Making music through e-mail
By ALLISON WOOD
The Post staff writer
It may have taken five years, but a band that includes Lafayette Township resident Al Diamond Phillips managed to record a whole album without ever meeting or playing together in person
"We have an idea of doing a Web concert," he said. "I'd like to get together once to play with them."
The four members of the appropriately named Nevermet released their first album, Virtual Insanity, July 10. The songs have a "classic metal" sound, which Phillips said has always been his favorite kind.
The members include Phillips on vocals, guitarist Jonathan Crosby from Oregon, bassist David Raymer, who lives in the Netherlands and Scott Connor from California on drums.
Phillips, who is originally from Detroit, said he went on a few big tours with bands in the 1990s, but then left music for many years until performing in productions at Kent State University.
His interest renewed, Phillips thought about the idea of collaborating with far-off musicians when he bought his first computer in 1997. However, the technology back then wasn't conducive for such projects.
"There wasn't a way to do it then," he said. "I had given up."
Ten years later in 2007, the four members of Nevermet found each other on an Internet forum located on the fan site of Ronnie James Dio, the vocalist and songwriter who was a former member of Black Sabbath and other bands, before his death in 2010.
There was a category on the forum where people were discussing long distance recording about how people who lived far away could still produce tracks.
The first song the band made together, "Run Away," the idea which came from a charitable organization, Children of the Night, that helps former child prostitutes.
The band kept the forum members posted on all the details of the recording process.
To put a song together, band members e-mailed their sound files to Phillips, who mixed and put everything together using the software program Pro-tools. Nevermet members wrote all of the songs on the album but one.
The biggest challenge of four people working separately on an album is the time lag. If a group is working together, Phillips said someone could tell someone to change how to play something and it could be fixed quickly.
This is not the case for Nevermet. Phillips said he remembered one time when Crosby sent a recording of a guitar solo; when Phillips said it didn't work and to record another one, it took several weeks for Crosby to send it back.
"Because of creative hurdles, it can be a bear," Phillips said. "It was fun trying to figure everything out."
Despite the challenges, the five years he has been in Nevermet is the longest time he has ever spent in one band.
Working around a busy family scheduled is another challenge for Phillips, who is a father of five with a regular day job.
"It's a creative outlet without having to be in a bar every night," he said.
All four members may have never been all together in the same room, but Phillips did briefly meet Connor once, who was playing at a concert in Kent.
For more information, pictures and song samples from Nevermet, go to their Web page at http://www.reverbnation.com/nevermet.
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Nevermet / Blog
Musician’s collaborators are across the country, ocean
by Kiera Manion-Fischer September 10th,
LAFAYETTE TWP. — Al Diamond Phillips’ band is named “Nevermet” for good reason. The four band members never have — met, that is.
Al Diamond Phillips, of Lafayette Township, is the vocalist for the band Nevermet, whose members communicate and write songs via email. (COURTESY PHOTO) But that didn’t stop them from coming out with an eight-song album this summer. Phillips, 42, the band’s vocalist, lives in Lafayette Township. Guitarist Jonathan Crosby hails from Oregon and drummer Scott Connor from California. Bassist David Raymer is across the Atlantic Ocean, in the Netherlands. They collaborate with each other over the Internet, communicating via email and attaching their individual music tracks. Diamond Phillips said he came up with the idea of a virtual band when he got his first computer in 1997. But the technology wasn’t good enough. Now, with faster Internet speeds, it became feasible, he said. He and the other three band members met on an Internet forum on the official website for fans of Ronnie James Dio, the late vocalist for Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Dio. The four began to interact and share records of their music. “Before it was a band, it was just some guys trying to record a song together,” he said. Members send him recordings of themselves, and Diamond Phillips mixes them. The album, which was released July 10, took about five years to produce, he said. Diamond Phillips said the band’s name was suggested and voted on by members of the forum. “It’s been an online community project from the start,” he said. The title of the album is “Virtual Insanity.” Asked to describe the band’s music, Diamond Phillips said, “It definitely has a classic heavy metal feel to it.” Diamond Phillips, whose day job is a maintenance coordinator for the Federal Metal Co., in Bedford, said the band also has virtual fans — from across the globe. “We have fans in 75 countries — it might be one person in that country, but we have a fan there,” he said. The big question for fans though, is how and when the band might get together to perform. Diamond Phillips said the band has discussed meeting for a performance or doing a live webcast. “Hopefully we can work out the logistics of doing some type of live performance, whether it be in individual locations or together,” he said. “I would imagine we’ll keep recording and doing things.” The album is available at http://www.reverbnation.com/nevermet. Contact Kiera Manion-Fischer at (330) 721-4049 or kfischer@medina-gazette.com.
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Interview with The Gazette
Just did an interview with the Median Gazette!!\m/\m/!!
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Nevermet in the Medina Post
Making music through e-mail
By ALLISON WOOD
The Post staff writer
It may have taken five years, but a band that includes Lafayette Township resident Al Diamond Phillips managed to record a whole album without ever meeting or playing together in person
"We have an idea of doing a Web concert," he said. "I'd like to get together once to play with them."
The four members of the appropriately named Nevermet released their first album, Virtual Insanity, July 10. The songs have a "classic metal" sound, which Phillips said has always been his favorite kind.
The members include Phillips on vocals, guitarist Jonathan Crosby from Oregon, bassist David Raymer, who lives in the Netherlands and Scott Connor from California on drums.
Phillips, who is originally from Detroit, said he went on a few big tours with bands in the 1990s, but then left music for many years until performing in productions at Kent State University.
His interest renewed, Phillips thought about the idea of collaborating with far-off musicians when he bought his first computer in 1997. However, the technology back then wasn't conducive for such projects.
"There wasn't a way to do it then," he said. "I had given up."
Ten years later in 2007, the four members of Nevermet found each other on an Internet forum located on the fan site of Ronnie James Dio, the vocalist and songwriter who was a former member of Black Sabbath and other bands, before his death in 2010.
There was a category on the forum where people were discussing long distance recording about how people who lived far away could still produce tracks.
The first song the band made together, "Run Away," the idea which came from a charitable organization, Children of the Night, that helps former child prostitutes.
The band kept the forum members posted on all the details of the recording process.
To put a song together, band members e-mailed their sound files to Phillips, who mixed and put everything together using the software program Pro-tools. Nevermet members wrote all of the songs on the album but one.
The biggest challenge of four people working separately on an album is the time lag. If a group is working together, Phillips said someone could tell someone to change how to play something and it could be fixed quickly.
This is not the case for Nevermet. Phillips said he remembered one time when Crosby sent a recording of a guitar solo; when Phillips said it didn't work and to record another one, it took several weeks for Crosby to send it back.
"Because of creative hurdles, it can be a bear," Phillips said. "It was fun trying to figure everything out."
Despite the challenges, the five years he has been in Nevermet is the longest time he has ever spent in one band.
Working around a busy family scheduled is another challenge for Phillips, who is a father of five with a regular day job.
"It's a creative outlet without having to be in a bar every night," he said.
All four members may have never been all together in the same room, but Phillips did briefly meet Connor once, who was playing at a concert in Kent.
For more information, pictures and song samples from Nevermet, go to their Web page at http://www.reverbnation.com/nevermet.
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Fan Whores
Okay let me say that if a band/artist fans us, I will automatically fan them back out of mutual respect, but if you are just trying to build your fan base with numbers, and then un fan us after we give you that mutual respect, you are a fan whore, and as I figure out which bands/artist are doing this, I will un fan you right back! We dont need worthless numbers to make our page look better than it is,
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The East Oregonian
Metal made by email
By KATHY ANEY East Oregonian | Posted: Monday, July 23, 2012 10:44 pm
Pendleton guitarist Jonathan Crosby and three other musicians play heavy metal music together as a band — despite the fact they have never met. Not once. The band, fittingly called Nevermet, released its first CD earlier this month. Crosby, a Pendleton native, plays guitar despite mangling his left hand in a motorcycle accident 22 years ago. Bass guitar David Raymer lives in Holland. Drummer Scott Connor hails from Southern California. Al Diamond Phillips sings and writes lyrics in Cleveland. Their recording project evolved after the musicians connected on a website for fans of heavy metal pioneer Ronnie James Dio. Crosby started the conversation after clicking on a link to one of Phillips’ songs. “His work was so good,” said Crosby, now 44. “I sent him a message that I would really love to record a song with his vocal work, but the distance was a problem.” Phillips replied immediately. “It’s the 21st Century,” Phillips remembers writing. “We can do anything we want. It’s the computer age.” They started exchanging recordings. Crosby sent guitar riffs. Phillips added vocals. In the meantime, Raymer, a Southern California chiropractor who now lives in Holland, jumped into the conversation, offering to play bass guitar. Connor, the last of three drummers in the cyber band, joined a few years ago. Their CD, “Virtual Insanity,” took five years to finish and plenty of emailed audio files. For Crosby, the album is a milestone of sorts. The guitarist injured his hand during a motorcycle accident on Tutuilla Road in 1989 as the then-21-year-old rode double behind his brother. While skipping down a row of barbed wire, Crosby broke his back and badly mangled his left hand. His brother had a nasty case of road rash. Despite the injuries, they limped about a mile to the nearest house. After surgery, Crosby stared at his hand, black and swollen and reassembled with pins. Unable to move his fingers, he held his guitar longingly, but couldn’t play. “I told my physical therapist, ‘It looks like I’m a singer now,’” he said. “She said, ‘Don’t give up.’” Eventually, he learned to use what he calls his “monkey hand.” “I ended up with a better sound,” he said. “I was forced to work harder and pull a little bit more out of my soul.” Crosby used each of his nine guitars on the new album. He spent hours in a small home studio on Southeast Fourth Street working on the guitar riffs that would provide texture for the group’s music, his Australian/border collie mix, Pookie, at his feet. Some of his guitar tracks, he said, are layered four guitars deep. Phillips, 42, mixes Crosby’s guitar and his own vocals with bass, drums and special effects (such as thunder) into a final product. Phillip’s vocals come from a background of heavy metal, funk, grunge and opera, the latter studied at Kent State University. He played Jesus in a college production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” The singer also works in a copper foundry and says “I have metal running through my veins.” Phillips describes Crosby’s playing style as distinctive — “a buzz saw that rips right through your skull.” To select a band name, the musicians enlisted the help of Dio forum members, who almost unanimously chose Nevermet from several options. The group’s first song, “Run Away,” has gotten more than 2,600 YouTube hits. Travis Dollarhide, of Pendleton, played drums on that one. Crosby, father of two sons, is getting married in two weeks and works at Rocky Mountain Colby Pipe in Pendleton. His life is busy. He doesn’t know if he will have time to meet his fellow band members in person unless they travel to Pendleton. He grinned. “If that happens,” he said, “the band might have to change its name.” Nevermet’s album can be purchased at www.reverbnation.com/nevermet in CD or Download versions
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Virtual Insanity
On July 10th The band Nevermet will release their debut album “Virtual Insanity” on www.reverbnation.com/nevermet The album is the culmination of the band’s 5 year history. In early 2007 members of the Ronnie James Dio Forum decided to write a song together the rest is history. The band has written and recorded a full album worth of material, and is now ready to unleash it on the world. The album itself is based in the Classic Heavy Metal style of the early to mid 80s. The band wanted to not only emulate bands like DIO, but incorporate other influences of that era. The final product is a very unique sounding album, and because of the fact that this band has never met, the song structure is often unconventional and hard to compare to anything else. You may hear a hint of this, and a touch of that, but Nevermet’s sound is all their own. This is an album definitely worth buying!
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Guest Guitar
A very Special thanks to Billy Morris, of the Billy Morris Band , for helping Nevermet out with a little Guitar work. we had one track that just didnt feel right, and Billy was cool enough to lend us a hand!
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Only a week and a half
We are so close to releasing this album I cant think of anything else! The Metal is running through my veins, and not just the lead I pick up working in the foundry!
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Two Weeks out
At this time in two weeks I'll be waiting for Midnight when Nevermet - Virtual Insanity Goes on Sale!!!!
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16 Days
can't believe it's almost here! Virtual Insanity July 10, 2012!!!!
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