Our friends at www.megakungfu.com have got the low down from Johnny Kelly. Check out their site and read the feature below. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything so I’ll try to update you as to what has been going on around here. The writing for the next record began sometime in January of this year. At that point we were rehearsing ideas a few nights a week. Most of the songs that Peter writes are written during rehearsals. Most of the time, he’ll bring down pieces of songs that he came up with while at home and brings it to the band the next night. Usually these ideas are rough melodies & riffs. During rehearsals, the song begins to take some kind of shape. Very seldom, does a song need little work. A song is in a constant state of change from the time it’s written to the time it’s printed on tape. We kept going to rehearsals up until April. Josh has a 16 track studio in his house that the band uses for making the demos of new songs that have been written. During the rehearsals my daughter Sophia was born. A month after Sophia was born Josh’s wife gave birth to their daughter also. In between diaper changes, feedings & sleepless nights, the band continued to rehearse and write. The rehearsals wound up producing I think, 10 – 12 songs. It was sometime around April when Josh got his studio together in his house and we started working there. The demo recording process is also a time consuming venture. Demos for Type O are just as involved as making the actual record at Systems II. A lot of time and effort go into our demos. What takes us so long to do demos is that we experiment with the songs until we feel that it’s the best the song is going to get. Let me clear something up before we go further though. I am not trying to boast or anything like that. I am not a big fan of recording. I enjoy live performance a lot more than recording. I’m trying to say that there is much more work in recording the demos than it is to record the actual record. By the time the demos are finished, we pretty much know how the songs are supposed to sound and it’s just a matter of trying to recreate what we did at Josh’s house. We have a great relationship with Systems II. They are considered family. Peter & Josh have been using Systems II since they were teenagers. The band has never used any other recording studio. Among all of the other excuses that I can use to explain why the demos are not finished is that our manager worked out an opportunity for us last spring. It was to record a version of the wrestler “Kane” from the World Wrestling Federation theme song titled “Into the Fire” for a new cd for the WWF. I don’t by whom or how it was decided that we were going to do his song but, I found it humoring that we were chosen. He looks like he could be in the band. This took a little time out of recording the demos. I remember after the track was completed, we were surprised at how the song turned out. Most Type O Negative fans are used to the way we do covers of songs. They usually don’t sound like the original versions. We always took the approach of “how would the song sound if it was one of ours?” This song is no different. I am told that the CD is going to be released in October but, things like that change constantly. I still have no idea who else is doing songs on the CD but I do remember that they were all much more popular than Type O Negative. Steve our webmaster knows more about the CD than we do. I think that he has something written about it on our website. Here we are in the middle of September already & the demos are not completed yet. We are making progress though. A few songs are completed. We’re expecting to have them completed shortly but after talking to Peter the other night, he mentioned that he has written two more songs. He always does this to us. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. He usually comes up with stronger songs around this time in the recording process. I guess he doesn’t feel pressure to write & they just come out of him. Usually when this happens, the song is demoed quickly & more attention is focused when we’re at Systems II. Both records that I have done with the band, he has done & the results were always good. So, I am anxious to hear them. I’m sure that everyone reading this is now familiar with what has happened here in NYC on September 11. The World Trade Center was attacked & destroyed by terrorists. It has been very hard to concentrate on anything since this has happened. My heart goes out to all the families of the people that are missing and were killed. I’m trying to take my mind off of the subject by writing tonight. It is so mind blowing to watch TV and not see those buildings. After being on tour for months, it was always great to see the skyline when coming into NY. I’ve always been in awe of the Twin Towers. I spent most of the following day watching the news with Kenny and our families. I’m still in shock! The city will come back from this and eventually things will get back to normal. The past few days have been spent watching the news and I haven’t spent too much time doing much else. I did get some e-mails reminding me that work has to get done. This journal is one of those things. The other is preparing for the upcoming dates that the band has booked to celebrate Halloween. It’s become some sort of tradition that we play a few shows around that time of year regardless of what our schedule is. As soon as July was starting to end, the e-mails started to come in asking if we were going to be touring around Halloween this year. I wasn’t certain if we were going to do it this year. Why would this year be different than any other? We hadn’t discussed anything about touring as of yet but, I knew the subject would be coming up soon. Because we’re busy with the new record, this run of dates is pretty short. We’re doing ten shows in eleven days. I’m looking forward to performing. We haven’t played live since New Years Eve. It’ll be fun to get out there for a few days. Speaking of tradition, when it was decided that we were going to do some dates, the Trocadero in Philadelphia was one of the first clubs to book the band. This will be the fifth year in a row that we’ll be playing there on Halloween. It’s usually a pretty wild night for all involved. The crowd seems to have an extra edge to them on that night. Philadelphia has really seemed to embrace us. It’s pretty cool! The band is pretty much divided when it comes to touring. Kenny and I enjoy it while Peter and Josh don’t. But this trip isn’t that bad at all. It’s a very short run and most of the shows are kind of close to home. It’s a nice way to get reacquainted with the road since we’ve been home for a long time now. It would be a whole lot worse for them if this trip was three months long. We’ll be doing that soon enough. With the dates coming there are things that have to be done besides playing drums. There’s lots of coordinating that has to be done now so that the trip will run smoothly and efficiently. All of the dates have been confirmed and most of the crew has been assembled already. There are lots of business details that have to be done now even before we begin rehearsals. It’s not the most Rock N Roll thing to do but it has to get done. But I honestly feel that you’re not too interested in reading about that stuff. It’s getting late and I still have a bunch of things to take care of before I go to bed. I’ll try to stay on top of my journal now that that there will be a few things to write about. Take care. Johnny