Interview with Russell Allen for Paragon Music Magazine June/July 2005 New Jersey's own Russell Allen is mostly known for his work as the singer for SYMPHONY X, but at the moment, he has a new solo album out called Atomic Soul and was more than happy to get on the phone to promote it. This interview was especially fun to do since there were so many references to our home area. Just to name a few topics: He reveals the secret behind the best sausage sandwiches in New Jersey. He teaches you how to name a song. And he explains the good and bad about living in The Garden State. We also learn never to piss him off or he might challenge us to a joust. Don't get the reference? Read on and see what we mean. 

Paragon Rob: Real quick, before I get into musical questions, I was looking around the Symphony X website the other day and I looked at some of the fan art. A lot of bands have sections on their sites with fan art and I was wondering if you had ever considered hiring a fan to do album artwork instead of a regular artist? 

Russell Allen: Well, we got a fan to do our website. Does that count? ::laughs:: She did all the artwork stuff, she was a big fan of the band, so we let her handle it. She’s also doing my site too, the ATOMIC SOUL site, so we’re not against anything like that. I’m always looking for stuff like that. 

Paragon Lisa: Most musicians say they grew up in musical environments when they were very young. Would you say this creates a musical drive in a person? Or do you think that anyone could have the same drive even if they did not grow up in that kind of environment? 

RA: Oh yeah, they can. Not everybody had that. Some of the greats really didn’t have that. I think if you’re passionate about something, whether it be music or anything else, even if you don’t have it around you, some guys, like rock guys, rebel against their parents with this in a sense, that rebellion early on in your teens. And you dreamt to make it because they said you can’t. So I think it works both ways. It helped me immensely, I had a big musical family. But just looking at how many artists have made it without that, there are a lot. I think it’s all in yourself, if you have the drive, you’re gonna go. And you have to persevere, you can’t just expect everything to happen overnight. Unless you’re really lucky, and if you’re that lucky, go get a Mega Millions lottery ticket, I think it’s like $200 million now. You gotta persevere. 

PR: You were performing in front of people when you were as young as 5 years old. As you grew, you went through all the different stages that most musicians do, listening to and taking in different eras and styles of music. Is there a particular style that you were really into at one point that maybe you look back at now and try to steer clear of? 

RA: No, I don’t really steer clear of anything. I still enjoy listening to WILLIE NELSON on a really nice, sunny day. Or actually more of a rainy day, ::laughs:: he’s more of a rainy day kinda guy. But I don’t particularly steer away from anything. In my professional career, I might not be inclined to pull out a Country song, and obviously, I’m more into Rock and Metal and stuff, but I don’t make a conscious effort to say, “Oh I’ll never do that.” I don’t have that attitude. Who knows what I’ll do, and that’s the beauty of it. I have so many different influences and I started so young. A lot of that Willie Nelson stuff and early JOHNNY CASH kind of helped to shape how I feel when I sing soft stuff, even if it’s Rock or Metal. It just kinda helps me because they were such great storytellers. And in that sense, that sort of facilitated the accolade. I kind of learned my story telling from those guys. So there’s always something there that, if I don’t directly do the form that it was presented to me in, somehow I can transmute that into something I can use. 

PR: Symphony X is from the NY/NJ area. Where are you living right now, still in NJ? 

RA: Yeah, I live in north Jersey. 

PR: Okay, cool, because I have a few area-related questions. What’s the best place in South Jersey to get a sausage sandwich when the boardwalks are open? 

RA: Well I would’ve told you that the best sausage sandwich I ever had on a boardwalk was down in Seaside at Midway. 

PR: Nice, that’s my favorite place too! 

RA: Yeah, that place is the shit. I haven’t been there in years. Seaside’s changed a lot in the last 10 years, it’s a little different than when I was a teenager bouncing around down there. But back in those days, and even up to 5 years ago, the last time I was there---I go down, more or less, to Belmar, or I’ll go to Point Pleasant---but yeah, that Midway place is the bomb. ::laughs:: 

PR: Are you kidding me? I live about an hour and half away from Seaside, and I make sure to drive down there for a sausage sandwich at least 3-4 times a summer. You just have to if you’re from here. 

RA: Yeah, I hear ya, dude. My mother-in-law’s Italian, and she cooks a mean sausage and peppers, bro. Oof, damn. She’s up there. You know what makes the Midway place so great, is they do it with a little bit of tomato sauce, they throw that little marinara in there and it gives it a little kick, you know? It’s excellent. ::laughs:: My first food question of the interview tour and that was pretty good. 

PL: What are your favorite and least favorite things about living in this area? 

RA:My favorite thing about living in this area is the people here. Some of the best people--I’ve met my wife here, my best friend who is a really good actor is from Jersey, and I just really connect with a lot of people here. They seem to be more down-to-earth. I grew up in California, and I mean, I have friends out there, I still keep in contact with a few of them, but not as many as I’ve made in the course of my years living here. I was kind of like an old-fashioned kinda guy living in the hippie, freethinking West coast, so I kind of like a little more traditional sort of loyalties with friends and stuff, and out there, people are kind of fly-by-night a little bit. Very laid-back, but not too many guys I can count on in a pinch. Out here I’ve got a friggen army of friends that are really close with me. ::laughs:: Literally an army because I met them all pretty much at Medieval Times. I worked there for 12 years. All my close boys are all the knights there. I lived in Lyndhurst for years, and I trained half those dudes. So I still hang out with them all the time. I was just there last night. They’re really cool, they support me, “how’s the band, how’s your career going,” so it’s really cool to keep with them and go out with them, and I go to their weddings, I go to their funerals, you name it, we’re real tight. 

PR: Cool, so what about the least favorite thing about the area? 

RA: Oh yeah, I forgot about that! The winter! Don’t like the winter man, California boy inside of me is just not happy when the winter starts coming down the pike. But the change of seasons is actually not too bad, I know it’s the life and death cycle, it is life, in Jersey and the East coast in general, you’re reminded of that. So I think that’s why, in a sense, a lot of people around here are very grounded, because everything dies here. But then it grows again. I think that’s why this place is cool. But the actual physical aspect of dealing with the winter here, is not cool. 

Paragon Rob: Yeah, like what is it today 60°, and Wednesday it was 85°? Back and forth… 

RA: And that just wreaks havoc on a dude like me, especially if I’m on tour, and singing. Oh God, it sucks. 

PR: Progressive Metal is a kind of music that, even though it has a huge underground following, is one of the least exposed forms of Metal in mainstream media. Your solo CD branches out away from that Prog sound and incorporates tastes of all your other influences. Were there any songs that, when you sat down to write them, you said to yourself, “Ok, I’m gonna do this song like a DIO song,” or any other artist, for that matter? 

RA: No, I didn’t have anything like that. A lot of people hear the influences, they peg everything, which is a testament, I guess, to my admiration to them, but it’s just all in me. I didn’t consciously sit down and say, “I’m gonna make Dio today.” I’d say, “Hey, this is a cool rhythm, it’s got a THIN LIZZY feel, or kind of a RAINBOW vibe,” but it was always the idea that came first. It wasn’t, “Today, I shall write Led Zeppelin 10!” ::laughs:: It wasn’t like that. I just sat down to write. 

PL: How much more creative freedom did you have when you were working on your solo album as opposed to writing with the whole band on a Symphony X CD? 

RA: Complete. 

PR: You didn’t have anybody telling you, “Maybe you should do it like this?” 

RA: No, no one. I was the captain of the boat, which was really cool and kind of scary at the same time. I’d never written a whole album by myself, I’d always been a collaborator with other people. And I was also the producer, and I had to get the players, I had to do it all. So in a sense, it’s really a solo record, but what I did do though, is I did create a band around me. I didn’t get a bunch of hired guns, I went back and found dudes from my past, and even some new friends that I met, and I tried to surround myself with those types of people and make it like a real, cool vibe. Kind of like when you first started, getting together in the garage kind of jamming. But we were in a little bit nicer than a garage of course, ::laughs:: but I spent a lot of time with them rehearsing the songs and stuff. And I was very conscious, and I was very open if somebody did have an idea. I was open to it, I did listen to it. And there were some songs like “Unjustified” where that was just a riff that was pretty much the first thing we played when we were just kind of warming up to play “Voodoo Hand” and some of the other songs I’d written for the record, and then we finished jamming on the riff, so I came up with the other riff, because I was playing bass, and so that song kind of took shape with those guys. That was a really pleasant surprise; I had no idea that was going to happen. I’d say 8 out of the 11 tracks were pretty much verbatim to how I had wrote them in pre-production. If there was anything that stuck out that didn’t feel right, I junked it. If there was something that I felt needed something, I added it. And if it was my idea or someone else’s, I was cool with it. It was fun. 

PR: What do you think about when choosing a name for a song? Sometimes song titles are obvious because of key words repeated in the chorus or a general theme, but if there is no easy answer, how do you come up with a title? 

RA: It needs to be something that I remember. That’s the way I kind of do it. Like the song “We Will Fly” was really originally called “A Bend in the Road,” and “A Bend in the Road” is more of a poetic sort of title; you picture a Robert Frost poem or something, you know what I mean, “The Road Less Traveled.” So I was like, “Is that really what the song is saying?” And then Bob kept saying, “I love that ‘We Will Fly’ song” because he only heard the pre-production with the singing on it, so he didn’t know what the title was, and other people would hear the pre-production and say, “That ‘We Will Fly’ song is great.” Everyone calling it “We Will Fly,” and I’m sitting there starting to think, “You know what? I think I should call it ‘We Will Fly.’” ::laughs:: That was just a sort of common sense judgment call. So sometimes it’s like that, and other times, like with “Voodoo Hand,” it is what it is. I couldn’t come up with a cooler title than what I was singing in the chorus. And then “Gaia” of course, is a title where I really searched for a while. I didn’t know what I was gonna call that song. That’s the situation you’re kind of talking about. Because I was singing about the Earth. It’s a whole song about the Earth, and kind of glorifying the spirit of the planet, and it has a little space sort of vibe to it. You know, when I’m saying “when her children leave,” I’m basically talking about how when man finally leaves this planet behind, if we last that long, I’m saying I’ll stay here because you gotta protect the old girl, you know? I couldn’t find anything, and I found something in Greek literature, the ancient goddess Gaia, who is the earliest goddess in Greek mythology for the Earth. She was the mother of all the titans, like Zeus and all the ones that you know, so she’s very rare. And I said, “That’s perfect. That’s it!” There you go. Instead of calling the song “The Earth,” I needed something cooler than that. So that’s how that happened. But it depends. Sometimes it’s just a common sense call, sometimes you stumble across something that’s really cool, and sometimes it just pops like a bubble and it’s right in your face. 

PR: Being from the NY/NJ area, you probably get stuck listening to the same radio stations we do--K-Rock, Q104.3, WNEW before it went through its big format change. Since the music radio stations in this area have always been a bit of a letdown, did you ever find yourself listening to Howard Stern or the Opie & Anthony show, and if so, which one do you prefer? 

RA: Oh yeah, I used to listen to Opie & Anthony a lot. Howard Stern too. Howard’s awful early. Unless I was up all night, Howard is a rocker, but it’s funny because his listener base is all 9-5ers, normal guys. Us rockers, we’re sleeping during those hours. So I would actually catch a lot more Opie & Anthony because they were on in the evenings. And I used to listen to them driving down to the studio, because the studio’s down in Red Bank. 

PR: Yeah, I used to listen to them on the way home from work all the time. 

RA: Yeah, they were funny, man! Then they got shit-canned because they fucked up, I forget the whole incident. 

PR: Well now they’re on XM Satellite Radio. 

RA: Oh yeah? I didn’t know that, I didn’t know they were back. 

PR: They’re on from 7-11AM. And then they have replays all day. 

RA: They actually were talking about Symphony X one day on their show. It was funny. Everyone was telling me, “Opie & Anthony were talking about you, man!” 

PR: Any last words or plugs to our readers? 

RA: Plug-wise, I gotta say I’ve got a gig coming up in Cleveland. I’m doing an acoustic thing out there at ALICE COOPER's place, it’ll be a half-hour set with about 3 or 4 songs off my new CD and some old covers. I’m gonna break out some surprises that people never heard me do before. Pretty much, I’m hoping to get out on the road with Atomic Soul, but I’m going to kind of wait and see. I’m hoping it does well, and I hope people wanna check me out doing this type of music. I had a lot of fun making it. I hope everyone enjoys it. I just wanna thank all the fans for supporting me and the band, the Symphony X stuff, and everything else. Without it, I wouldn’t have a life, so I want to thank everybody for that.