SbOrg: What was your first band?

John Boegehold: It was in high school and it was a band called "The Crescendos" which was a 1950's rock group, like Elvis, Beach Boys, all cover stuff. It was back in like '73 or '74 when the movie "American Graffiti" came out so the 50's was a real big thing. I didn't play an instrument but that's when I picked up bass. It was a high school band, we were kind of horrible, but it was a lot of fun. We were popular.

SbOrg: I found on-line that you were in a band called "Map of Shadows" did they ever record?

John Boegehold: Yeah, we recorded a lot of stuff -- Map of Shadows grew out of an earlier band called "Man Made". It was 1982 and it was kind of this weird, kind of progressive didn't-fit-anywhere type of group. I was playing bass. Our drummer also played in a group with Al and Neal at that point. That's when I met Al; in '82. Al actually played on a bunch of demos that we did. Map of Shadows eventually grew out of that band. I was playing bass, but we were going through all of these different guitar players and I finally just got fed up with going through all of that. So I thought "I'm just going to start playing guitar or keyboards or whatever would work. At that point it was guitar, and find a bass player." That's when we found Dave Meros. Then the keyboard player in that band left and I went over to keyboards and we got a guitar player and that became Map of Shadows. That was the first fully realized band -- we recorded a lot of stuff. No records were released, just a lot of demos. We played a lot of gigs around town, the usual places, and kind of went nowhere. It was fun and cool stuff, but it just didn't quite fit in anywhere.

SbOrg: Here is a sampling of John's early recording work

Artist: Map of Shadows Title: Cloudborne written by John Boegehold - 1988 download: Cloudborne

Artist: Map of Shadows Title: On a Long Road Home written by John Boegehold - and Diane Boothy - 1988 download: On a Long Road Home

Artist: Map of Shadows Title: Holding Out for Heaven written by John Boegehold and Diane Boothy - 1989 download: Holding Out for Heaven

SbOrg: So Dave wasn't the first Beard member that you'd met?

John Boegehold: No, I met Al. It was 1982 and Al played some wild stuff. It was fun stuff. Kind of proggy but not really -- it's hard to even describe what it was.

SbOrg: Which band was this?

John Boegehold: Man Made. In 1982 he came and did a session with us.

SbOrg: Do you remember how you found him?

John Boegehold: That was through our drummer, Steve, who was also in a band with Al and Neal called Casanova

Al Morse: Sounded exactly like Styx

John Boegehold: It was Al, Neal, Kirk Hunter and our drummer Steve. Steve said,"I know this guitar player who can come do our demo", because our guy just vanished. So he got Al, and Al came over and played all this stuff and from there, Al played in a couple different things that Map of Shadows did when we were between guitar players. Dave and I wrote a bunch of more pop type of stuff and Al played on a bunch of those.

SbOrg: We're going to have to do one of those Family Tree things [laughing]

John Boegehold: Exactly. [laughs] It's complicated. Al was the first and then Dave --- I think it was in 1985 that I met Dave.

SbOrg: Here is a sample of the band Drastic Pleasures featuring the first recording of Al & Dave playing together

Artist: Drastic Pleasures Title: Holding Out For Love written by John Boegehold & Esther Tessel 1986 first recording of Al & Dave playing together!!!!! download: Holding Out For Love

SbOrg: A lot of fans heard your name for the first time just prior to the release of Feel Euphoria -- you know "here's a guy who's helping us write", but a lot of them probably don't know that the first time you were actually credited on a Spock's Beard album was on "Beware of Darkness". You were credited with "overdubs".

John Boegehold: For actual credits I think you're right.

SbOrg: So what were you doing?

John Boegehold: I think that was after "The Light" I told the guys "I have a studio in my apartment and anytime you want to do overdubs at my place, feel free to bring the tapes over" I was kind of doing anything I could to help. I decided to do a little photography and design at that point for them too. The overdubs, I think for Beware of Darkness, if I remember, in the song Beware of Darkness I think Al played some Ebo guitar, he overdubbed those there.

SbOrg: So you were doing engineering?

John Boegehold: Yeah, just recording. I mean I did play one note on that album if I remember. On Beware of Darkness, there's that big note "gzzzsssshhhhhh" at the beginning of the song that big swell thing. I just came up with Synth Patch for Neal and I said wait, let me play this so I can say I played one note on the album and he said OK. But that was it. No it was really just turning the knobs. They just came over and did some vocals over at my house I think and for that and for the live record, official bootleg, we mixed a couple things at my studio, Dave and I did. For "Into the Fire", Neal and Nick both did the lead vocals over at my place. I think Ryo did some keyboards --- just little stuff. You know the basic stuff they did at a real studio. But when they just needed to do some guitar overdubs or a synth thing here or there they'd just come over and bring the tapes and just plug it in and do it. Aside from that, some photography for the some of the records.

Al Morse: You took the first pictures that we ever had of the band.

John Boegehold: Yeah the group pictures. I took the promo pictures and shot them off of Mulholland at some little park up there. In fact, some of them are on the reissue of "The Light" or "Beware of Darkness", one of those two when Inside Out rereleased them and remastered them they stuck some of the original promo pictures inside.

SbOrg: You also did the cover for "Beware of Darkness"

John Boegehold: Al had the idea for that one and I just put together the frame and made up a little plaque that said "Spock's Beard". You know what it was, I bought this frame at a garage sale or something and I thought it was really cool, so I just took a picture of the frame, but it was a really odd shape, so what I did, I took one corner of it in photoshop and made a square frame with a round picture and we put the little flash thing in there and then Al had the little plaque made up that said "Beware of Darkness" so it looked like a plaque in a frame. Just kind of a photoshop concoction of this cool frame I saw at a garage sale.

SbOrg: How did the beginnings in your involvement in the band after "Snow" happen?

John Boegehold: Basically, Dave called me. Actually, somewhere I read on the internet there like a rumor [folks laugh] being a total internet thing. I read this rumor that Neal's leaving. I thought, no way. [sarcastic] Right, Sure. They were planning to play in a couple weeks down by my house at a place called "Moby Disc".

SbOrg: I was there.

John Boegehold: Yeah, you were there. No one was in town, and they're playing, so I thought, I'll ask Dave. I went to see that gig and I just hung out and everyone was kind of being really weird about it and I think Nick said "Hey do you want to go get something to eat" and it was kind of a strange situation and I said "Nah, I don't think so, I'm just gonna go home" because I had work to do. The next day, Dave called me and I probably asked "Is it true? Is there just something weird, is Neal leaving?" And he said, "Yup, Neal left". And the first thing I asked was "Well, are you guys going to keep on going?" Dave said "Yeah, we're just going to keep writing". I said "I would love to get a chance to write with you guys. At any level, lyrics, whatever you want to do." he said "Sure, we haven't thought about it" because they were still trying to formulate what they were going to do next. I said, "Absolutely anything at any level, I'd be happy to do it. I'd LOVE to do it." So that was pretty much it. Then there was a couple months where they were still trying to figure out what to do, when to put out the next album or whatever.

SbOrg: They were talking for a while about putting an EP out right away to get the new persona of the band out there just as something to establish the band as a four piece. I remember the debate happening as to whether that was a good idea or if they should just wait and put out the full album. Obviously that won.

John Boegehold: Exactly, because then they were going to do that gig with the Shaming of the True and I think they were going to present themselves at that point. At the time I talked to them, I don't even think that they were sure that Nick was going to sing, or if they'd get someone else or do that, but I think Nick pretty much wanted to do it the whole time.

SbOrg: That was a great show, "The Shaming of the True", the songs they did. It sounded great.

John Boegehold: When I talked to them a few months before that they'd just started to write some ideas and at that point, I didn't actually start writing with Dave first I started writing with Al first. Al and I got together and he brought a CD of just different ideas --- some instrumental stuff, some musical ideas, and we kind of picked a couple and from there had "East of Eden, West of Memphis" and "Carry On" with Stan Ausmus , and "Onomatopoeia"

At that point, Dave hadn't written anything, and I kept bugging him, we gotta put something out, because Nick had already written "Sid" which was really cool. The first time I heard that I thought, wow this is going to be a really cool record. I loved that whole thing. So finally Dave started, I said, "Come on Dave, you've gotta write something for this thing" and that's when he sent me "Ghost of Autumn"

SbOrg: Tell me about your writing for Spock's Beard

John Boegehold: "Feel Euphoria" I co-wrote "East of Eden, West of Memphis" with Al, music and lyrics. "Onomatopoeia"; I wrote lyrics on that one. Al pretty much had the base of that song, Nick wrote the bridge. It was sort of pieced together, but turned out really cool. For "Ghosts of Autumn", Dave basically wrote the music for the verse and the chorus, and I wrote the melody and lyrics and the instrumental bridge before the solo starts. And then "Carry On". Again it was mostly lyrics because Stan and Al had written the whole song as far as the structure and the melody So Al and I wrote the lyrics together.

Then "Octane" was kind of different because after "Feel Euphoria" they went out and started touring, so I thought I'm going to try to initiate some things here and see if they buy it and are into it. So while they were touring I started writing stuff. For "Flash Before My Eyes"; I wrote the whole story and most of the lyrics before there was music. I thought OK, I'm going to kind of present it as a possible idea for an epic. I also wrote the music for the first part, "Ballet of the impact", I wrote the first three minutes of that music and was all demo-ed out and ready to go. And when they got back touring and started thinking about the rest of the album and I got to talking to Nick and Al about it and they weren't sure if they wanted to go with an epic, which I understood, maybe they would want to go with shorter songs. I said, not a problem with me. Maybe what we can do is use some of these lyrics for individual songs. I kind of wanted them to specifically be stand alone songs. So the first thing I did was I emailed Al the lyrics for "Wouldn't Let It Go" and said see if you can do something with this. Al just came up with the music for it, and then we hashed it out as a song, I wrote the musical bridge or whatever. We hashed it out as a song not thinking that it was going to be an epic. Then I sent the instrumental thing to Dave, and he thought that was cool and he said "let's write the whole epic, let's just start writing it". Dave finished that song and we started writing "Surfing Down the Avalanche" and "She is Everything", Dave would come up with musical ideas and send them to me and I would kind of flesh them out as songs.

For "I wouldn't Let it Go" I wrote the lyrics for that first and Al wrote the music and the melody as a song, but then I wrote the instrumental middle for it. See it's all different. For "Surfing Down the Avalanche", Dave wrote the -- da da da Da da da da -- that whole riff and pretty much the whole thing, because I didn't have a real feel for it melodically. I wrote the lyrics and gave the lyrics to Nick and he sort of fleshed it out as a song -- which to me, I never would have thought of a keyboard in that song. On "She is Everything" there's a chord progression that basically Dave wrote, then I took that and wrote the song, the lyrics and the melody around everything. Same thing with "Climbing up that Hill". Had a basic chord progression I wrote the chorus around there. The same thing on "The Beauty of it All". That was kind of the "Ballet of the Impact" reshuffled around with different parts, different arrangements. "As Long As We Ride" I was lyrics on that one. They were jamming -- they jammed that whole thing together and I wrote lyrics for it.

SbOrg: Am I right that, right now you're doing all the string and horn arrangements?

John Boegehold: On the last album I did. On this one, Dave and I are doing it. I don't want to call it an epic because that's a weird terminology. It's a long piece which is 17 minutes. Dave wrote all the music for it. I wrote the lyrics and the melodies, but Dave had already written string and horn arrangements for some of the sections within this piece because it's like five different sections. However, I took a lot of those and embellished them and changed them, and then I was the one who printed out and scored it and worked with the string players. So we kind of co-wrote the string and horn arrangements on this one. But then there's one other piece that I did all the string arrangements for. On the last album I did everything, but on this one he and I did it together.

SbOrg: What role do you play in the production?

John Boegehold: Production? I do a lot because I'm local and since I don't have family obligations and I work for myself I can be here long periods of time, so I just get to hang out and basically listen to everyone play their parts and listen to all the engineering stuff and make suggestions along the way, as far as this vocal part sounds good, that guitar part sounds good, but I just kind of hang out and make sure the things I've written get performed correctly and that kind of stuff. When other people do stuff you've written, they don't necessarily hear parts that should be played or they don't know, so I've been in situations before with bands where I've written stuff for them or with them and then they go into the studio to record it and they come out and I'll say "what happened? that was the main keyboard part", or "you're not doing the right melody". I'm definitely not a tyrant as far as telling -- well with these guys you can't really tell them exactly --- but there are things I would gently suggest, "ah, this really should be like this". I just show up here and I hang out. Do a bunch of detail work and just make sure things get done, right.

SbOrg: Did you play any instruments on the album?

John Boegehold: There's a couple little things from demos that end up [on it]. You know a synth part here, a guitar thing here or there, but it's usually buried in the mix. There's a couple times where my voice will end up on it. That song you just heard "They Know, We Know", we all yelled into the microphone, so little stuff like that. But there's no whole parts or things like that. A few things from the demo Dave and I would do might end up in the mix, but no one sat me down in the studio and said "now play this guitar part" -- that doesn't happen.

SbOrg: Are you happy with your role in the band currently? Would you like to see it change in any way? More or less involved?

John Boegehold: Oh yeah, it's perfect. I've got the best of both worlds. I get to write my favorite kind of music with a whole bunch of my friends and just hang out and goof around, and I also get to write with one of my favorite bands! You can't beat that one. Plus I don't have the rigors. You know when you're 20, you can ride across country and sleep on the floor of a van or someone's living room. It doesn't matter. As you get older, that kind of stuff does not appeal and all the business stuff; I just don't like dealing with it. I just get to do the fun part. So I get to come and hang out at the studio all the time and just have a good old time. I have all the benefits but none of the negative stuff.

SbOrg: Do you have any desire to do any performing or be a touring member of the band?

John Boegehold: No, absolutely not. For a couple reasons. Number one, I'm no where near the caliber musicians with any of these guys. I'm not even in the same stratosphere. I was an OK bass player when I was playing and that's because I was really working at it. But Dave is just head and tails a better bass player than I was. Now, I play enough guitar and keyboards to write with but these guys are just like the kings of their instruments. Even if I wanted to be, or I'd thought about it, I'm just not even in the same league. Also, the other thing is that I'm just way kind of past the point of wanting to be a performing musician. I'm way more at home in the studio or writing. It's more fulfilling for me doing that kind of stuff. I just enjoy it a lot more.

SbOrg: What's your favorite Spock's Beard song that you've co-written?

John Boegehold: Favorite? Have to do it from each record. On the first one, "Ghosts of Autumn", For me, that's my favorite on that record. Although I like all of them, but for different reasons. I just think that one is best one lyrically. I like the way that one plays out. On Octane, I like different sections. That one I look at two different ways. I look at it as a craft, from actual quote-un-quote good song writing and I look at it objectively, I think "She is Everything" is probably the best crafted one, but you know I like all of them. Again, I like "When she's gone" which is on the bonus disc. Lyrically I like that one a lot because there's some lines I'm really happy I thought of, I thought that was kind of cool. But they're all kind of different perspectives.

SbOrg: How about your favorite Spock's Beard song that you didn't co-write?

John Boegehold: Probably "Go the Way You Go". "The Light" is really kind of the classic. The thing is that's the first thing I heard, so that really made the biggest impact on me. I heard that when it was Neal's demo tape when it was just Neal and Al. Al brought it over and said, "you've got to hear this". Obviously when you hear "The Light" and "Go the Way You Go" it just made such an impression.

SbOrg: Let's talk about the upcoming CD 'Spock's Beard'. Is there a concept piece on the album? You know, like "A Guy named Sid", "Flash Before My Eyes"....

John Boegehold: There's not really a concept piece per-say. There's a long song, that's like seventeen minutes long. Concept piece --- that's such a loaded question. Like for example, "Flash Before My Eyes" that was a concept piece to me because lyrically it's tied together with a story, the whole thing flowed in a certain way and everything was tied together, and musically there were things that came and went --- reoccurring themes and stuff like this. On this one there's a piece called "As Far As the Mind Can See". It's the one Dave and I wrote. Musically there are themes that come back in and repeating themes, or there are a few sections which stand alone as songs within a big section. But lyrically there's no overriding theme to it. There's no conceptual tie to the lyrics.

SbOrg: Story line?

John Boegehold: No story line. There's four individual sections where there are vocals. One part is a reprise of an earlier theme, but the two sections in the middle really have nothing to do with each other, lyrically. There is a flow. That's the only real concept.

SbOrg: News on the street is that this is going to be the most progressive CD they've put out now. What's your take?

John Boegehold: There's a lot of really progressive stuff on this album. There's some real main-stream stuff on this record, but yeah, this is definitely going to be proggier than the last couple. That's a weird word, "proggy". But there are a couple things on here that are definitely more prog oriented. Although, there are some tracks on here that are straight ahead mainstream stuff. Overall, I think that's probably true.

SbOrg: Have you ever considered putting out your own solo CD?

John Boegehold: Yes and no. Again, it's a lot of work. Dave and I have been kind of working on something on the side, you know, bits and pieces, which with each album keeps getting pushed aside. But maybe sometime we'll put out something like that, but myself, no. I just don't have the desire.

SbOrg: What's next?

John Boegehold: For me or for the band?

SbOrg: Both, either.

John Boegehold: I'm working on a film right now called "Short Tracks". I'm scoring it. It's about a family that is involved in NASCAR racing and musically it's all country, country/rock type of stuff. I write a ton of that stuff. I love country music. I have people I write with all the time doing stuff like that. So I'm working on that. Aside from that we'll see. Ask me tomorrow, it'll probably be totally different. It changes day to day.

As far as this one goes it'll be getting the record ready and getting it to the mastering and the manufacturing and they're going to try to have it out by November. And after that they'll start...

SbOrg: That's it! Thank you for your time.

John Boegehold: cool.