The Art of Prog

NOTE: Greg Hasbrouck turned in a first for PPUSA interviews, interviewing not one but two members of Futures End – at the same time! – guitarists Marc Pattison and Christian David Wentz. Greg’s epic interview took place in July of this year.

Greg: Let’s start at the beginning. Can you talk a little bit about how the band came together?

Christian: Actually, Marc and I have known each other for about twenty years. And we’ve played in… I hate to use the term “rival bands”, but I guess that’s what you could call it back in ’89 or ’90. Fred Marshall, our vocalist also sang in Marc’s band. So they had been working together forever to begin with. Actually, a couple years ago, a mutual friend of ours had died. And we ran into each other at the funeral… talking guitars and shit, worked out some old differences, that didn’t really exist. Some of the people up here in the Bay area were saying that there was some sort of rivalry between Marc and I, which never really existed. So we got that straightened out.

Marc: We made sure it didn’t actually exist and then got to making music. To begin with, we were just getting together for fun, to try doing something that was different than what we had done before, and it just kind of evolved.

Greg: After reading the band member’s respective bios, it seems like the band is something of an all-star of underground players. So I’m curious, does this feel like a one off project or is this a group of guys who are in it for the long haul?

Christian: No. Actually, we made sure, when we put this thing together, that everybody understood that this wasn’t a project band. We do have some relatively heavy hitters in the band; Steve DiGiorgio and John Allen, a breadth of experience, touring all over the world… Steve’s kind of a legend. In fact, on the album cover, I make sure that everybody is included in the songwriting credits, because I didn’t want it to feel like Marc and are the songwriters and everybody else were just our hired guns. I don’t want the band to feel like that, and I certainly don’t want it to be presented that way. So no… this is something that everybody’s in it… we’re already talking about writing the next album together.

Greg: And that includes your rhythm section, the two of them are equally committed as you guys are?

Marc: Yeah. To begin with, we didn’t really know what it was. It wasn’t necessarily a band or a project. We were just trying to do something that we liked that was Metal, melodic, progressive and wouldn’t sound totally derivative of stuff we’ve done in the past. And I think, after we had written three or four songs, and we had gotten Fred Marshall the vocalist involved, we realized that we had something, more than just fun. It was shaping into something that we had not expected and were really wanting to pursue.

It was actually at ProgPower two years ago that I contacted Steve DiGiorgio, from Atlanta, called him on the phone, because I was so inspired by the line up. I had kind of taken an absence from being an avid follower of the scene because I had become a little disillusioned. I didn’t hear a lot of good new stuff and I was tired of regurgitating all the stuff that I enjoyed when I was a kid. Going to ProgPower made me see that not only was the genre alive and well, but evolving and it was really super inspiring. And based on the fact that we were starting to have some magic, we felt, I got on the phone. I thought that Steve would be an excellent candidate to help finish out that part of the rhythm section and was hopeful that he would dig it as much as we did. He immediately latched on and liked it. And then he suggested that John come on board, because they’ve been playing drums together since they were children… they live right next door to each other, that’s how close they are.

It’s hard to find a drummer and a bass player that gel together so well and have that kind of playing experience. Oftentimes a good drummer will chew up a bass player and vice versa. So they kind of came as a package deal. And John had never really done anything progressive like this, but Steve assured us that John could and then he blew us away beyond our expectations, we had no idea what he had in him.

Marc: The further we went down the road… then eventually we’d written the songs. The only person who isn’t in the Bay area with us is Fred, but we flew him out, we flew to Texas. We tracked all the vocals, the drums and the bass were the last thing to make it, in finality, on the album. By the time we put the drums and the bass down, everybody was looking at each other going, “Wow. This is better than anything else that we’ve involved in for a long time… maybe even ever.”

So we’re pretty fired up. Mainly because we love what we’re doing. It’s not so much because we’re trying to follow a trend or anything; we just stumbled across some kind of chemistry.

Greg: That’s really cool. Let me double back to two points about Steve. So if I was starting a band, I too would want to pick up the phone and call Steve DiGiorgio. I assume you guys had some sort of pre-existing relationship?

Christian: Yeah… actually, Marc, you’ve known Steve for what, fifteen years?

Marc: Yeah, I’ve known him for a long time.

Christian: And I’ve met him off and on, he lives in the Bay area, it’s kind of hard not to run into him.

Marc: We took a wild gamble, I had no idea whether we could nail him down for this or not.

Greg: And you mentioned earlier that he’s something of a legend, and that he is. The list of bands he’s played with reads like a who’s who. So is there sort of an added level of respect when you’re in the studio with him, because of what he’s accomplished, or is he just one of the guys? Or is it a weird balance?

Christian: I’d like to answer that, just because I’ve actually gotten to know him… Steve and I have become really close over the last couple of years. He’s one of my friends, actually. I love the guy. Him and John both are like family to me at this point. In fact last week we went to John Allen’s family barbeque for his birthday. And like Marc said, Steve and John literally bought houses directly across the street from each other. I’d trust the guy with my kid… you know what I mean? When we’re in the studio I’m busting his ass and telling him he sucks.

Greg: So how did you guys get hooked up with Lance (King) and Nightmare Records?

Christian: I’ll take that one, because that was my end of things. I actually was a DJ on an internet radio station for a couple of years. And I had gone to Texas Madfest… we both went, a couple of years ago. I got an opportunity to meet Lance then. I interviewed Lance for my radio show and then instantly Lance and I hit it off and kind of stayed in contact via e-mail. I’m naturally really good at networking and I made sure he got an e-mail from me, pretty much, once a week, so he wouldn’t forget who I was. The station owner actually sent Lance to… we had put up a MySpace page with the demos that Marc and I had put together. It was just guitars and a drum machine… and I think I played bass on it. There were no vocals on it yet. The station owner called Lance and said, “You need to hear this stuff.” Lance calls me, a couple of weeks later and says, “This stuff’s fantastic, I want it.” I said, “There’s not even any vocals on it.” He goes, “It doesn’t matter.Get some vocals on it and then we’ll talk.”

Greg: And was there ever a thought about approaching Lance to do the vocals?

Christian: You know I don’t think… we never discussed approaching Lance to sing on it. I mean Fred was pretty much who we had in mind from square one.

Marc: Yeah… I had actually started doing something that was kind of Metal but not quite as progressive with Fred over the internet, before. And when Christian came along and we started working on stuff, I suggested we merge the two because I was pretty confident that Fred could do the job and that point I didn’t even know who Lance was.

Greg: So someone asked me to ask you this; where did the band’s name come from and why no apostrophe? (mutual laughter)

Greg: It’s not an homage to the apostrophe-less NOVEMBERS DOOM, in some way is it?

Christian: (laughter) No… not at all. We needed a logo, because I put the MySpace page up and I called Marc and said, “Do you want me to do this or do you want to do it?” And he said, “No, I’ll do it.” And he busted out Photoshop and came up with the logo. So there’s no real meaning behind the lack of an apostrophe.

Marc: No… actually I think that I knew that a band name doesn’t necessarily have to be correct English. (mutual laughter)

Greg: Fair enough. And why FUTURES END, is there some meaning to that?

Marc: Fred came up with that particular phrase. There’s a couple things about names. One, you want to find something that’s maybe cool or interesting. But even MORE difficult to achieve is something that everyone else in the band doesn’t hate. (mutual laughter)

Christian: My recollection of that discussion was me getting really frustrated because none of my ideas were working, none of Marc’s ideas were working, none of Fred’s ideas were working… he throws that one out and I’m like, “Ahhh… good… that’s it.” (mutual laughter)

Marc: Basically something that didn’t suck as bad as everything else. (mutual laughter)

Greg: I think you achieved that. So in the process of setting up this interview, you guys were going through a bit of a nightmare trying to complete “Memoirs of a Broken Man”. Can you relive some of that nightmare for the readers?

Marc: First of all, I think most of it was not a nightmare, it was pretty enjoyable. I think the end part was the most hectic for a couple of reasons. One, we started realizing that we had to stop putzing around and actually finish it. There was also a little more pressure and more deadlines, especially with the impending ProgPower show. We wanted to have stuff available and we were still right, smack in the middle of fine tuning. And really, the end product was nowhere in sight yet, even though we knew we had to get it done. I think that’s where the nightmare part comes in. We have something and we don’t want to spoil it by rushing it, but on the other hand, sooner or later you have to finish your soup and say it’s done. The other thing was… I like to joke around. I mixed the record. I had to take suggestions with everyone in the band. And I joked around saying I’m in this band with all chiefs and no Indians.

It’s not easy mixing something that has so many different instruments going on at different times and making sure that everybody can be heard, the frequency is to their liking, their tones and everything. So, there was a lot of input that at some point was a little bit overwhelming. In the long run, it was all very helpful, because everybody is experienced enough to know what they want. And half the battle in recording is knowing what you want so that you have something to shoot for. I know from past experience, recording when I was younger, I would go in and tell the engineer I wanted a good guitar tone. Once I finally figured out what a good guitar tone was to me, I can go into any studio in the world and tell the engineer how to achieve that. I think that is the one advantage we had. We’ve all been doing this long enough that we know what we like and we know what we don’t like. Yeah… massive amounts of input from everybody.

Christian: I know that in my correspondence with you, I kind of detailed the issues we had. Because ultimately it was recorded in two studios. The drums were recorded at Trident Studios, at the extremely adept hands of our good friend and engineer Juan (Urtgeaga). And the rest of it… actually we recorded drums and bass there. And the rest of it was recorded right here at Marc’s studio. So it was up in air… OK… we’re going to have Juan mix the whole album. Then we got a deadline and Juan is very busy, he’s an extremely popular engineer, very skilled. His studio is very popular; he’s recorded a lot of really heavy hitters there. And then suddenly we’re getting close to our deadlines and we couldn’t actually establish a schedule that worked for both parties. And it went back and forth, and back and forth for weeks until finally Marc said, we had approached the deadline where it’s like “That’s it. We’ve got to lock down and do this ourselves and we got to do it now”.

The other thing is, Steve and John are pros that go way back, and like Marc said, they had some really specific ideas about what they wanted and ultimately it all gelled. Everybody is happy with it. So it was a nightmare and I can’t even begin to tell you how I’m sleeping better now that it’s done. (mutual laughter)

Greg: So obviously you guys are getting ready to release the debut, so it’s fair to assume most people who will read this will not be familiar with you. How would you describe your sound?

Christian: You know, I was talking to Lance King about that today and we came up with a good one, it’s like… What did we say? Oh shit… It’s TESTAMENT meets COHEED AND CAMBRIA and ALICE IN CHAINS. (mutual laughter)

Greg: That’s an interesting trifecta.

Christian: I think so too. A lot of people have decided it sounds like different things to them. We’ve always thought it was a progressive project, but I’m hearing Thrash, and I’m hearing Power Metal, and…

Marc: Well… we had some specific objectives. We came from an era where we were part of first fans and musicians of an earlier wave of progressive. The very beginning may have been… well, maybe IRON MAIDEN who is at least slightly progressive. Then QUEENSRYCHE… FATES WARNING. But then when I became reconnected to the scene, one thing I noticed was that the Prog and Power Metal scene had become extremely influenced by Thrash Metal and Speed Metal drums.

We consciously knew that if we were going to be more up to date, more modern, that we were going to have to do some stuff that was heavier and faster and more of a marriage of Metal. But we also consciously decided that, if we’re going to have fifteen parts before the chorus comes in, because we’re trying to be progressive and we like different, cool parts, we at least need to build these sections where the chorus is going to be, so that they support catchy melodies. Because if you have all sorts of complicated stuff and don’t leave the vocals any breathing room, than you have all salt and pepper and no meal. Definitely a conscious effort. We’re fans of MAIDEN and PRIEST and we thought that they had really catchy choruses. So we thought if we could bring that element to a new kind of school of Power and Prog Metal, and then… the heaviness and the Thrash and the heavy riffs, I don’t know… it was more of an accident, it just kind of happened. I think Christian brought some of that early on and then I kind of climbed on board as well. That particular aspect, I don’t think we planned on having the guitars be as heavy as they are, but once they were we were pretty happy with it.

Christian: I’d like to speak to that too. Your question is what do we sound like? Marc answered it pretty well. We are both children of the 80s in terms of the IRON MAIDEN, JUDAS PRIEST, METALLICA, MEGADETH thing. And I’ve actually been thinking about it lately, where did all this heaviness come out of me from? And that’s probably where the METALLICA, the MEGADETH…

Marc: And we’re in the Bay area and a lot of our friends, while we were trying to be more melodic, most of the people we knew were doing heavy stuff with what I call Cookie Monster vocals. And while we weren’t influenced by that vocal style, it’s hard to be around that much heaviness in Metal and not somehow be influenced, you know? I think one of the things a lot of 80s guitar players do is only alternate pick, and then a lot of the Thrash guys only down pick. So now, I think we made a conscious decision to marry those two, because either one by itself could be limiting. Being in the Bay area influenced us to be heavier. We’re friends with EXODUS, TESTAMENT, obviously SADUS. I guess it kind of rubbed off on us.

Greg: And speaking as someone who grew up during the same period as the two of you, and as someone whose now listened to the disc three times through, I’d say it really does sound like you’ve bridged that more classic Prog sound with more modern Prog sound, quite well, and wound up with something unique. Much of what’s progressive isn’t as dark and aggressive as what you’ve created here, yet you didn’t go to an extreme with it, ala NEVERMORE. So I think you’ve achieved something pretty interesting.

Christian: Thank you.

Greg: So “Memoirs of a Broken Man” is a full blown concept album, and it’s got a very well written back story to it. I’m not sure who came up with the story, but can one of you speak to the inspiration for the concept and perhaps also give a 30,000 foot overview of the story, for those who are first hearing about this while reading the interview?

Christian: The story is that of a man who survives… he comes back from the war in the Middle East. He and his best friend in his unit come back and they’re the only two survivors. And they spend their days and nights getting completely wasted, because obviously they’re suffering some sort of shock/trauma and depression. His friend ends up killing himself, his girlfriend leaves him, he ends up drinking himself damn near to death and he spends all of that time being angry and resentful, feeling that the world has left him to rot.

Ultimately he starts thinking his own thoughts of suicide, and that’s what wakes him up.

He decides that’s not the way he wants to go and maybe it’s time for him to try to breakout of this alcoholic and depressive haze and finally connect with what he believes in, or reconnect with himself and perhaps grow past his limitations. That’s what the album is about.

Interestingly enough, we did not conceive the album that way… that wasn’t the idea. Marc and I wrote the music. We would send it to Fred Marshall in Texas and he would write the lyrics. We had no idea what he was writing until it came time to recording it, actually. He would kind of hum or sing stuff to us over the phone, so we had an idea, but he never really sent us any lyrics or anything. We flew him out here the first time to record the vocals and that was pretty much the first time we heard the lyrics or the melodies.

Greg: So let me just interrupt for a second. So you guys were unaware, that behind your back, which isn’t to signify anything Machiavellian, this was becoming a concept album?

Christian: Exactly.

Greg: (laughter) That’s interesting.

Christian: Yeah, I know… it’s funny. We had reached a point where most of the lyrics, if not all, were written and I said “You know if you arrange these songs in the right order it tells a story”. So the three of us got on board with that idea and I wrote the back story. I wrote what it is that you have in your hand (CD artwork and liner notes), actually. It fits together when you lay out the songs in the right order. It actually really works well. (laughter)

Greg: It does. And just to clarify a point, the album picks up, where the back story leaves off, correct?

Christian: Yes… it does.

Greg: OK. I had intended on asking if you found the boundaries of a concept album useful, in that it could keep the writing process focused; or limiting, in that it can construct artificial boundaries. But I guess that question is now irrelevant, as the music was written without the foreknowledge that it was forming a concept.

Christian: Yeah… we didn’t actually turn it into a concept album until all the lyrics were already written.

Marc: I think the best way to describe it is that musically, lyrically and from a story point, the whole thing kind of unfolded for us in front of our eye. To our surprise. We didn’t anticipate the story. We didn’t anticipate the style. We didn’t anticipate the collection of songs. We just kind of rolled with it. And afterwards, we’re just as surprised as anyone else who hears it and wonders where it came from. We just feel lucky that it kind of fell together the way it did. Now we feel like we want to ride the train for a while.

Greg: Nice. So obviously you guys are playing ProgPower in September, it’s why we’re doing the interview. You’ve been to the festival, what are your expectations?

Christian: Have a killer time. Have a lot of fun. Hang out with our peers. At this point, we have a lot of friends in the business and in the genre. ProgPower, as you know, is just the greatest… I mean it’s like a meeting from all over the world of people who have the same passion for this kind of music. Everybody is friendly and everybody has a great time…

One of my expectations, to speak to something I saw you posted on the ProgPower message board, is that we’re going to play hard enough to the point where you don’t feel like you need to go the bar during our set!

Greg: (laughter) Excellent… I like that. That’s a good attitude. I think especially for a band like you guys, it’s such a perfect opportunity to showcase who you are, because I think you’ll appeal to both the Prog fan and the Power fans.

Christian: I hope so. To be totally honest with you, I’m really proud of what it we’ve done. I’m amazed at the quality of the team that we have, and the dedication to this band. At the same time, I’m really curious to see how the world is going to react to it. Like I’ve said, I’ve heard different things about it, I’ve heard comparisons to NEVERMORE, which I thought was really odd, to tell you the truth. And then John Cheek was saying it’s Power-Thrash with Prog overtones, which I thought was interesting. I don’t really know how the world is going to react to it.

Typically, traditionally, the Progressive Metal community is also extremely picky, very discerning. They like a really good quality in their music. So I’ve got a touch of nervousness about how they’re going to react to it.

Greg: I think you’re going to do pretty well. Let me ask you this, have you guys played out live yet, as a five-some?

Christian: We will be pretty soon. (mutual laughter)

Greg: So that’s my question. Obviously the music is intricate. I saw where one of you wrote on your MySpace page about how trying to reproduce all the technicality live is a bit intimidating. How will you prep for a show where you’ve got a lot of guitar players with folded arms in the audience?

Christian: (laughter) Yeah… that’s usually what we face. We have a couple of shows coming up before we go play ProgPower.

But at the same time, what I was really referring to was it’s taken two years to write all this stuff. We’re definitely technically proficient. We can definitely play it live. I’m not even concerned about that. It was more, what I was referring to, was going back and going, how did I play that exactly? Actually just remembering exactly what it was I did so I can reproduce it faithfully. But, in terms of being concerned as to whether or not we can play the songs live, that’s not even going to be an issue.

Marc: Let me add a footnote to that. When we first started this, we would write stuff that we couldn’t yet play, because we wanted to challenge ourselves. We didn’t want to reach for the same old tools and tricks that we had gained over the last twenty years. We wanted to pull something new out of the hat. And that meant, that to begin with it was difficult to play what we were playing. We would have to go and get a metronome and practice a section until we could actually play it. It was one thing to punch in it during the songwriting process and listen back and go, “Wow… that sounds cool.” Now we have to be able to play it all strung together. And honestly, I think by challenging ourselves, now after this whole process is done, we forced ourselves to improve and take our playing up a couple of notches. So whereas before it would have been almost too difficult to play, we’ve now boosted our skills to the point where we can play it in our sleep.

Christian: And believe it or not, even the great Steve DiGiorgio had a hell of a time playing some of these parts. (mutual laughter)

Greg: So, you mentioned that four of you are from the Bay area, and Fred is not?

Christian: Well, Fred is from here. He just moved to Texas a few years ago.

Greg: OK. What is the plan, beyond Prog Power, as far as the next move? Are you going to play dates locally, try to do a national tour, festivals in Europe?

Christian: Fortunately, we’ve all been doing this long enough and we’re all well plugged in enough to have some channels available to us to go play overseas. You know, I was talking to Lance King about getting some festival shows put together for us in Mexico and South America. There has been a great deal of interest already from some promoters in Europe to have us over there. One guy, at this party we were at last weekend, was talking about getting us in at Wacken, if at all possible. Yeah… that’s definitely the plan. I was talking to Lance just the other day about potentially playing with SYMPHONY X on a North American tour. It’s really just…
There’s a lot of things available to us.

Quite frankly, I think it’s really going to depend on how well the record is received, how much it sells before we get a gauge of how much time and energy and money to invest in, perhaps, buying on to a tour or something of that nature. But we definitely plan on going out and playing all over the place. Everybody in the band is down for that.

Greg: You mentioned earlier the pressure of the looming ProgPower date. Can I then assume the record is going to be available for sale at the festival?

Christian: Yes it is. Actually, Lance has posted on the ProgPower forum that it will be available. It’ll be pre-release. It will be the official, full release, but it will be available at ProgPower before the street date of October 1st, I believe.

Greg: So, I’m curious. You have your first album coming out… obviously not the first thing either of you have recorded. I’d like to know how you feel about the double-edged sword of MP3s and all the illegal stuff that goes along with it?

Christian: Wow. You know, I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about that myself. You know, Marc actually made his name by making his stuff available via MP3. You’ve been downloaded what, 2 million times?

Marc: Yeah. It’s hard to keep track after awhile because not everything is monitored like it used to be back when it was just album sales. I think it’s a double-edged sword either way that you look at it. On one hand, it opened up the market to almost anyone. In a way, the market can now choose what they want to perpetuate, you know, with popularity. I think in the past the record companies decided what they were gonna serve the public, and if it wasn’t up to their standard of commerciality, they would leave a lot of stuff on the back burner and music fans were disappointed. And I also think a lot of musicians got screwed over with bad contracts and being star-struck with being rock stars; signing away their whole career for a chance at stardom.

So, I think that the kind of disintegration of the old system leaves huge opportunities for both the listener and the musician. The problem is, it has become very difficult to predict how anybody’s gonna make any money off of records, in the present and the near future. Record sales are down in, like, record numbers, but I don’t think that people are listening to music any less.

Marc: It’s also created a whole… you know when I was a kid, I wouldn’t know about something unless somebody told be about it. JUDAS PRIEST wasn’t on the radio, neither was IRON MAIDEN. Friends would tell me.

An album was a universal experience. We all had the same albums and we all had similar music tastes, at least in our cliques. Now, you’ll meet somebody who has 80 different bands on their iPod than you do. The range of styles is much broader than ever before, and if somebody wants to go seek out something different, it’s all out there for the taking. So, I guess there’s obvious benefits… especially to the listener. You know, the music fan. There’s so much more available… you don’t have to go hunt in some obscure record bin for something that you could previously only get in Japan, you know.

On the other hand, Lenny Kravitz once said in an interview, “The future is about the live show. They can’t steal that”. (mutual laughter)

Marc: I think that ultimately that’s what it’s going to come down to. I saw the evolution of the demo tape. It used to be that a band would play well live and a good sounding demo was hard to come by, because it cost so much money. So people were judged on their live merit so much more. Then, the demo tape started becoming like an album, and anybody could record one, even if they sucked live. It was much harder to tell who was actually good because of studio tricks. I think what’s happened is people are not impressed by a flashy recording anymore, unless the band can actually play that way live. So, I think the importance of the live show has been amplified by this whole process.

Christian: I am concerned… I mean, I don’t think there’s any way for us to avoid the fact that somebody’s gonna buy the record, rip it on to their computer and then share it out to their friends. There’s no way we can avoid this.

But one of the things that impresses me about the progressive community, especially, is that they are all about paying for their music. There was a post on the ProgPower forums about a woman who was fined a couple of million bucks for downloading 90 songs or whatever. And most of the reactions to it were, “Yeah…she got what she deserved. You should pay for your damn music. Be fair to the artist.” So, while it’s inevitable that people are gonna share out our stuff, at the same time I also think we’ll get a fair shake.

Greg: Yeah… it is strange. To some extent, MP3s kept the genre alive in the ‘90s, but now it keeps some artists from taking that next step forward. It’s a strange kind of deal. But, yeah, you’re right. It’s such a tight knit community, people know the artists; they actually feel like they’re stealing from someone they know.

Christian: That’s a very good point and I think that that’s another thing that the Internet and MP3s have done for us, though. You had mentioned that we grew up in basically the same era. You remember how impossible it was to get to meet one of your heroes? These days you just send them an e-mail and nine times out of ten you’ll get a response. You get one that says, “Come say hi to me… I’ll see you in the bar after the show”. So you’re right… when you’re downloading MP3s it’s like you’re stealing from somebody you know or could potentially be friends with, so that makes sense.

Greg: So let me ask my final question. You guys aren’t 18, releasing your first album. You’re experienced musicians, yet you’re embarking on something new and in some senses you’re at the starting gate. What are your goals, individually or collectively, for what you want to accomplish with in music, with FUTURES END, the realistic or the outlandish, whichever way you want to go with it?

Marc: Well, let me take a first stab at that. The music thing can be motivated by a number of different things. One is pure love of music and entertaining yourself, the musician. Then, you can also be motivated by trying to give your fans a three to seven minute vacation from their troubles, at a time, with song; which is kinda what music did for me when I was young. Then, on top of that, you have to aspire to be able to pay your bills, so that you can continue to do what you love which is music and also giving people this three to eight minute vacation.

Marc: It’s kind of like, if you love to play football, you don’t necessarily need to go for the championship. But, if there’s a brass ring in the championship and you love to play football anyway, why not go for the brass ring?

I think, what our hopes for FUTURES END are, on a minimum level, is to keep doing what we love. And on a higher level, to have at least enough success so that we can keep doing what we love. I think, why not shoot for the moon or shoot for the stars, or whatever the saying is? So, if we can take this to a point where we can all live comfortably and do this for the rest of our lives, whatever degree that would be, I think would be fine with us. I don’t think we’re greedy. We’re not after a lot of ego attention or fame or money. We would just like to have enough money to live comfortably, so that we could do this for the rest of our lives.

Christian: Well, for me, of course I’d love to be able to pay my bills this way, but if I can’t it doesn’t really matter, either.

Marc: No, we’re not stopping because of the money.

Christian: No, that has nothing to do with it. For me, too, like I said. We spent two years writing this first album. We just got it finished. It’s being pressed as we speak. There’s a lot of cool things coming up; the potential to play the festivals that I’d mentioned next year. All of those things. In terms of goals, we should actually be able to do that.

I’ve spent time touring Europe. We’re gonna be touring South America this year. I want to be able to do that with FUTURE’S END. That would just be amazing to me.

Christian: Also, to get the five of us together again and write another record that takes us to another level beyond the one that we just wrote. That would be awesome. You know, to have people buy the record and enjoy it, would be just freakin’ great. All of the mechanics of it really don’t matter so much when I think about the goals that I have. It’s more about being able to go play places and have people enjoy the music; more than anything else.

Christian: And to be a part of the community. You know, the Prog community is full of incredibly cool people, supportive people. What a great community of support that we have. It’s a little different from other genres of music where you’re fighting each other to try and get someplace. Here, we all try and help each other out. And as you know, when you get into the inner circles in the Prog community, the circles get even smaller and everybody kind of knows each other. So just to be a productive part of the community. Go play. Make another great record, and create with the guys that I love creating with so much. That would be the ultimate for me.

Greg: Thanks you guys both for your time, I appreciate it. I look forward to seeing the set, buying the album and maybe chatting with you in Atlanta.

Christian: Hey man… great interview, thanks a lot. And I wanted to say, I’ve read your other interviews that you’ve posted. Really good job and thank you for doing that. I mean it’s really interesting. And it’s cool for you to contribute your time for the festival… it’s great. Thanks.

Greg: Oh no problem, it’s a pleasure to give back in even the smallest way. Thank you both… I appreciate your time and I am really digging the new disc.

Christian: Oh cool… thanks, man, I’m glad you like it. That’s awesome. I’m so nervous about that, bro.

Greg: Yeah… I can imagine. Actually, I can’t imagine what that must be like; to read reviews on something you just busted your ass on for as long as you guys did.

Christian: Yeah, especially from the Prog community. Like I said, that’s a tough crowd to please. A really tough crowd. So, I’m really glad you like it and thanks for your time.

Greg: Take care, and good luck.

Christian: We’ll see you in Atlanta.

This ends Greg’s interview with Futures End guitarists Marc Pattison and Christian David Wentz.

Final Note: All photos/images used to illustrate this interview are used in compliance with the principles of Fair Use. They illustrate reviews, opinions, and interviews with the band members who created the albums and on whose official web sites and MySpace pages some of these images reside. No copyright violations are intended.