Rock My Monkey: Hello, you are listening to the Rock My Monkey netcast on RockMyMonkey.com. Today we are speaking with Dave Meniketti of the band
Y & T. How are you doing today, Dave?
Dave Meniketti: Doing great, man. Glad to be on.
Rock My Monkey: First off, I was wondering how well you knew Kevin DuBrow, and what are your thoughts on his passing?
Dave Meniketti: It was a real big shock to me. I found out yesterday morning as it came down the pike. It was really a shock. Anybody that you know, or know of, that has been in the business for this long, a lot of respect has to be given to somebody that’s been doing it as long as he has, and been doing it in the quality that he’s been doing it. You just don’t expect something like of a pretty young guy. I don’t know that they’ve actually even said anything, even today, about the reason for his death, or whatever, which, whatever. Whatever that may be. It’s none of my business, per se. But it really did shock me quite a bit, and everybody in the band. We were talking about it last night at rehearsal. It was something else, you know? It just came in out of left field, obviously. I’ve known Kevin on and off. We were not big acquaintances. We didn’t talk to each other very much or anything. But we certainly have met each other and have played at gigs together and talked together on and off. In fact, the last time I talked to him was at the Rocklahoma Festival in July, earlier this year. I think it was July. July or August, whatever it was. I was really impressed with him. I thought he looked the best he’s ever looked. He did an amazing job of being a front man. His voice was great. The band was great. In fact, I thought the band was one of the best bands, if not the best band, on the bill that particular day. And I hadn’t seen them for many years, so I didn’t know what to expect. And I talked to him afterwards, and told him what I thought about that and everything. He brought up the old days when we hung out together in Buffalo when they were playing a gig and we were at the same hotel. You know, little things like that. It’s definitely a shock. It’s really too bad for everybody involved, not only the fans, but of course the band especially, because they’ve been active and going out there and touring for quite some time now. And I know they’ve been kicking it up again the last couple of years especially. This, obviously, puts a major crimp in that whole thing.
Rock My Monkey: I think one of the things that shocked people the most about his death is that in the past several years he had actually started getting really focused on being as healthy as he possibly be, so that he could continue that high quality performance. Actually one thing I noticed about you on the-I actually just watched a couple of days ago the Bang Your Head DVD, and I know you guys have some of your footage on your bonus disc, but I was watching the couple of songs that were on there on the one that covers all the bands, and you, your voice sounded actually stronger and healthier than a lot of the guys half your age. I was wondering, maybe as a segue to the Kevin DuBrow incident, what do you do to make sure that your voice is one of the stronger voices in a big festival like that, and maybe on your live DVD. How do you make sure that you can still bring it to the level that you can?
Dave Meniketti: Part of it has just got to be your natural ability, I guess. Because I don’t know why my voice keeps stronger, and staying strong for all these years. I’m not doing anything special other than taking very, very good care of myself when it comes to being on the road and playing shows. I do actually go well out of my way to make sure that I can sing the best that I can every night. And that’s two simple, very simple things for me. The first being sleep, trying to make sure I get close to eight hours of sleep before a show day, which is very tough when you’re traveling in planes same day as the show, and traveling from one country to the next. It does get hard to do. I just try to get it some way or another, even if I have to take a nap just before we go onstage or something, because it’s very important for the voice to get that rest. It makes a huge difference in making it easier to sing, rather than really having to strain it out. That and the fact of how I eat and what I eat before I go onstage. It’s just to keep the energy going and not to upset my stomach so that I don’t have anything against my body that basically makes it harder for me to do my job. And those two things I’ve been doing religiously for thirty years. Ever since I figured out what was the right thing to do for my voice, I’ve been doing that, and been doing it for years. So I guess that given with just whatever you’ve got naturally to work with is what it’s all about.
Rock My Monkey: What was it about The Netherlands that made that the perfect place to film the first live DVD for Y & T?
Dave Meniketti: Well, The Netherlands have always been a really strong market for Y & T. It was from the very beginning of our career going over there. In fact the very first show we played in Europe was in Holland, or The Netherlands, as it should be said, at the Pink Pop Festival. It was pretty amazing for us, because we really had no idea the impact our band had in Europe at that time. We had only been playing U.S. dates. We had seen some articles here and there in some magazines that were forwarded to us from overseas, but we didn’t know if anybody really know who we were. When we went and played that gig in 1982, we were really surprised as we were just even driving up to the festival that there were all these people that had Y & T sewn on their jackets. When we played the gig there were people that had banners naming our songs and all kinds of things. And of course they were singing along with the songs and everything. Then it became only too obvious that things were different over there. Different than we expected. In fact we were told when we actually arrived that the Earthshaker record had been chosen in the rock magazines that year as the number one rock album of the year. So we thought ‘Oh, wow.’ We went from zero to ten in our mind as far as what we were expecting in that region, or in Europe anyway. It’s pretty much stayed like that ever since. Even though we spent maybe sixteen years of no action over there, from I’d say ’85 through 2003 we stayed away from Europe, and the U.K. And so even so, even with all of that when we finally came back again, it was like we picked up where we left off, which was pretty amazing actually. Because we had no indication as to whether or not anybody even cared anymore when we came back again. It’s been great ever since. It’s always been good. The Netherlands, the Benelux region in general, the Belgium, Holland, whatever you want to say. That’s always been a very, very big area for us. The way it worked out with the DVD is that this was a German company that wanted to do this DVD, that did the DVD. They came to us right after we did the Bang Your Head Festival and showed us some footage a couple of days later on a laptop, and said, ‘Look, this is what we did at the Bang Your Head fest, this is what we’ve done for other artists. But the thing is we want to do it for you not only because we can do a good job, but because we’re fans of the band.’ And that of course made the biggest impact to me. So it was just after that just getting the right date where they could get there with their crew, and also was going to be a good show that looked good on DVD, that was a good venue, that had a nice stage and it was going to present right. And we knew we were coming back a couple of months later to tour Europe again, and we just got in connection with that company and said, ‘Here are the dates we’re playing. Let’s figure out the best venue and you guys come out and shoot it.’ That’s how it all sort of came together.
Rock My Monkey: What was the reason for Stef Burns’ dismissal, and how is John Nymann working out?
Dave Meniketti: Well, Stef just got too busy, quite frankly. Stef is one of those guys that is like a chameleon. He can play in anybody’s band, and he can look the part no matter what band he’s in . He’s been in various bands from literally from Sheila E. all the way to Pablo Cruz and obviously Y & T, and then later on he was playing with Alice Cooper. He was playing with, oh god, all kinds of different bands over the years. Basically he just got really busy, at the point where we were not playing that much, and we just started kicking things back up again about 2002 or so, started playing a few shows. But he started getting more and more dates. He started playing with Huey Lewis And The News, and he started playing with this major rock guy in Italy, who is actually the biggest rock star in Italy, and that just sort of ended up taking a lot of his time away, and he found it difficult to work all three or all four projects together at the same time. And considering we were not playing as much as he would have liked at that time, he had to go on his way. We understood that. And John Nymann came in because John was like the ultimate guy that we could have ever wanted to have in the band. In fact we’d even been thinking about how cool it would have been if John was in the band, even as far back as 1983 or 1984. So he’s been around us for years. He’s been a friend of ours. He’s actually sung background vocals on a couple of our records over the years. He’s been on the road with us doing different things. He was a natural guy to have in the band, and when it came down that we needed somebody, he was the first guy that we went to. It just made sense as soon as he put the guitar on. He already knew the songs. So it was just right. It just made sense.
Rock My Monkey: Who is on this DVD? Is it Stef or John.
Dave Meniketti: It is John.
Rock My Monkey: It is John. Okay.
Dave Meniketti: Yeah. John’s been with us since 2003 now. He took over it when Stef left in 2003.
Rock My Monkey: Then I might need to go in and hack your Wikipedia page and correct that.
Dave Meniketti: Okay. There you go. You need to do that! (both laugh) Yeah, no, Johns’ been with us quite some time now. His first festival as a matter of fact with us was in Europe was in 2004. But he joined at the end of 2003, I think it was, sometime around there. Middle of 2003, actually. It may have been 2003 even when he played in some of the festivals in Europe, because we went back twice. Stef was with us in Spain earlier in the year, and I think John joined us sort of mid year at that point, as my recollection is starting to come back to me.
Rock My Monkey: When can fans expect a new studio release of new material from Y & T?
Dave Meniketti: That’s a good question. It’s a question we get asked a lot. It’s a difficult question to answer only because we’ve been working so much, and we usually need a big block of time set out for us in order to really get into songwriting. Because we really need to be distraction-free in order to really come up with the tunes. And the next block of time period that looks like that would work out for would be like January, February, and part of March. And if we play our cards right and we get motivated, and get into the studio, we should start writing come January. And hopefully have something released for, if not next year, then the year after, early in the year. Really hard to say. It just depends on what happens in the upcoming three or four months.
Rock My Monkey: What would be the biggest reason that “Going Off The Deep End” is not on this DVD?
Dave Meniketti: Well, that’s because we have too many songs. (both laugh) And we only can play so long. And as it is we play two to two and a quarter hours every night, so you can imagine what that means. That means our typical set list comprises of nineteen to twenty-two songs a night. In most instances we play twenty to twenty-two songs almost every night. Given that, and given the fact that we have hundreds of songs, it’s really difficult to put a good mix of the songs that we know everybody wants to see every night, such as “Mean Streak” and “Rescue Me” and “Forever”, and things like that, and also get, you know, keep sort of rotating the rest of the catalog and expect that you’re going to certainly have the song of your dreams in that set that particular night. You never know what’s going to happen. But we do try to keep it fresh every year. In fact every month even. We’ll get back into the rehearsal studio when we have some time off between shows and we go ‘Okay, what can we bring into the sets now that we haven’t played last year, or we haven’t played in the previous years?’ And I keep set lists of every single gig we ever play, so I know if we’re going back to the U.K. one year to the next, what we’ve done last year and what we ought to do this year to make it fresh for the fans that are coming out from year to year and so on and so forth. That’s just what happens. We can’t do them all all the time. That particular song we haven’t played in a long time, and that’s something we might work up for 2008 to do in some sets there. And hopefully we’ll just have a new DVD that’s shot at that time.
Rock My Monkey: To squash any rumors, you can still totally pull that song off?
Dave Meniketti: Oh, absolutely. Are you kidding? (both laugh) Yeah.
Rock My Monkey: What does Y & T offer you that your solo material doesn’t, and vice versa?
Dave Meniketti: Well, Y & T of course is the legacy of my career. That’s what I’ve given my heart and soul to for thirty three years. In fact longer than that, before we had a record deal obviously. So I mean that is always going to be the staple for me. That’s always going to be the basics for what I’ve always been into as far as songwriting and the energy we put across and everything like that. Myself and Phil Kennemore are the original band members that are left in the band. That’s half of us at least. We’re the principle songwriters anyways, so you’ve got most of what that material came from are the two guys that are still in the band, and they’re responsible for that sound a lot. We’re like brothers, and there’s something about this band that is like a brotherhood, and not only for us, but for the fans, too. There is this special connection that we have with the fans that seems to be, to me it seems to be a little more special than your average fan to band relationship. We really do take advantage of the fans’ communication with us. We do what they ask us to do as many times as we can. We try to part of everything they want us to be, as well. So that’s the specialness of Y & T. As far as the solo career goes, that allows me to stretch myself into a different region that Y & T doesn’t cover. Y & T doesn’t do blues stuff, more traditionally blues stuff. Even my solo stuff isn’t necessarily traditional blues, but it’s much closer to traditional blues than anything that Y & T does. There is a big background in there that is something I think a lot of us in the band, and certainly me personally, have come from, which is a blues-based kind of thing. I was listening to the blues well before I ever started Y & T-well, I didn’t start it, but I was part of starting the band. Before we started that band going and doing original material I was always into the blues. I think that my playing has reflected a blues-based playing, so it made sense for me to get into that when I was doing my solo thing, and explore that side of me. It’s really inspirational to do it. For me it’s great because it gets me that other side. I get to play with different musicians. I get to play slightly different material than Y & T, and I get to explore my guitar playing in a wider range because we do a lot of jamming when we do the Meniketti gigs, and it really allows me to get out there with my playing a little bit further, I think, rather than just having just complete structured songs with structured, semi-structured soloing. It adds a nice, refreshing extra to my life as a musician. Although I’ve stayed away from it for two years now, because we’ve been so busy doing Y & T stuff I just haven’t had any time to do it. But I will get back to doing another record and doing some more touring with that at some point.
Rock My Monkey: Not only am I a big hard rock and metal fan, but I’m also a little bit of a computer geek, and few years ago I saw you on a show that’s legendary among computer geeks known as The Screen Savers with one Leo Laporte. So I was wondering how much of a geek are you, and why are we not doing this interview on Skype?
Dave Meniketti: (laughs) Well, it’s funny. I’m actually a major computer geek. And where do I live? I live in Silicon Valley, so it’s not like I can get away from it, either. I’ve been into computers since the mid-80’s, maybe the early 80’s. I think I bought my first IBM’s clone computer, you know, 80-88 complete computer back in the early 80’s. Within a couple of months I was already writing some basic code and stuff like that. I’m a nut when it comes to this stuff. I just love computers. I’m constantly building new computers and servers in the house and everything like that. But the Skype thing, man, I don’t know. I just kind of totally avoided it for ever since it’s been around. I guess I’m just going to have to get into that one of these days.
Rock My Monkey: I got to tell you, the quality, the sound quality of the recording-I mean, this is actually pretty good. You actually have a really good signal coming in. But the sound quality on Skype is phenomenal. It will blow you away.
Dave Meniketti: Really? Wow. Alright.
Rock My Monkey: I also want to know, how do you, being a geek, I want to ask you if you think technology has hurt or helped music?
Dave Meniketti: I think it’s done both, but I think mostly it’s helped. Hurt in the way that, the obvious thing, people downloading our music for free. Or what I like to say is stealing. (chuckles) That has certainly made an impact on most musicians that I know. Unfortunately most people don’t look at it that way. They look at musicians and they think that we’re all rich, and what will a couple of cents make difference to them? But it all adds up. It really does, because most of us are not rich, and most of us are working and living from gig to gig, paycheck to paycheck, just like most of the world out there. And our income is never 100% set. We don’t have salaries. We don’t have 401ks unless we start them ourselves. We live off of those royalties, and when somebody takes something from you that they’re normally supposed to pay for, it makes an impact. But on the flip side of that, you have the technology that allows your songs to be available online, legally and illegally, to people that are looking for it, or that maybe aren’t looking for it, but it shows up online and they have a chance to listen to it and get familiarized with the band from the very beginning. And that goes down from seeing a YouTube video that a fan took at a gig or something that they may have just come across, to maybe finding out about the band’s website and being able to buy stuff right there or listen to stuff online. Or just simply to communicate with the band. We have a forum on our site that is up 24/7, and fans from around the world are constantly on there talking to each other, asking questions about the band members. We try to do our best to get in there and answer questions personally, but if nothing else we certainly read the stuff all the time, so we know what’s going on in the community. So there’s all this stuff that has happened because of technology that has made things so much easier. And it’s also allowed bands to be their own managers, quite frankly, because they can be in direct contact with fans. They can have mailing lists that they can get a hold of them. They can webcast live shows, podcasts. There’s so many ways to reach people nowadays that were not available to us in the 80’s. It makes it that much easier to be a musician and to be able to guide your own career rather than relying on the existence of the big record companies that can swallow you, quite frankly.
Rock My Monkey: What are the chances of the band doing a full coast to coast tour of the United States anytime soon?
Dave Meniketti: We’ve been trying to do that every year. Ever since, I’d say the last three years especially, when we changed managers and we changed the way we wanted to do business, our whole philosophy is to get out there and to play for as many people as possible, just like we used to in the old days. Of course that’s a little bit more difficult nowadays, because it’s a different market as far as live show ticket sales go. I mean, things are not what they used to be. In the 80’s people used to come to shows all the time. Nowadays for what they call classic rock, which is what we’re categorized as nowadays, or heavy rock, or whatever, the fan base is smaller for the live show thing. I mean, they still buy material. They still love the music. But getting people to shows is much more difficult nowadays. So we do our best given all of those limitations and the fact that it’s expensive as hell to get out there on the road nowadays, with the price of fuel and flights and hotels. So we do our best. And every year we keep trying to hit all the markets that we used to hit years ago that we haven’t been to for maybe decades. In fact, this year we hit some extra markets we hadn’t been to. We finally got back to Massachusetts. We got to Michigan. We hit different markets that we haven’t hit in a while. Of course we went through from part of the Midwest into part of the Northeast this year, and we did that last year. We continue to try to hit as many places as possible. The South, the Southwest are places that we’re going to be hitting again this next year coming up. And depending on what kind of tours we might be getting on as well, that’s always the other way to get you out to a full coast to coast tour that makes it so much harder to do on your own just playing the clubs and the scenes as the headliner. We never know what’s going to happen from year to year when it comes to that. Our names get submitted for some of these big tours that come out, and sometimes we’ll have a chance at it better than others. I think 2008 we might have a better chance at getting one of those tours. But it’s always a crapshoot. You never know.
Rock My Monkey: Now to tie up interviews I like to do a little section I call The Lightening Round where I’m going to name something in popular news or popular culture and you sum up your thoughts in one short sentence.
Dave Meniketti: (laughs) That’s not easy for me to do, but I’ll give it a go. (both laugh)
Rock My Monkey: Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul.
Dave Meniketti: Interesting. Personality is certainly different from the rest of the candidates. I would say-of course I’ve already done over one sentence, haven’t I? (both laugh)
Rock My Monkey: Yep. The NBC show Heroes.
Dave Meniketti: I love it. I watch it every week.
Rock My Monkey: The iPhone.
Dave Meniketti: I love it. But I don’t own it, because I don’t like AT & T right now. (laughs)
Rock My Monkey: President Bush.
Dave Meniketti: No comment. (laughs)
Rock My Monkey: Fox News.
Dave Meniketti: Equally no comment. (both laugh) Certainly not fair and balanced, let’s put it that way.
Rock My Monkey: The Recording Industry Association Of America.
Dave Meniketti: Confused, but trying to do the right thing. Not always doing so.
RMM I do have one final question. Every year we do choose one final question that we ask every single band from classic rock legends to the most extreme death metal bands at the end of every interview, partially to stump people, but also to see who wimps out and won’t answer. This is also a question that people interpret in many different ways, so it’s also to see how you interpret the question.
Dave Meniketti: So you’re trying to get me in trouble, is what you’re saying? (laughs)
Rock My Monkey: Well, a little bit, maybe. (laughs) This year I’m asking people to look into their crystal ball and predict what political figure, world leader, musician, celebrity, anybody world wide famous, who do you think we might lose before the end of the year?
Dave Meniketti: Lose before the end of the year? Wow.
Rock My Monkey: Who might die before the end of the year. It’s kind of our little death pool.
Dave Meniketti: Okay, well I’ve already been shocked by two deaths this year, and both lead singers from Quiet Riot and from Boston, which I would have never expected. Oh my god. I hate to be that morose and mention somebody that I think might die this year. (laughs)
Rock My Monkey: It doesn’t have to be a musician. It could also be a world leader who’s getting on in the years, or a celebrity-and we’ve also had some people, like I said, interpret-we actually have had some people basically use this question to call out a friend of theirs that they think needs to watch their health a little bit more and are concerned with.
Dave Meniketti: Oh jeez. I’m going to wimp out on you, man. I just don’t want to say. (laughs)
Rock My Monkey: Okay. That’s fine. Alright. I thank you very much for doing the interview, and anybody that’s listening to the audio version can go to RockMyMonkey.com for the full featured version with clickable links, readable text, and many more wonderful features. I’m asking people to click on the DVD cover above and below this interview to purchase One Hot Night by Y & T. I do hope to see you guys up on tour in the Northwest sometime soon, and I highly recommend a club called Studio 7 maybe when you do come up here.
Dave Meniketti: And where is that located?
Rock My Monkey: That is in Seattle.
Dave Meniketti: Seattle. Studio 7. Okay.
Rock My Monkey: You go to StudioSeven.us for information on them.
Dave Meniketti: StudioSeven.us Okay. Alright. I just told our manager just as we were sitting here talking. That’s on the list of things to do.
Rock My Monkey: Cool. Alright. I thank you very much for your time, and like I said I do hope to see you up on tour in the Northwest sometime soon.
