The Riders:

I first came up with the concept for Drakus way back in 1994. It started as a song idea, but eventually grew into a 20 minute side long epic a la Pink Floyd's Echoes or Yes's Close to the Edge (two bands I was a big fan of at the time). As the suite developed I knew it needed an epic instrumental opening. "The Riders" is what I came up with. I had just learned how to play the main riff to "Heart of the Sunrise" on guitar so I was getting pretty good at back and forth speed picking. My close friend since grade school, Chris Voos, called it "Dragon Surfer Punk".

By 1996, when I had all the parts of the Drakus Suite more or less complete, it had grown to about 30 minutes! I tried to get some friends together in Chris's basement to see if we could at least play "The Riders" section. It didn't turn out so well. It was me, Chris on drums, and fellow trumpet players from band class: Dean Wartell on bass and Andrew Karaptis on guitar. Andrew was actually a much better guitar player than me. They were all better because they had all been playing in various punk and grunge bands all throughout high school. I had just been sitting in my bedroom that whole time trying to compose Drakus on my guitar. I give them credit for having patience as I tried to direct them through each little change and note I had in my head. But after about an hour or so we had had enough and just wanted to go back to doing punk songs. I never made another attempt to get a band together to play the full Drakus Suite after that.

I had mostly given up on Drakus by the year 2000 and gradually cannibalized it, turning many of the sections into standalone songs, but the concept was always in the back of my head, and I always held out hope that one day I'd be able to put the songs back together into one concept album. Over the past ten years, in my spare time, I learned how to record and edit using protools. Most of my early demos were unusable, including one pretty terrible sounding session of "The Riders", but in the last few years I've managed to make some significant progress, especially after learning how to use Logic Pro X.

And so, The Riders was reborn last year in a fresh Logic session and I put it back together the best I could remember from how I envisioned it in the 90s. It's pretty faithful to the original version if not improved, especially with Bongo John's drumming.

Worthwhile:

I had always intended "The Riders" instrumental opening section to precede the heavy riff that opens "Worthwhile". It was one of the first riffs I ever came up when I first bought my electric guitar way back in 1995. It was an Ibanez Artist partial hollow body. I'm using that same guitar on this recording. In fact it's the electric guitar I use on all of the songs on this album. I remember first trying this song out with another high school friend of mine, Louis Caravana. Lou played guitar in our high school jazz band and also in one of Chris's early bands, "Angry Youth Man", but that day he just happened to be sitting in on drums and I had put down my trumpet to show off a "Led Zeppelin" inspired riff I had come up with on electric guitar.

Both Lou and I were big fans of Led Zeppelin at the time and the original vocals over that heavier section were intended to be much higher in pitch. I used to sing it in a falsetto, imagining myself one day being able to develop a Robert Plant-like voice. Since that never happened I eventually compromised and came up with the more within my range harmonized vocal line you hear on this recording. Adding my sister's and cousins' voices to back me up helped a lot too.

The lyrics to this song, including the softer "worthwhile" section were written in 2010 ... 15 years after the heavier section was written. But by 2010 I was writing it as a standalone song, not as a part of Drakus. But it was just a coincidence that the lyrics seemed to perfectly match the theme of the album. Our time on this earth is limited, and figuring out the "worthwhile" paths to to take in our life is possibly our greatest challenge. But it is through adversity that we gain strength, so we should not even view our failures as time wasted. Drakus's biggest regret was that he spent eons alone in his cave with nothing but his hatred and resentment for the mortals he despised and feared. His long life wasted before the riders finally brought him to his doom.

I actually can't remember what the original 1995 lyrics were. They may have just been scratch lyrics. Back in the 90s this song was much shorter and was just meant as a section of the larger Drakus suite, not as a song in its own right. It was meant as a bridge between the instrumental "riders" opening and the main Drakus theme section.

But by 2010 I had long ago given up on the epic Drakus suite idea and was turning all those little sections into full standalone songs. Worthwhile had developed into one of my favorite folk songs to play in my acoustic sets, even though I had originally intended it to be quite a heavy Led Zeppeliny rock song section of the Drakus suite.

When I had decided to record the full Drakus album, I made the decision to put the heavy electric guitars back into the song and put it back in as the bridge between "The Riders" and "Drakus". But it's now a full song in its own right and has that beautiful softer "worthwhile" section. It's definitely an improvement I think. Especially after my sister Coreen and my cousins Michelle and Christina added their voices. Christina in particular stole the spotlight from me with her amazing vocal track. And Bongo John did an awesome job on drums as usual.