Gaillion: A timeline of 26 years

Gaillion - Letters from the Skipper

Don Gunn, drums and percussion; 
Todd Howard, vocals, bass and keyboards; James Vasquenza Jr., guitars and backing vocals. 

Released 07 May 2015

http://www.gaillion.com/
http://gaillion.bandcamp.com/
http://www.facebook.com/gaillion25
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/gaillion/id950554954

Cover art and songs are courtesy Gaillion. Do not reproduce without written consent. 

US prog band Gaillion has re-released their first album “Admit One” to celebrate its 25^th anniversary. They have also released their first new song since 1989.

Don Gunn, on behalf of the band, is sharing with us:

Gaillion: A timeline of 26 years

Jorge Rittatore.: Hi Don, welcome to This Strange Blog!

Don Gunn: Hi, Jorge! Thanks so much for the invitation.

J.R.: Let’s go back in time to 1989: “Admit One”

DG: Way back in the “dark ages”, the three of us were still in high school; Todd and James were seniors and I was a sophomore when we formed the band. We’d been playing music together for a bit more than a year, Todd and James had graduated and we recorded a 3-song demo cassette in a studio in Hartford, CT, during xmas vacation. That gave us the bug to want to return to the studio and record more; we were writing furiously (very ambitious lot we were!) and felt we could put an album’s worth of material together within a couple months of having recorded the demo. Four months later we were in a different studio tracking the album. It took us a total of two weeks (69 and 3/4 hours for those keeping score at home) to track and mix “Admit One”.

I graduated high school just as we were finishing the recording and we began playing as many shows as we could in the southern New England area. By the time mastering and duplication on the CD was complete - things worked at a considerably slower pace back then before EVERYTHING was computerized/automated - we were ready to debut the finished product in December of 1989. A number of shows followed into the new year and then things began to fray - interests and motivations were divided, so we split amicably as so many bands do after the push to make a record. There’s so much excitement and drive while the creative activities of writing and recording are occurring that the suddenly daunting feeling of looking at boxes of 1000 CDs in one’s garage can make anyone ask the question, “Well, what happens now??”

So, we broke up.

J.R.: Tell us about what has happened since then.

DG: Todd and I continued writing through the years, mostly sporadically, but sometimes in a great flood of ideas; there were times  when we were in the same location and that generally fostered more writing. Todd and James stayed in touch with each other much better than James and I did, so we were always only one degree from each other.

In 2009, James was going to be in Seattle (where I now live) for a week on business and Todd was flying through on his way to Hawaii for a filming gig. James made the bold suggestion that we all get together and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of “Admit One” by having a weekend together playing through the songs in my studio for no other reason than for three friends to have a great time and enjoy ourselves.

This worked out so well that we started meeting up at least once a year since 2009 to write and see what kind of new mayhem we could come up with, again, just for our own enjoyment and without any particular plan in mind.

J.R.:  That brings us to last year, the re-release of “Admit One” remixed and remastered.

DG: Right. James, ever the motivator, had suggested early in 2014 that we think about doing something for the 25th anniversary of “Admit One”; I’ve been disappointed in the sound of the mixing and mastering of the record almost since the time we put it out. Once the shine of the release wore off in 1989 and I could hear the record with more objective ears, I was really disappointed in the sonics. Granted, we made it on a limited budget in a studio with decent, but by no means world-class equipment, but I always expected it to sound better; in fact, the sound of the original release was my motivation to pursue recording and mixing as a career so that I would be the one responsible for the sound of my music in the future rather than relying on someone else’s ears/ability/taste.

I had kept all of the multitrack tapes from “Admit One” through the years, so I suggested that if anything were to happen to mark the anniversary of the record that included playing the music for a wider audience once again (wider than the bounds of my studio, for example), that I would want to remix the record, or at least attempt to bring the sound of the CD to a place where I wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed to let others hear it. After mixing the first song, which I believe was “Victory Parade”, the three of us knew that this was going to work and would be worth pursuing, even if it was just for ourselves. I finished mixing and had one of my regular mastering engineers put the final polish on it, and then James picked up the ball and went crazy with promotion - if he hadn’t done any of the legwork, we’d never have progressed beyond having a newly mixed version of the CD for the three of us to listen to. The man is a marketing machine!

J.R.: May 7^th 2015: “Letters From The Skipper”

DG: With our yearly get-togethers starting to bear some actual new musical fruit, and with all of the incredible response to the re-release of “Admit One” from blogs like yours and a number of radio shows in North America and Europe, it felt like it was time to test the waters with new material. To me, this is so much more gratifying as it is current and where our heads are at musically and lyrically. “Letters From The Skipper” began life as a demo that James had sent to Todd and me a couple of years ago. I started working on it by pulling it apart and changing the arrangement around by extending some parts, cutting others, turning what were to be choruses into verses and verses into the chorus!

The three of us then worked through this new arrangement refining parts and figuring out the tricky bits. At that point, we still didn’t have any lyrics, so I started putting some ideas together based on some long conversations the three of us had about James’ life in the past decade and a half. After presenting a fairly complete set of words to the other two, James asked if he could have a crack at it and contribute some lines; Todd then worked on integrating both sets of lyrics into a cohesive whole, marking the first time we’ve really had a proper lyric collaboration, as prior to this, I had been the sole lyricist.

We released the song earlier this month and for a day it was the #1 selling rock single on the iTunes chart; we have no idea if that means we sold 15 copies and it was a slow day all around, or 1000, but it was an exciting thing to see nevertheless.

J.R.: Is the timeline over at this point? I believe it is not ;-)

DG: Definitely not! In many ways, we feel like we did 26 years ago and that we’re just getting started. We have a follow-up single that will be released later this summer or early autumn; this one is a bit heavier! After that we’re planning our next time together in the studio to work on some new material and discuss the possibility of perhaps playing live next year.

J.R.: Looking forward to hear some new tracks! Thanks Don for sharing Gaillion’s story with us!

DG: Thank you, Jorge, for your support and enthusiasm; we’re truly honored!