Center Stage with Ed DeGenaro - Part 2

by Aaron Cheney | July 6, 2009 | Add Comment

Less is Seldom More

In part 2 of my interview with fusion guitarist Ed DeGenaro we discuss his country project, his new album, and his battle with music piracy:

AC: And Neck Bone is a nod to your country influences. Are you still playing with your country project?

ED: Yeah….I gotta eat. (Laughter.) I’ve only sold about 100 copies in the last two months of “Less is Seldom More”. But then again, you know, it’s readily available on your favorite download site for free.

AC: Do you have to deal with a lot of piracy?

ED: Of my stuff? Yeah! I’d say I spend a day a week chasing down blogs that host my album, like on Rapidshare and those kinds of sites, just to have that shit shut down - and a week later it’s up again. Like last week I came home, and I ran my weekly Google search for pirate downloads, and it just had gone up just a half an hour before. I contacted Rapidshare, to take it down. By the next morning they had it up on Rapidshare again. I contacted them again, and they took it down in like three minutes, which was awesome, and then they put it up on, you know, on some MyFiles or some other file hosting site. So we took it down there, and then finally Google took the listing off. I mean it’s a frikkin’ headache-and-a-half!

AC: It sounds like an ongoing nightmare.

ED: I mean there are people who think it’s good advertising, but where will I make that money? At a gig where I charge $5 dollars? I don’t think so.

AC: Going back to the country thing, have you managed to incorporate your fretless guitars into that, to imitate pedal steel or something?

ED: Everyone once in a while I’ll bring it out if I’m bored, but there are so many guitar changes and it’s so fast paced, that it’s….I’m pretty stuck with Tele’s and Strat’s. At my own gigs I use the fretless for an hour, before I go back to fretted again.

AC: You have some amazing guest musicians on the new album. Are these all guys that you have musical relationships with, or do you contact them just for this recording?

ED: Short answer: yes. (Laughs.) Some of them I’ve played a million gigs with. Others I found when I started on eSession.

AC: I notice you have become a member of eSession. Have you managed to find work through that service? What do you think of it?

ED: Work? Yes. Much? No.

AC: Is that something you think will be growing in the future?

ED: I hope so, because the concept is really a great idea.

AC: I think so too. I write a lot of country tunes for pitching in Nashville, and it’s sometimes tough to find good musicians to record parts.

ED: Yes, it’s cheaper and a hell of a lot easier than going down there.

AC: The song Joe Z was on your last album, “Dog House”. Why did you decide to record it again for “Less is Seldom More”?

ED: It was very simple. When we did it on “Dog House” Joe was still alive. When we did “Less is Seldom More” Joe had passed, and I thought - you know what? I was never happy with the fact that it didn’t have bass and drums - that it was programmed. We redid it for the bass and drums.

AC: And I have to ask because I don’t know…who is Joe?

ED: Joe Zawinul the keyboard player from Weather Report, among other things. And in Miles Davis’ band

AC: So…to honor Joe and to get some live musicians on there?

ED: Yep. To make it the version that it should have been in the first place.

This CD gets the Aaron Cheney stamp of approval! Go buy “Less is Seldom More”….now! If you are a fan of fusion or just love great guitar you won’t regret it.

Ed Degenaro Website

Buy “Less is Seldom More”