Niacin

Billy Sheehan - Bass
John Novello - Keyboards
Dennis Chambers - Drums


Billy Sheehan, spider-fingered bass acrobat for such bands as Talas, David Lee Roth and Mr. Big, lays down the overall vibe for the project. "Well, a lot of the songs that I contributed, I wrote around bass lines, which is kind of cool. It adds a little bit of a different structural quality to the songs, or structural lack of quality if you prefer (laughs). With my writing contributions in the past, I would work with John in his studio. But this time I wrote a lot of stuff in my own studio, so I had to do my own drum tracks as demos, for Dennis to work from. So some of the stuff I put into the computer as drum tracks made sense when you listened to them, but they were kind of impossible for a human being to actually play. But Dennis, being true to what we expect of him, played them anyways (laughs). He did some amazing drum transitions and grooves, which I really would challenge a lot of other players to be able to do at all and still make them sound smooth. He really did an amazing job. And of course the record overall is just a little bit heavier and aggressive than we had gone before, a little bit more toward progressive rock than the fusion or jazz direction. We definitely went more towards some of our late '60s, early '70s prog rock roots, people like King Crimson, PFM, Gentle Giant, early Genesis and of course, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, a classic B-3 band, and one we often get compared to. Both John and I as writers have many, many influences. We've both gone in many directions in our years of playing. And a good part of that is that you have a big bag of tricks to pull from. So we have a lot of things that we can reference or use as inspiration.

Billy's bandmates are more than up to the task to help shape, create and develop the vision. "Dennis Chambers, man, I wouldn't know where to start to tell you what records he's been on. He's worked with Chick Corea, Steely Dan, Parliament/Funkadelic, even James Brown. He's just an absolute champion of the drums. His jazz and funk roots are as deep as the tallest oak is tall (laughs). And as a person, he is ego-free, completely selfless. It's an inspiration because he is just so possessed by playing music. That's all he does, tour and play music. And even if his background is jazz, he loves rock. In soundcheck we'll play Grand Funk, Zeppelin. He's not a jazz snob at all. He digs so many different kinds of music. And that's kind of inherent with all of us, so it works out really good when we play together."

And Billy maintains that even though Niacin's daunting writing is the domain of John and himself, the Dennis Chambers vibe is an integral part of the trio-riffic whole. "All Dennis really has to do is sit down and perform, and it is so unique to him as an individual while at the same time true to the intention of the writer, that it's almost as though he is writing. He certainly puts his own indelible stamp on there."

Keyboardist John Novello is, in essence, the guitarist and lead vocalist of Niacin even if he accomplishes the entire ball of wax on his coterie of B-3 vocabularies. "Well, John is a real expert at the B-3 thing. And you know, it's fallen on keyboardists' shoulders to know the computer and MIDI stuff and he's become an expert at that too. But he can also remove himself from that whole computer thing and play real heart and soul type stuff, almost like gospel, on the B3. It's funny. There's this white guy, but you look over your shoulder, and you think you see a black choir behind you singing (laughs). It's really cool. And a big part of that is his groove. And just as a person, he's really fastidious, and he cares a lot about the overall sound of the band; he's more of a team player than an individualist. I like that a lot."

Niacin's B-3 sound harkens back to a great history within the rock tradition, something the band has front-and-center celebrated and revived. Billy charts some of the classic B-3 greats through history. "Well, there's some of the standards, like Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff, the B-3 legends; Humble Pie and Spooky Tooth, Traffic or some of the Blind Faith stuff. Keith Emerson is the standard in the prog field, but there's B-3 all through Yes and even Led Zeppelin's debut which is a great B-3 record as is Hendrix's Electric Ladyland. Jon Lord (Deep Purple) and Ken Hensley (Uriah Heep) and some of the prog guys went for a rockier, grinding version of it. I believe Jon Lord put it through a Marshall. But the jazz guys like Jimmy Smith tended to go straight or through a clean Leslie cabinet."

Billy is quick to flesh out and clarify his definition of the B-3 sound. "B-3 is used to designate the basic Hammond sound. There are several other instruments that do it, like the A-100 and the M-3, but basically when you say B-3 you are talking about the Hammond sound. Purists will bristle if I don't say whether we're talking about B-3, M-3 or an A-100 but, in actual fact, it's pretty much the same mechanics that go into creating that sound in all the Hammond organs."

"It's a really distinguishable sound," Billy adds. "And, for a long time, I remember in the late '60s and the early '70s, if you didn't have a B-3, you were basically out of luck as a band. Everybody had to have one. It was an integral a part of music in that era as the Telecaster, Strat, Les Paul, Fender P bass or Ludwig drums."

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