Chris Shryack: Hi Mike!

ProgScape.Com: Hey Chris! How are you?

CS: Good. No, great! Happy that the album's out.

PS: On that note, I wanted to congratulate you on an amazing and impressive debut album. When was it officially released?

CS: April 11th in the US.

PS: I noticed in going through your website that it's been supposedly 10 years since the formation of the band. Seems like a long time...how has it gotten from point A to point B?

CS: The ten year stretch is kind of an exaggeration in so much as to how it relates exactly to the final disc, but I've known Kurt [Barabas, bass guitarist]...he and I met under the auspices of Under The Sun back in 1989. We ran through at least three incarnations of the band - we had a violinist at the time, a vocalist and a different drummer. We lost the violinist, and Matt Evidon [current UTS keyboard player] joined the band on January 1, 1993. Matt walked in and said 'look no further.' Then we carried on and subsequently lost the vocalist and the drummer! I think at that point we got a new drummer and I decided to start singing...that was roughly '95. We worked with a Japanese drummer for another year or so and met Paul [Shkut, drummer], who auditioned to record a demo that featured some of the songs on the final record. It was through that....Paul finally joined roughly late '96 or early '97 if memory serves me, so...and at least half of the material was written from that point on. As far as the material on the record goes, The Time Being has been around since 1989 (I think I wrote it in October of 1989). Gardens Of Autumn was written in 1993...Now and Forever, Golden Voyage...were written in 1995, and Tracer was written for our live shows after Paul joined. Seeing Eye God was written in 1998 right at the making of the record, so that kinda gives you a quick backstory to the material and the lineup.

PS: Where did you come up with the name, Under The Sun?

CS: Under The Sun was suggested to me years ago by an old friend of mine [Eric Tally, according to the CD jacket]. I was just figuring out that I wanted to put something together...I wanted to put together a band. Even before playing I knew I wanted this type of music...I remember driving with him and we were listening to music and he suggested Under The Sun...and it never went away! Even after a couple of times when I became disenchanted with the name I thought that maybe I wanted to change it, it seemed to stick and after a while you just can't rename your kids.

PS: In looking in the liner notes, I noticed some thing that kinda struck my interest. One - obviously this album had a big boost by Broon [Terry Brown] doing the mixing. How did you get in touch with him and how did he end up mixing the whole thing?

CS: It was through Mark Zonder, really. Paul and Mark are both Canadian and they both knew each other (I forget exactly how) but through the making of the record I remember we were just another band out here, playing - in terms of writing and playing - as much as we could. At some point, we started recording. Halfway through the making of the record, we were recording it on our own and had stopped playing live and had transferred a lot of our funds (equipment wise) over to recording equipment, recording gear, etc, etc, so the live thing really stopped in its' tracks to make the record. So, 8 months in or so, Paul shows up one day to rehearsal with a tape...he gathered everybody around and he said "listen to this" and it was Terry saying "Hi, Paul. I got your tape and I like it! I assume the material you're working on is of the same caliber and I'd love to talk to you further about it" and that was really it. It was just through Mark Zonder and Mark said "here's the number, please use it carefully" and so eventually we scrambled to finish...once we got that, it was like "OK" so we scrambled to finish it by the time that Paul agreed to fly up to Canada and...Terry and Dave Townson, who owns Town Music Studios out in Toronto - we just had a great time hanging out with them and needless to say having Terry Brown mix the record was the beginning of the legitimization of our career, really - getting involved with him kind of "upped the ante" in terms of the...the legitimacy of what we were doing.

PS: Did you write most of the material or was it a case of people bringing in different things and then adapting it...I would assume, although this probably isn't the case, that you had a hand in most of the lyric writing as well.

CS: Yeah, I think it's funny - the nice thing about making a first record - as anyone knows - is that you get the opportunity to do whatever you want. I don't know if we'll have that opportunity as freely again. Also, we had the luxury of time to work out the bugs. In this case, people were just bringing in material, you know, as I said even as far back as '89, The Time Being has always been my baby and I kinda oversaw the orchestration of it...and just like Breakwater is Paul's - when he joined, I said "hey, what do you have?" and he said "I have this" and so we sat down and worked on it and its been predominately his baby. The only reason at all I share any writing credit on that is because the vocal melodies are mine. But, the lyrics and all the compositional structure are Paul's. Then, Matt put a huge stamp on the thing, I mean both Kurt and Matt but Matt really orchestrated it and got it sounding as powerful as it does now. We get a lot of responses on that song.

PS: I was actually going to ask you about Breakwater, because the piano solo literally comes out from nowhere! It's kinda just like "what the...?"

CS: : Yeah.

PS: Was that planned?

CS: I just think, again, it came out of improvising and playing around with the song in rehearsal and playing live. I don't remember if it was....I remember Paul's demo vaguely and I do not think there was any semblance to the solo at the end of that, so instead of me hogging the spotlight for once I probably got some class for 5 seconds and said "hey, why don't we give someone else a chance to play" <laughs> I don't know. I think, though, that it came out of rehearsals and Matt just started banging away at it. He worked really hard on that solo. There's been a running joke that every time we came into the studio to record, he'd always be in there working on the Breakwater solo. It seemed like...for whatever reason, it was like "Matt, is there anything else on the record you're working on other than Breakwater?" But, anyway going back to your question regarding authorship, it has been everybody kind of contributing pretty freely. I will say this - early on, before we met Paul, there was a lot of individual crediting, and that's why some songs reflect that. But as soon as he joined and we really started getting into a momentum that we had yet to experience prior to having Paul in the fold. The band really started to contribute pretty evenly writing wise, and that's why things like Dream Catcher, Reflections, Tracer...they reflect the authorship of the band - they really came out of rehearsals. That was a first for me personally. I think the band - we really didn't demo those songs. I think honestly that they're my favorite songs and I think they're the band's favorite songs. There was a nice sense of unity, collaborative mindset and enthusiasm that was based on the strength of the stuff that we did just sitting in a room together, as opposed to people writing and bringing it to each other. That's kind of the direction we're hoping to go, because we seemed to get a lot of enjoyment out of that.

PS: Very cool! You mentioned earlier that some of the material was brought in and some of it was played live. How much of the album was...not necessarily born (other than Tracer) but "tuned" playing live and how much of it was brought in..."oh, here's a song, let's go with it."

CS: Believe it or not, the whole record is our live performance...except for Seeing Eye God. SEG was done...it was brought in by Kurt at the last minute. I'm not even sure if it wasn't towards the first quarter of the recording process. We started recording without it and Kurt came along somewhere after we had started laying down the basic tracks of a few of the songs and it is a very catchy, more kind of a fun feeling kind of song than we had ever really done. He had done it...he had knocked it out in two hours - with our basic drum and bass track. So of course I sat around overthinking the lyrics for days and came up with four drafts of lyrics that I was going to try and workout and try and make them fit - which, in retrospect, would have been the wrong approach for it considering he had come into it so spontaneously. So, as I was driving to lay down my temp vocals - to work on vocals and put them down, I had forgotten the lyrics I worked out! By the time I got there, I was forced to come up something on the spot anyway - much like he had done when he wrote it. So, the lyrics that are on that are very spontaneous and a mix of stuff that he had lying around - stuff that came to me off the top of my head, and we just - I think we wanted something to kind offset some of the more heavy themes that were going on and some of the imagery...to come up with something more light and playful and, god forbid in the progressive genre, sexy!

PS: <laughs> It actually shows me...I've been listening to it lately...and it just makes me smile because I can see the humor in that song in direct contrast to the rest of the album.

CS: Exactly! In a funny way, it's the people that aren't weened or conditioned to some of the demands of listening to progressive music - they don't respond to the rest of the record like they do that. That's the song I usually receive the most comments on . It's more general, straight ahead rock, whereas alot of progressive guys out there don't have much use for the song.

PS: Actually, I personally think it's one of the better tracks on the album.

CS: Oh, thank you!

PS: Your welcome! How long did it take you to record the album?

CS: : I think from beginning...from the moment we started laying down drums, or when Paul walked in and said literally - I think it was this - we were playing and I think he walked in and said, "I'm recording my drums Thursday for a few of the songs." Thank god he had a fire under his gait because it may have stretched on indefinitely - we loved playing live but we wanted to get some of this stuff recorded. So, from the moment he walked in and said that he was recording and started the whole process of rehearsing before we gave into recording, it took roughly 10 and a half months from that point to record it and to come back with the final mixes that were mastered by Terry.

PS: According to the notes in the CD booklet, it says the album was recorded at Entourage Studios. Can I assume that Entourage is someone's basement?

CS: No! Actually, Entourage Studios is a really nice, legitimate recording facility in North Hollywood that's done quite a few major artists. It's kind of a funny recording studio because it's situated in the middle of two apartment complexes in North Hollywood on the corner of Magnolia and Lankershim. So, it's a very kind of different recording studio - you'd never really know what it is unless you know what it is. We ended up doing the drums there. We worked with a really good friend of ours named Gordon Suffield. He got the drum sound really 'top of the line,' and we tracked the grand piano for [The] Time Being there, I believe as well. The rest of the overdubs were recorded at Kurt's house in Chatsworth. He went out and got the AKAI DR-16 and we did all the rest on hard disk and worked very hard on trying to make it sound analog while using the conveniences of the digital technology that it had to offer. We were told by a few people that it [the AKAI DR-16] was probably the warmest machine available. There was a huge learning curve - I mean, none of us knew what the fuck we were doing! So, there was this massive "pulling your hair out" feeling - I remember losing the the entire bass track on Now And Forever not once but twice and having to find a way to fly it back freeform by re-transferring his saved bass track, which had taken three days to cut with Matt - I had to learn to get it all back. The mistakes, though, taught us the tricks of editing. By the end of it, we were doing some pretty complex editing procedures. The learning curve was definitely worth it - it was just extraordinarily frustrating to learn a whole big chunk of something that we had no background professionally in. You run the risk of having the band look at you with crossed eyes saying "What's going on? What are you doing?" But - all's' well that ends well! We did it, and we came out the other end with this - we get some nice compliments from audiophiles saying how good it sounds..

PS: It works, right?

CS: Yeah, it works. Somehow we pulled it off. You gotta remember, it's a bunch of guys who went in there and just...it was like the little engine that could - "I can do it, We can do it."

PS: You mentioned that you did most of the album digitally.

CS: The entire thing was digital, if I remember correctly.

PS: Had you ever used analog? For someone who isn't into recording, is it easier? Is it more difficult? What kind of processes do you use for digital rather than analog?

CS: Probably, I think it's easier - especially for the editing, for us. You can just move tracks around with no generation loss like nobody's business. At that point, I think the digital technology - that's just par for the course. It helped with things like...we were able to fly in cassette four-track sound effects and things like that with the guitar bits on the record. Actually, my four-track blended into the digital tracks and I did it seamlessly enough so no one knows and you can't tell. It helped in that way. The only time I remember ever having to say, "Wow, I wish I had a tape machine," was when I wanted to do some backwards delays with some of the processing. We had to wait and do it with Terry there at the actual mix. He, of course, knew exactly what to do so it was no problem. So, to answer your question, in retrospect we didn't miss much at all without tape. You know, even the four-track stuff - tape is tape and you learn little tricks that you can apply from your four-track cassette over to the big master consoles. It all really paid off in that way, alot of the demoing we had done over the years had really helped because at least it didn't feel like you're coming into the overall painting unprepared. We had demoed the shit out of a few of the songs at least twice over, and a few others probably three or four times, so we kinda knew how to get the sounds out as long as we had the proper equipment.

PS: There's a couple things on the booklet I wanted to bring up to you. The last song, From Henceforth Now And Forever, has PS 124 at the end. What's that all about?

CS: There's a riddle tacked inside the song that will explain that. We'll leave it up to the listener to decide.

PS: That's all your giving us?

CS: Yeah.

PS: Ugh! Moving away from THAT subject [Chris laughs], you've mentioned the infamous word "touring." I'm sure you may (or may not) be aware that most Magna Carta bands don't tour. Do you, and if so, how often?

CS: We have not officially toured. But we're working on it. We're making plans. We're hoping that over the next few...well, we're 6 months already into the new year, so between us playing locally and starting on working on small jaunts that will take us into certain parts of the country (as yet to be determined), it'll slowly work into doing some semblance of a tour. Either attaching on to the coattails of a big band or maybe working alongside another band or series of bands of our stature at the moment - maybe putting together a mini-tour of a few different acts. We're not really sure - that's been the discussion but, you know, we've spent the first two years writing the material and we wanted to put out a record that we could be proud of - we've gotten that far, so mission accomplished. The next couple of years are designed to getting out there and performing the record - then, of course, making another record - and hopefully working with Terry again!

PS: Yeah! From people that I know that have worked with Terry, Chris Herin of Tiles in particular, it's kinda like "once you work with Terry you can't go back to anyone else" sorta thing.

CS: Actually, Kurt and I had just discussed this the other day, and Terry is about as warm and nice of a human being as anyone's ever going to meet. When I met him, I didn't know quite what to expect after his history with Rush and Fates Warning, you could meet someone that's kinda "been there, done that" and had lost some of the fire or enthusiasm for it and for his work, but he's just wide-eyed and full of mischief as any kid. He gets excited about seeing bands in clubs locally and we had some great times - hanging out, listening to good music, and he's got a wide variety of tastes. I don't think people have realized that he's done a lot of work that I think fans of the progressive genre that know Terry's work predominately through Rush would even be aware of. He's the alchemist, man. Watching him mix the stuff from behind the board was just a real kick. I remember driving back from the initial mixes of Reflections and the band just sitting there...it had felt like we had arrived somewhere, if not just in Toronto hanging out with Terry but the sonic quality of it just leaped out from the speakers. We were all just pinching ourselves.

PS: Let me rack your brain a little bit. I'm going to take little quotes and phrases from the album and I want your opinions on them - kinda seeing what they mean to you.

CS: Sure.

PS: "A storm brews burning on a blood-red horizon" [taken from This Golden Voyage].

CS: As is most of that song, it's lyrical wordplay suggesting an overall visual impact as opposed to saying anything specific. I think, really, it doesn't project much of anything other than the imagery of the words. If this would be a movie then it would be a blood-red sunset with a big old dark storm approaching, and that's echoed enough..I don't even remember half of the stuff until someone brings it up! It's the same as Dream Catcher...a friend of mine once said "you know, for a band called Under The Sun, there's sure a lot of bad weather on the record!" And you know what? He's right! The dichotomy fuels a lot of this stuff. So, there's your answer - I don't know how much of an answer that was...

PS: It'll work. "On a plate so full of life-foods, it's easy to consume too much to chew" [taken from Gardens Of Autumn].

CS: You're the second guy who's mentioned that. I'm not sure whether to be embarrassed by that line or what to think. It's one of the things that strikes me now as juvenile and I've made no secret of it to the band. Let's put it this way - if I could go and re-write the song and that damned line, I would, but it's committed to the song. I see Steven Tyler change every friggin' line in Sweet Emotion, so maybe I'll switch that Gardens verse around as well. Even so, in essence, it means be careful for what you opt and commit to, because, as we all know, you may be in the heat of the moment when you commit to something and you can set yourself up for something that may be a lot more difficult than you initially anticipated. Sometimes, you have to ask yourself whether or not it's worth it.

PS: Gothca.

CS: That's a little more articulate description...I've never been crazy about the lyrics for Gardens in retrospect, but oh well. I like the chorus a lot in that song.

PS: The chorus is extremely catchy. Here's another lyric for you - "Wise men of the great circle dance for redemption" [taken from Dream Catcher].

CS: That was a line of Kurt's, I believe, and that is on a song called Dream Catcher, which is a song that we love dearly as a band. In the lyrical imagery of the song, there's a tribe of spiritual elders, so to speak, and dying is an exhalted holy state. The wise men of the tribe are dancing in anticipation of the death of the forefather that's going to pass on very soon. An old man is sitting by a fire weaving a dream catcher as the song opens. He's lying alone in the desert with a storm approaching and weaving his last work of art for mankind. Off somewhere else are these other tribesmen - they're dancing for him to allow his spirit to pass on...in a truly magnificent state, free from the baggage of this realm, and that's that!

PS: "And then I saw her standing in the sunset" [taken from Seeing Eye God].

CS: I'm sure people feel that once in a while things happen and you feel like you've got somebody looking after you. You know, every once in a while something happens where it's like "there's no real reason why I should still be walking around" but someone or something was insuring safety - insuring your heart gets through in one piece. That's kinda what it is - envisioning your spirit, guardian angel, your soul mate, however you want to say it - this big wall of light. Just keep focused on that when things seem bleak. That was the imagery, just to try and offer a very different take on the same lyrical idea as, say, Reflections - which is a very somber, melancholy alternative to the same idea.

PS: One more for you here. "The avenger's failed retribution yields another deadly criminal win" [taken from Perfect World].

CS: That is a very specific lyric which deals with a very lyrically specific song. At that point in the story, the vigilante goes after the criminal and is unexpectedly killed by the criminal. The sequence of events has yielded not the justice that we hoped the vigilante would have acquired by going after the antagonist, but the antagonist has 'one-upped' the way of good yet again.

PS: One last question for you - are you happy with the record?

CS: Very, very, very happy. Couldn't be happier, really. We got lucky - it could have turned out differently, as you know. Having Terry come in...personally, for me, getting to work with the guys that I work with and dealing with a band of this caliber - we're all very close - is a blessing, that's number one. Number two - working with Terry and David [Townson] and just the people at the pub across the street from the studio - we had a wonderful time. Number three, hooking up with Magna Carta - and they put so much quality into the presentation of the record and have been very communicative with us and have set us up with guys like John Harrell, the photographer, and set us up with top artists like Dave McKean, so everything that's come about since [joining Magna Carta] has been due to the music. I think we're all very, very, very pleased.

PS: In the end, the music is all the matters.

CS: Yeah, I think so. We've got the first part of the process accomplished, and we're all hell-bent on getting the second part done. Nothing seems to be failing so we have no reason to expect the second part not to be achieved also.

To learn more about Chris Shryack and Under The Sun, check out the following links:

The Official Under The Sun Website
Magna Carta Records