Mark Kadzielawa of 69 Faces of Rock recently conducted an interview with THE SKULL, the new band formed by two original members of Chicago doom legends TROUBLE — vocalist Eric Wagner and drummer Jeff "Oly" Olson — alongside the band's longtime bassist, Ron Holzner. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
69 Faces of Rock: What will the main purpose of this project be?
Ron Holzner: Basically, we’ve answered the call of the fans. They really wanted to hear old TROUBLE songs, with Eric singing them, and they are tired of waiting for the other guys to do it, so they talked us into it. We’re doing it for the fans that don’t want to wait anymore, and they want to hear the old doomy TROUBLE songs from the first two records. We’re here to deliver.
Jeff Olson: We’ve just heard from a guy from England today. And he’s hoping that THE SKULL does some of the older material because we didn’t tour a lot when those songs were originally released. But, they also want to hear songs with the three of us as a tighter group.
Eric Wagner: I‘m just doing it for the fun of it. I just want to. I think it’s a lot of fun for me personally. My expectations are already exceeded. I mean, it almost started out as a joke a little bit, at first, as a tribute. But, we’ve been getting a great response from the fans, and it’s been a lot of fun. The project is getting a lot of attention, so it’s cool, let’s do it.
Ron: Most people know us for playing TROUBLE songs. So why the hell not? Why can’t we play TROUBLE songs?
69 Faces of Rock: Guitars were always very important in TROUBLE, and they had a very specific role and sound. Who will handle the guitars?
Wagner: Well, we got Lothar Keller and Michael Carpenter from the Chicago band SACRED DAWN. You know, we were gonna just used guests and stuff like that at first. But we were all saying that it would be nice to have a steady band. And with Lothar, we all know him. And when he said he was interested in doing it with his other guitar player, we were into it. They’ve been playing together for 20 years, and we just felt like it was a good team. They already knew each other well. And when Michael told me, “we answer each other’s sentences with our solos,” I just thought it was perfect. So we got this nice twin guitar duo to join us. I think it’s gonna be great.
69 Faces of Rock: You’ve mentioned THE SKULL would be doing some early TROUBLE tracks, what about the rest of the catalog? Which by the way was very impressive.
Wagner: We were going back and forth at first. No, let’s just do the old stuff. Well, maybe everyone wants to hear a little bit of everything. But then, it kind of came to the point where maybe THE SKULL should establish its own identity. You know, separate from TROUBLE, even though we’re playing these songs. But, everybody was talking about playing those old songs, and we never did those, and some guys didn’t want to do that stuff anymore. And with TROUBLE, we’ve had 7 records, so there is a lot of material we could choose from. So, it was kind of tough sometimes, but I think as THE SKULL, we should just concentrate on the first few records, and maybe a couple things from “Plastic Green Head,” which was the only record where all three of us played together. So, we’re definitely gonna do a couple of songs from that record too. And that will kind of establish our sound, and who we are. We’ve been talking about doing a new record too, so it will kind of fit everything. Everything kind of fits together.
69 Faces of Rock: It looks like the promoters are really excited at having this project available, as you already have big concert plans.
Wagner: Yeah, at first we were gonna get together in November for a festival. And they wanted us to do that, then all of a sudden we were starting to get other offers from other festivals. They wanted us to play some of them in June, so we had to start getting ready. I think it’s cool because I don’t think I could’ve waited until November. Everybody is kind of anxious to get going.
Holzner: It’s great, but it’s a surprise that they really want to hear the old stuff. It’s really cool, and we didn’t really expect this kind of response. We’re delighted.
69 Faces of Rock: Now, what if Rick (Wartell) and Bruce (Franklin) suddenly knocked on your door, and said, “we’re here, you’re here, let’s be a band again.” Could that be a possibility?
Wagner: Well, I don’t know. We have two guitar players, what are we gonna do. We can’t just fire them (laughs.)
Olson: It’s a tough question.
Holzner: If they wanted to work with us, the three of us would be playing on the new record.
Olson: Yeah, maybe. But I think maybe someday in the future. I just don’t think it was the time right now, and that’s why there is different creativity going on. Maybe someday, you know.
Wagner: We’ll see what happens. I mean who knows what happens to all of us in the future. And like I’ve said, they are busy doing their record, and we want to go out and play. That’s all that’s gonna happen.
Holzner: We’ll be well rehearsed if it does happen then.
69 Faces of Rock: Your press release mentions the possibility of THE SKULL working on a brand new material, and Jeff just mentioned it too. So, what are the plans?
Wagner: Speaking for myself, personally I always have something that I’m working on. It’s a natural progression for any band to write songs, and do a new record. At first, we didn’t think about it. We just wanted to play, but for me, it’s my favorite part of being in the band, it’s writing the songs. I’m kind of excited about it. I think it’s cool THE SKULL will make a record. I think the record will be good, and it will be a lot of fun doing it.
Holzner: And playing the early stuff is really gonna influence our writing. I think we’ll write a little bit that way.
Olson: I talked to Lothar (Keller) on the phone the other day, and he was saying how he would like to get music, and work on it. So I’m gonna do things differently than I ever did in TROUBLE before. Rather than just showing him just some keyboards stuff, I can actually put things down on paper for him because he can read music, then also just focusing on the music will be easier because of the new technology that wasn’t around in the old days. We can just send MP3s to each other right over the phone, or the computer. It’s awesome.
Thursday, May 16, 2013 at 6:22AM 
