themselves in the middle of an S&M club. Welcome to “Paddles”. It seems that Giorgio rented out more than just rehearsal space. (Read more about the exploits of Gomelsky in the book ‘For Your Love’ by Francis Dumaurier with a foreword by your favorite Non-Writer.)
Interview transcript:
[Rick]
Tim Motzer on guitar. Alex Skolnick guitar, probably some of you know Alex. Percy Jones on bass. Kenny Grohowski on drums.
Tim, you have probably the most improvised background before PAKT. You've played all over the world with many different people. So tell us a little bit about who you played with, and how you got into improvisation.
[Tim]
Wow. Well, that's quite the question.
And I mean, really, I think we all start improvising very early on at a young age when you first start tinkering on a piano or getting a guitar for the first time. And we don't know anything. So we're just trying to get some sound going.
So it really starts like it starts from there. My mom and two sisters were all singers. So I grew up in a musical household.
Lots of jazz was played, lots of rock and roll, lots of folk music. So you know, hearing my mom's music, which was like Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, stuff like that, kind of turned me on to jazz and eventually led me to Miles Davis and people like that. But via Jimi Hendrix, via Led Zeppelin, via Black Sabbath, and all that stuff.
And finally getting into jazz really hardcore through Mahavishnu, bands like Brand X, and stuff like that, you know. So that really led me into learning all about guitar and harmony and starting to improvise. So something like that.
[Rick]
So I want to talk to Kenny next. Kenny is in what do you call Imperial Triumphant. Is it avant metal? Is it avant black metal?
[Kenny]
Yeah, that's, that's a safe assumption.
[Rick]
Yeah. But prior to that, you played with John Zorn.
[Kenny]
I mean, I still do.
[Rick]
How did you get into playing improvised music?
[Kenny]
Just by being in a place like New York City where it has an improvised music scene. I've never specifically chosen what kind of music I was going to make. I just sort of always wanted to have whatever opportunities come my way.
I'm just going to get into that and see how it goes. Random series of events, I ended up doing at Zorn's sites and it kind of went from there. But I was playing with other improvised groups as well before that, like just local, kind of like New York, Brooklyn, you know, playing on like some fucking, you know, little place like anybody that will like book a band, you know, put a bunch of improvisers together and see what happens.
So I've been doing this for a while.
[Rick]
And Alex, you're obviously best known for playing guitar in Testament. How did you end up? Or how did you get into playing improvised music? Did this happen before Testament?
[Alex]
You know, it's, there's a strange full circle quality to it. Testament did our first two records in a place called Ithaca New York, which is funny because we were just talking about Ithaca in a very different context. But yeah, Ithaca is an interesting place and has this music scene with a lot of jam bands and improvised groups.
And at some point when I was making the first couple Testament records, I got handed a CD by a band called Jaws. That was a big improvising group in Ithaca. And somebody handed me said, you know, I don't like this, but I think you might like it, knowing I have diverse listening tastes.
And fast forward to a few years later, it's the early 90s, the guys from Jaws moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. A guy named Dan McAssey, Jason Tubbs, so I got to know these guys. Because they moved to the Bay Area.
And it turned out they were the guys in Jaws. And they were all about improvising. And they were into stuff like Derek Bailey.
And you know, Song X, Pat Metheny's collaboration with Ornette Coleman.
[Rick]
That's my favorite Pat Metheny.
[Alex]
Yeah, they turned me on to all this music.
And they would come over and we would have these jam sessions. And they would do things like detune the guitars, take a bottle cap and jam it into the guitar. And it sounded cool.
It was a totally weird, fun thing to do.
[Rick]
And that was all new to you at that time?
[Alex]
And it was new to me at that time. And that was my first experience doing it. It was all pretty much in private. I never did it in public. And then fast forward a few more years, I'm in New York. I get a music degree at the New School.
And I meet, you know, some jazz players at the New School that are also into free playing. And it's, you know, it's never been my main thing. But it was something I was always curious about. And I always did it for fun. And then this came together. And it all became full circle.
[Rick]
Okay, we'll get into a little bit more about how this came together in a minute. But I'd like to talk to Percy. Percy Jones.
You have reinvented what the bass sounds like. And Brand X is how many of us know you from going back to 76. When Brand X started?
[Percy]
I think it was 1974. Took a while to get it rolling.
[Rick]
Right. And I remember seeing Brand X in 1979. In San Francisco at the Old Waldorf. Anybody remember the Old Waldorf?
[Percy]
Got a nice pool table in the back.
[Rick]
It was a little bigger than this place.
But Phil Collins was in the band then. Was he an original member of Brand X?
[Percy]
No. The very first drummer was John Dillon. Then he left.
We offered the gig to Bill Bruford. He turned it down.
And then Phil Collins took it eventually.
[Rick]
But you mentioned Bill Bruford. I know he did a short stint, I think live only in Brand X on percussion.
[Percy]
We played a few gigs in London playing. Yeah, I remember there was one gig at the London School of Economics that he played at. Which we never got paid for.
[Rick]
It's an old story.
So what was it like in those early days of Brand X? How did that band come together?
[Percy]
Well, I grew up in mid Wales. And then in 66, I moved to Liverpool. Because I got a place in university there.
So I spent a few years studying. Started playing with some of the guys in Liverpool. And then in 70, I think it was 71 or 72, I moved to London and got to meet some of the guys in the area where I was living.
It was Keith Tippett and Julie Driscoll. And Robin Lumley was living there. And Lumley, I had done some jamming with Robin Lumley.
And he said, first day we're having this jam session up in Clapham. Why don't you come up and sit in? You know, so I went up.
And there was a group of people which included Goodsall. So we just did a lot of jamming. And I was immediately impressed with John Goodsall.
And John Dillon, as I said, was the original drummer. So we spent quite a few weeks just jamming. And then the guy who was helping us with equipment came in one day and said I've hooked up an audition at Island Records.
And we all cracked up. Because we were improvising. So the next week, a guy from two guys from Island Records came and we were making stuff up.
And they signed us. So that led to that first record, Unorthodox Behavior.
[Rick]
Right.
And so Brand X has this long history from 74. It reformed a few times. And then in one of its latest or last incarnations, Kenny Grohowski gets involved.
How did you guys meet?
[Speaker 3]
Well, Kenwood Dennard called me up one day. And he was playing drums with us in the 70s when the field was all so busy. And he said, I know this guy who's willing to put the band back together. But on condition that he plays in the band. And it turns out he was a percussionist. A shitty one at that, actually.
So anyway, we got the band going again. Ken would play with us for, I think, 18 months. And then we were looking for somebody else.
And I heard Kenny sometime earlier playing in Manhattan. So I recommended Kenny to the other guys.
So Kenny came up, played a rehearsal.
[Rick]
So just based on this one live performance that you saw Kenny at, you decided you wanted him in your band. Do you remember that, Kenny?
[Kenny]
Sure.
[Rick]
I mean, did you guys meet at that performance?
[Kenny]
We actually got to hang out.
[Rick]
Was that your first time meeting Percy?
[Kenny]
That was yeah, we had met only like a handful of times before I came, became involved with the band. And one time was just hanging out with a surrogate uncle of mine, who's been a longtime friend of his for many, many decades. So Percy was playing.
We went to see a show. These were like the two times before the audition kind of leading up to it.
But yeah, we had never played before anything like that. It was always just like, you know, oh, yeah, it's Percy. Hey, Percy.
You know, at a distance.
[Rick]
Sure. So what did you think when you were invited to join Brand X?
[Kenny]
I mean, going into it, I was pretty excited because I was not aware of how things were working inside the project at that point. But, you know, going into it, it was kind of great. Like, you know, I grew up being an avid fan of the band.
My dad was a huge fan. He was my dad's favorite bass player.
[Rick]
Were you even born when the band started?
[Kenny]
Oh, no, of course not. But I mean, I grew up on all that music from like, when I was a small child. My dad was into the band when they started.
He was a musician. So, you know, their music was always, always in the house. Like, it was never a situation where I'd been a peer.
A lot of the music that this kind of band harkens from stylistically, I'm a child of, you know, I didn't grow up when it was happening. But it was around all over the place. And I kind of like in a time where it's like, you know, what's relevant, right?
Like, wasn't that, that's not what was relevant in the music world for most people at the time. But that's the shit I was listening to as a kid, you know.
[Rick]
All right, well, I'd like to play a piece of Brand X music with Kenny Grohowski and the band. The song is called The Poke.
Do you remember the song? What can you tell us about that song?
[Percy]
Well, it was really hard to play. It was a John Goodsall composition. I don't know if anybody knows what The Poke means. You know, a bit of imagination. Anyway, it was actually quite, quite difficult to play.
[...the song plays...]
[Rick]
All right, that was Brand X doing The Poke with Kenny Grohowski on drums, Percy Jones on bass. So Percy, did you want to tell us a little bit about the status of Brand X now?
[Percy]
Well, we retired it two years ago. It's retired. John Goodsall passed away.
[Rick]
Sure. Are you the only original founding member still alive?
[Percy]
Yeah.
Yeah, it was me, John and Robin Lumley. We were the three owners, so to speak. Phil actually hired himself out from his company. So he was technically a sideman, believe it or not.
[Rick]
All right. So Brand X covers a lot of years and a lot of music. In the 1990s, Alex, you start branching out with your playing a bit.
And by 1998, you have hooked up with Michael Manring on bass and Tim Alexander from Primus on drums. And you form a band called Attention Deficit. How did that happen?
[Alex]
Yeah, well, you can mark my musical development by the decades, in a way, because the 80s, you know, I was all hard rock and metal. Dio, Ozzy, Van Halen. And I think people forget because I looked older and the band was a few years older than me.
But I was 18 when I did the first Testament record. So those first two Testament records were at the end of the 80s. And then the 90s, then I'm in my 20s, I'm still developing as a player and I started getting into other types of music.
So I got hired by a bassist named Stuart Hamm. Yeah, that was 1991. And that was my first experience outside of the rock and metal world.
And Stu turned me on to all this new music. You know, he got me listening. He tried to get me listening to Joni Mitchell. That soft adult music. He's like, dude, Shadows and Light with Michael Brecker and Pat Metheny. And then one of the bands he turned me on to was Brand X. He told me all about Percy.
So it's amazing to be here with Percy now doing this project. So it started with Stu, but Stu didn't record. We actually didn't record until 2023.
So Stu's album, Hold Fast, was our first recording together. So Stu went through this period, he wasn't recording for a long time. But Michael Manring, I guess, I think he'd been as part of the bass community, had seen me with Stu.
So he was working on a record. And he brought me in to play on a record called Thonk, which was Michael Manring's solo record. So that was my first recording, doing, you know, sort of jazz rock or improvisation or whatever.
And that led to Attention Deficit. The record label, it was called Magna Carta, that was sort of doing your new prog at the time. They made an offer to put a band together of me and Michael and the drummer.
And we got Tim from Primus. And we ended up doing two records. But that was how that all came together.
We never played live.
[Rick]
Yeah, unfortunate, that. I have to admit that it was Attention Deficit where you, Alex, first got on my radar because that album is so awesome. And I'm going to play a little Attention Deficit right now.
[...the song plays...]
[Rick]
Attention Deficit. All right, Attention Deficit, Alex Skolnick, killer guitar solo, man.
[Alex]
Thanks for playing that. It's fun to hear that.
[Rick]
Yeah, 1998. Have you revisited it much?
[Alex]
Usually when I record anything, any style, I don't want to listen to it again.
[Rick]
Really?
[Alex]
Well, because you're in the studio, you're hearing it over and over again. You get tired. But what's fun about PAKT is every time we hear the music, it's fresh, because it's so improvised.
It's like you've never heard it before. We were listening to stuff earlier, right, Tim and I were going, how improvised?
[Tim]
Who is this? Oh, it's us.
[Rick]
So there's three of you, obviously playing that song.
Was that recorded live in the studio? Or were there overdubs?
[Alex]
Both. Both? Yeah, it was the rhythm track we got live in the studio.
[Rick]
I see. So that killer guitar solo, was that?
[Alex]
I'm sure I overdubbed that. I think.
[Rick]
So I want to play one more cut from this album by Attention Deficit that's actually more improvised sounding. You tell me what's going on.
Say Hello To My Little Friend.
[...the song plays...]
[Rick]
Attention Deficit, Say Hello To My Little Friend. It's completely improvised song?
[Alex]
Yeah, except for that, there's a loop there. A loop. Michael had a loop for his bass.
And I think the device at the time, I forget what it was called. It was one of the earliest loopers. Not the jammer, but it was made by Lexicon. That's all I remember. And it was kind of primitive compared to the loopers we have today. But yeah, he did that loop, and we liked that loop.
And we just said, okay, we're all going to just jam to this loop.
[Rick]
So this CD is loaded with great songs like this, and quite a few of them. And none of them are really that long, as I recall. They're all around three minutes.
Maybe one is four minutes.
[Alex]
Maybe four minutes. It just turned out that way. Totally unplanned and just fell into place.
[Rick]
So from what you were telling me earlier, it sounded like working with these guys on this album kind of set you on a trajectory towards experimenting or improvising more. Can you tell us about that?
[Alex]
Yeah, certainly. I mean, I felt like I'm proud of this record. I think it came out really well.
But there were also things I heard that I wasn't able to express. And I was just discovering a lot of other great players that were becoming influences that felt beyond my grasp. So it just inspired me to really pursue this more full-time, go to university, get a music degree, study with as many people as I can.
It made be very serious about it. And also, I mentioned the tour with Stu Hamm a couple years before this. And at one point, I remember Steve Morse came and jammed on stage with us. Satriani sat in. So just suddenly to be in this situation where I'm around players like this. Okay.
Okay. Yeah. I'm like, super motivated.
And it's good to always find players that motivate you. For sure. And it continues to this day.
[Rick]
Yeah. Okay. Look who you're surrounded by.
[Alex]
Yeah, absolutely. I'm playing with these guys. Yeah, I feel inspired every time.
[Rick]
Right. So looking at your histories, it seems like, Kenny, you are a common factor here in maybe bringing PAKT together in a way. First of all, you played with Brand X. And then you knew Tim. And you played with Tim in different settings.
[Kenny]
Oh, yeah, with Markus Reuter.
[Rick]
Markus Reuter, right. So this is purely improvised music that you did with Markus Reuter, correct?
[Kenny]
Yeah.
[Rick]
I guess what I would like to know is I know, Tim, you worked with Markus Reuter for quite a while. You've been working with him since when?
[Tim]
Good question.
Probably 2005, I think, or 2008. Markus Reuter is a touch guitarist from Berlin.
He works with some former King Crimson players, Pat Mastelotto and Tony Levin, a band called Stick Men. And it's an incredible power trio. And they have their own music as well as playing a lot of King Crimson material. But anyway, Markus is quite an amazing musician and producer from Berlin.
He has his own record label. And he's also known for doing soundscapes and working with loopers, multiple loopers. And we met in 2006 in Munich and talked about getting together and playing at some point.
And that ended up happening in 2008. And we made a record called Descending, which turned out to be kind of a classic record because Pat Mastelotto from Crimson played on it. B.J. Cole, the famous English slide guitar player, is on it. Theo Travis is on it. So it's kind of a really interesting classical record that came out. And it's a really cool thing where it's all built on looping and textures and cinematic soundscapes.
And everybody improvised that together. And it's really cool. So that's part of the Markus thing.
[Rick]
Sure. So you have a long relationship with him. You've released a number of recordings.
[Tim]
A number of recordings.
[Rick]
In fact, were you involved in, was he involved in 1K? You have a label, 1K Recordings.
[Tim]
I have a label, yeah.
And he's on a number of those recordings. Another record we did was called Rapture and Space is the Place. Those are the three that we've done so far.
[Rick]
So Kenny, how do you end up hooking up with these guys?
[Kenny]
Well, of course he was through Brand X. But Tim was through MoonJune. Leo kind of put this whole thing together with PAKT.
Alex and I actually met because I've subbed for several of his bands over the years. One of them being.
[Rick]
Oh, I didn't know you had met Alex before.
[Kenny]
Yeah. Yeah, he was the one guy I played with.
[Speaker 4]
Yeah. Oh, I see. When did you play together?
[Kenny]
Let's see. One time was with Planetary Coalition, like back in.
[Alex]
Yeah, like mid 2010s.
[Kenny]
Yeah.
[Rick]
No recording?
[Kenny]
No, it was like a show. No recording. And then subbed the Metal Allegiance one time to do a Deep Purple tribute over at St. Vitus back in Brooklyn. And we also did the Skull and Trio that same week at a G3 camp. G4. G4, G5.
[Alex]
Yeah, G numbers camp.
[Kenny]
G4. He needed, they needed a band. They needed a couple extra instructors and wanted me to bring a band.
[Alex]
Uh-huh. So I brought Kenny and a friend of ours, Steve Jenkins, on base.
[Rick]
And how did you hook up with Tim and Markus? Through MoonJune?
[Kenny]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how I met Tim. We have a lot of mutual friends like back in the New York and Philly scene, but we met officially through MoonJune.
Through the Shapeshifters gig that became the band. That was a gig that we played during COVID back when they weren't letting people go to shows anymore.
So you had to stream your shows.
[Tim]
That was our first show. That was a PAKT. That was the very first time.
[Kenny]
Yeah, that's a pack. But that's also the same story for the trio of Shapeshifters. It was the same deal.
[Rick]
That album was called Shapeshifters.
[Kenny]
So there's this place in New York called Shapeshifter Lab.
[Rick]
Shapeshifter Lab, yeah.
[Kenny]
That's right.
[Rick]
Tell me about it because it seems like an important venue.
[Alex]
It's owned by Matt Garrison, who's a terrific jazz, jazz rock bass player. Played with John McLaughlin in the 90s.
Played with Zawinul. He's played with Herbie Hancock. I don't know if he doesn't like touring that much, but he decided to just be in one place and open an art center in Brooklyn.
And he opened this art center called Shapeshifter Lab.
[Rick]
And it's set up not just for live performance with an audience, but also during COVID, they were streaming high quality concerts out of there, which I believe is the very first time you guys played together.
[Alex]
Yeah, that was how this started in a way.
I believe, yeah, Leo Leonardo had a show booked there. I'm not sure who it was that was supposed to play there, but we needed to fill the date. And it was during COVID, the height of COVID.
So we all had to be masked, take our temperatures at the door, and it was all just streamed. So it kind of added to the surreal quality of it. But that was the first time we played together.
It was recorded, and that's on the disc.
[Rick]
And it's available over on the merch table. Yeah, and I'm going to play a little of that a little later. But I want to get back to Tim and Kenny and Markus.
When you guys first played together, also at Shapeshifter Lab, you would release another album together called Bleed. And Bleed has a song on it called Monolith that I want to play because it has some interesting sections in it.
So I'm going to play it and then pause it and have you talk about it a little bit, about what you're doing. So this is, what do you call the trio? It's just your names?
Markus Reuter. Reuter, Motzer, Grohowski. I think.
Reuter, Motzer, Grohowski. Monolith from Bleed.
[...the song plays...]
[Tim]
Each piece was improvised completely, and it was usually just based on a starting point, like a note, a sound, and everybody would just be listening and adding to that. So it was very similar to the way PAKT was. Yeah, same exactly.
And we just developed from there. Yeah, no real plan.
[Rick]
I'm going to skip ahead a little bit now.
[...the song plays...]
[Rick]
Okay, so what is happening now? We're building up to this point now. Kenny's coming in.
We're dealing with some kind of an issue here.
[Kenny]
Right now, or in the design?
[Tim]
In the music.
[Kenny]
I don't know, I just don't know. So I'm just having fun.
[Rick]
You were playing guitar?
[Tim]
Yeah. And you'll hear Markus. This stuff is really low, distorted. It sounds a lot more hazy here.
[Rick]
Is there some looping going on also?
[Tim]
Yeah, in the bottom of the piece, what we heard in the beginning, that's still happening. Yeah, it's regenerating in different ways.
Somewhat violent, a little brutal.
[Rick]
A little violent, really get knocked out? Towards the conclusion.
There's something in this that reminds me of King Crimson Red.
[Tim]
I think it's fair to say that this is inspired by Crimson music. And it's hard not to be playing with Markus because he really comes from that.
That they know what they're doing in a sense. He brings that kind of tonality to all this music. We played a gig in New Jersey, a real pop-style cast, real folks, only for a stick gig.
And that's what actually became an album. But experiencing this live is the way to experience it. With any of this music really, live is the best.
But we're happy we have these recordings. It's nice to hear it.
[Rick]
You know, about experience in live music, like you say, it's important with any music, but so important with improvised music, I think.
It's great to have the recordings, but there's nothing like it live.
So that was Monolith on the CD Bleed by Reuter, Motzer, and Grohowski. And you're going to be releasing something else soon, you just said, right?
[Tim]
Yeah, live from ProgStock. I don't know what the title of the album is going to be yet, but it'll be the same format, same band.
[Rick]
So we know that PAKT played their first notes together at Shapeshifter Lab in the middle of the pandemic at a live streaming show.
But was that the very first time the four of you met together?
[Alex]
It was the first time we were all in the same place at the same time. We'd been in pairs, I guess, right? These guys doing that music.
[Tim]
That was the first time we met.
[Alex]
That was the first time we met. I met Percy. I played for another group, Jane Getter Premonition, that opened one of the Brand X shows. And I met Percy. I think we met before, too, at some point.
[Rick]
Yeah, and Kenny knows everybody from other things. But as far as the four of you ever getting together, you come together, you do that. And you've been doing that ever since, right?
You've been playing live shows, recording them, and releasing them. So do you know if the Sweetwater is going to get recorded?
[Tim]
I hope so. We haven't heard back if they have the faculty to do it or not. Yeah, whenever we can.
[Rick]
I see. Great. All right, I want to open it up now to any of you out there who have a question for anybody up here.
Anybody have any questions out there?
Oh, yeah! All right, let's hear it.
[Audience member]
First of all, I love it and appreciate the metalheads here, right?
[All]
Yeah.
[Audience member]
They're my generation. I'm born in 66, so we're around the same time. I grew up here in the Bay Area.
I wondered how the hell did you make the connection and the relationship with getting together with a master here? Percy Jones? Yes, how did you go from metal and bridge over to meet Percy Jones and make that connection?
[Rick]
Yeah, okay. Let me thank you for emphasizing that Percy Jones is the master because that is true.
On the bass, Percy is one of the true masters, and lucky to have him.
[Alex]
Yeah, and what you're saying ties into a point I was going to make before, which was that in the 2000s, once I relocated to New York, I was doing instrumental music all the time. I found my way back to Testament. I'm still playing with Testament.
We reunited. But I'm also doing all the instrumental stuff. That was kind of the deal.
It's like, I'll rejoin the band, but I have to be able to do all my instrumental stuff. And, yeah, I was born, I'm Gen X, Kenny's like next generation. But Kenny was one of the first people I met who does metal as well as improvisation and instrumental music.
So it was really cool to have that connection. I know a few others, but I can count them on one hand. But Kenny is somebody we'll meet up at European Metal Festival where Imperial Triumphant is on the same show with Testament.
But we'll also do broad projects together, whether they're high-level jazz or improv.
[Rick]
I think we should mention Leonardo (Leonardo Pavkovic) for just a second because he clearly played a big role in bringing you guys together. Leonardo runs MoonJune Records, and he manages a few bands. Do you consider him your manager?
I mean, he booked this tour pretty much.
[Kenny]
Yeah, I mean, in a sense, he operates as a very distant sort of manager because, again, he's running the label, so he's running several bands and booking things.
[Rick]
And some of those bands are like Stick Men, which he's working with now, and Soft Machine, which probably some of you know.
[Alex]
He used to work with Alan Holdsworth.
[Rick]
Alan Holdsworth, yeah.
[Alex]
And yeah, it was his idea to get the four of us together. And yeah, as soon as he mentioned these guys, obviously I knew Kenny, but when he said, you know, Tim and Percy?
Percy from this Brand X? Are you kidding me? Finally.
Finally happened.
[Tim]
Yeah, I felt the same way. You know, Percy had played in Philly so many different times with the Tritones and stuff like that. I always remember talking to you after gigs and like, hey, Percy, it would be great to play sometime.
And so when Leonardo called, I said, yes, I have this idea for this band with you and Percy and Kenny. And now it's like, yes.
[Rick]
Do you think it would have happened without COVID?
[Tim]
That's a good question.
[Alex]
I think we'd all be pretty busy. Right.
[Rick]
Yeah. So there were some good things that come out of the pandemic.
[Tim]
Absolutely. A lot of good things.
[Rick]
Any other questions out there in Winter's Tavern land? No?
All right. I want to introduce your DJ for the rest of the night. Mr. Will Carroll. Will, are you out there? Now, you should know. Obviously, you know, Alex is from Testament.
Will is the drummer from Death Angel. We have two of the big four from the Bay Area here in the house tonight. Will, these two guys have toured together quite a bit.
I'm sure you have something, some stories to share with us.
[Will]
Were you guys on the same ferry that almost went down?
[Alex]
Yeah.
[Will]
That's what I remember the most about touring with Testament.
[Alex]
That was before COVID.
The same month as COVID, we're just like quickly catching up to the rest of the world. Our biggest trauma was we had this ferry ride.
[Will]
From maybe Norway to Sweden or something?
[Alex]
Yeah. Overnight ferry ride where the weather was so bad. Our boat was the last one to leave before they decided it's too dangerous.
We just woke up in the middle of the night. It was like a thrill ride.
[Will]
They sent everybody back to their cabins. I was still up with Mark from Death Angel. Surprise, surprise.
A couple of other people and guys from Exodus maybe. We were drinking in the bar. All of a sudden, stools started sliding and we were sliding in our chairs.
Stuff behind the bar started chattering. They sent everybody to their cabin.
[Audience member]
Did you die?
[Will]
Yeah, it was a trip. That little circular window in your cabin, in mine, I was submerged. I was underwater.
I was like, holy shit. The boat was totally like this.
[Alex]
All my furniture was going left to right, left to right. Yeah. Crazy.
That was the start of 2020.
[Will]
Totally. The guy I was sharing a cabin with was Death Angel's light guy. At that time, that was his first tour.
He was really fresh and young. He was freaking out. He was posting.
I don't even know how he was able to get on the fucking Wi-Fi. He was posting on Facebook that, Tell my mom I love her. It's just going down.
I got to get all these messages once we got back. My phone was working. I was like, oh my God.
Are you okay? You fucking asshole. He was doing it right across from me.
I'm laying on the bed just talking to him. I'm like, whoa, this is trippy. He's like, yeah, yeah.
Oh, it's all right. I'm like, oh.
[Alex]
And getting off that boat. I'll never forget people's expressions. You ever see people getting off a roller coaster?
There's people that can't handle it. Obviously, they're nauseous. That's what this is like.
[Will]
Of course, Blabbermouth (Blabbermouth.net is a website dedicated to heavy metal and hard rock news) got it wrong as well.
They sensationalized it and said, Testament lost all their gear. The barge went to sea and all the band's gear was lost. But it wasn't true.
The other barge or ship got delayed. So their gear showed up late. They used our gear.
But it didn't get lost at sea. But Blabbermouth made it sound way more fun.
[Alex]
We borrowed your gear.
We played in street clothes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like the old days.
[Will]
And then COVID happened. Yeah. But we've toured a shit ton together.
We've had some history. And we were just in Japan a couple months ago.
[Alex]
That's right.
And it's so funny the way this came together. We have this show tomorrow. They set this up.
Where are we playing tomorrow? Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley. I got this e-mail that there's going to be this metal DJ, Will.
And it's funny because there's also a DJ Will. From L.A. So I thought, oh, okay, we're going to do this with DJ Will. And then I thought, oh, no, we're doing it with this guy, DJ Bleeding Priest.
And then I forget who it was. I think it was one of your band members. Dude, that's Will, our drummer. So it all makes sense.
[Will]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, so thanks for coming out.
[Alex]
Thanks for having us in Pacifica.
[Rick]
Thank you, Will. Thank you, PAKT.
Thank you all for coming out. There's a merch table over there. And go see PAKT play tomorrow night in Mill Valley at the Sweetwater.
[Alex]
Yeah, you can join us tomorrow. Please do. All right.
[Rick]
It'll be worth the drive. I'm going to close it out with a final song from PAKT.
[Audience]
Woo.
[...the song plays...]
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai)
Also, thank you Rick for taking the time to make and post the transcript of the interview. The audio was making it a bit difficult for me to understand, and the transcript saved it for me. Great interview by the way, and your vast knowledge of all this esoteric music never ceases to amaze me.
Congratulations for grabbing the bull by the horns, and for defeating your fear of public speaking. Your relentless pursuit of interviewing musicians who have left, and still leave, their mark on you is admirable. Thanks for the plug and the link for my book too, it's truly appreciated.