Chords for DREAMS IN THE WITCH HOUSE - Douglas Blair Lucek of W.A.S.P. interview

[Fm] Hi there, I'm Anders Ringman songwriter and co-producer of Dreams in the Witch House.
[Am] We're here today in Stockholm, Sweden
And we're lucky enough to have Doug Blair with us guitarist of Wasp of course and also future [N] lead guitarist for
Two tracks on Dreams in the Witch House.
So Doug tell me a little about your background
Well, I come from far far away across the ocean
But a very similar city called Boston and there was a great scene in the 80s and 90s in Boston
With a lot of original bands and we had a really cool power trio
called Run 21
He was in Wasp for a while.
He's the one that got me in Wasp, Stet.
I don't know who that guy is
Just played lead guitar and sang in the trio
kind of forcing me to try to fill up a lot of space and
Resulting in some of these wacky guitars that I'm surrounded by and also
By way of this one in particular getting into Wasp [Ebm] because it's got an acoustic
Neck on the top
So that's how I ended up here [N] in Stockholm by way of touring with Wasp and recording with Wasp and the band is
Most popular in Finland and Sweden at this point, which is fine with me.
Tell me how did you get involved in Dreams in the Witch House?
We have had so many, you know great opening acts over the seven years
I've been back in Wasp and touring a lot.
One of the best ones was a band called Chris Laney's Animal
I believe it was when when they opened for us or was
_ That was Randy Piper's animal
Right, so when we had him open for us Randy wasn't in the band, but we were all
really impressed with with him and the band and and we made friends and I had told Chris at that point that I
Wanted to try to find, you know
Maybe some projects around Sweden to play a lead on or get involved in and one day he came to see us in Sundsvall
About a year ago from right now and he said, you know, I got something pretty cool going on here
You got to check it out.
And that's what it was.
Tell me about the recording you did that in in Hollywood
Yeah, I had been you know
Trying to figure out a way to record it at home like Bruce and other guys who contributed to the record did I don't have?
A really fancy home studio.
It's just by serendipity turned out that we were rehearsing
last May or April in Los Angeles for the one wasp show that we ended up having and
I come to find out that
The main, you know director operations manager producer guy happened to live on my drive
From where I was staying in North Hollywood to where we rehearsed in Burbank really lucky to be able to
Organize a recording session after a long full day of rehearsing with wasp for me
Oh, which is the best time to try to just say you were warmed up.
I was warmed up
I was kind of burned out but in a great headspace
So I drove straight from rehearsal to a great little studio that Mike works in and we just had some beers and let it roll
And you play on two songs.
Yeah, I played on the nightmare and
The power ballad which you know, they had operating titles or working titles when I was working on them
So I'm not familiar with the final between reality and dream
That's what it is.
And that's right where I live all the time.
So it's perfect.
Obviously now you've heard the album a couple of times
What do you think about the rest of the songs were there?
It's killer.
I hadn't heard how heavy and how dynamic they are
So it was great to hear it last night at the release party at full volume and really feel the [Ab] you know
Production and Chris did a great job on the production of Leonard
So the musical side of it is really strong and powerful
And I think that the amount of dialogue that goes between the songs is just right
The instruments that I used are all out in California.
In fact
This guitar to show a really scary picture this actual guitar is what I used for
I think both of the leads on the witch house Oh
So this has ended up being one of my best sounding recording guitars and I've used it on
The ballads my favorite leads in wasp are a couple of the ballads that guitar
I covered with red snakeskin and it made it like a pound heavier
But somehow it made the tone really great
So now it's just a studio guitar and that's like blackies favorites like get the red one talking about guitars
You're known for modifying the chars and even building most of your own guitars
Yeah, and you have this thing called the guitar cross.
That's this right here
This was also designed for run 21 for my bass [N] player Jimmy to be able to play some guitar parts behind
_ Production or no, I've just made three prototypes and what's cool is we hopefully can use this
To bring the witch house music to the stage and be able to have a small really efficient band
That can cover all the parts without having a second needing a second guitar player and stuff like that
Hopefully Chris Laney can can handle this machine, which I'm sure he will are [G] there any talks at this stage about
Bringing it to [Ab] stage.
Absolutely.
We've got a date in February that we're all shooting for it's in
Warwick Rhode Island, which is ironically kind of, you know run 21 played all around that area
That's where we used to be popular.
It would be incredible to go from kind of concert band
Presentation with the actors on stage singing and then go right, you know drop the band away into the dark and here's the dialogue
well wasp, of course are known also for their
Concept album the crimson idol and I understand you still play a lot of those songs live we do
They're kind of the center point of the live set because they're they've always been one of the you know strongest
[N] Songs for the for the diehard fans and for the you know, it was an obscure album
It really was a departure from all the other records that were made before or after kind of it's loosely
Patterned or inspired by Tommy and you know, you have the who and bands like Queen and doing really great
Records that can easily be brought to the play stage to make them work
Do you see any similarities between dreams in the witch house and the crimson idol?
I know the guy dies at the end
Yeah, there's _
It's a rock tragedy, you know, it's a typical rock tragedy that the
the main actor is your you know, your musician your troubled musician with the broken family and you know at the end is
hanging from a string by guitar strings _
whereas dreams in the witch house is much more I think of a
Really developed fantasy into other dimensions, which is amazing that he's you know
Reaching characters in so many other places and it's not quite as reflective of just his own
Character, of course, it is a lot about his own character, but it's all the external things
the external evils in [Bbm] crimson
Idol _ [A] _
[D] [Bb] thing [G] that
[C] _ [Bb] Like us have [C] to [A] fight with
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ [Am] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Gm] _ _ [D] _ _ [E] _ [Bb] _ _ [N] _
_ I Miss from
1984 but it's amazing.
That's the same guitar.
That's still it's like the number one recording guitar up.
He still has his face
That's the one he would play with one