Steve Coyne Songwriter / Guitarist

Music

General Info

Genre: Fusion / Metal / Rock
Location Hamden, Connecticut, Un
Profile Views: 16277
Last Login: 9/29/2012
Member Since 8/16/2007
Type of Label Indie
Bio
.. .. .. .... .. .. .. .. .. .................... .. .... .. .. .. .. .. .................... ............ ....Myspace Layouts.. at Pimp-My-Profile.com / ..Digital guitar.. / ..Comments.. .. .............. .. .. .. .. .. .. ........ ...... ........ .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ...... .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ...... .. .. .. .. I started playing the Piano when I was around 8 years old, learning songs from Classical, Ragtime, Jazz and Rock and Popular music genres. I liked playing the piano and practiced enough to excel at it. The piano has always been something that I relied on as a songwriter. Then I started playing the guitar and I realized what it meant to love music. I aspired to be just like Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. One of my first solos was Stairway to Heaven which I can still play to this day. .. I first studied the guitar with some teachers local to the Boston area. But my main teacher was an old reel to reel tape recorder (still have it) that would let me slow down solos to half speed and quarter speed. I learned all my favorite solos by Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Randy Rhoades, Jake E. Lee, Brad Gillis, Jeff Watson, Steve Morse, Steve Vai and Eddie Van Halen. I could play Eruption and some other landmark guitar solos of the day but I wanted to take it a step further and get into Berklee College of Music. So I went to the local Berklee Grad guitar teacher and started learning some music theory, scales, Jazz standards and improv techniques. .. After 2-3 years of that I was ready for Berklee. My teacher wrote me a recommendation and I was in. You may know this, but in the 80s, you had to have massive chops to last at Berklee, so I did what every self respecting guitar player did at that time.........practice 8,10 and sometimes 12 hours a day. At this point Steve Vai was really my favorite guitar player. There was a bootleg Steve Vai realbook floating around so I got a copy of it and learned all his great solos. Crossroads Suite, For the Love Of God, Animals, Erotic Nightmares, I also got into some Yngwie, Paul Gilbert, and Frank Gambale. .. Berklee was a great time for me. All music, all the time. Just the way it should be. At the time I played with some rock and metal bands while learning my Jazz theory, Classical Theory, sight reading and songwriting and composition classes. .. After that, I got into teaching, got my master's degree from WestConn and gigged around, doing several theater gigs including, The Wiz, Pearlie and Dreamgirls; I played with Atlantic recording artist Ragan Whiteside on some local gigs around the NYC area - she won the Capitol Jazz Challenge and played for 40,000 people shortly after... I am currently a rock/fusion guitarist and songwriter writing and recording in my home studio. I write in a variety of styles ranging from Goth Metal, to Bubble Gum Pop, to Country, to Latin Jazz fusion to Instrumental Rock. .. Most notably, however, I am a member of the Original Rock Band FREERIDER. We have done recent shows as part of the Ernie Ball Moto Music Madness Tour, through Connecticut and Maine. We have received the honor of Finalist in the 16th Annual BILLBOARD SONG CONTEST. We are currently developing a game as a beta band for the new Harmonix downloadable content site, Rock Band Network, which will soon be available at the Rock Band Store... Boston Writer Jim Sullivan's article on FREERIDER.. FREERIDER.. Second chances?.. You don't get a lot of those in the music business. Especially after your first attempt fizzles and you more or less put your rock dreams behind you, embarking upon other things like raising families and pursuing alternate careers... But here is Freerider, a hard rock trio originally from Boston, back with songs from a CD called "No Ride Denied." It was recorded in 1995 and first released in 2000. .. Singer-lyricist-bassist Todd Erickson defines Freerider – which includes guitarist Steve Coyne and drummer Jeremy Waybright - as "a power trio with thick, melodic guitars with introspective and honest lyrics. There's a universal element to it, going back several decades from classic rock to grunge and post-grunge and for people who love classic hard rock and as well as the Soundgardens and Pearl Jams of world. … We have songs about real places and events. We get involved in the spiritual, mental and emotional battles of life and living it. We try to end up in an optimistic place and avoid preaching." .. OK: So, why are the songs from "No Ride Denied" available now? Why does Freerider exist again?.. "We've gotten a hold of something pretty life changing," says Erickson, who readily acknowledges there's a big heap of Band-From-Nowhere-Gets-an-Unexpected-Break aspect to this leg of Freerider's journey... And the break is … .. Linking up with Harmonix, which is now partnered with MTV. The company that gave you Rock Band and Guitar Hero has a digital music distribution system, Rock Band Network. Freerider is among the first group of indie bands to be part of it, with a self-publishing initiative. Their songs go up for sale the day the store goes live to the universe near the end of November. It positions Freerider on the cutting edge of technology, gaming and self-publishing... "Many gamers already purchase and play downloadable content from the Rock Band Store," says Erickson. Up to now, these downloads have come from an array of already popular bands. You know, the Beatles, AC/DC, Aerosmith. Harmonix conducted tests of how indie bands might fare and discovered folks shopping at the Rock Band Store – considered gamers first, music fans second - had a hunger to discover new music... Here's how it'll work: The Rock Band Network gives indie bands the tools, approval pipeline and store to sell their songs as game files for Rock Band 2. Gamers will be able to demo any song, check the ratings from other gamers and purchase the songs to play in the game. A song will be sold for $1 or 160 Xbox points... Freerider was chosen for Rock Band Network by Erickson's old pal Jeff Marshall, who is the Network's executive producer. He knew Erickson from when he managed the '80s Boston rock club Spit and later ran the Monolyth record label. .. Erickson had worked as a bar-back at Spit, had played in the post-punk band Shake the Faith. After they broke up, he formed Mere Mortals in 1991. Mere Mortals evolved into Freerider when the band members discovered there were already other Mere Mortals out there in the rock world. Their new moniker was inspired by the character in their anthemic pop-metal song "No Ride Denied." .. "Jeff thought we'd be perfect for this," says Erickson, He says Marshall's analogy was this. "'It's like you've been a mechanic all your life working with a really crappy set of tools and you've done OK, but somebody hands you brand new tricked-out Snap-On tool chest with everything you need to be successful in the new age of being a mechanic. That mechanic still has to decide to get up and go to work everyday.' So, he's given us a bright, new tool box and I'm doing everything to take advantage.".. Waybright, who has a ProTools home studio in Hollis, NH, has been busy remixing songs for the RBN. "I have been re-mixing the album we did in '95," he says, "making the songs bigger, louder, punchier, and stronger.".. To that end, Freerider has begun booking gigs. To introduce Freerider to their new digital/social media/YouTube audience, the band is performing live on a community access TV show called "On Stage with Mantis" on Thursday, October 15. The "Wayne's World"-esque show airs live from WCTV studios in Wareham, MA. Freerider will debut their live show by playing a free, "edu-tainment" event for Repower America and Clean Energy Coalition (Wash., DC) at Port City Music Hall in Portland, ME on Thursday, October 29th. .. What you'll hear on "No Ride Denied" is a mix of rockers and ballads. If the rockers come from an aggressive place, they don't come from an angry place. There's a sense of hope. "I'm seeing nothing but my faith is getting bigger," sings Erickson on the opening track, "Spirit of Change." In "Brand New Revelation," he sings "Hello world, it's nice to meet you after all this time/Been my whole life playing Atlas/Today I've changed my mind. … I've got a brand new revelation/And I need it to survive." Prescient words then … and now. .. And there's plenty of new material in the pipeline – "20 years of songwriting stored up," says Erickson... "The modest hope is to gain a loyal following of Rock Band gamers who spread the word about Freerider, buy our songs and steer fans to our music sites and shows. Our wildest dream would be a Freerider song becomes a runaway smash in the game and propels sales of our music in to the millions of units. Either scenario is entirely possible." .. "My hope," says Coyne, "is someone in this network of not-well-known bands will have a massive hit. Something will emerge because of it. We hope we can be the ones with the hit. That sound never really went away, which is another stroke of luck for us. We sound like the new batch of bands." .. "It's a band that lived in obscurity, a phantom of our imagination," says Erickson. "We stayed alive so we could write or play. Like it or hate it, it's real and honest. We want to have an incredible amount of fun, and we want to take advantage of the new media in pipeline. .. An excerpt from Martin McCools review of "No Ride Denied". .. Freerider 'No Ride Denied' There are some bands and, at first listen, you know this band got something important going on. There is an urgency and direction to the album 'No Ride Denied' that suggests these guys have a vision and are going places. I for one am rooting for them to get there. If you wanted to go looking for America, in the coolest sense of the word, you might just find it in Freerider's 'No Ride Denied'. It might be termed an Easy Rider of the 21st century. These guys certainly weren't born to follow; rather Freerider are a band that are breaking new ground and breaching adventurous musical territory where other bands fear to wander... This is a technically excellent and lyrically rich album from a band that has style, sound and substance. Some bands have that big sound, but there's something missing in the mix. Freerider also possess the substance that many bands lack and I am confident that their musical panache will keep them afloat in the unpredictable swells of the music ocean today. The band's unique and refreshingly original sound catapult these guys to a different dimension completely than other bands working within similar genres... Freerider undeniably have a big sound. You don't mind a big noise when there is artistry behind it and, after listening to 'No Ride Denied', the thought came to my mind that "It's a beautiful noise, a sound that I love…." There are echoes here of Guns N'Roses, Metallica, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Eddie Vedder, the singer who provided the amazing soundtrack to Into the Wild. But to their credit Freerider have crafted and honed a sound all of their own, a sound that can be singularly and definitely be called Freerider... One of the standout songs for me is 'My Mind Is A Box' an anthemic track that fluctuates musically from gritty to gentle and the following lyrics reveal a poetic side to this heavy rock band:.. "A knock, no answer A bell, no sound A whisper across a meadow A scream in the fog".. This song has an emotional arc and thrust that show the musical complexity and depth of Freerider. These guys can get pretty complex on you – see where their music takes your mind... In the next track, an insistent, irrepressible metal sound takes hold of you by the throat and won't let you go, as Steve Coyne exclaims: "Will I hate my brother, blame him for my pain? Spend my life in living hell? Will I hear the wisdom and realize? Not always what I want…".. A hallmark of this CD is the dramatic changes of tempo, and on 'Ageless Veins' Freerider temporarily abandon the thrasing of previous songs for a soft rock approach that breaks down in a comfortable bed of air guitar. This song contains the best lyrics on the entire CD in a song polulated with "Lovers, drifters and anglers." The song paints a vivid picture of a time and place:.. "In the woods along River Rd. is a footpath Winding Through giant pines and ancient maples It was well worn for generations…. Satiated desires in the life-giving flow And sunbeams made diamonds that danced" It is probably fair to say that track 7 'Crash' is vintage Freerider. This one ups the ante in terms of sound, technical prowess and showcases kick-ass lyrics ("Gripping the wheel of tomorrow/Steering with nearsighted hands/Ignite the fuel of indecision/Run your race like a last lap mission") ..
Members
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Influences
...... Steve Vai, Edie Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Eric Johnson, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Frank Gambale, Steve Morse, My Chemical Romance, Green Day
Sounds Like
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