American guitar player Tracy Grijalva, who goes simply by the initial ‘TRACY G’ will be best known to rock & heavy metal fans as the guitarist in DIO in the 90s. He played and co-wrote on the albums Strange Highways and Angry Machines, as well as the double live set Inferno. Tracy’s latest project is the band DARK MILE, which also includes former QUIET RIOT singer Mark Huff. The band has put together an excellent debut album (on CD), please check it out! in our conversation Tracy talks about the new DARK MILE release, as well as some of his past, and recordings, such as DIO and BLUE DAHLIA (w/ Paul Shortino). Tracy’s also done numerous solo album (+ TRACY G GROUP), which can be found at his website.
Are you guys in the Dark Mile band, are you guys all relatively close?
Most of us are, but not the singer. The singer’s in Washington and we’re in California.
How did this project come together, because obviously you’re associated with DIO and some other stuff, and Mark had that run with Quiet Riot, which is what most people would recognize him from.
Yeah, me and Paul, Paul Alfrey’s a good friend of mine, he’s a guitar player, Randy Oviedo is the bass player, and then Mark Huff is the singer, as you know already. So, it’s really Paul’s project; Paul and me went to dinner one night and he just hit me up and said if I would want to do a project with him, and the first thing he said, because I’m not known for really being in a band with a project with two guitar players, I’ve always just played as the one guitar player guy, but I’ve known Paul since about ’83, so I’ve known him for a long time and he’s just a super guy and real humble, a real good musician, just a real straightforward kind of dude. So, he said, ‘would you want to play guitar in this project of mine? You can do all the solos, I’ll do the rhythms, and you can do the rhythms, but when it comes to the solos, you can do all the solos,’ because he knew that meant a lot to me because that’s kind of how I express myself, so to speak. And I go, ‘Yeah, no problem’, because it was him – it wasn’t just any guitar player, it was Paul. So that’s how that came about, and we started, it was a few years ago. It’s been a few years since we had that dinner and we found a singer and we did an album, but it was called something different, and it was with a different singer.
Was that the one with Paul Shortino?
No, that was a completely different project, that was mine and Paul’s project and we did with Randy, Randy played bass on it, the same guy that’s playing bass now, he played bass on a ‘Blue Dahlia’. Yeah, that one had Billy on the keyboards and Chuck on the drums and we had a line of different musicians on that one. And I was writing songs for Paul, and we did it and he got a friend of his to sign it and it came out and, you know, I think this sold a few copies or whatever. I really liked that CD too, but no, that had nothing to do with this. But we did do an album, going back to Dark Mile, but we didn’t have that yet, we had a band called ‘Gale Force’. Gale Force is me, Paul, Randy Oviedo and Michael Lee was the singer. Michael Lee comes from a band in the 80s called ‘Baron Cross’. And we did an album, and we didn’t wait around to get signed with a label, we let Michael take care of all the CDs and all the merchandising and he kind of had all that down, so Michael went ahead and ran all that and we sold a few CDs and stuff. Things didn’t work out the way we wanted it, so we went ahead and replaced Michael, and we found Mark. And we changed the name of the band, and we kept writing, but now we’re writing for Mark. We’ve been writing together for three or four years, but Mark’s only been with us the last year – year and a half. And we did the Dark Mile album, and then with Paul’s connections and stuff, that label in Germany signed us, Pride and Joy. They put it out (I think), in July, and it’s been floating around, I think, Europe a lot.
And Paul told me right away, up front, even back before Dark Mile (but for Dark Mile), that it was going to be kind of 80s, 80s-ish, but with a modern slash to it, because the labels he knew in Europe were kind of looking for that kind of stuff. And, if you give them stuff that they’re not interested in, you have less of a chance of getting signed. We tried to give them stuff that Paul knew they were kind of interested in, which is not full-blown 80s, but kind of. So that’s what Dark Mile is.
I’m going to look for this Blue Dahlia CD. So, you worked with Paul Shortino and now Mark Huff – 2 ex Quiet Riot singers!
(Haha) Yeah, both really great! Paul Shortino’s a great singer. I was always a big fan of his voice. There’s some good stuff on that CD.
Yeah, I’m familiar with your past with Dio, and those albums kind of have that slower, heavy sound, and these kind of incorporate more of like a bright 80s kind of sound, especially with the choruses and that. So I think it’s a very accessible album for people that like heavy stuff and 80s stuff as well.
I grew up on all of it, really. I grew up in the 80s, kind of. 70s – I was a little bit young, but all the 80s groups. and even in the 90s. In the 90s, I started with a band called ‘World War III’, and then I ended up with Dio.
World War III became before Dio with those guys? World War III was the one with Vinny Appice and Jimmy Bain and those guys?
Yeah, that was before Dio; that was like 1990, 91.
I want to go back a bit. How did you find Mark Huff?
Paul went seeking on the internet. We ran into a couple guys; we tried a couple people out, but once we heard Mark… We tried him out on a song that we already had written called “He Said, She Said”. We threw that song at him, the lyrics and everything. Him and Paul made a couple adjustments to my lyrics, I’m not really a lyric writer, but I do the best I can. They liked the song, so they fixed up the lyrics a little bit, and as soon as he sang that one and I heard it, and everybody heard it over here in the band they said, Yeah, that’s our guy!’ Mark’s a super, super guy; super nice guy, Super easy to work with. But he’s in Washington, so we’ve only met him once… a year ago. I don’t know if he still does, but he played in a Van Halen tribute band. It was a tribute to the Sammy Hagar era. So they were playing over here in the desert, so – me, Randy, and Paul went to meet him and went to see him. And that’s the only time we’ve met him. And all the songs he sings all the songs over there in Washington on his little laptop. And him and Paul talk on the phone and work on the stuff on the phone all the time, and then he emails it to Paul. Paul does all the production and the producing in his studio. And he flies in his vocals. I have a studio just like Paul and we bounce ideas back and forth. But Paul does the final mixing of everything. He does about an hour for me, Paul. And that’s kind of how we ran into Mark. …He’s a good, he’s a good fit for our music, I think.
One thing I don’t see on the album is who’s playing drums.
We don’t have a guy playing drums. We have a computer playing drums. We program the program that’s in the computer. Paul turned me on to it, it’s actually a real guy playing, but it’s more like just pieces, just loops and we grab them, and do our best to make it sound real.
I assume that when you guys get around to playing live, you’re going have to find a drummer then, right?
Yeah, if and when that happens, we would have to, we would have to haul in a real drummer. I have a couple in mind that I would call first, but you never know on that one. But there’s a guy named Adrian Aguilar, he played in my Tracy G group. He’s a local here, phenomenal drummer. And then of course there’s Patrick Johanson. I think he’s in Florida and he’s another I’ve done stuff with him. He’s played on a couple of my things already. These kinds of guys can play anything. So, I don’t know who we would get, but I do know who I would call.
Can we talk a bit about some of the songs? You said, you wrote the lyrics and so some of the songs that obviously stand out, for me, are “Is Anybody Listening”, “Games” and “Where’s The Love?”
I wrote both those songs. But I mean, in this group, it’s not really like one guy writes everything. I’ll have like an idea, or Paul will have an idea, or Randy, and then we’ll throw our ideas on the table. You know, we all kind of put our fingers in and play around with it. And, make it a song, kind of.
“Listening”, the words were written by me and a fellow friend of mine named Mark Bramlett, who’s not even in the band. I used to be in a band with him, but he writes good lyrics. So, Mark (Bramlett) helped write. And then I wrote the other part of the lyrics. And then, um, Randy and Paul helped piece all the rest of the song together and threw in their ideas. The song was basically there, but they touched it up. And Mark Huff is mainly the voice, I call him. He doesn’t write, he’s not writing anything for us right now – we’ve got that covered. But he just takes direction, like ‘tell me what you want me to sing. Just tell me what the words are and where’s the melody, and I’ll just go’.
But that was the story with “Listening”. I think it’s a very strong song, it’s got a strong chorus, and I like the meaning of it and everything, it’s clear.
And “Games”?
And “Games” is a strong chorus, a strong song too, but it’s kind of like a ballad.
Yeah, it’s got that intro to it…
Yeah, and it comes in heavy and stuff, but the same story on that one, I kind of had that idea already. I wrote the lyrics to it, Paul touched them up and Randy puts in his two cents and then Mark sings it, and there you have it!
And then you have the ballad “Where Is The Love”…
Same thing with that song. I had that song, but Paul changed some of the lyrics to it. Basically, I already had the music and the melody for that song. And that’s one of our favorites too. And then “United We Stand” was something we just wrote last year. Me and Randy wrote that song, no singing at all. And then we gave it to Paul and Paul played rhythm guitar on it, and he wrote the words. That’s one of my favorites.
“The Boy” – who chose that as the first single?
We all kind of did. That’s another one of my old songs, but we thought it was just appropriate because it was, it pretty much says it all – “I’m just a boy who wants to rock”. It’s pretty simple and straightforward and in your face and there’s really no fancy nothing to it. We think it’s fun and it would be really fun to play that live; it’s like a live song; you could hear it.
We think it’s a good rocker, we all feel the same way. And the same thing, I wrote the words, but then Paul and Mark kind of made them make more sense, update them a little bit. Some of these songs I wrote a few years back, and I just had as demos because they didn’t make the projects I had at the time. So, if I don’t redo them, I figured no one’s ever going to hear them.
When you write stuff, do you keep your riffs and kind of your solo ideas and then eventually they turn up or…?
Sometimes… mostly no solo ideas – I do them on the spot. Solos are kind of spontaneous for each song I get, I just go for it. Once in a while I have a solo idea for a song, but that kind of comes last for the song. Most of the time I’m improvising on the song that I’m given.
How much were you guys involved as far as the packaging goes, the album cover and all that stuff?
We did the album cover; I think Paul mostly did the album cover. At first, we were trying for crazy stuff, but then we just figured ‘let’s just make it fucking simple’. And my friend Susie took the photos of us. It’s pretty simple, no big deal.
You guys have already started on a second album!?
We have. While the first album is going out there, we’ve been writing the second album. I think we’re up to maybe six or seven songs now on what could be a second Dark Mile album. Just in case…if this label asks us to do another one (or whatever), we’ll be ready.
So, I think it’s great. I would love to see it issued on vinyl. Do you keep a lot of records yourself?
I’ve got a lot of CDs, quite a bit. I haven’t bought any really, in the last few years. I don’t really buy any CDs anymore. I hear them online, on the internet and stuff. But, I’ve got a lot of my own stuff that I do myself in my little studio, you know, my solo stuff. But I try to keep up on any new groups and stuff. Paul turns me on to all kinds of stuff too.
Can we talk a bit about some of your previous work? You go all the way back to the early eighties with some of these bands – Swift Kick and Driven and some of these other things.
In the 80s I had the band ‘Swift Kick’ with some friends and then I kind of always had a Tracy G Group. So, most of the time it was instrumental. And I sometimes I had different singers, and I put out a couple of CDs as the Tracy G Group. And that was way back though. And then I didn’t get the gig for World War III until like ’90.
And that, we did that one album and then, we did a small tour in the United States and then that split up. Then I had like a year off, so I started another band called ‘Mankind’. That’s where a lot of these demos came from because I thought a lot of the songs were really good, but the band ended up breaking up because I joined DIO.
And some of the, some of the Dio riffs came from my demos because I practiced with Vinnie and Jimmy Bain. I would start playing my riffs. And if Ronnie liked them, he’d start to write some words on them. And a lot of them turned out to be songs on Strange Highways, the first album I did.
How did that whole Dio gig all come about?
They called me. You know, I had already been in World War III with Jimmy Bain and Vinnie. And one day, I think I read in a local paper, that Dio was starting his band back together with his original guys, but they’re looking for a new guitar player. I read that and I thought ‘well, Vinnie and Jimmy, they know me, and if they think anything of me, then they’ll let Ronnie know’. I wasn’t going to call them and say ‘hey, remember me?’ And then Vinnie called and said, ‘hey, do you want to come down and audition for Dio?’ I said ‘I think so!’ I go down and I audition with them, play a few, just jams. We didn’t play any songs. Ronnie didn’t sing; Ronnie just sat there and listened. We played and then ‘okay, we’ll call you’. And a month went by. I didn’t think they were going to call me, and then they called me and said ‘he wants you to come back. And so I did. And then after I played again, when I played the second time, Ronnie came up and sang, but we were just making stuff up, we weren’t playing any of his catalog, any of my catalog, no World War III, no Dio, none of that, just jamming. But the thing is, when I jammed with Jimmy Bain and Vinnie, it kind of already sounded like a band because we were a band. It sounded heavier than anything Dio had done, which was my goal anyways.
I always loved Dio’s voice, obviously, but I always thought his music could have been heavier. And in all the 80s and everything, my thoughts were – Vivian Campbell, Craig Goldy, Rowan Robertson, all great guitar players, but they needed to get heavier. With that voice you can’t really get too heavy with the music, and I thought I had the music and the guitar sound for that. I told Ronnie that, after the second audition I said, ‘I know you can get whoever you want,’ he pretty much could get any guitar player in the world, really… and I said ‘but I think if I get the gig we can make one of the heaviest DIO records there is.’ And then a couple days later they called me and said, ‘you’re the guy!’ I was pretty blown away, I didn’t expect it, but I am proud of the music that we made. I think it is the heaviest Dio stuff.
I was wondering how much of an influence you had on the sound, whereas if you listen to that Sabbath Dehumanizer album, and it has that heavier, slower sound to it.
Yeah, that big fat Sabbath sound, which I loved. I love Dehumanizer, but Strange Highways has nothing to do with it. A lot of people still email me and say “hey, is Strange Highways a lot of Dehumanizer leftovers?” And no, I love Dehumanizer, and I love Tony Iommi, but No – it’s all original riffs that I brought in, or we wrote right there on the spot. It just happens to be as heavy or heavier than Dehumanizer. I am heavily influenced by Tony Iommi; how can you not be!? He’s like the King of heavy guitar. In my day he was, at least.
What are the highlights from that era? You did the 2 albums, and the live album. Any favorite songs, or any shows you played that stood out for you?
It is one great big giant grey thing to me. The very first time I stepped on stage; it was in Greece. I was pretty much in Awe the whole time I was in the band. The whole thing was a giant rush. It really wasn’t ever bad to me. Most of the time I was playing I had Ronnie James Dio as the singer, Vinny Appice as the drummer, and Jeff Pilson as the bass player. How are you going to go wrong with that!? I just had to make sure I could cover my own shoes. And I got to say with that line-up there wasn’t much of a weak link. Ronnie said the same thing; we could feed off each other musically each night and make it special and make it heavy. And i knew what Jeff was going to play before he played it; I knew what Vinny was going to do, and vice versa. It was just a real musician’s band; we were all on the same page. We did have different line-ups, and everyone was great! Larry Dennison was a great bass player, and a great guy; Bob Daisley played bass for a little bit. Simon Wright filled in for a bit, a great drummer. And Ronnie, of course – The greatest! I think with Jeff. Vinny, myself, and Ronnie – there was really no stopping that, as far as live.
Was it a tough era for Dio (?), because in the ’90s and into the 2000s a lot of that stuff got shoved off to the side.
It probably was for him – with all the grunge and music changing, the times, but for me personally, again – playing with top notch musicians like that, there was really no low point. Yeah, it changed a little bit, but it was all rocking to me. I live about an hour from where we practiced, every day. And when we practiced, I didn’t mind the drive. I mean – I was going to work doing that!? I have no complaints!
Did you keep in touch with Ronnie after you’d left the band?
Not too much. Most of our relationship was business. We didn’t go out all the time, sometimes. I never smoked pot, I never got high, and they kinda do, so we didn’t have that in common. I was just mainly his guitar player.
Other than Tony Iommi, what were some of your favorite guitar players, and bands from your youth?
I’m all over the place. I liked all the typical guys – Angus Young, Tony Iommi, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore. Eddie Van Halen came along, and you know!? And then going to Allan Holdsworth, Al Di Meola, and all these fusion guys, and different types of music. I like all kinds of stuff, and all kinds of guitar players. Jeff Beck was one of my favorite players, and he wasn’t a ‘metal’ guy, but I like what he got out of the guitar. A couple of local guys, one guy named Shawn Lane- amazing guitar player, I took some lessons from him.
What else do you got on the go?
I’ve got a couple of projects; I’m always working on my instrumental CDs. I’ve got a couple in the works, I’m recording. I record a lot of local guys too, and different guys fly in from different states, and I help them record with their demos and stuff. And I work around the studio, keeping busy. And I’m working on new Dark Mile songs.
LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/darkmileband?igsh=MW9kbnY1eWJ3cjJ2ZQ==
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