Today I talk to Jeremy Savo of the Philadelphia-based band Out of the Beardspace. If you’re in the area, go see their show on January 11 with past BandsLikeZappa feature Statospheerius. And also check out their new experimental EP.

Ben Sommer:  I’m here with Jeremy from the band, Out of Beardspace. Jeremy, first of all, tell me about the band, and if you don’t mind to start with this out of left field name you guys came up for yourselves.

Jeremy Savo: Well, the name is Out of the Beardspace, and it comes from an idea and the idea is of the beard space, and it’s a simple idea. It’s just when you stroke your beard, you are in the beard space.

Ben: Got it.

Jeremy: So if you think of the famous statue of the thinker, it’s basically you are in thought, and so out of the beard space simply means that it’s a creation that you make, so it’s something that came of your thoughts.

Ben: Are you guys hirsute, all have beards or any facial hair of some kind?

Jeremy: Actually, only one of us does.

Ben: Oh. My favorite music blog these days is BeardRock.com. They have a similar gimmick. Everything is facial hair themed.

Jeremy: Yeah. We haven’t gone there. I’m actually not sure we can go there yet. We are pretty young.

Ben: Oh, well, how old are you guys?

Jeremy: Our oldest member is about to turn 22 and our youngest member is 18.

Ben: Oh, wow. So your music style is very progressive. You’ve all got chops obviously. Usually kids with those kind of chops and who are playing such a harmonically, rhythmically, adventurous music have some sort of jazz background. Is that true with you guys?

Jeremy: We actually have a rock background. We all went to a place called The School of Rock, but one of the main themes of this School of Rock was Frank Zappa.

Ben: Oh.

Jeremy: And so we all basically, throughout our teenage years, spent a lot of our time learning and performing all sorts of different songs from all sorts of different genres, but mostly with a rock background and then it’s been actually in more recent times that we’ve all gotten into jazz.

Ben: School of Rock, what is this? I’ve heard of this, but who runs this?

Jeremy: Well, when we went there, it used to be ran by a guy called Paul Green who actually founded this school and he created this school, which is now across the country. But we all went in Cherry Hill and most of us, but actually all of us except one of use was in something called the All-Stars. There were all these schools all over the East Coast and the All-Stars brought together. It was like an audition group. It brought together the best of the schools, and through that we got to go on tour and play with some people like Jon Anderson from Yes and Napoleon Murphy Brock from Frank Zappa and John Wetton from King Crimson.

Ben: Wow, and so I’m looking it up now as we talk, so it’s a Philly area kind of thing. Is that true?

Jeremy: That’s what started it, but it’s as far as California and Texas now.

Ben: Right, right. So I’m so out of step. I mix up that stupid movie with the School of Rock. Now, I’ve heard it mentioned several times. In fact, there is this girl. I forgot her name. She’s a young bassist, kind of a hot shot. She has played with a lot of progressive musicians. I follow her on Twitter. I think she went to School of Rock, too.

Jeremy: Julie Slick?

Ben: Yeah. That’s the one.

Jeremy: Yeah, her and her brother.

Ben: So it spawned some minor stars, so that’s pretty cool as you guys are carrying on the tradition. Did you guys go to college?

Jeremy: Well, currently, none of us go to college full time. Three of us go to college part time, which means basically we each take two classes at the community college down the street. But I used to go to college for Music Industry briefly and Sam, our keyboard player went to Berkeley for two years and Zack, our other guitar player, went to school for music for two years. We kind of all pulled out from that a little bit to more concentrate on our band and on other things th[...]

This week I speak French guitar virtuoso & composer Julien Beyleix – the man behind Unfrethead.

Ben Sommer: Hi, this is Ben Sommer with BandsLikeZappa.com. Today I’m talking to Julien Beyleix, who comes all the way from France. He is basically the one-man machine behind the band, Unfrethead. Julien, I want you to say hi to the audience. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your music, and also your mysterious band name.

Julien Beyleix: For one, I’m Julien from France; maybe you’ve noticed by the accent. I’ve played guitar since 12 or 13 years old. The main idea behind Unfrethead was basically Fretless Project due to buying a Vigier fretless guitar. The name came from when I was looking for some kind of music that was unfretted that had some heavy metal music influences. That’s how I came up with it.

Ben: Did you manufacture your own fretless guitar?

Julien: No, the special guitar that I used on this project was made by Vigier Guitars, which makes French hand-made, very top-of-the-line guitars. I bought it because one of my greatest guitar influences played on fretless guitars. It’s Ron Thal, also known as Bumblefoot. He is actually the lead guitarist for Guns N’ Roses now.

Ben: Oh, Buckethead, you mean?

Julien: No, the guy who came after, Bumblefoot.

Ben: Oh, Bumblefoot. What a fun name.

Julien: Yeah, exactly.

Ben: Did you take your name after Buckethead and Bumblefoot, too, to try to come up with a neat stage name?

Julien: Yeah, something like that. I was right in front of my computer trying to build up my first MySpace page. I chose my name very quickly in front of the login page.

Ben: Oh, excellent. That’s a good story. Regardless of the fretless instrument, how would you describe your style? What music influences you? Who are your favorite artists?

Julien: It’s a melting pot of many, many, many influences. I’m a great fan of string guitar music players like Steve Vai, etc. But, on the other hand, I like very progressive music and un-metal music. And while simply learning guitar, learning music, I started to add other influences, like more metal music. Devin Townsend might have come right after all that influence; but it should come from within, not just sit in the music.

Ben: I don’t know who that is.

Julien: He was a singer with Steve Vai in the early ‘90s on the album, Sex & Religion. After that he created his own death metal project called Strapping Young Lad.

Ben: Oh, I’ve heard of that band, sure.

Julien: He is a very charismatic singer. He has his own career and his own sort of stuff that is very unique. I think it was really the first metal band that I really dug outside of being a teenager. It’s the first heavy metal band that I was really digging. That and maybe Meshugga too.

Ben: Meshuggah is a great European band. I’m curious. What did you do before this? What are you doing separately from this? Is this your main project that you pour all your energy into? What’s your history?

Julien: I played guitar early in my own corner before this. I was just playing guitar with a local band. As far as what the goal is, it’s like a side project to me.

Ben: Do you make a living from music?

Julien: No, I worked a little as a computer engineer.

Ben: Me, too.

Julien: Then I stopped because it was very boring to me. I started giving simple guitar lessons and tried to make a living with that.

Ben: Do you do that now or did you try that and then fail, or give up?

Julien: No, I didn’t really give up. It’s always cool giving lessons to…Sometimes I learn a lot from students.

Ben: Oh, so do you teach full-time?

Julien: Yes.

Ben: Oh, good. Interesting.

Julien: I use more time for the music now, but I had a full set of giving lessons in the past.

Ben: How is the scene for your type of music in France?

Julien: I think there has been a good response for a while for basic guitar. I think there’s a really French audience for guys like Bumblefoot or Mattihias IA Eklundh from Freak Kitchen, which is a Swedish band. It’s a [...]

Ben Sommer: Hi, this is Ben with BandsLikeZappa.com. I’m here with Joe Deninzon from the band Stratospheerius. Joe, why don’t you just say hi, and just give a little introduction about yourself, the band, and what you guys are all about.

Joe Deninzon: First of all, thanks for having me on your program, and my band is called Stratospheerius. I play the electric seven-stringed Viper violin, and basically, Zappa’s one of our biggest influences. In fact, we performed a few of their songs live. The band is hard to describe, but it’s a mixture of Zappa, Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Police, little flashes of Dave Matthews but not too many, and I’m the lead singer of the band, and it’s prog, rock, funk, jam music with the influences of gypsy music and classical music as well.

Ben: Yeah. Cool. Now, it’s an excellent and very interesting instrumentation you’ve got, with mix of song styles. I’m not sure if you’re a violinist or fiddle player. Oh, you’re like Jean Luc Ponty or you’re like Dave Matthews. I mean, in this case I guess there is that element of that Dave Matthews angle. You’ve got that bit of a jam band element where you guys rock out and then take trade solos, and then you’ve also got absolutely the prog and jazz fusion element. The precedent there is – I guess – Ponty. I’m not sure who else.

Joe: Well, in the worlds of progressive rock, bands like Yes, King Crimson, that’s old school progressive rock and they influenced us a lot, but not so much as a lot of the newer bands out of that genre, but jazz fusion, I would say with Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jean Luc Ponty, Return of Forever, groups like that. We take elements of all that, each of those genres of music that we like, we mix them together.

Ben: Tell me about your instrument. You have a name for it. It looks like a tricked out electric fiddle, but you have a different name for it. Tell me about it.

Joe: It’s known as a Viper. It’s made by a man named Mark Wood out of Long Island, and he was the violinist for Trans Siberian Orchestra for a while. He’s manufactured these violins for about twenty years now. And they’re shaped like flying-V guitars, and they have a unique harness strap-on system that goes around your back, so it sort of becomes an extension of your body. And me being a singer, it’s very comfortable to play and sing with this instrument, and it’s a solid body violin.

Ben: It’s the seven strings? How is it strung? What are the pitches?

Joe: Well, the top four strings are regular violin strings, from the highest which is E down to A, D, G, then it goes down to C, like a viola, F and then B flat. And B flat is a whole step lower below a cello.

Ben: Oh, awesome.

Joe: It’s got a range of most of the bowed stringed instruments.

Ben: Basically, it’s a guitar, roughly.

Joe: Yes. I put it in through about sixteen different effects pedals. I have a huge pedal board onstage, if you come and see our shows. Basically, if you put a distortion pedal on it, you get those low power cords on this instrument. It sounds really cool.

Ben: Cool. Yeah. What’s the training like to take that up? I play five-stringed instruments. I’ve tried out a seven and ten-stringed guitar, and it’s not so weird. You can adjust to it. You’re going to learn. Is it the same deal with the violin? Was it pretty easy to pick this up? I presumed you were trained classically?

Joe: Yes and no. I mean classical training is definitely important. I mean it really is a foundation for everything I do, but it takes a bit of adjustment because the angles of the strings are different, the intonation is a little different. It took me about a month of just practicing and getting used to it. It also has frets like the guitar, that’s the other thing and that takes getting used to for a violinist.

Ben: Doesn’t that make your life easier?

Joe: It does in a lot of ways.

Ben: Why did they put frets on it? Is it to make it easier to play now that you’[...]