Dear friends, first of all I would like to thank you for giving this interview to our webzine. "The Tale of Woe" is your latest release after many years and we would like to talk about it. Are you satisfied with the final result?

Chris Ogburn: Yes. It is such an improvement over “Traumatized” in *so* many aspects. The recording quality, the performances, the sounds of the instruments themselves, the production, the mix, virtually everything has been improved upon.
Sean Frazier: I agree with Chris. The quality of the recording is light- years ahead of “Traumatized”. Traumatized was meant to be a demo that developed a life of it's own. I am sometimes amazed it sounds as good as it does given the circumstances.
Craig Polson: As far as recording quality goes, “The Tale Of Woe” is the album that we had hoped “Traumatized” would be, but really couldn't. Where “Traumatized” suffered from its demo origins (and all the confusion & struggle that entails), “The Tale of Woe” was well planned and carefully recorded. Having Terry Brown put the pieces together really ensured the care we put into capturing the performances really came across in spades.

What it the response of the audience and the press to "The Tale of Woe" so far? Given the fact that "Traumatized" was very positive back in 1997 what comparisons can be made between the responses?

Chris Ogburn: It's so hard to tell. What little I've seen in terms of reviews have been translations of reviews from German and Dutch sources. It seems to be mostly favorable though.
Sean Frazier: So far I think it's been very positive. My teenagers are a good barometer for music and they love this new album, so to me it's a hit!
Craig Polson: It's still very early to have much feedback - we're still waiting for most the reviews from the English language press. But so far, so good, as far as we can tell.

What is the main feature of "The Tale of Woe"? What do you think that adds to today's progressive rock scene?

Chris Ogburn: I would say the focus is upon the songs themselves.
Sean Frazier: I have very diverse musical tastes so I am not as "prog hip" as others. I think that we just focused on writing good songs that we would want to listen to. The fact that the songs are "proggy" or are long epics was a byproduct not a goal. I think sometimes in prog bands feel the need to adhere to some time honored formula (e.g. long songs, constantly changing meter) without writing good songs. We aren't like that. We write from the heart and the songs grow organically and I think you can tell when you listen.
Craig Polson: I don't think we have any ambitions with the album beyond it being enjoyable. I don't think we're trying to carve any sort of new niche into the Prog scene. I hadn't really thought about it, but it's probably safe to say that the use of many classic Prog instruments and tones is sort of a love letter to the classic bands that we all grew up listening to. But I think the use of the Ebow, classic keyboard tones, and Rickenbacker bass has really created this impression with listeners that the material sounds like early Genesis. While that's certainly a compliment, it's totally unexpected. There are so many passages that to me don't even remotely sound like Genesis, other than perhaps the instrument tones or the presence of a strong melodic element. Some of the new songs have brief sections that, to my mind, cross well into Prog Metal, but we're not hearing many remarks about that aspect of the album.

Are there any favorite tunes that you prefer to play live? In general what is the feedback that you get when you play live?

Chris Ogburn: That's also a hard question to answer simply because it's been so long since we were performing on a regular basis. “Marathon” from “Traumatized” was always a favorite live for me. From the new album “Seasons” and “The Past Has Just Begun” come to mind.
Sean Frazier: We haven't played often enough lately to gauge, but we are certainly a "live" band. We all enjoy playing and to me that's the highlight and the icing on the cake in this whole process. I enjoy playing all the songs live but my favorite of all is "Ring of Truth" from the first CD. That song is so powerful and by the end I've left everything I've got on the stage... and this is what music is all about.
Craig Polson: For me, I really enjoy playing "The Seven Gentle Spirits", which is a song that has sections that predate all but one person in the band - Chris Ogburn. It was the first song that I heard the guys playing over the phone when I answered their ad. It's changed a lot over the years, but the previous bass player Jeremy Johnson wrote about half of the remaining bass parts. They're fun to play!

Do you think that the passing of so many years since "Traumatized" made you better -or should I say different- musicians?

Chris Ogburn: With so many years between now and then, I can't really pretend that I'm exactly the same in every sense. I have more experience my instrument, with writing songs, with recording, with listening... with music than I did when we recorded "Traumatized". I think that's probably true for all of us in the band.
Sean Frazier: Yeah, I wouldn't say better, but different. We've all maintained our music ability but as you can imagine you do a lot of growing in 10 years. These songs are really all tied together weaving the story of life, love and death. When you get older you certainly think about these things more. When we did the first CD I was in my mid twenties so the writing focus was a little different.

What took you so long to release a second album?

Chris Ogburn: So many things! Personnel changes, people getting married, having children, people moving... Life is what happens while you're making other plans.
Sean Frazier: As Chris said, life happened. We've always enjoyed playing music together and we have a very collaborative approach to the band and we had tons of material left to do (still do) so we felt it was worth the effort (and it's quite an effort working coast-to-coast) to put out more music.

Were these prohibiting factors so strong that you couldn't avoid?

Chris Ogburn: Yes. There were some changes that were unforeseen and regrettable that cost us a considerable chunk of time. Also there were things that just had to happen for people and their families.
Sean Frazier: Yeah, they were unfortunately. We'd all love it if we could make a living playing progressive rock, but the reality is we can't... no one can. So we all have full time jobs and families and music is just a very serious hobby.

What are the differences between the two time-periods of your career? Do you believe that the conditions for groups like yours are better now?

Chris Ogburn: Maybe. There seems to be more and more interest in prog rock all the time. It certainly seems that there are a lot more bands playing that sort of music today.
Sean Frazier: It's amazing how many "prog" bands are out there now and how many sub-genres there are. When we started in the early to mid nineties there were really only a handful. So yes, I think this is good and bad. It's good because there are enough talented musicians making great music as opposed to the "bubble gum" music we are force fed daily (MTV, American Idol, Radio.... blech!), but the bad side is that there is now lots of "noise" in the genre and we have to try not to get lost in it.
Craig Polson: It seems like there are a lot more Prog bands out there, as well as music labels and festivals. That means it's harder to get attention and get noticed, but there are more opportunities to try!

What was the contribution of Terry Brown to the final outcome? Do you believe that such "additions" can enhance the final result of an album in a significant degree?

Chris Ogburn: Terry mixed "The Tale of Woe". On "Traumatized" we attempted to do this ourselves. There is a huge difference in quality between the two.
Sean Frazier: Terry is amazing. The technology has gotten so "user friendly" that bands can make really good sounding recordings in home studios and I'm sure we could have done that, but Terry takes things to the next level. Having someone like him guiding us through the recording process and then actually working on the mixing just brought the whole project together. Anyone who listens to our 2 CD's side by side would not question Terry's ability. I would love to be able to work with Terry on a project from start to finish, i learned so much from him on this CD I can only imagine what it would be like to go though the whole process with him. It was pretty surreal to be sitting in his studio mixing "Tale of Woe" while looking at his platinum record for Rush's "Moving Pictures". This guy worked on my 2 favorite albums of all time so it was a once in a lifetime experience to work with him.
Craig Polson: Having Terry participate on the album was really incredible. Having been a musician for years and years, in bands or solo, I've gone through that process that all musicians with moderate budgets go though to create the best recordings possible, and they usually don't live up to expectations. And like most musicians, I always wondered what it would be like to be involved with a real top quality recording with an industry professional. What would that process be like? Even with the warts & pimples of “Traumatized”, I felt like if I never did anything else with music at least I had gone through the process of recording and releasing an entire album of good music and musicianship. Now with “The Tale of Woe”, I got that dream opportunity to just concentrate on composing and recording, but leaving the mixing in the hands of a real pro. I mean, this guy produced & mixed the classic Rush albums... Tom-Freakin'-Sawyer! He worked with The Who! I don't think the contribution that Terry made to the album can be understated. The tunes are all ours - the dynamics, the songwriting, the performances, the patch choices... but he created the final sonic landscape using the paints and brushes and canvas we provided for him. The sweetness in the lush sections, the subtle changing of emphasis between the instruments on the repeated sections, many of the instrument effects and the mix effects... that's Terry. He took good individual recorded tracks and combined them into a great, top quality presentation as recorded artwork. I feel absolutely blessed to have had such an opportunity.

What about the cover? I was impressed with the wonderful illustrations of Craig Polson. Was this something that Craig took on his shoulders or was an issue of whole team?

Sean Frazier: Craig didn't do the illustrations. He found them somewhere. I'm sure he can tell you where. We did commission some original artwork for the centerfold from Mary Hildebrandt and David Boller. Mary & David are professional comic book artists and true professionals. They did an amazing job of capturing our vision and we were lucky enough to meet them in person at ROSFest this year, which was great.
Craig Polson: I only did the graphic design and layout of the CD artwork... perhaps the credits should have been clearer, as you're not the first one to complement me on the illustrations. The figures are black and white illustrations by an unknown artist from a 16th Century French book titled "The Humorous Dreams Of Pantagruel.” This book contains many figures from the imagination of master Francois Rabelais’ last work, “For The Amusement Of All Good Spirits". As a graphic artist (one of my sidelines when not playing music), I just colorized them and did a little editing as necessary, then combined them with the other graphical elements to create the album artwork. There was a lot of feedback with the band and Prog Rock Records during this process. I had been aware of these weird characters for some years and thought it'd be cool to use them for something. It was only after a lot of the artwork of this album had been completed that the unintentional connection between the illustrations and prog legends Gentle Giant came to light - both "Pantagruel's Nativity" and "The Advent of Panurge" are related to the characters Francois Rabelais created.

Ok, guys this is the end of the interview. Thank you very much for speaking to our webzine. I wish you all the best to you and to "A Tale of Woe".

Sean Frazier: Thank you Giannis. It' was pleasure to do the interview. All the best.