If you were a Dokken and/or hard rock fan in 1990, chances are you picked up the first Lynch Mob release, “Wicked Sensation” or at the very least you were familiar with the sexy swagger of the title track. Their second release, simply titled “Lynch Mob” marking the replacement of vocalist Oni Logan with Robert Mason maybe less so, still good, but missing some of the aforementioned swagger. And then… nothing save an EP in ’98 followed up in ’99 by their first full length release in seven years with “Smoke This”, a decidedly “nu-metal” offering complete with rapping and a totally different lineup than previous efforts. 2003 saw a live album “Evil: Live” and the release of “Revolution”, featuring Robert Mason again on vocals, which consisted of remakes of older Dokken/Lynch Mob tracks.

Fast forward to 2009, George has once again reunited with Oni Logan on vocals to release what can truly be called a return to form with a new Lynch Mob release, “Smoke and Mirrors” to be released in Europe and the US this fall. Back to the attitude and drive of the first Lynch Mob release, “Smoke and Mirrors” also shows a bit more maturity in the songwriting, most notably in the lyrics. But enough about that for now, I’ll give all my opinions in my review which you can read here. I was fortunate enough to have a chance to have a conversation with George and speak with him regarding his thoughts about writing and recording the new record, how the timing will affect Souls of We (currently on tour), his view on the current music scene, and even some of his plans for the future, check it out!

Pete: First of it’s really an honor to speak with you today, I really appreciate your time! Smoke and Mirrors is a fantastic album, I’ve been listening to it a lot over the last couple weeks. I know you can’t read the future, but do you anticipate this being a long term band effort, or is this a one shot project deal?

George: Well that will be determined by the success or lack of success of the record. Of course, every record that you do is the best record you’ve ever done at the moment, and you’re very close to it, and you love it because it’s a product of your blood, sweat and tears. You have high expectations, and I’ve seen the reality exceed the expectations, and I’ve seen the opposite happen, so that I’ve come to realize and learn that you have to temper your enthusiasm with reality, and there’s all sorts of other things that are involved here, you know timing, where you’re at with your career, what’s the state of the industry in the marketplace, and what kind of label is behind it, what kind of push you’re getting and so forth, and if you’re getting breaks or not.

For instance last year we, Lynch Mob had the whole Summer Cinderella tour laid out in front of us, and a couple days before I was supposed to leave on tour, I got the call from my manager that the tour had been cancelled because Tom Keifer, the singer had blown out his voice and was having voice surgery, vocal chord surgery. So some things you have no control over. And taking that tour, had that tour happened, you know, we’d be having a completely different conversation at this point probably, because the record would have been done at a different time, and been a different record. So it’s impossible really to predict anything, it’s so chaotic. So all we did was do the best record we could possibly do at this place and time, and work as hard as we can to help to get it out there so people are aware of the record. I have out that there are millions of people that will love this album, it’s just really a matter of getting it in front of people and getting it in there ears, getting them aware of it.

Pete: Well you can chalk up one so far.

George: Which is why we’re doing this interview, right. (laughs)

Pete: I notice the chemistry on the album with the band is great, not just between you and Oni, but also the rhythm section of Marco and Scott sounds like you guys are having fun, and it has an almost live feel to it. Was this an easy album to record?

George: It was relatively easy, I mean no record is easy but, you know unless you’re just walking in and it’s already written, and you’re playing on somebody else’s record, but I mean to conceive, and compose, and execute from start to finish is something where you’re starting from vapor you know, it’s painful. But when you’ve been through the process, you’re kind of like maybe building a house, you have to design it first, and you have an architect involved, and the engineering, and site selection, and procurement of all the materials, and the contractors and subcontractors, and having a vision and so forth, you know. And it takes a long time, and that’s how building records is. It’s very, very time consuming and it takes a lot of energy, and a lot of thought, and you can definitely get thrown off track if you don’t keep yourself focused, and have a vision for it. So, having said that, compared to all the other records I’ve done in my past, it was, I wouldn’t say easy, but it was, at the end of the day, we got what we expected to get out of it, and then some. So it was a successful endeavor, and we felt a huge sense of gratification with the final product.

Pete: Great, that’s always good to hear at the end of recording an album! I read that the original songwriting sessions with Oni resulted in some more “roots rock”, or 70’s style songs, to which you then kind of applied the “Wicked Sensation” mindset to in subsequent writing. It seems like you’ve done a great job of combining the groove of “Wicked” with some more mature songwriting especially in the lyrical area, was this hard to do and did it feel at all forced?

George: Well, we had the luxury of writing the record over a fairly long period of time, and we did it in fragmented blocks of time. So, we didn’t do that intentionally, but that’s the way it worked out. So we had several different writing periods, and the first writing period was basically when Oni just landed in this country from Switzerland, and came to my studio and we sat down and we started hashing out ideas. Those first half a dozen of ideas were more kind of a Southern rock vibe like you know Raging Slab-ish or something, Badlands-ish and that was cool. Not many of those ideas made it on the record, “Smoke and Mirrors” is a product of that writing effort, that particular song. But then we went out and did some shows, and then we started writing again when we had the full band together in the band room and so forth, and so we thought well, after having sat back and been able to sort of stew in these songs we’d written we thought well you know, it’s cool, but it’s, I just don’t think it’s hard enough, you know, it’s not edgy enough. We just sound a little too relaxed, we’re not that old you know? (laughs) So we went back at it, now that the band had been playing some dates and we were a little tighter, and a little more aggressive, we went back in with some more confidence and we had some great new riffs, and we just started building stuff that was more in line with the vibe of the Wicked Sensation record, and then our last writing period we were actually even thinking of evolving that to the next level, and that’s when we wrote “Let the Music Be Your Master” and “Time Keepers” and stuff like that which are a little more, I don’t want to say modern, because they’re not modern, but a little more involved from right at the middle Wicked Sensation, blues based hard rock.

Pete: Absolutely, it sounds kind of like you definitely went for the Wicked Sensation sound, but like you said there’s some more I don’t know, contemporary influences in there, which really makes it a nicely balanced record, which kind of erases my next question because I was going to ask you about that anyway! So according to your MySpace page you’ve got a number of live dates coming up, seems like many of them are with Souls of We, are there plans for a Lynch Mob tour, and if so do you have any specifics at this point, or is it too early to tell?

George: Souls of We is going to blanket the country here up until the end of September. We’ve been playing dates, we’ve got the drummer from As I Lay Dying, who’s back out with them now so we have a replacement for him, but he’s gonna be coming back and doing the Japanese tour with us next January. Got Johny Chow on bass from Cavalera Conspiracy and Fireball Ministry, and London and myself. It’s a two guitar band, so we have Jimmy Weigel on guitar as well so it’s a lot of fun, it’s a different thing for me because I’ve never played in a two guitar band. So we’re going to be hittin’ it really hard until the end of September, we’ve got a video coming out for the second single “Skeleton Key” off the “Let the Truth Be Known” record, which came out about a year ago. But that’s gonna wind down at the end of September, and then Lynch Mob is gonna gear up, and we’re gonna go out for the balance of the year. But I don’t have any definite dates or tours to tell you about, yet.

Pete: So it sounds like Souls of We is definitely not something you’re pushing off to the side, you’re kind of running in parallel with Lynch Mob and definitely keeping that alive and giving it the full force treatment, which is pretty cool. Does that sound pretty accurate?

George: Yeah, I didn’t plan on having it butt up against Lynch Mob, but that’s very unfortunate logistically, and really confuses people. But it just sort of happened that way, events that were out of my control. SO yeah, I put 4 or 5 years into that record, and it was a monster effort, to get this thing done, and so it was just not an option to just put it out there on an okay label, or not even an okay label, and just watch it die. You know, we sold some records, but I think the record is better than that, it deserves better than that so I’m doing everything in my power to get it out in front of people and that requires touring, and the video will be done here in about two weeks, and hopefully that will help create awareness. And so that hopefully Souls of We will possibly live to fight another day, down the road, do another record. We’d love to do another album, and get out there on a tour. We made a very bad decision last year to not go out on the Black Label/Sevendust tour, which we were offered and that would have done wonderful things for the band, so we want to make sure we don’t make that mistake again. So Souls of We has the good fortune to be able to do another record sometime in the future, we’ll tag on with another band, get on a package and go out there and show people what we can do.

Pete: Alright, sounds great! I’m sure you’ve noticed that kind of “resurgence” out there where people are starting to get back into that 80’s sound, or the early 90’s and that sort of thing. Are you seeing that and are you feeling pretty optimistic that things like Lynch Mob can be successful in this environment?

George: Well, you know, I don’t analyze things that much, I think when you analyze the state of the industry or where you think music might be going based on what it’s done in the past versus where it’s at right now is a futile effort unless you’ve got a crystal ball. Because it’s chaos theory out there, you don’t know what’s gonna happen, and I think in my experience when you try to follow trends and predict the future, and play to that, you end up really taking a misstep. I mean, I did that with the second Lynch Mob record, we thought we had gauged things right, well we had gauged things exactly wrong! (laughs) We wrote a very commercial record, it was very watered down and polished and we changed out the singer, which was really the magic of the band, and we paid the price for it. So I think a really safe way to play it, and which Lynch Mob has done is we had a formula, which was a happy accident ,and, we just stuck with it. We didn’t fight, we didn’t resist the natural flow of what that band’s chemistry’s all about, and that would work with Dokken as well. Next year, early next year I plan on doing an instrumental record, with Jordan Mancino from As I Lay Dying on drums, and it’s gonna be just a rippin’ up guitar record, just stamp my place in the history of guitar music, I’m gonna take the gloves off, and I’ve already written some songs for it, one of which is “Son of Scary”, which is a new Mr. Scary that I did on 8-string guitar, and again I’m not trying to follow trends, like guitar music is back in, or 80’s music is back, or anything like that. I’m just gonna do the most rippin’ record I can possibly do, without second guessing it or trying to think too much about it, think too much into it.

Pete: That’s great to hear, it’s actually kind of refreshing.

George: (laughs) Makes it a lot less stressful, believe me.

Pete: (laughs) I can imagine, I can imagine! I really appreciate your time, you spent a lot of time with me, really took some time to answer the questions and I really appreciate that, and as I mentioned I’m a huge fan, so it was really cool for me.

George: Well thank you, and thank you for helping us get the word out, I really appreciate you letting people know what’s going on.

Pete: Absolutely my pleasure, any last words for the people out there reading this?

George: Well I think I’ve really turned a corner on this Lynch Mob Smoke and Mirrors record, and the way it’s resonating with people doing interviews like we just did, which I’ve been doing every single day now for the last three weeks. Like with past records, I’ve had a lot of people like what I do and some people wonder when are you going to get back together with Dokken? When are you going to get together with Lynch Mob? Why don’t you do what you used to do, and I thin k we did that on this record. We did what we used to do, but we did what we like to do now at the same time. So everbody’s happy, so I think this is really going to turn a corner for us and I hope people get a chance to listen to it.

Pete: I hope so, you certainly deserve it. Thanks very much George.

George: Alright, talk to you soon.

*Interviewed by: Pete Fry guitarist from the USA band  “Farcry”.  Click here to check them out!!