An Interview with
APOLLO RA

Bill McKeowon

by Thomas Huff and Joe Carrigan

On February 23, 1989 Joe and I had the pleasure of talking to Bill McKeowon, lead guitarist for the up and coming band Apollo Ra. The Baltimore based band has a high quality demo tape out called "Ra Pariah" and is on the verge of getting signed to a major label. We caught up to Billy and got to ask him some question about the band. Here is a transcript of our interview:


Tell us a little bit about the band, who's in it and were you got the name.
The name comes from the Greek and Egyptian gods of the sun. Apollo is the Greek god of the sun, and Ra is the Egyptian god of the sun. I play guitar, Kevin Bulkley also plays guitar, Danny Miller is our lead singer (Daniel John Miller as he likes to be called), Todd Weaver is our bass player, and Steve Albinak is our drummer.

How long have you been together?
The band's been together, I'd say, about four years. I've been in the band about 3 years. They've had a lot of line up changes. In fact, the only original member left is Steve the drummer.

We've heard the "Ra Pariah" demo tape that you guys did. Are you planning on going back into the studio again to re-record the songs or are you just going to use the tracks from the demo?
Well, it al depends. That demo was originally intended to be an album. So we may just remix it and release it as it is, or depending on what kind of deal we get, if we get a deal with a lot of money involved, with a major label or something, and they want us to re-record, then we'll be happy to do it.

Tell us about "Crimson Streets," that's a real interesting song.
That song is about Cocaine abuse or substance abuse in general. It's just about the dangers of falling in to something like that. That was written quite a long time ago, and the lyrics were co-written by our old guitar player and our singer. The singer changed 'em around a bit before we went in the studio.

How do you feel about the rating records issue?
I have mixed opinions about it; on the one hand, maybe it is a good idea to tell people before they buy the album that there is some language on it, because I would feel a little strange if I had a five year old kid and he was listening to some one going fuck you, fuck you for five minutes straight, but also a lot of times people will try to blame the fact, that they can't raise their kids, on heavy metal. Because, they can't raise their kids because their kid will go out and do drugs, or kill themselves or something and they have a heavy metal record collection that has nothing to do with it. It has to do with the fact that their parents didn't raise them right or they have a screwed up life. Heavy metal music is probably the only thing that kept them alive that long, and you always hear stuff such as the Judas Priest incident where the kids kill themselves, in a graveyard, in a suicide pack. But Judas Priest probably kept those kids alive for a couple years longer then they would have been. If the music brings them out of depression, they what's wrong with it.

What were some of your favorite groups and inspirations as a musician?
Influences and inspirations to me, song writing wise, would mainly be early Rush, and early Rainbow when Ronni Dio still sang for them. I love it, to me that stuff is timeless; you can still listen to it now-a-days and it blows away most of the stuff that's coming out now-a-days., and is a lot less dated then some of the stuff that's coming out now-a-days. It the way the arrangements were and the vocals; real powerful vocals, powerful guitars. Pure power music. Ritchie Blackmore I love. He was great, now-days he is a little lackadaisical but back then he was great. Back in the early Deep Purple days and early Rainbow days he was incredible.

Are you thinking about doing any cover tunes on your first album?
We thought about doing one, I don't know whether we'll ever record it or not but, we have a joke song we do live. The original is called "Blood and Roses" and we do "Bloody Posers," as a pure humor song; we thought about doing a couple Black Sabbath songs which our singer wanted to do. We also thought about doing "Let It Ride" by B.T.O. [Bocmen Turner Overdrive] doing a metal version of that.

What kind of furniture do you have in your living room?
Well, right now our whole living room is destroyed. They are tarring apart the entire house to put in new model floors, new carpeting, wood floors and stuff. So, last weekend my Father and my brother and I moved all the furniture from the hallway and the dinning room into the living room, so everything is backed up against each other and it looks really cool, we got a couch here, and a couch right smack in front of it, and a huge clock right in front of that, and I got a table right there. It's really cool. It's like an obstacle course, it's like a maze. You have to kinda step over everything. I think we should leave it that way.

I know that you've opened for groups like Overkill, King Diamond, and Autograph. What are your plans for the road?
Deal or no deal, we are going to tour this summer. Other bands have done it with out deals so there is no reason why we can't. Our guitar player's thinking about buying a van, and our singer has got a van that he's fixing up. We going to try to get a booking agency to start booking us at lease around the East Coast. We'll take two vans to fit us, our road crew, and our gear in. Will, just go as far as we can 'till we run out of money and have to come home. But, If we get a deal that will be different. If we get a record deal, and they put us on tour with someone else that would be better. We might get quick money for equipment. If we get on with, let say, another band that's been around a couple of years longer, and get on a tour with them, that would be idea, because then you only have to play forty-five minutes every night, and your seeing new people every night, playing for them. That would be the ideal situation. If we don't do that we're defiantly going to do this.

You are an incredible guitarist, what kind of training have you had on all sorts of different instruments or is it just guitar?
I dabble around with bass and piano every once-in-a-while and I sign a lot in the shower, but mainly I just play guitar 'cause people hear my singing and they tell me never to do that again. I have been playing guitar for about nine and a half years now, I took lessons for about the first six months when I started, I didn't know how the guitar was played at all. I was a big Kiss freak and I knew all there guitars. I knew who played what kind of guitar, so I figured if would be kinda logical to start taking lessons. So, I took lessons for a while and the teacher I originally had was kind of an asshole, he was good, he was very talented but he was no teacher at all, first off he didn't like rock. If I said I what to learn a song, you know I was like 13-14 years old and I wanted to learn a song by Rush or by Kiss or something, and he would be like na you don't want to learn that. That's no good. He didn't like rock, he had a really narrow minded attitude. He liked jazz, and classical guitar and that it. So, got just got really frustrated with that. Really quick. I feel that if you're gonna give lessons, well the way I teach is I'll give 'em some fundamentals, which is a probably a pain in the ass for him to learn but will come in handy a few years down the road, and then I'll teach him some fun stuff which is going to be fun to play on so you'll keep him interested in it. This guy didn't keep me interested at all so I blew that, all six mounts. Then I sat there with Van Halen records and learned that stuff for years. Trying to learn things off the record. I went back a couple years later and took from a guy who's incredible, a guy named Mike Cobol in Baltimore. I took from him for I guess about another nine mounts after that. He taught me all kinds of incredible things. And then I took music theory in High School and College.

What are some of your own songs that you really like, and really like to play?
A lot of them. There are not really many at all that we have that we don't like to play. There was one that no one really liked to play and we finally decided to stop playing that one live. My favorite, I guess, would be "Bane Or The Black Sword," is a lot of fun to play. "Alone In Darkness" is a lot of fun to play too, and "Rukkus" is great, because it has a fun solo to do. It first off depends on how much you like the song over all, and also it depends on how much you like your parts. If you really love the solo and you love to play it, it will always come out well. "March of Fire" is a fun song to play for me but the rest of the band gets board sometime 'cause it's real straight ahead.

What are your future album plans, and what's gonna be going on over the next year or so?
Hopefully we'll be doing well. We are going to go as far as we can with this. We've been talking to a few labels recently. Done a bunch of showcases and we're still talking to different labels and if we get the deal we want, you'll be hearing a lot more from us. We could have signed a couple different deals that would have guaranteed us really nothing. You could walk in to a record store and see a hundred albums that you've never heard of the band, so it's better to have no deal then a bad deal. So we're looking for the right deal just to get our name around. We don't expect to make a whole hell of a lot of money. We just want to get our name around and get people to understand what we're doing and get people to hear us more-or-less. We just want to play our music for as many people as we can.

This interview courtesy of Tom and Joe for MetalWorx Radio,
©1989 Thomas Huff and Joe Carrigan.

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