PopStops By John Everson

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Artist Interviews

The most recent interviews to be added to this section are with Robby Takac of the Goo Goo Dolls, Jim Peterik (formerly of Survivor), No Doubt, Brit band Velocette and with Dennis DeYoung of Styx for The Star Newspapers. An expanded version of this interview, also including Styx's James Young, ran in Illinois Entertainer magazine.

Early in 1999, I also talked to newcomers C. Gibbs Group who played the sidestage for John Mellencamp's tour from May-July, 1999. The band's debut album on Atlantic Records, filled with hints of classic rock, folksy twang and occasional alt-rock distortion, doesn't give a hint to bandleader Christian Gibbs' punk-rock origins. I've also posted an interview with Chicago singer-songwriter Rose Polenzani, who released an independent album in 1998 and put out a new disc with the help of The Indigo Girls in summer 1999.

Past interviews:
Tori Amos has been one of my favorite artists to interview over the years. She's evocative, free-spirited and you never know what she'll say next. I first met her in 1991, just before Little Earthquakes was released (even have a photo of that meeting), and since then, I have interviewed her twice more. My most recent 1998 interview with Tori ran as a cover story in the September 1998 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine and is available online here in its entirety. My 1994 interview with Tori is also available.

Tara MacLean is another of the more engaging and down-to-earth artists I've interviewed in recent years. We talked a few months ago while she was opening for Paula Cole, and I used the transcript of that interview to preview her recent shows in Chicago. I did several other interviews in 1997 for Illinois Entertainer magazine and The Star Newspapers (in fact, the Toad the Wet Sprocket interview turned up as completely different articles in both publications — see the index at left). Among those was an interview with Rodney Crowell about his new rock band The Cicadas. Other fairly new features are a long-promised chat with Chip Z'Nuff about the seventh Enuff Z'Nuff album, Seven, an interview with Dennis DeYoung of Styx about the band's 1997 tour, the aforementioned Toad interview and a chat with Ben Vaughn (who does the music for TV's "Third Rock From The Sun," among other things).

A little history: I 've interviewed dozens of rock bands over the past 10 years, from Tori Amos, Bad English, Belly, Bodeans, Concrete Blonde, Damn Yankees, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Enuff Z'nuff, Erasure and Melissa Etheridge to Katrina & The Waves, King's X, Psychedelic Furs, Rembrandts, Styx, Survivor, 10,000 Maniacs, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Throwing Muses and even European guitar "god" Yngwie Malmsteen. And those are just a few of them. Unfortunately, when I went to compile some of my interviews for this page, I realized I hadn't saved most of my electronic files. I did manage to pull together a handful of fun interviews from the past few years.