Gary Hoey Interview

by Brian D. Holland.

Guitarist Gary Hoey has released instrumental rock albums for close to 14 years now and has proved time and again that modesty works for him as his albums contain both his own compositions and amazing covers of classic rock songs. Playing to packed houses since the '80s, fans long to hear Gary play his own songs along with other well known tunes played his way, versions that are often just as popular as the originals. His live shows are powerhouse, rocked up, electric guitar extravaganzas.

The Lowell, Massachusetts born and bred guitarist auditioned for Ozzy Osbourne back in the late '80s, when the legendary metal vocalist was seeking to replace Jake E. Lee*. Though the job went to a budding young metal player named Zakk Wylde, Gary up and moved stakes from New England to Los Angeles, after Ozzy’s eye and ear for talent recognized Hoey’s playing potential.

The move to California proved fruitful as five years later a trio had been born and a record deal signed. Hoey’s 1993 Warner Bothers debut release, Animal Instinct, went on to sell close to 200,000 copies. It had a Billboard Top 5 single with the '70s Focus tune ‘Hocus Pocus’, a cover that only complemented brilliant Hoey originals such as ‘Bert’s Lounge’ and ‘Drive’. In 1994, Gary released his successful Endless Summer II soundtrack, which led to a burgeoning friendship with surf guitar legend Dick Dale.

Gary Hoey’s 2006 release, American Made, features more of the tasteful diversity fans have come to expect from him: interesting originals, humble covers, and amazing guitar playing flash and ability. He gets into diverse styles of blues, metal, prog-rock, and classic rock on this one. In ‘Shed My Skin’, as well as in his amazing cover of the Tom Cochrane penned ‘Lunatic Fringe’, Gary’s vocal ability is also highlighted.

Gary, what’s going on, man?

Gary Hoey: I’m on a radio tour down here in Florida, Brian. I’m out promoting the new album.

I’ve been listening to the new one, ‘American Made’, a lot over the past few days. Though it’s rock and roll in general content, there are a lot of different styles of rock on it. It’s very versatile. You seem to get into more of a heavy metal mode than in the past.

GH: Yes. Absolutely.

You’ve been around a long time now, and you’re very renowned and respected in Massachusetts, where you lived and grew up, respected throughout New England for that matter. I’ve listened to your music and your interviews on local rock radio stations for years.

GH: Yeah. They’ve all been good to me.

So, where’s Gary Hoey at today? Is it a place where you want to be? Has it all been worth it?

GH: Oh, yeah. My God, absolutely. I’m living my dream, man. I have no complaints and I feel very blessed. I’m always reaching higher and further, and looking to expand my audience. But it’s kind of nice being the type of guitar player with a niche, or kind of a cult following. I’d much rather do this than sell 20 million records and have it be over in a year, and not have the ability to walk through the mall and all that stuff. I’m very happy with what I’ve been able to do. I’ve been able to have a career. I have a wife and two kids, and it’s been kind of the best of both worlds. I mean, there are times when I’m gone for a while, but when I’m home I’m there 24/7. I just work out of my studio.

Why do you think your name may not be as well known as the likes of Satriani and Vai? I think it should be.

GH: Well, I think it should be, and my fans think it should be. There are a couple of reasons, though. Satriani broke into the business back in the '80s when guitar music was at its peak, or instrumental music. He was able to get on the radio and he was able to capitalize when radio was still cool. People were still getting a shot at playing cool guitar music, and so I think he hit it at that peak in time. But talking about going against the grain, my big hit came out in ’93 when Nirvana and the whole grunge movement had just hit.

Grunge kind of changed everything, didn’t it?

GH: It flipped everything upside-down. People weren’t even playing guitar solos anymore. I give myself credit for breaking in at a time when it was impossible to break in. But someone like Steve Vai, when you look at his list of achievements over the years, such as Frank Zappa, White Snake, David Lee Roth, the Crossroads movie, and if you add up all of the bands he’d been in, he’s very high profile. He’s so popular because of all the people he’s played with. If he didn’t play with all of those people then he may be in the same boat I’m in. You get exposure through the people you play with. Those high profile exposure things make a big difference. I haven’t had the kind of exposure those guys have had. Though I’m not really a household name, most musicians know who I am. But I don’t think the party’s over; my time is still coming. I’m just warming up.

I spoke with Eric Johnson about six months ago and he agrees that the genre is opening up once again, a new time for instrumental rock guitar.

GH: It is, man. Guitar is coming back in a strong way. I’ve really been noticing it. The first two rows are full of kids ranging from eight to 13-years-old at my guitar clinics. The bug’s getting out there again.

Is it true you used to hang outside Boston’s Berklee School of Music with the intention to pay students for lessons learned?

GH: Yeah. That’s pretty much what I did. My parents didn’t have the money to send me to the school, so I went down to Berklee and started hanging out with graduates and taking private lessons. I learned how to read and write music through the back door. It gave me some background in jazz and some theory, which helped me with my rock. It gave me things to focus on and more to practice. That was kind of how I learned it.

That’s pretty good. I’ve got to hand it to you for that.

GH: Thanks.

It’s a tough and demanding school. Many kids go there on their parents' money and quit after a while.

GH: Yeah. They don’t make it through a year or two. I was hungry to learn. I had played by ear for a long time and learned by listening to records. I finally woke up one day and realized that I didn’t know what scale to play with what chords, what key I’m in, or exchanging keys. I wanted to learn more about what makes the music tick.

Talk about growing up in the Boston area and playing and hanging out in the city.

GH: The Channel was a cool club. I miss that place and I have a lot of great memories there. I definitely feel that the Boston rock music scene has died a lot compared to what it once was. I used to go to Bunratty’s a lot, and I had a lot of good times there. Another place, I think it was called Great Scott. I used to see some really great funk and fusion bands there. There was the 1369 Club, a great jazz venue. The Paradise is still a great club, too. I’ve got to say that I feel real lucky that I grew up in Boston because the music scene was so diverse. You could go to one club and hear heavy metal and go down the street to hear some jazz and then go someplace else and hear some funk. I think it made me a much more versatile player.

Who are your heroes and inspirations?

GH: Besides my mother, I’d definitely say Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Black Sabbath. Tony Iommi was a big one for me. Stevie Ray Vaughan became really big for me. There were a lot of '70s guys, like Rick Derringer. I loved Rick Derringer a lot; I still do. I learned a lot from him. I used to play a lot of Foghat. Foghat was a great band. It kind of goes all over the place. Then I got into Al Di Meola and started discovering some of the fusion guys, Mike Stern and people like that. The stuff I used to listen to was very wide, but those mentioned were the main ones.

Talk about the experience you had with Ozzy Osbourne during one of the times he was looking for a guitarist (to replace Jake E. Lee, who replaced Randy Rhoads).

GH: Oh, that was unbelievable. Ozzy came to WBCN [Boston] and was on the radio talking about looking for a guitar player. I sent a demo over there and I got a call about a week later saying that they really liked it and that they’ll be flying me to California. It was a dream, man, and it was my first experience going to California. At the time I was practicing a lot of jazz stuff, but I was still rocking, too. I kind of put the jazz books down and went into a rehearsal room for about two weeks. I put up the Marshall stack and just started wailing. I was on the list of the last five guys when they picked Zakk Wylde. I flew out there and got to play with Ozzy. Sabbath was one of my main influences, so it was dream come true. I met Sharon and Ozzy. Randy Castillo played drums and Phil Soussan played bass. I didn’t get the gig, obviously, but Ozzy told me to come to California. He said I’d definitely make it. So, with his advice, I came home and packed up the U-Haul and drove cross-country to L.A. Within five years I had a major label record deal and a manager.

You ended up moving back to the East Coast eventually.

GH: After 17 years I came back with my wife and two kids. I wanted my kids to build snowmen and drink hot cocoa, and have the things I grew up with, you know, have all their aunts and uncles around and all that stuff. You’ve got to have family around you, man. I had my fun. I lived in Hollywood while I was single and all.

I agree. Now, getting back to the music, you’ve done some interesting covers over the years. I’m especially fond of your version of ‘California Dreamin’. Although covers aren’t always the best route to take, you’ve had decent success with them. ‘Hocus Pocus’, in the early '90s, was huge for you. Are covers still the way to go?

GH: Yeah. My new album has a version of ‘Lunatic Fringe’, and I’ve done ‘Low Rider’ and ‘Money’. See, it’s hard to get people’s attention for instrumental music sometimes, but if you do a cover it kind of gives people something to relate to. If you add your own twist to it, it can be creative and interesting. I’ve been known for my kind of cool versions of old songs, so I keep it that way and give people what they want. On the new record I wasn’t going to do any covers, but I finally said, "You know what? We’ve got to do at least one." So we did ‘Lunatic Fringe’. It’s definitely a great vehicle for getting people to pay attention to what you’re doing. They’ve got something to relate to. I think it has done well for me. People react to them when I play live. It’s a good thing.

Your debut album, ‘Animal Instinct’, featured contributions from a few notable names of '80s hard rock, such as ex-Firm bassist Tony Franklin. In fact ‘Bert’s Lounge’ consists of phenomenal bass and guitar playing. And I can’t leave out keyboardist Claude Schnell (ex-Dio), and drummer Frankie Banali (ex-Quiet Riot).

GH: Thanks, man. Yes, Tony did a great job on that song.

‘Animal Instinct’ was an incredible album. Did it sell well?

GH: I had pretty good marketing on my first two albums. I was on Warner Brothers Records at the time and Warner Reprise when Animal Instinct came out. We had a good run with it, a Top 5 Billboard hit. I had two more Top 20 Billboard hits. We were selling about 15,000 records a week, which is a lot of records. It sold close to 200,000 copies. We actually got a lot of mileage out of that album. To this day, many consider that to be a classic album. And that’s what I was trying to do, make an album that would still be considered cool ten years later. Endless Summer came the following year and Guitar Player magazine readers voted me best new artist. So, those two albums kind of put me on the map, and I was selling plenty of records to earn a living. It was really cool.

Sometimes the band, as a whole, has a lot to do with the success of an album.

GH: Honestly, a lot less than you might think. Where you could have a star studded lineup on an album, when it goes to radio and over the air, people have no idea who’s on the record and the DJs often don’t read the liner notes. It’s the songs that get the attention, the songs more than anything. If you’ve got a great album in which the playing makes it what it is, then that’s what matters. I think having the guys I had on the record made it a better album. The chemistry didn’t do too much to help with the success of the album, but it did help with the all around performance.

Do you still get into doing songs like ‘Hocus Pocus’, ‘Bert’s Lounge’, ‘Texas Sun’, ‘Fade To Blue’, ‘City Sunrise’, ‘Shark Attack’, and ‘Lost Dreams’ when playing live?

GH: Well, on the live show I still love playing ‘Hocus Pocus’. We couldn’t play a show without it now. People come to hear it, and I honestly love playing it every time. I’ve been playing it for a long time now, over a decade. It’s still a lot of fun to play, like brand new. But I have so many albums now, about 13 or 14 albums of material. I can’t cover it all, so I try to do a little from each. And we mix it up and bring in some new songs, too. I love the old songs and I try to do the most important ones when I can. We still haven’t done ‘Bert’s Lounge’ with my East Coast band. I’ve been asking them to go back and listen to my old stuff and learn it.

You’ve had a good relationship with surf guitarist Dick Dale over the years, a lot of respect for him as well. You kind of shifted into a surf mode for a while.

GH: Yeah. Well, doing the soundtrack to Endless Summer II is what first got me into the whole surf thing. I thought of getting Dick Dale to play on the album. He was excited to help out. It’s funny, because when I scored that movie I didn’t realize it was going to be such a cool, classic film. I didn’t know that some people would consider me the young Dick Dale. It’s interesting, because a lot of people all over the world perceive me to be a surf rock guitar player. It’s not what I am. I grew up on hard rock and blues. It’s just one dimension of what I am. I have no problem taking that on or anything. I love playing surf guitar; I think it’s a lot of fun. I thought I was a shredder, but I’ll tell you, the first time I played with Dick Dale I tried doing that tremolo picking for four minutes. I thought my arm was going to fall off. It’s actually not easy to do. There’s a certain style and technique to it. Yeah, Dick has been a great friend and I’ve learned a lot from him. He’s blown my mind, man, more than once when I’ve watched him play. His whole technique is very interesting and unique.

You’ve played with Zakk Wylde, too?

GH: Oh, yeah. I’ve jammed with Zakk Wylde. We’re definitely friends.

He’s quite a character.

GH: Zakk’s a total character and he’s gotten to be more of a character as the years have gone on. He’s an awesome player and a great guy, and he tells it like it is. I’m happy for him and he’s having a lot of success with his own Black Label Society.

Do you want to talk about your latest CD, ‘American Made’?

GH: Yeah. I’d love to.

Some have said, myself included, that it may be your best album yet. It’s definitely got some great rock and roll going on, a lot of different styles as well. It seems to have a lot of vocal mixes in it, too. Your vocal on the cover of ’Lunatic Fringe’ is pretty good. It makes me wonder why you haven’t done more singing over the years.

GH: Well, I grew up singing in bands. I sang lead for about 15 years. You know, doing the top 40 thing like everyone else just coming up. In California in the mid-'80s, a time when everyone had a lead singer upfront with a foot up on the monitor, I thought, okay, I’ve got to get a lead singer. I always knew that my guitar playing was my strength.

To be honest with you, I never grew up with the idea that I wanted to be a famous instrumental guitar player. It’s not something I aspired to do. It just sort of happened. I developed the idea while growing up listening to Jeff Beck. It just kind of took off and I thought of it as my niche. I wasn’t worried about singing for a long time. Finally, after doing so many albums and starting to tour a lot, I wanted to have a show that was complete and not just a bunch of guitar solos and instrumentals. I like to keep expanding on what I do. People say that they never know what Gary Hoey’s going to do next. They make comments about my variety. I think that’s what keeps my fans coming back. I decided, after writing some lyrics that it was time to do a vocal album. I’ve been singing more over the past couple of years and finding where my vocals fit. I’m not trying to be a Steve Perry or anything, but I’m trying to find my style as a singer in an effort to expand my audience a bit.

I think it’s great and it definitely helps when an instrumental guitarist, one who possesses the talent enough to pull it off, finds that they have a singing voice as well. Like Eric Johnson, it adds another dimension and so much diversity to the music, especially if it’s utilized only sporadically.

GH: Exactly. It gives it a little more than just the same thing. So far we’ve been getting a great response from it, and people have said it’s my best album yet. Though I like my older ones for what’s individual about each, it’s always nice to hear people say that the latest is the best.

‘Shed My Skin’ seems to get the album going in an abrupt rocking mode. The rhythm guitar has a nice modern sound. Then it gets into ‘Reaction’, which is in an interesting bluesy mode. I like it a lot.

GH: ‘Reaction’ is sort of the way that I am. I can pick up a guitar and go for a really head banging heavy metal sound, and then I like to take a Strat and try to get a bluesy tone and start funkin’ out with a Stevie Ray Vaughan thing. That turns me on, too. I like that style, and it’s nice to have that variety.

‘Psychedelic Psycho’ comes next, which is an interesting instrumental.

GH: That was fun. In fact, my bass player, Eric Kondziolka, who’s from Lowell, Massachusetts as well, came up with that riff one day at band rehearsal. He started playing the bass riff, and I asked him what he was playing. He said he didn’t know. I said, well, you better keep playing it, man, because we’ve got to put that on the album. We started jamming on it and that’s where that song came from. It reminds me of old Cream stuff, you know?

Yes, it does. Now, ‘Fly On The Wall’ gets it all going in another metal groove.

GH: Yeah. That one’s very metal.

‘Gonzo Guru’ is kind of a kick ass song as well.

GH: Yeah. I was able to make use of a harmonic minor mode in that song, and it’s in 6/8, so it has interesting timing to it. Matt does some awesome drumming on it. That’s a fun tune. And we did the guitar backwards to reverse the sound.

‘Truth’ has real nice guitar tone in it, and it’s a pleasant blues song.

GH: Yeah. There was some magic in the air that day, man. The way the tubes were heating up or something. I had this crazy guitar tone, and I was playing straight into the amp without a distortion pedal. The notes were squealing in a sweet way. You know, I’m a big blues fan, and I have so much respect for it. People that aren’t playing straightforward blues have to play it with caution. It’s hard for me to say I’m a blues man, and I have so much respect for the purists. But I said, "You know what? I’m going to write a song about truth in life." You can go through all of these things in life, and deny all there is. You know, you can deny the love of your life, that you’re not trying hard enough; you can be on drugs and not facing the truth. Whatever it is, I just thought it was an interesting concept, and that’s what I love about the blues. You can take one little thought and turn it into a whole song. I’ve gotten amazing response to that song on the road. I’ve had blues bands tell me that they were going to add it to their set! Having other bands play one of my songs is such an honor, you know.

Did you happen to get into ‘Tribal Mania’ on the same day? Talk about solos and sonic textures and tones.

GH: Thanks, man. No, that wasn’t recorded on the same day, but I was definitely pretty happy with the solo on that one. My engineer thought it was the best solo on the record.

There’s a lot of nice sounds on that one, the rhythm textures as well.

GH: Yeah! It’s an interesting song. I like it a lot.

‘The Deep’ is a nice ending.

GH: Thanks. It was going to be on The Endless Summer II soundtrack. It originally didn’t have drums, but when we started doing it live it moved into this whole new thing. A lot of fans started requesting it, so I thought, we should do a version of ‘The Deep’ on the album, just to have that version recorded and documented somewhere. And it is kind of a nice way to end the album.

I find it interesting that your website is loaded with guitar playing tips. More pros should get into doing that.

GH: Yeah! And they’re free!

Yeah. I know it.[Laughing]

GH: I love the technology that’s out there. I’m actually working on a whole bunch of instructional DVDs, starting from the total beginner up to advanced players. I want to document a lot of stuff that I’ve learned. Some of it I’ll put up on the website and if people want to go deeper then they can buy the DVDs.

That’s cool. Talk about the band a bit, the other two guys.

GH: Erik [Kondziolka], the bass player, is from my hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. He has played in lots of bands his whole life with the hopes and dreams of someday making it. I moved back home and I wanted to find some fresh, young guys who were vocal with some heart and soul. I’m happy for Erik because he got the gig out of 20 something bass players who had auditioned. He’s a great guy, a monster player, and he did his homework. Now he’s touring the world. My drummer, Matt [Scurfield], is a Berklee grad. He’s one of the guys who actually did graduate [Laughing]. He’s a monster drummer, man. He played with Bostonian and neo-classical player Joe Stump. Joe’s got kind of an underground name. Matt’s just an incredible drummer, man, a really versatile one, and a great guy to be on the road with. They’re straight guys; they don’t do drugs and they’re not drinkers. They’re just hooked on the music, and that’s what attracted me to them.

That’s great.

GH: Yeah. I have a zero tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol in my band. I tell everybody, hey, if you want to waste your life away then go ahead, but I don’t want you playing in the band high. We’ll have a couple of beers after the show's over but that’s about it. There’s a misconception of the old days, you know, when Hendrix was all drugged out. They didn’t have the information we have now, the understanding and the drug awareness. It’s fun for the minute for some of these people, but if you want to have longevity and survive in this business, man, you’ve got to keep your head on. I work very hard at what I do, and I’m not going to waste it away by taking drugs. I’m much more consistent and creative, even with what I do for TV and film, without the substances. I talk about it at clinics as well.

That’s cool. Let’s talk about gear for a bit. I noticed on your latest, ‘American Made’, that you’re playing the white Strat with the American flag pickguard.

GH: Yup.

I know that you’ve had that guitar for a long time, but I think the pickguard is fairly recent.

GH: Right. The pickguard is the newest thing on it.

Is that the main axe these days?

GH: I use a lot of different guitars, and probably about three or four live. That’s definitely one of them. It’s a 1960 relic with a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker, stacked kind of, in the single coil slot. It sounds really good. My other Fender Strats have humbuckers in them. I like the sound. Sometimes I cut the coils on those, but primarily I use them for the crunchy humbucker stuff.

I recently signed with Peavey. I’m using the Triple XXX amp [along with the 4/12 slant and straight cabs], which was one of the main amps I used on the new album, American Made. We’re redesigning the amp and will be putting out a Gary Hoey signature amp next year. I also use some other amps. I use my old Soldano [an ’88 SLO-100, built by Mike Soldano himself], some Marshalls, and a bunch of Fenders. I had a Bogner Uberschall in the studio. A lot of different amps. The Peavey stuff is going great. I’m really happy with it. It’s all tube.

I use a bunch of foot pedals. I use the Dunlop Crybaby. There’s this company called Homebrew Electronics out of Phoenix, Arizona. I use their pedal called a Power Screamer. It’s an awesome distortion pedal. I use a Rocktron Cyborg Digital Delay pedal. That thing sounds amazing. I used it on a bunch of stuff on the record. I used an MXR Flanger on some stuff. I’m leaning more toward the Homebrew Electronics and the Rocktron stuff these days. We recorded the whole album in Pro Tools.

[For more past and present info on Gary’s gear click his website link below.]

Is there anything you’d like to add, Gary, or say to your fans and fellow guitarists?

GH: You know what? I’d like them to check out the guitar lessons on my website. I actually read my e-mails, so if they want to send me any guitar questions I’ll do my best to answer everybody.
__

* Though some sources state that Gary auditioned with Ozzy Osbourne to replace Randy Rhoads, that account is easily discredited. Besides the fact that Gary says the job went to Zakk Wylde (who had replaced Jake E. Lee, not Rhoads), he also noted that his 1993 debut album was released five years after the audition, which makes that approximately 1988, when Ozzy held auditions to replace Jake E. Lee.

American Made Track Listing
1. Shed My Skin
2. Lunatic Fringe
3. Reaction
4. Psychedelic Psycho
5. Fly On The Wall
6. American Made
7. Welcome To My World
8. Gonzo Guru
9. Fades Away
10. Truth
11. Tribal Mania
12. The Deep

Gary Hoey: guitars, vocals
Erik Kondziolka: bass, vocals
Matt Scurfield: drums

Surfdog 2006

Related Links
Gary Hoey
American Made on Amazon

---