Modern Drummer
April 1997
By: Robyn Flans
Transcribed by: Jeff Hacker

For Journey lovers, 1997 is a landmark year, as one of the best-selling rock bands in history reunites to please audiences with their classic material-- as well as songs from their first studio record in ten years, Trial By Fire. Reprising his role as Journey drummer is Steve Smith, who joined the band in 1978 and was "let go" in 1985, largely because of musical differences regarding the making of the band's last studio album, Raised on Radio. It was no secret that musical and personal dissension had infiltrated the group. Journey disbanded two years later.

The past ten years have been well spent by Steve. He's been incredibly productive, taking part in many outstanding projects: seven albums and road work with Vital Information; a seven-year relationship with Steps Ahead; albums with the Storm, Shaw/Blades, Y&T, and Italian artists Zucchero and Franchesco de Gregori; a couple of tracks on Mariah Carey's Emotion; Jonathan Cain's and Neal Schon's solo albums; the Burning For Buddy project; and tours with Stanley Clarke, Allan Holdsworth, and Randy Brecker. When he's at home in Northern California, Steve enjoys working with local bands, covering a variety of styles such as fusion with Marc Russo, straight-ahead jazz with Mel Graves and Mike Zelber, hip-hop with Alphabet Soup, and blues with a trio called the Russell Brothers.

Despite the fact that all of the members of Journey were busy with projects early in 1995, when Sony proposed that the band reunite, it seemed to make sense to everyone involved. To date, Journey has sold more than forty-five million albums with Escape and Frontiers remaining on Sony's Top-10 list of best-selling albums to this day. Journey's multi-platinum Greatest Hits, released in 1989, continues to sell more than 500,000 copies per year, making it obvious to group members that there is still an enthusiastic audience out there ready for more.

To Steve, whose larger body of work has been in the jazz field, the reunion is an opportunity to make a good wage replaying a role that he can now infuse with ten more years' worth of musical experience and wisdom. "I do some things that make a lot of money," he candidly explains. "I do some things that make a fair amount of money. I do some things that make me very little money and I do some things that lose money. But all in all, it's a balanced portfolio...and it feels good."

RF: Are you still practicing like a mad-man?

SS: Yes. I really enjoy the practicing process, so part of my day is allocated for that. It's one of the first things I do every morning after I get up and have breakfast. I'm more focused if I do it, say, around 9:00 in the morning.

RF: Until?

SS: Maybe noon. I have a lot of great rational reasons for doing it, but the overriding reason is that it feels great; I enjoy it. I see it as part of my job, just like an athlete must stay in training. I don't understand why it's so surprising that I do this. I'm fascinated by the instrument and the music and want to make it easier to play and access more ideas. Also, I feel it is a way for me to help respect, enhance, and develop the potential of the musical gift I was born with.

RF: Can you elaborate on how you are doing that?

SS: I'm constantly re-addressing the foundations of what I do.

RF: Can you define "foundations?"

SS: The basic grip I'm using, the motion that my hinds are making, and the path that the stick is making as it's moving through space...the basic physics of holding the sticks, sitting at the drumset with the feet on the pedals and a sense of balance and centering.

If I'm developing something to a specific degree of proficiency, a lot of times I'll hit some kind of wall. The way to break through that wall is to re-address the foundation. It really gets down to, What does it feel like when I play? The less I break the laws, the easier it gets. I am becoming more and more aware of the physical laws and trying to align with them rather than resist them.

RF: Let's get specific: Tell us something about your lessons with Freddie Gruber.

SS: One thing that is consistent with the lessons is having everything really settle to the bottom of the beat and having what I play be very grounded and connected to the earth. Otherwise, whatever I play would have a nervous sensation. That's one aspect of it.

RF: What does being grounded require?

SS: It requires that we don't get in the way of gravity, that I let the sticks and the pedal fall, and allow them to naturally reach the bottom of the beat. I allow the sticks to touch the surface and play off the surface of the drum, but without going below the surface of the drum.

A tap dancer will use his toes and heels to float on top of the floor; he's not trying to drive his feet through the floor. You don't get anywhere doing that, and you can hurt yourself. That's a common way people play the drums. They don't dance off the top of the drum, they play as if what they're striking is inches below the head. It's really important to find out where the surface lies and play off of it.

It's also about being very aware of the motion that happens once the stick hits the drum. How does it travel between one strike to the next strike? That motion in between is important. To draw an analogy to a percussion instrument, let's use the tambourine. As we drop the tambourine and it hits our hand, we hear that as an impact, like the drumstick coming down and hitting the head of the drum. But as we move the tambourine away from the hand, we hear the other side of the beat; we hear the release. With the drumstick we don't hear the release, so we're not often conscious of what the stick is doing in the release. With a tambourine, the release also has to be in time, Both motions must be in time to work. The motion of time and space being equal is the result of respecting the laws.

It's difficult and meticulous work addressing this. And this is just breaking down one piece of the puzzle. When I strike the drum, the stick will naturally bounce as long as I don't inhibit that bounce. So I have to move my hand out of the way of the stick to allow it to move through space, and then I have to guide it back down, to start the trip back down and allow gravity to take it back down. I don't want to force any of it. I don't want to lift it up or push it down. I want to facilitate its bounce, and then its rebound, by letting gravity take hold. How my hand moves is really dependent on what dynamic level laying at, and what instrument I'm playing--a cymbal, the snare, a tom-tom, whether I'm moving from the snare to the tom to the cymbal; there are so many variables.

It takes an amazing amount of concentration to slow down the process to the point where it's meditative. I just have to work with microscopic pieces and watch and adjust my body to the point where I'm just breathing and relaxing. Eventually, when the motions are developed and I get out of the way, it starts to play itself.

Every time I go to Fred Gruber to take a lesson every four to six months--I'll get a piece and develop it. After I've developed that, there will be even more detail to take it a step further: How can I make it easier and lighter? What I mean by lighter is, when you have less and less resistance, there is actually a physical sensation of the stick being lighter, almost weightless--though the sound that comes out can be bigger and stronger-sounding, yet without the effort that I expended, say, ten years ago. That's the analytical practice stage, but when I play the drums in performance, I pay less attention to the mechanics of it because I've spent the time in practice, so it's easier for me to play and it's more of a creative experience.

I feel a new sense of balance and grounding--sensing the bottom of the beat, sensing my body movement on the drumset with increased ease. I've discovered that I don't often break sticks or cymbals. I occasionally dent drumheads, and they wear out, but not quickly. I changed the upper tom heads once during the whole tracking sessions for the Journey record. It's because of touch. The sticks wear out eventually, but I notice that without forcing things, I'm not breaking them which brings up the subject of common injuries. When you're using tension, something has to give. Hopefully your arm will not break; the stick will break first, the cymbal will break first. But usually, your body has already taken quite a beating.

RF: Certainly this is applicable to the Vital Information situation, but what about the dynamics and power in the Journey situation?

SS: There may be a misconception that what I'm talking about can only work in a soft context, but that's not the case. Buddy Rich is such a great example of somebody who embodied all of this. That was one of the reasons he was such a technically accomplished player. Buddy didn't break the laws; he was aligned with them, which explains a lot of his facility. But he was capable of playing incredibly loud. you can utilize all of these principles with a full range of dynamics.

I'm finding the Journey situation very comfortable in fact, it's easier than it used to be. I have just as big a sound as I used to have, but I would have had to play with a lot more force to fill up the same space with sound.

RF: There was a ten-year absence of playing in that group. You're ten years older, more musically mature, more studied, more experienced, and now you're going back in a situation from your past. Did you need to redevelop certain techniques you used back then because that's what worked, or can you truly apply your maturity to a situation you were in ten years ago?

SS: When I realized this reunion was inevitable, I decided to really do my home work on rock 'n' roll. When I first joined the band in '78, I was coming from more of a jazz background, with pretty limited rock 'n' roll knowledge. I knew of the groups of the '60s, like Hendrix, Cream, and Led Zeppelin, but I had never done any major research on rock 'n' roll history. I had done that with jazz.

In the last few years, I really traced the roots of the instrument, the music, and the different players. When I first joined Journey, I played the music intuitively I was sort of a toned-down fusion drummer at the time. But for this reunion, I decided to approach the music from a completely different perspective, more from the roots of rock'n' roll.

In my researching the history of the drumset I decided to go back and try to find the point where the music began to diverge from jazz. The instrument itself was basically designed to play jazz. If you were a drummer before a certain time, you were petty much a jazz drummer. Eventually they used the drumset to play the blues. I tried to find the point where the blues started to evolve into the early rock 'n' roll feels. I read books, bought videos and a lot of biographies and histories of rock 'n' roll, and then went out and tried to find the recordings to accompany all of that. I enjoyed it. This is my work. If you talk to somebody who writes a book, they do research before they start writing, so this was no different.

I really dug into the whole blues thing and found as many of the earliest recordings as I could. Most of them have no drums, and some of them have a washboard. Then eventually, there are drums. Louis Jordan & the Tympany Five were called jump blues, but they're credited for creating some of the early rock 'n' roll. Jordan had a drummer named Shadow Wilson, who was a great jazz drummer. Some of the other early breakthrough guys were Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley, and I listened to original recordings and checked out what their drummers were playing, and then found the common threads.

Earl Palmer was somebody who really came up as a strong influence as far as all this goes, because most of the early rock stuff came from New Orleans. He was the session player on many of the records coming from there. There's a DCI collection called New Orleans Drummers, and I thought his part was fantastic. I learned a lot about the earliest rock 'n' roll feels from listening and watching him play.

What struck me was that nearly all of the early rock drummers were basically jazz drummers who, while doing the studio work, had to come up with parts to fit the new music being played. Thus, rock drumming was born. The one thread I heard with most of the first-generation rockers was that they swung like crazy. It was coming out of swing, it was coming out of a shuffle. If you listen to Little Richard or Fats Domino, it's not an even 8th-note feel for the most part. It's a shuffle type of feel, a swinging, swampy feel, which Jim Keltner so embodies and has kept alive through the years.

The whole British Invasion had to base their music on something, and this is pretty much what they based it on. Rather than going to John Bonham and Ringo, which is legitimate--and I did readdress all that--I wanted to heal where they got their stuff from. From what it sounds like to me, they got their influences mostly from jazz drummers like Max Roach, Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Buddy Rich, and Gene Krupa, and then the work of Earl Palmer and his contemporaries. When I listen to those early English drummers, they have this great swing as well.

The further we get from the source, the further drummers move away from their orientation of the instrument being based in the 4/4 swing pulse, or at least the shuffle. Consequently, we're further removed from the essence of a grooving, swinging, down home funky rock feel.

I did personal examinations of the different musicians I knew who were influential to Steve Perry, Neal Schon, and Jonathan Cain. I know Steve's major influence is Sam Cooke, so I read his biography and I had a sense of where he came from with his gospel roots. I bought many of his recordings, which encompassed all of his different periods. Jackie Wilson is also a big influence on Steve, as well as many of the great soul singers of the '60s. I bought Motown collections--Wilson Pickett. Marvin Gaye, and Otis Redding, to name a few.

I wanted it to be that when I walked into the rehearsal hall with Journey, it would be different from before. Like when Steve would talk about this Sam Cooke tune or the feel of this Motown hit--back then, if he gave me a hint of what it was about I could fake it; I could come up with a good approximation and something intuitively that worked. But now I was coming at it more from having firsthand knowledge of what it was he was listening to. It was easier for us to connect musically.

It was always easier for me to connect with Neal, with his heavy background in blues and then Eric Clapton and Hendrix and the whole '60s guitar thing, because I was pretty familiar with it. But I went back even further to check out Neal's blues roots. It was an interesting period of months where I was listening and reading I'd then try to play along with the records and try to cop the feel, getting right back to how I practiced when I was a kid. I also went out and played gigs with some of the local San Francisco players. This way I could embody it, feel it, and develop it so I could play it whenever it was appropriate. It gave me the feeling that I could enjoy this Journey reunion and get something out of it in a musical way.

RF: How do you see your evolution of the last ten years, and what do you see that you're bringing to the music, aside from the studying?

SS: I've had a lot of studio experience in the last ten years, so I have a lot of newly developed skills in "song drumming" I have a lot of technical awareness of the studio environment and playing with click tracks, sequencers, loops, and all of the modern technology, which I didn't have any knowledge of when I had originally joined the band. That was a lot of experience for me to bring to the situation.

Something new I brought to the reunion was a sense of detachment from the "band experience." Before, the band was incredibly important to me and the outlet was really crucial in that I wanted to demonstrate everything I knew, my ability and knowledge--and I was trying to squeeze everything in, which can cause a lot of tension. In some ways it can create some great music, and there's something to be said for that. But behind that, there was also somewhat of a lack of awareness of what might he the most appropriate thing to play. Now I just cut to the chase without taking some unnecessary, circuitous route. Having a lot of experience as a hired hand now, I do what the people who hire me want, and there are boundaries to be creative within, which is the challenge so I take the challenge and if they like it, great, and if they don't, I'm not attached to it; I'm just there to do my job. I've learned something through the experience, but I'm not attached to it. I approached this situation with that sense of professionalism and objectivity.

RF: Having done a lot of session projects, you probably came back to this situation with more confidence.

SS: Yes. I had the confidence to know I could do a good job and to know I have worked with very demanding people who have been very satisfied with my work. I went into this situation with that attitude.

RF: In the early days the creation of the music was a band process. When Journey recorded Raised on Radio in 1985 it was much less that way. How was the new material put together?

SS: it was a combination of approaches. A normal working day would be 11:00 to 5:00, five days a week, like a regular day gig. We would jam and come up with song ideas and nurture them to completion. We pretty consistently created one song a day for a couple of months. That would result in a pretty good song form--verse, chorus, bridge, with an arrangement and some melody, although no lyrics. Then we would make a rough demo with a couple of mic's in the room.

The other approach taken was that Jon, Neal, and Steve, or just a couple of them, would go to Jon's house and sketch out some song ideas. What they did differently from the Raised on Radio project, except for two tunes, was they didn't use a drum computer or synth bass, which was really nice. They just left it open, so when Ross [Valory] and I came in, we could take their ideas and put ourselves into it. They had the knowledge that there was something of value in that spark of chemistry and creativity that happens with the five of us in the room. That felt great.

After a few months of this, we had around thirty songs in various stages of completion. Then we tried to hone down the best of those because the lyric and final melody writing was rather painstaking for Jon and Steve, and they didn't want to do it if it was unnecessary. We got it down to eighteen songs, and they completed them. We ended up choosing sixteen to record.

By the time producer Kevin Shirley showed up, we were ready to record--or so we thought. He took a different approach and wanted us to rehearse. All of us had done a lot of studio work while we were apart, and everyone was comfortable with the idea of going into the studio with a pretty good idea of what the song was and focusing on that one song and cutting it. If we had to play through the sixteen songs, we really didn't know them. We knew them that one day, but without listening to the demo, we had completely forgotten them. I would write out a sketch of a chart as it went by, so I had my music to refer to, but I didn't have it memorized. He wanted us to rehearse the stuff like we were a young band and get the music to the point where we had it just about memorized and could perform all the songs like a set. That is something we used to do way back when, but we didn't want to do it this time. So there was a lot of grumbling, but we did it. We spent three weeks rehearsing the songs that had already been written.

RF: Was there value in that?

SS: Yes, it turned out to be good. We got to the point where we honed the songs even more than they were, and we got very comfortable with them. So by the time we went into the studio, we were going for magical takes, rather than trying to learn the song and then trying to get the magical take. We only had to do maybe three takes per song, so there was a lot of energy and spontaneity in the performance.

We did play everything as a band. We used a click track on everything, which was almost more at my insistence than anybody else's. I feel very comfortable with a click track, and it makes it easier for me; I think of it as a ruler with which I'm trying to draw a straight line across a page. We cut everything live with vocals and guitar solos, and I'd say a lot of the guitar solos ended up being live. We kept almost everything. Occasionally we would splice a verse from one take or a chorus from another take, but that felt better to us than doing it with a computer. Kevin Shirley was trying to capture what he felt was the essence of the band--sometimes against what we wanted to do. But he got his way, and he did a great job producing us.

RF: What things did you resist?

SS: The title track, "Trial By Fire," was written to a drum loop, and the guys were saying, "Let's just cut it to the drum loop and then Steve can over dub the drums to it." I was fine with that because I've done that hundreds of times. Kevin said no. so we learned the song, rehearsed it, and I imitated the drum loop, but did my thing to it, and it came out better. He really pushed the band toward the live performance thing.

Kevin is a very strong personality, and we needed that. Also, he's a musician, and it's the first time we had a producer who wasn't just an engineer/producer. He has musical knowledge, and he's a great engineer, so he got into suggesting different chords and different arrangements, but from a more musical perspective than in the past.

RF: it was probably good to have one ring leader to whom you had to defer.

SS: Right. It took the pressure off of us to always have to fight it out amongst the five of us. He earned his money. One of the things he did that I was really happy about was insist on there not being fade outs on the record. Most of the songs really didn't have endings, and we were just going to fade. When it came time to cut the track, we'd goof around a little at the end and have some fun. Thankfully, we created some endings very spontaneously. Some of the endings were kinda wild and nuts, and he ended up leaving everything.

RE: Let's talk about some of the specific tracks that might have been more creative or challenging.

SS: "Message of Love" reminded me somewhat of the drumming I did on "Separate Ways." I came up with what fit for that particular song, but it has a breakdown in the middle and drum fills. That one had a particularly exciting fade-out on it, which Kevin kept. That was an exciting tune to play.

On "One More," I really got into the sound of this new Zildjian cymbal combination called Trash Hats. There's a little 14" China cymbal on the bottom and a 12" top cymbal. It has a really nasty, trashy hi-hat type of sound. I put them up and played hip-hop feels, which really works well. I also used that sound on "Colors of The Spirit," which has a sort of slowed-down hip-hop type of groove with a slight swing to it. I used the Trash Hats in the chorus, and it has a nice feel to it.

"Castles Burning" was a fun track because it's reminiscent of Hendrix and a Band of Gypsys kind of feel, a sort of Buddy Miles or Greg Errico [Sly & the Family Stone] type of feel to it. It's got a little hip-hop breakdown in the middle. That one was really fun and exciting to play. At the fade of that one, there's a funky double bass groove I play. you can't hear it too well in the mix, but it was a little groove that Tim Alexander showed me when we hung out one day. He's got some really nice double bass stuff.

Then there are a few of the typical Journey ballad tunes on the record, which I just did my treatment to--that ballad thing. Something different I used on this record from any of the other records was my Zildjian flat cymbal. I have a nice 20" K Flat Top ride with four rivets in it. I'd bring different things to rehearsal, not knowing what the reaction would be. Who would have guessed? Everyone loved the sound, so instead of playing the hi-hat for the verse on some of those ballads, I played that flat sizzle cymbal.

RF: Listening to the album, I was heating a little more of a jazz approach. That may account for it.

SS: Yes, that might have been the jazz sort of sound. It's mellow, it has a flow; it's not jagged, it's smooth. I used that on quite a few of the tunes. I also used an LP tam bourine mounted to my left on some of the songs for a backbeat. I did that on "When You Love A Woman" and "Forever in Blue."

RF: What about the double bass?

SS: I used the double pedal in the studio, although I'll probably use the two bass drums on the tour. The double pedal records well, so I used that on "One More,""Can't Tame The Lion," "Castles Burning," and 'I Can See it In Your Eyes," which is only on the Japanese and European release.

One other one I'd like to mention is "It's Just The Rain," which I love the mood on. That one was written to a drum loop, and the part I'm playing is almost identical to what the drum loop played. "Trial By Fire" was also a drum loop song. It's sort of a reggae tune that's hidden at the end of the record. It was a tune that we demoed early on in the process, and it had a blues shuffle feeling. We were fooling around with it one day and played it as a reggae tune, and Kevin really loved it, so we ended up recording it as a reggae tune.

RF: You've become very proficient with traditional grip. Did you ever feel you wanted to use matched grip on the new Journey record, and what will you do live?

SS: on this record I played most of the tunes with traditional grip, but I played a few of the tunes matched grip as well. With me it depends on what feels right for the song.

RF: It's not about power for you ?

SS: No, it's a feel thing. "I Can See it in Your Eyes," which is not on the U.S. record, was a matched-grip tune. The drum part was reminiscent of the Led Zeppelin song "Rock And Roll.' I could just get more of the feeling I wanted with matched grip. "It's Just The Rain," which is more of a ballad, for some reason felt better matched grip. On "Trial By Fire" I used Hot Rods and matched grip. In "Still She Cries," I used a stick in my right hand and an Ed Thigpen brush in my left hand. "If He Should Break Your Heart" was half and half. The first half of the tune was all matched grip, and then as we reached the fade-out I went to traditional grip.

It's technically easier for me to play traditional grip; I feel more at home. But there is something to be said for the matched grip for a feel. One of the points of all the facility is to have choices. Each angle and each approach has a particular feel, so therein lies the decision. If you think of it in terms of different periods of the development of music, there were particular approaches to the drumset, technically, that worked. So in some ways to get a more authentic feel to certain roots of a musical sound, even physically approaching it in relation to the grip will help access that feel.

If I'm playing a backbeat on a particular song, I'll play traditional grip differently from the way I do when I'm playing straight-ahead swing. For swing, I'll have my hand up a bit higher on the stick. With more of an angle, you can get a lighter sound. For more of a rock sound with the traditional grip, the stick will be more parallel to the head so you get the rim and the full head of the stick on the head.

RF: How did the group get back together, and what was it like playing together for the first time?

SS: As far as I can tell, how we got back together started with Columbia first working towards reuniting Steve with Jonathan and Neal, and then including Ross and me in the mix. It was difficult to get it off the ground initially. Steve was happy doing a solo project, as were the other guys.

Eventually Steve got interested, and he really was the crucial piece. The rest of us had had some dialog about whether we'd be interested in doing something like this if the opportunity arose. The other members were into it. When he consented to get together with everybody, we went into a rehearsal hall in L.A. and just played.

Actually, the story there was that we were supposed to play on a particular day in September of '95, though we were going to get into town the night before and set up the instruments on the rehearsal Stage. But you can't get people to just set up their stuff and not start playing. So it ended up that the four of us set up and started jamming right away. We had a list of some of the old Journey tunes we were going to play, which none of us had played for all those years. We were having a lot of fun, and then Steve Perry called to find out what was going on, and we said, "Come on over." So it actually started a day early. He came over, we ran through a bunch of the songs, and it felt really good. The next day we got together again and played, and the chemistry was instantaneous.

It was interesting to me that it still felt good after all those years; it didn't feel like we had been apart for so long. During the next few months we worked out the legal matters, and then we worked on some of the personal issues that had been unresolved in the ten years.

RF: It's no secret that when Journey ended there were some problems. Ten years later you came back into this feeling...

SS: ...a bit apprehensive about getting involved again. As far as having moved on from the pain I went through when I first left the band in '85, I felt resolved about that. I didn't harbor any resentment about being kicked out of the band, because dealing with those pains turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me. It helped me to move on as far as being a musician and developing as a person, and having to make my way in life without the protective, cocoon of a successful rock band.

From the point of view of needing a resolution, it didn't matter to me if this reunion happened. What I was apprehensive about was getting involved in this type of lifestyle again, and opening the whole can of worms that goes with it. I enjoyed my life and really liked what was going on with Vital Information, the clinics, the sessions, and family life. But with the success of all the other reunion bands, it seemed like a great opportunity to further heal some of the wounds that happened when the band broke up.

RF: so let's talk about where you stand with Vital Information and your last release, Ray of Hope. One of the reviews had applauded the playing, but was not overwhelmed with the material, which raises the question about instrumental music right now--who it gets written for and what impact it's supposed to make.

SS: That is a very big question. I'd have to start by saying it was written for the musicians and listeners alike--to entertain, excite, and inspire them. When the music was first being developed in the late '60s and early '70s, there was a great musical openness and creative spirit that doesn't exist today in the same way. Rock was still fairly innocent and not formularized, soul music was very creative, jazz was experimenting with modal forms, and the climate was ripe for cross-pollination. We had a burst of creativity from Miles Davis, the Tony Williams Lifetime, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever, Weather Report, and others that was socially supported as an expression of the times.

There is still some great music being played, and there are musicians coming up with some fresh approaches. But on the whole, I think the fusion era has come to an end as far as its being a vital movement. It seems that it was assumed that listeners became less adventurous, and the music reflected that. I think there will always be an audience for it if it's played with integrity and high musicianship. The "young lions" are proving that there is still an audience for well-played bebop.

As for Ray of Hope, we did a lot of group writing, which is the first time we ever did that. We got in a room and jammed on some grooves, and then completed the compositions based on those grooves, which is more or less the rock 'n' roll writing style I had experienced with Journey. The music we came up with for this record was, in some ways, surprisingly mellow. On the whole, it's not a hard-core fusion record. For whatever reason, that's where the group was at, and we went with it.

We hope to have a new Vital Information recording completed before I go on tour with Journey. We're going to go for a much looser, more improvisational approach. The writing will be blues-based, with Tom Coster playing the instruments he grew up on--Hammond B3 and Fender Rhodes. Jeff Andrews will be playing a lot of acoustic bass, and Frank Gambale will be using his hollow-body guitar. I'll be going for a more organic jazz drum sound. We're really looking forward to reinventing ourselves and taking on the challenge of making a statement that is personal and interesting to us, as well as entertaining and inspiring to our listeners.

RF: When the journey with Journey is completed, what will you do?

SS: I think I'll just continue to do what I was doing before Journey came along, which is record and tour with Vital Information, do session recordings, clinics solo performances--be a working musician, and spend time with my family and loved ones.