Biography

The Inner Vision Interview

This interview, by John Meinhardt of Inner Vision Recordings, occurred on July 14, 2002 in the Columbus Ohio home studio of Elexus Quinn, lead singer and co-writer and co-producer of Blues Evolution. Quinn’s partner, Ziggy True, was on the road; probably in Reno or Las Vegas, where he works much of the year performing for the music loving patrons of the casinos.

IV: Why don’t we start with a little history of the Blues Evolution?

Quinn: Back in the 80’s Ziggy and I got together after not having worked together for many years. I was working in an original rock band, Everwind, in the Pittsburgh club scene and when that ended, I decided to do a demo of pop songs and try to get a record deal. So Ziggy and I got together and recorded the music with a variety of musicians with whom each of us had been working. We then moved to LA to promote the demos.

IV: What was it like in LA?

Quinn: As I remember, people did a lot of lunches. We met some interesting music industry people and had a few songs published. Vanity Music took one of the songs for a CBS Records release. But the timing wasn’t right. I think that was right around the time that Sony took over CBS and with all of the restructuring, the album was never released. I was working with another songwriter and we had a tune published with Al Galico music. Another interesting thing happened to me while I was living in Hollywood. I stumbled into a production company, Morson Productions, and I was asked to join the gospel group, United.
I have always been very fond of gospel music ala that Leon Russell sort of thing, so I was very keen on having an opportunity to perform in a gospel format. We were a 6 or 7 piece vocal group. I think it was probably with that group that I learned, more fundamentally, how to sing. We recorded an album of contemporary gospel songs. I was promoting both projects simultaneously.
At that time in California the hair bands were becoming very popular, and the gospel thing and the pop songs were not well received by the industry. You know, the industry is often very trendy. So after about three or four years, I didn’t see much point in remaining in California and so I went back to Pennsylvania to regroup. Ziggy remained in California working the lounge circuit, which he still does in Reno and Vegas and all around the West Coast. That’s why he’s not here today for this. When I returned to Pennsylvania I began writing again and contacted Ziggy with an idea for a new musical project.


IV: That turned out to be the Blues Evolution?

Quinn: Yes, I wanted to record an album of pretty straight-ahead blues and soul material. I have been a long time fan of Stax and that whole Muscle Shoals, Dan Penn, Jerry Wexler, Atlantic thing. I also love jump blues. So I wanted to do a musical project that was in that vein, with a lot of horns and strong vocals.


IV: I hear a little of that on the BE CD but it’s …

Quinn: You’re right, we didn’t really go too far in that direction. That’s due entirely to Ziggy’s influence. If I were left to my own devices, the album would be much more derivative. It’s because of Ziggy’s arrangements that the soul music influence is not so obvious.

IV: What are his influences?

Quinn: Well Zig is pretty eclectic and has a very broad range of influences. He is also very musical, in the sense that he really understands the music of music and works with a fairly broad palette. You know he studied at Berklee and I think it must have been pretty influential in his musical development. Anyway, there do not seem to be many genres with which he does not have at least a cursory familiarity. From listening to our music, you probably would not hear it, but Pete Townsend has been a big influence on him, but then so has Larry Carlton, which may be more noticeable on the recording. I know he is also a big Steely Dan fan. So he has that sophistication that I lack. I think of myself simply as a saloon singer. I don’t have any formal musical training. It’s probably a pretty good combination.


IV: Let’s talk a little bit about the album. It took quite a while to complete.

Quinn: Quite a while! I think it probably took longer than any album ever made. The BE album was recorded over a period of years, basically because we did not have the money to quickly complete such an ambitious project.

IV: By ambitious you mean?

Quinn: I don’t know if the reader will be much interested in the technical aspects of the writing and recording process, but this might be interesting to musicians and to performers just starting out. Maybe they may decide to reconsider.
For one thing, as I said, Ziggy and myself were living at opposite ends of the continent. So we collaborated via the postal department. I would send a recording to him and in a few months he would send me back a fully orchestrated sequenced arrangement.
After the sequences were completed, we dumped them to 4-track cassette where I added a vocal. We then passed the cassettes to the band members and they had to learn the songs. We then had to wait for Ziggy to finish his engagements and come back to Pennsylvania to begin rehearsals with the rhythm section and get into the studio to lay down the initial rhythm tracks.
Actually the initial recordings went very well and very fast. I think we recorded the rhythm tracks for the whole album, including two other songs, which were not included on this release, in about six hours in one evening session. I think every song is the initial take. We were very lucky. Bill Smith, the bass player and Chuck Kerrigan, the drummer, just nailed it. Chuck, as usual, came in with his parts written out.
It was another waiting game until we were able to assemble a horn section, wait for Ziggy to finish his road work, and get back with the scores to rehearse with the horns and record them. The horns to all eleven songs were recorded in one mammoth session which lasted for about twelve or fifteen hours. I am sure that they did not expect that kind of abuse but they were very hard working and gracious.
There was a lot of sweetening that had to be added with keyboards, guitars, and saxes. This was done by several people, all across America. The background vocals were added in LA by some of the members from United, the gospel group I worked with in the 80’s. So tapes were flying everywhere. Although we initially recorded on 2 inch reels, some of the studios we used only had ADAT and we also used Protools so there were a lot of transfers, depending upon where the musicians were recording. It was very tedious and complicated.
We finally completed five songs and decided to make demos to send to the music industry. We were so broke and we were hoping that we could interest a recording company in helping us to complete the project. It’s not that simple though. You know, there’s a lot to it.
You have to pull together an attractive promotional package. You need to do your research to find out who is working where and what type of things they are doing. I had a computer and was developing a database throughout those years. I would search the trades at the library. I was doing a lot of Xeroxing. It all costs money and it takes a lot of time, but eventually we did pull together a very nice promotional package, including some very good reviews.
We got a lot of positive replies from all over the world. I think the first lucky break we got was from Tony Zarella of Sphere Productions in New Jersey. He was interested in managing us. He knew a lot of people in the industry and was very enthusiastic about working with us. Eventually we did sign with Tony and we spent the next couple of years just promoting the act to the recording companies.

IV: What was it like pursing the record companies?

Quinn: Well I knew a little bit about it from my experiences in LA. Basically, we were in a dilemma. The record companies either totally disregard you or they will give you just enough encouragement to keep you struggling.
Frequently the music publishers or the record companies would ask for more material. That would mean that we would have to be constantly writing and saving our money to record new material. We would try to do high quality demos. Tony, the recording companies, and other industry people would make suggestions and we would then go into the studio and try to lay the golden egg. We would go to the studio, send something to Tony. He would critique it. We might go back to the studio. Then he would take the new songs to the companies and we would wait to hear back. They would then either lose interest (because by then the politics or direction of the company had changed) or they would make more suggestions. In the meantime, the BE project was just sitting in the can because we did not have the funds to complete it because we were spending our money on all of these demos.


IV: So what happened?

Quinn: Well, eventually I think we all just ran out of steam. After a couple of years we parted ways with our management and Ziggy and I didn’t see much of each other. I completed graduate school and Ziggy continued working the casinos.

IV: Well we know that’s not the end of the story because I know you eventually finished the recording.

Quinn: Actually, I never entirely stopped promoting the music. In fact we had one of the songs published by Transition Music during our hiatus. Transition Music places music with film and television productions. Also, about a year ago another label became interested in releasing the album. Eventually the talks broke down, but it gave us the impetus to complete the project and try to release it on our own. We started our own label and just last week the first shipment of CDs was delivered. So we’re going to put it out there and see what kind of a reaction we get. I expect this will be primarily an internet release.

IV: What’s on the horizon for Blues Evolution?

Quinn: I don’t know for sure, but one thing I am very interested in is developing the Virtual Blues Evolution as a follow-up. Because so much of the first Blues Evolution project was recorded all across America and several of the musicians on the project never actually met one another, I had the idea that it would be very interesting to try to create a virtual band for the next project. By that I mean, I would like to work with a variety of musicians from across the world to create a musical production sort of virtually. For example, I think it might be interesting to work with a horn section from Memphis, an organist from the UK, backup singers from South America, you know, just great players from around the world. We would never actually know each other and probably most of us would never actually be in the same room together. I know there are many great great players out there who, for one reason or another, are not performing in any organized way but might really enjoy participating in a project like this. Of course, finding them will not be easy, but I have placed some advertisements in the classifieds on the Internet and have already received some responses. After I get some promotion going for the first project, I will be more actively pursuing this idea. So all of you guys and gals who may be interested in this idea can contact us at blueseveolution@earthlink.net or through the website at www.bluesevolution.com. And for those of you who are true music lovers I hope you will take a little time to visit us and give a listen to the Blues Evolution. Zig and I are looking forward to hearing from you.