- “What’s a common myth about Independent Artists and can you debunk it?”
First thanks for having me on your website! I’m not sure how to answer this question, it’s not something I’ve really ever thought about. I can only speak for myself, as I’ve been an independent artist for most of my life. With Docker’s Guild, people tend to think that the project is much “larger” than what it actually is. Of course it is designed that way, but often people think there is a large structure behind, with a team ranging from the musical production aspects to the digital marketing etc. Actually, it is largely a one man operation, except for the special guests and the graphic artist. Pretty much everything else is me, from the songwriting to the production to designing and updating the website, and for this last album, I even managed to write, shoot and produce the 12 videos myself, with a lot of help from my very patient wife. To be honest, it is way too much work for a single person, but the economic aspects do not allow for a larger team of collaborators.- “What advice would you give to someone wanting to enter the music industry?”
My first impulse would be “don’t!”, but I realise that’s a pretty negative outlook on a scene that for me at least has never been this bad. More positively, I would recommend to be yourself, believe in what you do and never quit. And do what you love, don’t chase dragons like success, or write music to please someone, that’s the best way to quickly lose your identity. On the technical side, the more things you know how to do well, the cheaper and more fun your project becomes. There are too many middlemen in this business that are very good at taking your money but completely unwilling or incapable of delivering results. So spend time learning every day. Songwriting, production, music businesss, how to make a video. It all helps.- “Are there any resources or even advice that have really helped you on your journey?”
As an original artist, paradoxically what has helped me the most is spending years playing in cover bands and honing my writing skills, first copying what I liked then selecting my influences and using them more intelligently until I found my own musical style and language. Too many new bands today start writing original music immediately without a clue, and you can hear it. A year spent playing Beatles covers is time well spent and you will find the benefits for the rest of your career. Too many original bands look down on tribute and cover bands, but musically they are invaluable for your own growth Regarding the more technical aspects, read, and read a lot, something less and less people do these days. I read all the time and I never stop learning new things. There are many interesting YouTube tutorials out there and they can be very useful, but reading has another depth. Keep educating yourself as much as you can.- “What has been your biggest accomplishment in your career thus far?”
I would pick three. The first one goes all the way back to the ’80s when I was competing at an international level as a classical pianist. I won a lot of awards and 1st prizes in those days and I was supposed to become a classical concertist, but I switched to rock keyboards instead. Fun days and good memories. The next highlight was when I joined LA-based melodic rock band Biloxi back in 1993. We had a very successful CD in Europe and Japan and the tour culminated in a fantastic live at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum in Biloxi (MS). I had never played in a 12000 seat American arena before and that was quite a moment. The most recent highlight was the release of Docker’s Guild first album, which was met with enthusiastic reactions by press and fans alike. I won a lot of awards back in 2012 and I was not excpecting it at all, since I was totally unknown back then. Happy times!- “What do you wish you had known when you started out?”
A lot more about the business. I wasted a lot of time, probably years, promoting my projects in the wrong way and also dealing with other professionals in the wrong way. I didn’t know how to network I was raised in the days of cassettes, demos, fliers, etc. and I took several music business courses in LA in the mid ’90s which helped quite a bit. When I started Docker’s Guild however, all that stuff had become totally obsolete, so I had to retrain myself for the new world of digital promotion.- “What led you to becoming a singer-songwriter?”
I have no idea. My musical training was totally classical for most of my career, and being creative was not exactly encouraged, but I found myself writing little snippets of classical compositions from the age of 7. They had grandiose titles like “Fantasia”, “Hydrogen Sonata” and the like, but then the “score” had like 4 notes and 1 bar of music. I still have them and it’s pretty funny to look at them these days. But I’ve always been extremely creative, I can’t stay still and not create something. So I started writing without even knowing what I was doing. After some classical attempts, I wrote my first batch of rock songs when I was 15 years old, and from there it has never stopped. The strange thing is that although I have been formally trained in many musical fields, songwriting is probably the only area that came naturally without any studies whatsoever. It just seems to pour out effortlessly and I still have no idea where it all comes from.- “What do you think is your unique skill(s) that has helped you become successful?”
Architecture, strangely enough. I am very good instrumentally, my classical training has served me well in that sense, but also because of that, I am basically a terrible improviser or session man. I can’t walk into a studio, get a chart and groove through the song in one take. I have no skills in that department. Where I think I excel and where I have the most fun, is creating large scale projects and structures, be it a festival, a competition, a music project, a 20 minute progressive suite. I can zoom in and out from the finest detail to the large scale picture without effort. That’s where my strenght is I believe.- “How was your journey to what you do Now?”
Difficult! My music life was a mine field and I think I managed to step on almost all of them. Projects and money getting stolen by crooks, health problems, failed albums or projects, you name it. But it all helped to build the person I’ve become today, and each problem or failure helped in making another project successful. As an example, there would not be Docker’s Guild today if I had succeded in recording a primitive version of it back in the ’90s. The technology was not there yet, so it sounded horrible, and I was not mature enough yet to give the music and story the depth it has today. The key point here is never quit, If I had, today I would have nothing, but I persevered until the time was right and now I’m pretty proud of the results. And it only took 33 years 🙂- “How did this project begin?”
Docker’s Guild’s roots go way back, all the way to 1990. I had just obtained my BA in classical piano performance in an Italian Conservatory, and I went through an extremely creative phase, writing dozens of songs in a very short time. One of them was The Mystic Technocracy, which opens Docker’s Guild’s debut album “Season 1”. The song was about the excesses of organized religion, around which I built a sci-fi story where a race of aliens actually corrupts human DNA to make them easy to manipulate, aggressive and violent, with the ultimate goal of destroying the entire human race. It was only in 1994, by which time I had moved to Los Angeles, that I realized that several songs from that period, if put in the correct order, told a dark sci-fi tale. At that time I was working with Mio Jager, today one of Frantic Amber’s guitarists and main songwriter, and we filled the gaps in the story by writing new songs together. By the time we were finished, we had a full album of material, and a CD was supposed to be released as Project DNA, but nothing came out of it for a variety of reasons. In the meantime, I kept developing and writing the story, but it was only in 2008 that the time became ripe to actually produce an album. The new technology made it much cheaper to make albums with musicians located all around the world. By that time the story had developed into nine albums. Five “Seasons” which narrate the main story, and four transitional “Books” that focus on an aspect of Jack Heisenberg, the main character of the story. I just released the third album called “Season 2”, so I still have a long way to go!
- “What makes this project different from “past projects?”
Most of my past projects have been bands that I put together myself, with the notable exception of Biloxi. Docker’s Guild, however, is not a band, it is a rotating collective if you will, where special guests and artists come and go depending on what I need for that particular album or live gig. The scope of the whole thing is also totally different, writing the music and story for nine albums worth a material is quite an undertaking, so it is very time consuming and challenging. And lots of fun! It takes a lot of planning.
- “What’s the inspiration behind this project?”
Story-wise, an observation of the excesses of dogmatic religion through history was more than enough to inspire me. The Crusades, the Inquisition, terrorism, the genocides caused by Colonialism, the never ending situation in Palestine and so much more. I’m also an avid fan of history, religions from a historical perspective, sci-fi and horror, so once you blend all of these ingredients together, you get pretty close to what I’m trying to create. Musically, there were always three main influences: the first one is prog rock and metal, especially Yes, ELP, early Dream Theater, but also Threshold and some Amaranthe; the second influence is AOR and melodic rock (Asia, Journey, but also Cheap Trick), especially in the vocal arrangements and melodies; and the third direction is a bit more eclectic, ranging from David Bowie to Duran Duran, from Jean-Michel Jarre to French space rock band The Rockets. It is probably this last group of influences that makes the Docker’s Guild sound so different from all the other excellent metal operas out there. - “What word or phrase would you use to describe this project?”
It has always been described as a prog metal space opera, but that’s partially misleading, since there are so many more influences and directions on the various albums. Some songs are not prog at all, some are not metal at all, but that was the closest thing to being accurate that I could come up with. - “How can listeners get in touch with or support you?”
Docker’s Guild official website is http://www.dockersguild.com and we are also present on all the social networks out there, so please do contact us, I’m always happy to interact with fans. - “What is coming up for you in the near future?”
Right now I’m working on two new albums. The first one is a tribute to Keith Emerson for piano solo. The second one is a project called Event Horizon, which is a container for all the rock music I have written in my life that has nothing to do with Docker’s Guild. The first three albums will be a retrospective of all the rock music I wrote back in the ’80s and never released. The first one in particular will contain 10 songs, the first songs I ever wrote back in 1983/84 when I was only 16 years old. It’s alot of fun, the music being much simpler than Docker’s Guild, so it’ refreshing to work on something more linear and easy to produce. - “Many people believe that becoming a musical artist is challenging to the point it becomes overwhelming and too much to handle. Why do you think people believe that?”
Well, it can be, and these days where you have to do almost everything yourself, it definitely is at some point. When you have to write, record, produce, make videos, think about the artwork, the lyrics, the booklet, and take care of most of the promotion and marketing yourself, the day becomes pretty short, and does not leave much time to be creative anymore. - “What’s the most common reason for people failing or giving up?”
Precisely that, and in that sequence. They fail, as everybody does in the beginning, and they quit. That’s it. In my case, I failed so many times I can’t even count them anymore, but I always picked up the pieces and kept ramming at the wall until it gave in. I’m a pretty stubborn guy. I’ve been doing it since 1983, and I’m still here. For the last couple years, until COVID, I was the organiser of a large festival competition for emerging Italian bands. We “processed” about 100 bands in four years, so I got to see and work with a lot of musicians. And the pattern was always the same. They focus all their energy on the album, thinking once it’s printed, that’s it, they’ve made it. But that is just the beginning. If you don’t work to build a fan base, a promotional strategy, and all the other things that are necessary to make a band visible these days, the CD will stay in your bedroom. Then after the initial euphoria, discouragement sets in, people start arguing within the band to find who or what to blame, and they break up. How many albums and years did it take David Bowie to emerge? Sure, different times, but that’s still the trick. Perseverance. Don’t quit! - “What is your favorite word?”
I’ll stay on the topic: perseverance! - “What are you not very good at?”
So many things… like I said before, improvising, jazz, session work, those are all musical aspects where I am a lost cause. As a person, I can be very impatient, but I also learned to control this quite well. Taking 33 years to make a dream come true says a lot about how I learned to manage my impatience. - “If you could have one superpower, what would it be?”
I’d love to be able to work faster, or find a way to speed up time. Making a Docker’s Guild album take 4 years on average, which is way too long! - “If you were a type of food, what type of food would you be?”
Sushi! - “If you could switch lives with someone for a day, who would you choose?”
Keith Emerson. I would have loved to see what went on his mind when he wrote music or when he improvised. A total and sorely missed musical genius and a huge influence on my playing and songwriting.
Thanks for having me and greetings to all the Docker’s Guild fans out there. Come and check us out on all the social platforms!