Intervju - Veronica Freeman, Benedictum Benedictum är ett litet band från San Diego i Kalifornien. Deras andra platta "Seasons of tragedy" är ute nu och vi tänkte att det kunde vara på sin plats att ta ett litet snack med den välsvarvade sångerskan Veronica Freeman. Bandet hade kanske aldrig gjort något avtryck inom hårdrocken om det inte varit för just Veronica. Hon besitter en röst som är lite utöver det vanliga och hör man bara hennes sånginsatser, skulle man kunna ta henne för en kille. Om det nu är positivt eller inte är svårt att säga. Hur som haver går hennes pipor inte av för hackor. Nygifta Veronica visade sig vara en ytterst trevlig kvinna, som snörvlade sig igenom delar av intervjun pga en ihärdig förkylning. Samtalet kom bl a att handla om samarbetet med gamle Dokkenbasisten Jeff Pilson, nya albumet, Tina Turner och önskan om att få spela på Sweden Rock Festival. Veronica Freeman: Hi, this is Veronica from Benedictum! Hi, how are you? VF: Fine! How are you doing? I´m pretty good! Where are you calling from? VF: I´m calling from Phoenix, Arizona. Phoenix, Arizona! Are you visiting Rob Halford? VF: (laughs) I´d love to do that! Is that where you live or do you live in San Diego? VF: I live in both. I have a house in San Diego and I recently got married, so I moved over here. I go back and forth all the time. That´s nice! First off, I was kind of wondering about how you got into the music business? VF: Yeah well, let´s see. Craig Goldy from Dio has been a long time friend of mine and he was pretty much the first person that got me interested in metal and music in general. He always encouraged me to do this sort of thing. I didn´t take it too seriously at first, but then later on over the years I thought "You know what? Let´s give this a shot!", so I´ve been playing music on and off for quite a few years and then when I met Pete, my guitar player, we started writing together and we had a band in San Diego together and it was a lot of fun but we wanted to try to move on and do something a little more serious and the rest of the guys weren´t into that. They wanted to keep it local, so that´s when we put together what is now Benedictum. During that time Craig got involved again and said "You know, I can get behind this!", so that´s kind of how that whole story began and then he introduced us to Jeff Pilson, who was the one that produced both albums and the rest kind of went from there. Right. Was there any kind of special moment, growing up, when you realised that heavy metal was the way to go? VF: Yeah, there was and it has a lot to do with Craig. He and I had totally different musical tastes at the time and he would sit there and listen to Rainbow and Dio and all that and I fell in love with it. I just got hooked and then I just fell in love with the whole sound of it or actually more so the energy of it since it´s so powerful and it suited me. I never really had a real operatic voice or anything (laughs) as we know. It just worked out really well. It just felt right, so then I just surrounded myself with that and at that time it was a lot more difficult. A lot of people didn´t want to have a female singer, that just wasn´t really happening at all. Other than some rock singers and stuff like that. But as far as actual heavy metal it was "Yeah, right! A chick singer!". We would go and try to do demos and stuff in these little studios that we´d rent and they kind of rolled their eyes when I came in there until they started hearing me sing and it was "Oh, ok!". (laughs) Are you totally self taught when it comes to singing? Did you ever take lessons? VF: I tried taking lessons, just one or two times. The first time I tried taking lessons the guy was a total nutcase anyway, so that didn´t work out. Then I got introduced to an opera coach and he was like "You really have a powerful voice!". I think his quote was "like a wild animal that needs to be tamed". But at $80/hour it was a little bit out of my price range at the time. So I just kind of learned on my own. Yeah, because that was the first thing that I was totally taken aback with the first time I heard you. It´s a really, really powerful voice. It´s unbelievable and you´ve got such a range as well. VF: Thank you very much! I really appreciate that. It´s always been kind of different for me. It´s nice to hear good things about it, because there was a time when my voice just didn´t fit, you know what I mean. Like the ugly duckling. (laughs) I think about that and then most of my friends who weren´t into metal back then, always told me "You should be singing something else! Whu aren´t you singing blues or r&b? Why do you wanna sing that metal?". But that was just what I loved, so I just kept at it. Cool! The latest album was once again produced by Jeff Pilson. Is he involved in the song writing as well or is he just producing? VF: He´s definitely involved in the song writing as well. The process kind of works like this... Pete and I will have something pretty well formed, especially for the second album because we learned so much from him on the first. Then he´ll listen to it and make more like arrangement ideas. "It´ll be a bit catchier if you put this here. Why don´t we thicken up the chorus right here.". We call him the sixth member of Benedictum. Has he told you any cool Dokken stories? VF: (laughs) Actually yeah, but I don´t think I´m at liberty to tell. He´s just a great guy and I´m gonna be seeing him tomorrow actually. He´s flying out to Phoenix because they´re (Foreigner) gonna be playing at one of the venues around the Super Bowl tomorrow. Super Bowl´s on Sunday and they have this whole thing, the whole city with all the celebrations going on, so we´re gonna go check him out with Foreigner tomorrow. You didn´t get to see Led Zeppelin in London, since he was playing there with Foreigner? VF: No, I didn´t. Too bad! How long does it take to put together an album these days, since everything is computerized and so on? VF: Well, for us it was a little bit different, which kind of happened the first time too. The whole situation had a lot to do with Jeff´s schedule too. We´re living in San Diego and his studio is in LA, so we would have to coordinate. And right at the time of the first album he was beginning his gig with Foreigner and all that stuff. So we kind of had to walk around his tour schedule. Especially now, since they started touring a lot, so for the second album we would go up and lay down some drums. It wasn´t like we booked a block of time, which I think really works to our advantage. That way we got to sit with our stuff a little and then we´d come back and power down again for another few days. Pete and I would stay at his house and we would work in the studio, so it worked out really well. I think it gave us an advantage and really kind of being able to sit with it a little bit longer to see if there were changes we wanted to make, which is a luxury I think a lot of bands don´t have if you just book a block of time and then you´re done. Going into the recordings, were all the songs done or did you come up with stuff while you were recording? VF: Both. For the first one the songs were more or less done and the he´d make some additions. Pete and I kind of got our little process down, so we would go there with mostly done songs and as I said, some of them were just like done and then there were just a few things here and there. With a couple of them it was like "Maybe we should do something a little different with that!". For the most part I would say they were 90-95 percent done, with just some tweaking here and there. What about the album cover. How much of it is your idea? Did you have an idea for it and then gave it to somebody to draw it? VF: That´s a good question! We originally had someone else do the art work and the label didn´t like it, so they said "No way" and I was a little disappointed with that, but that´s ok. That´s rock and roll! (laughs) I loved what the guy came up with and what ended up happening was that he just kind of did his own thing and then when I showed him all the lyrics and everything and some rough mixes of stuff, then he got a better idea and we just kind of pulled it in to be more in alignment with some of the lyrical stuff. It looks great! VF: Thank you! I really do like it, the work that he did. What about childhood heroes when it comes to singers? Were you into The Runaways and stuff like that? VF: Actually yeah! That and Pat Benatar and of course Dio. I´m also a big Tina Turner fan. Yeah, I read that somewhere. VF: Everytime I would hear her, especially... once I started really listening to her, I went back to listen to some of her old stuff. Yeah, that´s the good stuff! VF: Yeah, the good stuff, exactly! Her voice is so rough and so bad ass, I used to think "Man, she would be great for metal!". I´ve never seen her live and I´m so bummed that she´s not doing it anymore, because I would´ve loved to have seen that last concert. You know a lot of people go "This is the last concert!" and the two years later they go "This is the last concert!", but she didn´t do that. When she said it was the last one, she really meant it, so I missed that. She didn´t do it "Cher style"! The farewell tour that goes on forever and ever. VF: With Cher, yeah! I saw that one! One of the five farewell tours.(laughs) I love her too, just because she´s been doing it and doing it right for so many years. I admire that and I like to listen to a lot of different styles. Coming out of San Diego. I´ve always been a fan of the whole LA scene in the 80´s. Were you around then? VF: No, I wasn´t a part of that. I was doing my own little thing. I was in a different world back then, anyway. (laughs) That´s when I dropped off the map for a while, but life goes on. I love that kind of stuff too and even though LA is only a hop, skip or jump from San Diego, it´s a huge difference musically and the music scene and everything that out there. San Diego is still San Diego. I remember trying to get shows back then. It´s funny, I always joke about that we get really cool shows 6000 miles away, but we can´t get a decent one in our home town. (laughs) Did you ever see Dokken before you met Jeff Pilson? VF: Yeah, I believe I did. And now, like who knew? I probably didn´t appreciate it back then for what it was. It was probably one of those big festivals where they had all these bands and stuff. So, who would´ve known? I love early Dokken! You also worked with Jimmy Bain on the first album. I had no idea what he was up to and just felt like he had dropped off the map. VF: Yeah, he did! What´s he doing these days? Is he still playing? VF: I believe that he is. The whole way that that came about, was because Jeff had just recorded him and the project he was working on, 3 Legged Dog, or something. Right, with Carmine Appice! VF: Exactly! So he was like "You know, I know that he would probably be interested and looking for some extra things to do. So he was like "Here´s his number, call him!", and I was like "Nah, I´m not gonna call!" (laughs) But I did, he made me call and he was like "Yeah, ok!". It was really cool! He was a cool rock and roller back in the day. Is he living in LA? VF: I think he´s living in LA, but I really don´t know what he´s up to now. I´m pretty sure he´s still living in Los Angeles. I think he´s still involved in some stuff. He was nice enough to come down to San Diego and record down there, because once again it was one of those things where our budget was done and we were done and Jeff had to fly out the next day and the label wanted a bonus track so we had to throw something together. The last minute kind of thing. Touring wise then? You played Europe last year, right? VF: Yeah, we played Wacken last year and some other shows and we did the Doro tour in December 2006. So what´s going on now? What are the plans? VF: I think we´re gonna play the Rock Hard Festival around the 18th or 19th of July. We´re trying to book some things around there, so if we can get some festivals over in your neck of the woods that´ll be cool too. You should play Sweden Rock Festival! VF: I´d love to! There´s a lot of cool bands there. VF: When exactly is that? It´s in the beginning of June. Let´s see here... it´s between the 4th and 7th of June. VF: That would be wonderful! That´s kind of like what the plan is.The booking agency is trying to get us on like a festival tour. Because it´s gotta make sense for us to get out there for the flights and everything too. It would be our dream to play a few festivals out there and then come home. Yeah! Sweden Rock Festival has turned into the biggest festival over here. It´s a good mix of old stuff and new. You would fit right in. VF: I think that would be awesome so put out the word my friend! Where are you from? I´m from Sweden. VF: You hardly have any accent at all. Like you´re from next door. (laughs) No, but I´ve been to the Stest a couple of times and I studied in Bemidji, way up in Minnesota and my mum´s an English teacher. VF: Well, there you go! She did a good job! (laughs) Oh, thank you! I´ll tell her. VF: Yeah, you tell her I said that! Any touring in the US going on or the rest of the world? VF: Working on that as well. It´s just one of those times. The album just came out and you kind of have to wait to see what the reaction is and that´s why the booking agency is working on it. The press has been really good and that´ll give us a better chance to get some of the shows that we want. It´s definitely our desire to do some stuff here in the States too, because we don´t get to do that that often. So it´s all in the works and I wish I had some definite things to tell people, but I don´t yet. What else is going on? Ever thought of doing any solo stuff? VF: You´re not the first person to ask me that. I honestly can´t imagine doing anything without Pete, because he´s been just like a cain. I get really inspired by the stuff that he does and I´ve been asked to do something here and there and it just didn´t appeal to me, unless someone paid me a lot of money. (laughs) Is it easier or hareder today, given the internet and so on? VF: Exactly! It´s a double edged sword. Back in the day with the movie studios, it was kind of the same thing. Gone are the days, unless you´re Britney Spears or somebody like that, where you´re gonna have a ton of money invested into you upfront. But there are a lot of people playing it real smart. It has to do with your resources first of all, with what you have to put up front. There are a lot of bands that are doing things on their own, creating their own labels and putting stuff out there, but you also have to be somewhat part of the machine. It´s a double edged sword. You have really cool resources like the internet and webzines and myspace and that stuff. It´s just changing rapidly, so probably down the road it´ll get a little bit easier. The other side of that coin is that you´re flooded with so much music, so it really is hard to stand out and we´ve been really fortunate. Right! That´s about it. I´m pretty much done. It´s been excellent talking to you. VF: It´s been excellent talking to you too. Take care!

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