Danny Vaughn, be it solo, fronting Tyketto or even with the Illegal
Eagles is a man who just loves to be on stage, and this autumn it's
going to be one hell of a busy time for the amiable American. Not
only is he headline Firefest V fronting Tyketto but he also has the
small matter of a UK tour with the Illegal Eagles and two solo
Christmas shows to fit in as well. How does he manage, Darren
Brushneen caught up with the vocalist to find out more
Danny Vaughn
First off
then, Firefest last year was part of the farewell tour for Tyketto…
you can guess what the first question will be.
Danny
Vaughn: Yeah, and my answer would be ‘here’s Michael’s phone
number, you ask him.’ When we decided to do that he said to me flat
out ‘OK what can we do to make it special’ and then he said ‘you
know what, let’s make it the last one’. He’s just had a baby boy,
he’s got a very thriving business which he’s not happy unless he is
neck deep in it all the time, and he just said ‘I can’t see ever
doing this again for me, I can’t get away from work blah, blah,
blah…’ and I’m sitting there going ‘Mike why do you want to nail the
coffin shut?’ I’m not saying because none of us had any designs of
resurrecting Tyketto as an attempt as a full time thing, it wouldn’t
make any sense, again because people do have jobs, families, they
can’t get away for those periods of time. We were never quite big
enough to do say, what Firehouse does, which is basically every
weekend they are flying from where they live to somewhere in the
States, playing a couple of gigs for a few grand and back home, you
know, great. Firehouse was a multi-platinum act, Tyketto wasn’t, we
don’t have that fan draw. So we can only do a bit here and there
and so I just said ‘why nail the coffin shut, there are some of
these festivals that are starting to pop up’, I won’t say that the
popularity is back, but it’s better than what it was five years ago
and there’s opportunities out there.
Anyway fast-forward to Firefest
and he never expected what that was like. I was the least shocked
because of how much time I spend here, but still that was one
powerful reception. To be fair I don’t think the reception will
match that this year, and that’s not taking away from the fans, it’s
just there’s always something about the one where you haven’t seen a
band in a long time.
In a way it was almost a mistake to agree to do Firefest again in
the following year, but hey we love the gig.
So it was
Michael who just turned around and said ‘wait a minute that was
fun’. But to be fair he also thought that his life couldn’t spare
it, and it was his wife who said ‘why are you doing this, I’m not
asking you to stay at home forever’. She met him through Tyketto,
she said ‘the music meant a lot to me, why not make it once in a
while?’ So everything got restructured and rethought, we went to
Brazil
for one show and that was another one, just a fantastic outpouring
of affection for this band. That’s something, it’s not just your
ego, it’s like ‘wow, you know, we did do something’, a little thing,
but it’s something. You get a little proud and a little pumped up,
so that’s what Michael said ‘just tell everyone to blame me’, so I
am.
Michael Clayton
So
everyone was up for it?
DV:
Yeah, absolutely.
But
Brooke St James isn’t part of the reunion anymore.
DV:
That’s kind of an odd situation. But basically touring for us is
strictly a here and again thing, we might do it a couple of weeks in
a year, for the reasons I have already said. It’s not something to
base our income on, like Firehouse does, like everybody is making
base income money off that band. Brooke has definitely been through
some rough patches lately, and I love the boy to death and he’s just
struggled hard; he just hit a hard road in the last couple of
years. So what ended up happening is he got offered a situation
with a band in America that pretty much said if you join up you’re
going to be busy full time and you’ll get paid, but weren’t very
happy to say yeah you can go off every, you know, couple of weeks a
year and do this. So he just came to us and said ‘what am I going
to do? Tyketto doesn’t pay for me the year round and these guys are
gonna.’ So it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t a very happy thing either
because of course we take our contract very seriously, and he always
did as well, and he was just literally facing what for him was a
life changing decision. So it had to be this way, and we said ‘well
look if we’re gonna burn Firefest then we have one of two choices,
we pack it in or we find someone whose willing and psyched up and
able to help us keep playing this music’.
We’ll see
how the fans feel about it, I hope they’ll still think that it’s
worth going out there. I don’t know any other band that’s got four
original members anymore, we were the only ones I knew. I always
said we wouldn’t do Tyketto unless it was all of us but we are put
in this position now. Like I said we played Brazil and they want to
have us back for like seven shows across
South
America,
it was like ‘that was so much fun’. We are going to go with it and
if in any way it feels cheapened to us we’ll stop. But I don’t
think it will because, for one thing, at least in the UK,
everybody’s gonna know PJ (Zitarosa, Vaughn guitarist) from my tours
and those who don’t; people like PJ pretty fast, he’s enthusiastic,
he’s a monstrous guitarist and he’s just really, really psyched up
to do this. He really loved the Vaughn tours and he misses that, so
the chance to do something even slightly bigger and do the
South
America
thing.
We’re putting together about seven shows for
Europe in January and things like that, little bits and pieces, and
hopefully some of the summer festivals, that’s what I’m hoping for.
Brooke St James
PJ Zitarosa
And he
won’t have to learn the songs either.
DV:
Yeah, he knew quite a few of them. There’s gonna be some more he’s
got to pick up on. We’re gonna try and do a different one off the
Last Sunset thing as well.
You did
one last year, Till The Summer Comes
DV:
Yeah, another one of those. There are all kind of plans in the
works at the moment. We believe all bets are off and that the
rights for Don’t Come Easy and Strength In Numbers are now gettable
for us, so that’s a big deal. What we want to do is, we want to get
those two albums, we want to get all the videos, all the rights for
that because we believe the possession of that has expired. So
basically we’ve hired an incredibly expensive lawyer to go look into
all this.
What we
want to do is put a whole package together. I know some people that
have one album, some that have the other, some that had it and wore
it out and, you know, eBay prices can be pretty daunting. So what
we’re hoping to do, maybe for next year, god willing, is to have the
first two albums, then some collection of the videos with, we’ve got
actually quite a bit of footage from back in the day, you know just
our own personal footage that nobody’s seen, so put some of that in
and have some fun with it and with any luck maybe a few new songs.
But we need to settle in with PJ and see how that works, and with me
just writing music has become almost impossible because of my
schedule, but I’m going to keep trying. Because I’m actually in the
middle of about five different projects.
At
Firefest some bands recorded DVDs, is that something that you are
tempted to do, record footage from that for the reissue package?
DV: Once
again looking back in hindsight I wish we had done it last Firefest,
we won’t be able to touch that. The reason for not doing it was
that we were doing no shows before it and because of the budgets
involved, once you commit to that and say ‘right we’re gonna do
this’, whatever they film is going to get released. If the
performance had been bad that is what we would have released, and I
did not want that, I didn’t want fans going ‘oh well, I remember
them as better than this'.
So yes we definitely want to make a live DVD, people have been
asking for it for forever and ever. What we would do is, it’s
typical of us, we won’t do it unless we have complete control, and
the idea would be you’d do five, six, seven shows to get your
stride, then you film a couple of shows and take from there;
hopefully you turn out something great.
Film it
just when you’re at your best.
DV:
Hopefully, and you don’t just get the red light fever with the
cameras, because that happens. When suddenly you are aware cameras
are rolling and you just don’t act the same.
In this
day and age everyone is videoing on their phones.
DV:
Yeah, I’m a superstar on You Tube, I just laugh every time I put my
name in there, at the stuff that comes out. Which you can’t
complain that’s for sure.
You’ve
mentioned doing new Tyketto material, would you find a new album
exciting or that bit daunting given your previous albums?
DV: Both
answers. Exciting, yes, again one of the things we have to find out
is how we’ll gel with PJ, you know, if PJ is going to be a permanent
replacement how we gel writing, because his guitar playing is
certainly very different from Brooke’s stylistically. Once you
actually start talking about creating your own music his style would
come out more.
Daunting
because people can be very unforgiving, if an album is a classic to
them, you know like ‘this album came along at that time in my life
and at that point I decided it was perfect’. Well how are you going
to beat that? Then they ask you ‘why can’t you do another Don’t
Come Easy’, because it’s done, I can only write what comes out now.
It’s just my opinion but I like Traveller better, it’s just that
album means more to me, I’m not putting one down over the other,
it’s just I felt I managed more of my heart and soul into that, even
than Don’t Come Easy, even though Don’t Come Easy was a tremendous
piece of hard work for all of us. So I’m always worried about that,
it’s like the people that just won’t accept anybody singing for
Journey except Steve Perry. So all of the guys that have been there
before they’ve always got that wall to go up against. I watched
Jeff (Scott Soto) get it and it was just like ‘Jesus just watch him,
he’s great’, maybe he’s not Steve Perry, but he isn't coming back.
See if you can enjoy Journey with this new flavour, I certainly did,
I thought that they were never that good live as they were with
him. I haven’t seen the new guy, all I can tell is that he is
phenomenal on album; I was really impressed. So yeah, in that sense
the fans are funny because they are staunch and they are behind you,
they’re always going to play that ‘well it’s good but it’s not Don’t
Come Easy’ card. They did that with Strength In Numbers. To me
Don’t Come Easy is streamlined, you don’t wander off into different
territories, it’s 10 songs that have a particular sound and there’s
different types of songs and yet they all fall into one thing.
Strength is not like that, because where I started going ‘I really
like blues and I wrote this thing in Memphis’ and Why Do You Cry,
what does that have to do with Inherit The Wind with that sharp
heavy metal tune, it’s kind of all over the joint. So people had a
while getting used to that one, so the one thing I would say in
regards to if new Tyketto material happens is we’ll be very
conscious of not putting out something that ‘this is modern’, no we
would put something out that represents the Tyketto people.
People
just forget, you’re an entertainer. I hate when we get called
artists, there’s a few, Tom Waits is an artist, people like that
yes. But rock bands, not really.
Jimi Kennedy
Your
latest CD is the second From The Inside album, was it originally
supposed to be a one off project?
DV: No,
it wasn’t supposed to be anything. It was just an idea, I think
it’s the most successful one of those types that Frontiers have
done. They’ve done a couple of very good ones, the one that
convinced me to do the project in the first place was the one that
they did with
Kelly Hanson
which I quite liked. I didn’t really want to do it initially, but
the one thing that they hit me with initially was ‘well here is one
of the songs we think you should sing’, and it was Beautiful
Goodbye, and I was just blown away, I went ‘oh Amanda Marshall, OK
I’ll give it a try’. So the challenge with that first one was they
were going to throw me all these different songs by different
writers, and they were so different and diverse and I’d never tried
that before. So I said ‘alright then that’s an idea’ and I was able
to, I think they had like twenty songs set aside, so I was able to
really pick and chose which ones I felt strongest about. That was
very well received, I was happy for it and Frontiers were like ‘the
return to melodic rock’, I don’t know what they think I normally
do. I don’t know it’s got a few acoustic guitars in it so it must
not be, but it sounds like it’s got melody to me!
The
second one, my only disappointment with it, is that I wasn’t given
that freedom or that choice this time and we didn’t have a bunch of
diverse writers. The good side was they said instead of
contributing one or two songs we want you to write half the album.
So Maurizio (Grossi) and I talked and we said ‘we know what
Frontiers like, let’s hit them with it, let’s give them the most
Journey songs we can write’, and that’s kind of fun too. We go ‘OK
how can we do this?’ So we set out, and that’s where I think Eric
Ragno was a big help, because you had that keyboard influence that
we wouldn’t have had with just me and Fabrizio. And yeah the idea
was to keep pushing it towards a Steve Perry sounding, Journey type
song, but to me what I was unhappy about was they went ‘right the
other six songs are all going to be written by these guys’, and that
just cuts down on the flavours to me. I don’t know, I’m sure
they’re out there, but I’ve got to admit I haven’t seen the bad
reviews yet.
Is it
going to be an ongoing project, or is it something that will be just
visited now and again, or is that something out of your control?
DV: I
think now and again, it’s a mutually exclusive thing. I’m sure with
the way this is being received and hopefully it’ll sell decently,
I’m sure they’ll propose another one and maybe in a sense I can do
sort of what Bob Catley does, a Magnum album and a Bob Catley
album. I too go in and out of my solo albums and From The Inside or
something. I don’t know it’s definitely a wide open field.
So just
to confirm, Vaughn the band are still a going concern?
DV:
Yeah, we’re trying to be. It’s been a real restructuring year for
me and that kind of leapfrogs into another subject which is the
Illegal Eagles, you know it’s a great thing because I’m a lot more
relaxed than I used to be because I’ve got a relatively steady
paycheque, and as most musicians can tell you that’s a rarity. So
I’m not embarrassed about doing it, I’m very enthusiastic, I love
The Eagles music so I’m never kind of sitting there rolling my eyes
wondering what the hell happened to me, it’s a great springboard for
everything else I want to do, but it’s time consuming. We’re on the
road from October 7th to November 30th and
then pick up again in February to May, so I’ve got to fit other
things, for now, in between. There’s always a catch-22 with
original players that are involved in any kind of covers thing,
quite a few are.
So
unfortunately my band has kind of gotten shuffled for now. Having
said that we’re going to do a couple of acoustic shows at the end of
the year and I’m hoping to be able to feature more of the songs that
you don’t get to hear that often, some of the From The Inside stuff,
some of the Soldiers And Sailors stuff, things like that. Done
semi-acoustically because it’s going to be two guitars, drums and
keyboards. The guys are definitely itching to do another album, so
right there, there is a pretty heavy writing project waiting to
happen. As I said I’m kind of backed up with writing projects, I
just need to figure out when I get the time to write them.
You have
previously stated that Traveller was the album you have always
wanted to write, so will that be difficult to top?
DV:
Well… yeah I wouldn’t try to top it. I think that the next thing to
do is something different. With stuff that, particularly Pat Heath,
is presenting to me at the moment it is kind of sidling into another
area. I know he’s got one musical idea that he hit me with that
reminds me of some of the heavier side of what Glenn Hughes does and
I was like ‘OK I’m interested in there, I haven’t gone there so
often, so yeah let’s look at this’. Because Pat is a totally
different kind of guitarist from guys that I have normally played
with over the years, he’s very technically brilliant, but he’s also
got an amazing amount of soul. I tell everyone just listen to the
solo on Badlands Rain, sounds like Slash played it, and you wouldn’t
expect that if you know Pat, because he’s this technical wizard and
he’s a shredder king. But he’s sending me some very interesting
ideas and I’m trying not to influence him, and say ‘just give me
this kind of stuff, or that, just give me tons of ideas because you
never know what I’ll hear’. So I think it will be different, I
couldn’t imagine it being anything but an extremely guitar oriented
album, even more so than Traveller. Some of the songs on Traveller
would reflect that, you know like Warrior’s Way, those were songs
that we wrote, quite a few of them were songs I had ready to go so
you can tell that because the guitar work is maybe more restrained.
I kind of want to see where we can go with that, because that’s the
only band I’ve ever been in with a two guitar approach.
Since you
now have more Vaughn material than Tyketto, and Tyketto are up and
running again, when Vaughn do tour will you concentrate more on that
material?
DV:
That’s possible yeah. I mean, it’s funny you know to sit there and
think Christ I’ve got a back catalogue, that makes me quite old
doesn’t it. So yeah it’s getting harder and harder. Now people
want to hear ‘what about the thing you did with Gary Hughes, what
about the Ritchie Zito song?’ More and more single songs and bits
and pieces are popping up all over the place, which is great, I love
doing that. I’m doing another track for the Spanish guitarist Jorge
Salan right now, I did one on his previous album so it’s really nice
that he asked me to do another one. He’s quite big in Spain because
he plays in Mägo de Oz which is a huge band, they tour all over
every Spanish speaking country in the world. So it’s kind of a nice
little niche to get in, now if I just learn the language maybe.
Yeah all
these little bits and pieces are popping up as well, I just did
something the other day which just came out of nowhere. I got an
email from Kip Winger, who I haven’t spoken to in a while, and he’s
like ‘do you know Ken Mary?’ I was like ‘yeah he’s a phenomenal
drummer’, and so ‘well you know Ken and I are long time friends,
he’s very big in the Christian rock music industry in L.A. and
they’re putting this big project together called the Northern Lights
Orchestra, very similar to Trans Siberian Orchestra, so this will be
a rock opera about the birth of Christ, the whole Christmas story
with a bunch of different people on.
He listed
the guys that are playing on this, an amazing list of talents. Then
he said ‘I thought of you, I thought you’d be great to do one of
these songs’, I was like ‘yeah, yeah please’. So we did it and it’s
not quite my cup of tea musically, but Ken Mary is just an
outstanding drummer and the guitar work was so good. So this is
what happens on the internet now, you’re doing everything via emails
and all that, so I sent this stuff back to him and he approved it
and he said ‘yeah yeah we like what you did etc.’ and I said ‘yeah
the playing on it is really, really good, the guitar playing is
killing me’, and he said ‘oh yeah George always does a good job’,
‘George?’ ‘yeah George Lynch’, ‘I was on a track with George Lynch!’
so you just never know, things kind of pop up.
Did the
Northern Light Orchestra offer new challenges to you as a singer?
DV: Not
this particular track, it was pretty much written sort of right up
my alley I guess. A little bit, every project does, especially when
it is completely written and they just want you to perform better
what’s already there. Sometimes you’ll put something of yourself
into it and they’ll go ‘well it wasn’t what the writer had in mind’,
that sort of thing. So it is a lot like actually jingle or
commercial work. But yeah, it’s definitely a bit different as far
as what it is and the approach of it and it’s one of those things
they’re going to turn into a touring thing, so somebody will take
that part, who knows maybe one day they’ll ask me to come out and do
an on the road once in a while, it’d be fun.
You’ve
already touched on the stripped down shows you are doing in
December, do you prefer these or is it something you like in
contrast to the bigger shows like Firefest?
DV: I
guess in a way I prefer it; prefer is dangerous because then that’ll
come back and haunt me. I think more than anything because I am not
experienced at it, and the last thing I did acoustically was just
Tony and I, previous to that I was on my own and then once in a
while Michael would jump up for like two songs. So this is going to
be drums, two guitars and keyboard. I was originally offered the
idea of just me acoustically, and I thought ‘great I’ve done that
and it was Christmas time so kind of make a semi tradition out of
it’. Then I thought I wanted to do something that little more
challenging, see what we can do with these songs, let’s get a
keyboard player in, we don’t work with a keyboard player enough.
It’s hard to wish for stuff like that now on the limited budgets
that you’re dealing with, it’s not like Sting, gets an idea like
that, whatever he wants, so I still have those delusions of grandeur
where I think there’s got to be a way to do that without being a
bizillionaire.
Consequently one of the things I am most excited about now is I’ve
been talking awhile with Chris Childs about doing an acoustic album
of mine that I’ve been wanting to make for years. I’ve got a
backlog of songs that don’t have any other homes, they don’t belong
on Vaughn albums, they don’t belong on Tyketto albums, they range
from blues to jazz to a sort of Bob Dylan story telling approach.
It’s going to be very different, still me, still sung the way I
sing, but just talk about a variety of material and it’s just
something I want to do for myself, probably just make available
online. I just played some stuff for him the other day and he’s
really excited about it so we’re talking about is it possible to do
an album like that the way we’d like to. Which is he’s got a studio
in mind that’s in a big old house in Wales where it’s basically like
every room is full of wires, everybody sets up in separate rooms and
play most of it live. I thought ‘how much fun would that be?’
So this
is the thing, you do that and go oh yeah, because most of what I do
now, I do love it, but it’s just done here in my house and put
online and sent to the powers that be. There’s a loss of the joy of
making the albums there, which is always about the collaborative
thing and what goes on in the room when you’re all together pressed
for time thinking about what to do with stuff.
The
swearing!
DV: Oh
yeah, there’s always a bit of stress involved. So there’s things
like that, that I’m really excited about as well, so yeah, I don’t
have enough things.
Is there
anything you ever tire off. Do you ever think I’m not going to play
Forever Young today?
DV: I
felt that way once upon a time and it was my girlfriend, who is much
wiser than I am, sat me down and said ‘it’s not about you’, because
you sit there and go ‘I don’t want to’ but it’s not about whether or
not that song is run out for you, it’s run out for us. Put it in
perspective, you don’t think anybody would still care about us all.
They do and it’s a huge compliment and I think the best way to
answer that question is actually a great quote from Sting where they
asked him ‘no matter what form you take, jazz, acoustic, the reunion
with The Police, whatever you do you have to play Roxanne,
everywhere you go all of your life, you must be so sick of it’, and
he smiled and said ‘you know that lady’s been very good to me’, and
I just thought ‘yeah, you know come on that sums it up’. I may not
have a bank like he does because of the song but what I have came
about a great deal from that song and I’ve got a lot of friends and
fans that I feel very strongly about, and it’s all connected,
between that and Standing Alone, which is a song I never do tire
off. There’s some I could just as soon not do, I think maybe we
might not do Strip Me Down this time and I don’t think anyone’s
going to cry, it was never one that excited me. Whereas Nothing But
Love I absolutely love to do, it’s just so much fun to play live,
Catch My Fall is another one, I never tire of that one, there’s
something about the mode of it that still suits me.
Anything
else you would like to add?
DV: I
think we’ve covered everything, really do, I can’t think of anything
else. I’m definitely looking forward to Firefest, actually what’s
fun for me about it is, even though I’m right in the middle of an
Illegal Eagles tour, I knew about it ahead of time enough to
basically ask the guys for several days off so I am going to be able
to just hang for the whole weekend. I’m very excited about seeing
Tall Stories, of course hanging with Jeff again, there’s quite a few
bands that I actually want to see on this tour, so once I’m done
with my work I can sit back and just have fun. So that’s going to
be a real pleasure.
Darren Brushneen
