They met often and played hard, and struggled to overcome heavy personal schedules and family commitments - and the result was good enough to drive them to keep working at their collaborative songwriting and recording. The all-instrumental music isn't easily classified - it's a potpourri of rock, progressive music and fusion, and above all, each song gets into a head-nodding groove that drives it through its constant shifts and rich melodies. As one band member put it: Groove is what taps a toe, what bobs a head, and gets people listening. I call it Groove Oriented Instrumental Rock.

Duncan Glenday managed to get together with the band with a series of questions, to learn
- How they'd come together
- How they wrote the songs
- How a new band launches and markets its debut album, and
- What makes these guys tick.

Think of it as a grown-ups version of 'Making The Band'

For those readers not yet familiar with Speechless - can you give us a brief "nickel tour"? You know - the band's background, where you live, how you perceive your style of music, etc.

Sean: We're here in Atlanta. We came together, partly, out of the ashes of a sporadic group that played the music by Kansas, called the Southern Wheatheads. Sort of a pick up band that played cover tunes for Kansas fans. I met Robbie while part of that. I think we always hoped to work together in a band that did original music. Derik became involved when we tried to do the Wheathead thing again a few years later. In the meantime Derik had been working with Paul as well on some original music. Once we all got in the same room and played we knew we had something special. Our style of music? We've taken a lot of familiar elements and mixed them up in a way that folks tell us is fresh and somewhat original. Rock, funk, metal, jazz, classical, world, techno, avant, etc. It's quite a musical brew.

Robbie: Personally, I'm originally from Macon, GA. Toured extensively in the 90's in several variety acts (mainly country, if you can believe that!). Lived in NM for awhile, working as a session player in a studio out there. Never been in an original band worth mentioning before, so this is like a breath of fresh air to me! Not to mention the stuff we play is SO cool!

Paul: Derik and I started jamming together a few months after we met to play in another band where he was the hired gun. After I had left and found out Derik was not playing with a band, we just pretty much knew we were going to play together. Hell, Derik and I knew we had musical chemistry about 10 seconds after playing together. Then in came Sean and Robbie and we pretty much had a great groove from the outset. While many people seem to categorize us as progressive rock, I really don't see us as a pure prog band. To me, we're a groove oriented instrumental rock band. There are too many influences in our music to really have that as our niche. I'm a huge proponent of the music having a groove. I may not play completely groove oriented bass lines for the song, but we really strive for the song to be groovy if you know what I mean.

Derik: Paul and I played together in another band a year or two before this one developed. We felt a real connection as a rhythm section and decided to start a group that was all our own, doing what ever we felt like. I thought that getting Sean and Robbie out for a jam might be cool. We all got together one night, and everything seemed to click. We never set out to form a band with a particular style as much as we wanted a band without rules. In past experiences we all had bands with singer issues. Egos, moods, drugs, all sorts of drama. So we thought, ""Hey, let's see how things go as an instrumental band"". Not that we don't like singers, or vocals, (hell, my wife is a singer/songwriter, and a damn good one!) but as an instrument player, you have inherent restraints necessary so as not to step on the vocals. With this group, there's a lot more freedom to expand on our instruments possibilities. "

Derik – you say your wife's a a singer/songwriter? Tell us a bit about your her music

Derik: Lindsay has a very accurate description, "Alternacheesefolk". It's alternative-pop with a very folky flavor. Her lyrics are the kicker though. The "cheese" part comes from the fact that, one minute it's serious, emotional, and thought provoking, then it's tongue-in-cheek humor. Being a fan of so many different kinds of music, You don't get stuck with one mood for the entire album. I played drums on her second album, "Were You Prom Queen?", and it was really refreshing in the fact that the challenge of it all went the other direction from what Speechless does. Speechless requires me to be innovative and creative, where Lindsay's songs require me to be subtle, yet tasteful.

Speechless On Stage - Atlanta, GA

Your music is all instrumental. Is that where the name "Speechless" comes from?

Paul: Absolutely, Derik is the one who came up with the name - we also kind of hope to leave our listeners that way as well!

Derik: Yes, actually! I came up with that name while sitting around one day thinking, "what would be a good name that describes what we're, as opposed to something that's just a catchy name. The name, Without Voices popped into my head first, and I thought that was lame. "Hmmm. No vocals ... Speechless?" So I called Paul right away, and asked what he thought. Paul loved it, Sean and Robbie were unsure, but as time progressed we found ourselves liking it more and more until we just decided, "Fuck it. That's our name!"

Robbie: Um, yeah...but there IS talk of possible vocals on the second album…

Although you're all experienced musicians, Speechless is a new band. Tell us about the challenges you faced when you first pulled the project together.

Sean: Challenges? Nothing like obstacles, other than time or lack of it. Once we got together things went smoothly. I guess the biggest challenge was knowing the potential we had from the beginning, and then patiently waiting a year or more to see it come to fruition! We knew we were on to something, but of course had to write a whole CD before we could really get in the band groove and play out and all that.

Derik: There really weren't any, because of our experience. We got along great, and wrote some great material pretty much right away. As we got further into the writing, we started learning a little more about how each other works. Probably the biggest challenges were the things going on in our personal lives. I know for me, the band was a welcome diversion from the outside stress. It made us quickly grow as a family rather than a band.

Paul: The obvious one is the lack of vocals. My gripe about that is this, I want to be in a band that is going to pay attention to the music first, where we really can concentrate on giving a listener a great musical composition that does not require vocals to be comlete and make them bob their head. We also agreed to not play out live until the CD is done. Now we have broken that vow by a few months.

Robbie: Well, for me, it was writing stuff I thought the other guys would want to play. As I said, I'd never played in an original band before, so, I'd never really had the opportunity to bounce stuff I'd written off other people for them to play. You know how it is, I think everything I write sucks!

Since Robbie mentioned songwriting - how democratic is Speechless, creatively? Who writes the songs?

Robbie: Everybody writes, and for the most part, everyone comes up with their own parts. We've all got a great ear, I don't think anyone feels that anyone else needs anything other than direction - we play together because we respect each other's musicianship.

Sean: Pretty darned democratic, if I do say so. We all write the songs. Usually one of us will come up with the basic song and arrangement and then bring it to the rest of the band and we all write our own parts for each others songs. we're free to do our thing- encouraged to. That said, we do try and work towards something the writer of the song will like and work closely with them along the way. We'll demo the songs in the beginning and often the whole band has a hand in the evolution as their arrangements grow and mature over the course of a few months.

Derik: We all do writing. Actually, Paul, Sean, and Robbie did the writing for this album. With the exception of In The Clouds, which my brother Keith wrote the majority of. My main job was arranging. They'd bring in parts, and I'd suggest arrangements for those parts. On the next album I plan to write at least two.

Paul: Each person can bring in an idea at any time. On a personal level, I prefer to bring an almost finished idea to the table. Being the bassist doesn't mean that I only play rhythm, that idea for me is totally foreign, and I won't be relegated to the back of the bus so to speak when I have so much to say! Honestly, I'm very attached to the songs that I wrote for this CD. There is always an open forum for ideas...and we really try to keep egos in check and have fun. "Stella" is a tune Robbie should be particularly proud of.

Well - taking one song, as an example ... Robbie, Paul mentions "Stella" - what's special about that song, and how did you initially get the ideas for it and translate them into something substantial?

Robbie: Hmmm - well it's special for me because, unlike everybody else in the band, I'd never written anything for other people to learn in a rock group. Sure, I've had ideas and songs that I thought would work well, but when it's a crew as adept as this, you want to make it REALLY worthwhile. Hopefully I did. And of course they took what I had and ran with it, producing a far better end result than what it started out as.

In the past you've indicated that you think you "…sound like we threw all [of our influences] into a pot and made musical stew". I understand that, but I'm still going to pin you down now: Which one or two influences would each of you say are most strongly represented in Speechless's music?

Derik: We should be asking you that! I really can't pin us to any particular influences. There's hints of all of our influences throughout each song.

Paul: Groove oriented fusion rock.

Robbie: For me, I hear Rush, Kansas and Yes more than anything else.

Sean: See, there's no easy answer for that question with us. We each have different musical tastes and backgrounds so we can't just pick two. If we all liked the same stuff it would be easy. Because we all are into different things the two bands you're after would be different for each of us. So can we list eight instead? [Winks]

I'm one of those (very) old fashioned people who likes the organic sounds of music being recorded 'live in the studio'. I know that's very old-hat - but what recording methods and techniques did you use for Time Out Of Mind?

Robbie: Well, probably the only thing that would make you happy is the Fender Rhodes we used on several of the tracks. Otherwise, of course I'd rather play actual pianos and organs, but I just don't have the money to do so. So, I try to do the best with what I got!

Robbie, I'm not so old fashioned about the instruments – I'm referring to the old fashioned recording methods, the organic sounds that come from people actually playing together...

Sean: We're pretty old fashioned as well and like the live in the studio vibe too. I can't say we recorded this CD totally live though. Actually we recorded the drum tracks live as we played as a band and then threw away everything but the drums and built the songs up from there. So it has a bit of a live vibe, thanks to that.

Derik: The best way I could put it: The album contains the results of four individuals seeking a vehicle to further their potential, and discovering that they had tickets for the same bus.

Paul: Since Speechless is an all instrumental and fairly technical band, we took a different route. First thing is that we established the proper tempos for each song, we would actually record the click to a real track on the PC. Then, whoever wrote the tune, meaning whoever was the lead of the song would lay down a total scratch track to the click. This would give Derik the chance to really hone in on each song for the drums. This may sound like a weird way to do it, but many of the songs got changed along the way, so it just seemed an easier way to let Derik lock in. Then once the drums were down we set about laying all of the other bass, guitar and keys parts.

As a writer, I know only to well that it's impossible to describe music using mere words. But besides sending people to your MySpace site, can you try to tell us a few more more specifics about the album and the kind of music you're playing?

Sean: We have a mixture of styles on the CD. There are some tracks that are rather epic in scope and arrangement, like soundtracks for short films yet to be made. There are some that are very concise and to the point as well, but are based around heavy rock, basically. Rock, metal, jazz, funk, reggae, pomp, world, avant and more crop up in those tunes.

Derik: We pretty much did everything separately. On the song "Vader's Boogie", Paul and Sean were actually in the same room with me, but they were going direct, and their tracks were merely guides for me. So it was more of a jam, without a click track! The rest was done as guide tracks to a click, then I did the actual drum takes. Once I was satisfied with the drum performances, the rest of the guys put their tracks to it. An interesting note about that, we did the drum tracks so long ago, that I play some of the parts differently now.

Paul: Well this CD didn't have any kind of direction in terms of a picture we were painting with sonic nuances. All of the songs together do sound pretty good when ordered properly. I think our next CD will have more focus that will gather on feelings that inspire to a specific goal. When I wrote my tunes, I tried to incorporate all different styles of playing in each song...slapping, tapping, sliding, chords and regular finger style. I am certainly not your typical pocket player....I like to branch out.

Robbie: I think it is a solid representation of how far flung our tastes go. There's almost a jam band feel - at least, when we put it all together - in a lot of the material. We strived to keep the music interesting to all different walks of life. Sure, we could throw in a few more odd time signatures and key changes, but we don't want to do that just to make it hard to play.

Tell me more, guys. The only thing I've heard from Speechless is the samples you've posted on your MySpace site, and the first impression that came to my mind with the very first sample was 'man - this thing gets right into a groove right away!' And in you've said that the music is groove oriented. So - Besides that - and picking up on what we were talking about before - what characteristics describe it? And how would you describe the music in one sentence?

Paul: Well that makes me really happy. Groove is what taps a toe, what bobs a head and gets people listening. But again, Groove Oriented Instrumental Rock is what I call it. I see no need to put frosting on a cake that's already tasty.

Sean: There're a lot of dynamics in our music - also quite a bit of harmonic variety. A lot of our chords and their voicings are split up between the guitar and keys. Neither plays the exact same notes and you wind up with something a bit richer harmonically. I often play extensions of the chord the keys plays and vice versa. We have a lot of different textures too. I used a good chunk of the guitar family on this CD to offer a variety of flavors for each song. Some effects too, though not very much. A little slide, a bit of ebow here and there too. Robbie dug just as deep when he chose his keyboard sounds. I think the whole CD is a feast for the ears.

Robbie: It's epic and yet easily approachable.

Derik: There's something for everyone, and no one gets left behind.

What other elements of music would you like to employ on future albums?

Sean: Great question! We have quite a mix on this debut but there are certainly places we have yet to go. Anything goes into the musical 'pot'. I think it would be exciting to do a concept album sometime. Even without vocals it can be done and I think writing pieces of music specifically for certain points in a storyline would be very inspiring. Maybe have the storyline written on the booklet. Also, I'd like to see us do a few more fusion-esque things in the future.

Robbie: I'd like some jazz, Latin...Hell, even country if we do it well (and I'm sure these guys could).

Paul: I want to mess around with more effects, and give my parts a little more personality.

Derik: Soundscaping, and maybe some acoustic stuff with hand drums. Balls and chunk are good too!

Besides your own record - what would you say were the best albums of the past year or so?

Derik: Audio Slave's debut is a serious favorite of mine. I haven't really found anything recent that's caught my attention. One of my friends put Spock's Beard's "V" album on my iPod. I think that's one of greatest albums of all time. it. Heaven forbid, but if all the members of SB died tomorrow, they can go knowing that they created the greatest musical masterpiece of the 21st Century.

Paul: For me, I hardly buy albums. I just play my own stuff and every once and awhile I'll go pick up a CD. The last one I can really remember being happy about is The American by Angie Aparo - great vocals and great songwriting.

Robbie: Sad to say I haven't spent much time listening to anything current - too much time scrutinizing my parts on this album.

Sean: Honestly I have listened to less new music this past year or two than ever. I have been so absorbed with this band's music I just haven't gone looking. In fact I don't really want to be influenced by anything of the moment. That said, I really liked Echloyn's "The End is Beautiful". Donald Fagen's "Morph The Cat" was quite likeable too.

What other better-known acts do you compare Speechless with?

Paul: Again, beats me....ask Sean or Derik.

Derik: That dolphin one at Sea World......

Sean: Gee, I hate these sort of comparisons because then fans play the CD looking for traces of this list. What they find isn't going to sound just like any of these. Pressed for an answer though I'd say instrumental acts like the Dixie Dregs, Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, Ozric Tentacles, Bruford, Jeff Beck's 70s fusion era - though if we sound like any of them it is but for a coincidental, fleeting moment before we're off to something else. Some "vocal" bands that have music similar to us might be Rush, Kansas, Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, and even groups like the Chili Peppers.

Robbie: Inevitably there's the Dixie Dregs, or Dream Theater - I'd like to think we're more like Return to Forever, though.

Speechless is a new venture for you - what methods do you plan to use to get your message and your music out there? Presumably there's a marketing plan for the album?

Sean: Yes, we have a game plan. I'll defer to Paul for the specifics of it. I think that this band has a few different avenues it can pursue. The instrumental rock niche is of course there. But also background music for films or TV would be very doable.

Paul: Beat people in the head with their own copies of a Britney Spears CD! Okay, in lieu of that I think that we're going to be hooking up with someone who can help us book some shows where we fit in. I honestly think our music is accessible enough for the regular public. Not the young'uns of course but 21 and older seems to really be digging the tunes at our shows. We'll more than likely get on Burnlounge.com, and maybe even CDBaby.com A label might have a say so in that too though.

Derik: Obviously the Internet has been a huge help for us. I imagine we'll continue tapping into various online options as well as some others we've discussed while sitting in the studio. For instance, we could easily hear this music being put behind video games, or car commercials. I think our music could fit into a lot of possible streams, and we're not afraid to launch the boat and see if it floats!

So Paul, do I gather you're the marketing guru here. Tell us a bit more about your plans for exploiting the Internet. And do you think your MySpace site - with your samples - will be of any real value?

Paul: I guess so, I just push a lot. I want to get our music out there to show that groove oriented instrumental music rocks out and entertains. I also think the prog rock community is bigger than anyone gives it credit for. Exploiting the Internet - I think that we'll most likely join Burnlounge.com, slap our CD's at CDBaby.com, and then once the CD is out there, really slam home the promotion on Myspace.com. The idea of pricing a CD to not break your wallet is smart. I mean, freakin' $16 for a CD is pretty nuts, those prices by big labels turn people way off. It is a learning process but hopefully we can capitalize on that....$10 is a very fair price for a CD, and here is the thing...the artist has to do the work to get people to buy the CD, if you don't want to do the work, you'll sell squat because there are too many choices out there. You have to put it in peoples faces and say "This shit is killer!" to get them to listen.

In a perfect world - which label - or labels - do you think would be best suited to your style of music.

Paul: A label that digs eclectic music, and one that really likes music rather than always pandering to 3 chord wannabes.

Sean: Capricorn, and a label out of Canada, Unicorn are a few that come to mind. Even something like Steve Vai's label Favored Nations could be good if they were interested in signing bands and not just axe slingers, bless 'em. Or do they? I haven't checked lately. Just about anyone that signs instrumental acts, the more clout the better.

Well Sean, I'm not sure about Favored Nations etc - but you and I both know a few labels who are actively looking for artists to sign. I would have thought that now is the time to approach them. Any plans to do so?

Sean: You bet we'll actively be looking! As soon as the CD is in our hot little hands we'll be shopping it around in hopes of getting picked up for distribution. weren't looking in the sense of hoping a label will love us enough to bankroll the production of the CD. We're going to take care of that ourselves. We just need good distribution. If that includes being signed, then so be it. If there's a better way, we're open to that too.

I understand Speechless is a newcomer to the market, but what do you think is the most difficult aspect of doing business in this genre of music?

Paul: No vocals.

Sean: By genre do you mean the instrumental rock genre? Just being in this genre makes it hard. Anything without a singer can be hard to sell because it's going to demand more from the listener. Unless you're making music for elevators, and we definitely are not! So your avenues are less than a band with a singer. If your talking the progressive rock genre, well that slices the audience down even more doesn't it? We'd go down as well with the jam band scene as the proggers, I suspect.

Derik: Well, that's got two sides. On one, we have the advantage of being able to fit with any line up on a live bill. Whether the show is rock, fusion jazz, jam band, funk - whatever, we fit in. On the other side, it's very hard to get any industry help. Even though my drum students, ranging from ages 8 to 16, love our music, we've had industry types tell us that we'd never appeal to a younger audience. But then again, they also said that our music would only appeal to musicians. If you read our Myspace, or go to one of our shows, musicians only make up about 15% of our audience.

Robbie: The type of people who most likely will enjoy it aren't catered to on the radio.

Your debut CD will be called Time Out Of Mind. how was that chosen?

Paul: Ask Sean, I just thought it sounded cool when he said it.

Sean: It was inspired by our album's cover art. Look inside the guy's head, it looks a bit like the gears inside a clock. It just seemed to sum up the artwork nicely.

Derik: Robbie came up with that. Coincidentally, he'd never seen the album cover before that, and it has watch-like gearing in the head.

Robbie: I got that name in reference to an old X-Men comic from way back in the early '80s. Thought it fit what we were doing pretty well.

And speaking of the art work- Sean , I remember how excited you were when you saw the first draft of the cover illustration, and you were hoping to use the artist's work in other places too. That was a long time ago, though - tell us about your cover art, and the artist. (Note: A draft can be seen here.)

Sean: I'll defer to Derik on this one, he's worked very closely with our artist Will Renfo from the get go. All I can add is I think it's fantastic and having an artist onboard really helped carve out a visual identity from the start. I see this partnership as a lasting one, not unlike Yes and Roger Dean's!

Derik: Actually, you can credit my wife (Lindsay Smith), for that. Will Renfro, known on MySpace as "Inkenstien", had posted a really great comment about our music. So, I checked out his artwork and was immediately blown away. Especially by two of his pieces, one titled "The Illustrated Man" and the other, "The Spirit Tree". I told my wife it would be cool if we got him to do our album cover. She said quite simply, Why don't you E-Mail him and ask? So I did, he said "hell yes", and now we have what I think is one of the greatest album covers in the world. We gave him total freedom to come up with whatever he wanted to. That cover is totally him. We call each other about once or twice a week, just to keep up with each other. He's informed me that he's already working on our next cover!

Derik, Will sounds like quite an artist - does he have a web site? And has he done any other artwork, or CD covers, that we might know?

Derik: Yes - and he's been officially dubbed our "fifth member". His site is Inkenstein.com. As far as I know, we're the first, and only album cover he's ever done. I know when we asked him, he said he'd always wanted to do an album cover.

What do each of you do to refine your playing? How do you practice, and how often? Have you developed any special exercises?

Paul: I actually have been getting back into the process of practicing to the actual songs, and working out with a metronome. I've also been playing with effects more to add some texture to my tones.

Sean: "Practice as in 'I am honing my chops to be razor sharp'? I've played guitar the better part of my life, the day I quit practicing for the guitar Olympics was the day I enjoyed music a hundred times more. I haven't looked back since. I am more than capable of expressing myself musically on my instrument so I don't feel the need to sit around raising the bar anymore. I play all the time though, so I'm always practiced. But when I sit around trying to better myself it comes more from concepts about harmonic application, not dexterity exercises. The secret is in the note choices, not the way they're articulated.

Derik: Sadly, I haven't done enough practicing on my own. When I do practice on my own, I have a set routine I stick to. Using a metronome, I start off by warming my hands up playing simple rudiments on the snare. After about 5 minutes, I add the bass drum and hi hat in alternating patterns, while changing up the snare rolls. Eventually, I get moving around the kit, - toms, cymbals, electronics, 'bells and whistles' - and work into some beats and fills. During that, I just play some different styles, jazz, latin, funk, metal (with lots of double bass work), whatever comes to mind. That's pretty much my warm up routine

Robbie: I used to practice a lot, not so much these days. Most of the last year I've struggled to regain ability in my right hand...I broke it a year ago this August, and it's still not back yet. I'd say 80% of my playing on the album was done with only one hand doing the bulk of the work. Luckily, I'm left handed.

Robbie, many keyboard players I know have had to become technology buffs as much as musicians. Does that describe you? What gear and setups are you using?

Robbie: First question - sorry, not at all! Six years ago when I still worked in a music store I was very knowledgeable with what was cutting edge, nowadays, not so much. I don't think going with what's popular is necessarily a good thing. I prefer a sound that compliments what's going on with the other instruments, not one that's so gimmicky it calls attention to itself based on that alone. On the album I used A Korg Triton and a Roland JP8000 almost exclusively, as well as the Fender Rhodes. I used a Fatar controller for the weighted key stuff, driven by the Triton.

Sean, you were on a roll before - tell us more about your guitar philosophy!

Sean: My priorities are different than typical guitar players, always have been. The chops I work on are based on arranging and songwriting and these are lessons that can be learned away from your instrument. In fact it's probably best you do rather than grab your axe and go on auto-pilot, something that is easy to do. Special exercises? Just pick up a 1 liter of Dr Pepper and rock out! That's special to me. At this stage in the game it's about IMAGINATION not perspiration. As for refining, I guess I am always working on that. Seems I spent the better part of my life trying to weed the crap out of my playing [Laughs]. Haven't we all? It's a never ending process and an evolution. It comes with maturity and experience though, not sitting around trying to hurry into it. Patience Grasshopper! Patience!

Back to the CD - what's your rollout schedule? When can we expect to see the album?

Sean: It's looking like it'll be ready in time for the holiday season, barring any unexpected obstacles....

Robbie: Hopefully within the next 2 months.

Derik: [Laughs] When it's done! Seriously, with all the events that have happened during the recording sessions, we've actually done pretty well. We did miss our projected window...

Have are any live shows been planned to support the CD?

Sean: Sure! In fact we already started in hope of building a pre CD release buzz. We've had great turnouts so far too! More are to come and many are scheduled now. See our page on MySpace.

Derik: We've actually done a few shows and the response was overwhelming, which has been very inspiring. Over time our shows will get more visually elaborate with special lighting effects and possibly video, but that will depend on our budget.

In conclusion - is it too early to ask what comes next, after the album?

Sean: Guys? Thoughts? A lot of playing out and promoting the CD for starters...

Robbie: Hopefully a year of promotion and touring - as much as our schedule permits, anyway. Then the next album!

Derik: To be honest, we've had these songs for a while now. So we've already been discussing material for the next one. Maybe we'll be ahead of the game on the next CD, and have it out at a quicker pace.

Paul: Same as always, have fun, make and record more music, and play live - live is what it's all about!

Guys, I'd like to thank you for your time, and we hope the album is a huge success!

Sean, Derik, Paul and Robbie