Tony Levin

When there was enough time from not supplying his alchemical style of bass playing to the world's most renown acts, such as Peter Gabriel or King Crimson, Tony Levin, a renowned bass player in his own right, managed to take all of his experiences and create a second album. His "band” features Gabriel's early touring band, (with the addition of Woodstock, NY, heavyweight guitarist Jesse Gress) and the approach on this album differs from his previous one, which was more "classical” in scope, adding more rock to the new one. Levin explains, "It's a very different album. Here I wanted to cement my connection with my roots in progressive rock. That's the kind of writing I've been doing lately. Also, the lucky chance to have combined Larry Fast, Jerry Marotta, Jesse and me is too good to resist playing some older material that we were part of long ago. Hence asking Peter Gabriel if I might re-record a track, ‘Dog One,’ we played on in the '80s but never came out. The material is a bit darker, due to the writing, but I try to keep an optimistic mood to it too after all the various sections are ended." The album stays far away from being a noodling "bass album," however. "I'll probably never do one of those,” Levin says, "because my passion is for good music more than for the bass. I'm happy to hold down the low end if the composition is good, or to come up with some new kinds of Stick parts, which I did on many of these tracks. No attempt here to please masses, like many musicians, I just write for myself and hope others like it." Although they are touring small clubs with this material, the "scope” of the Pieces of the Sun material is quite large, it almost transforms said venues into stadiums. "It'd be great to play it at outdoor festivals where it'd be ideal, but frankly the most fun we have as players is usually in sweaty clubs where the audience is right on top of the band and gets to share with us the joy of our music.”