 Welcome to The Metal Voice and a return to an iconic guitarist and fellow Canadian and Montrealer Frank Moreno. Frank, I'm so happy that you're poking your head out and you're being productive and doing something great. Frank, welcome to the show. I'm trying. I'm trying. Frank, before we get into anything, how's the health? How are you doing these days? I'm hanging in, man. I'm hanging in. Just waiting for things to get better. We're kind of worried about you. I think a lot of people are worried about you, especially in the music community. There's a lot of love for music, there's a lot of love for you, and we're all praying for you and hoping for you that you got better. You know what? I'm really excited to see that you have been productive. These pedals are very exciting, Frank. How'd you hear about them? How I heard about them, I was on YouTube the other day. Okay, so you heard the interview. I did hear the interview, and I go, Frank's back. That's the first thing I thought. It was kind of like a relief that you're productive. A lot of people were scared, and they were scared for you. The only thing I had stopped was touring, really. I mean, it's hard to play sometimes, that's true, but I hadn't stopped that. I think it was sort of like you made a statement, and then when people make statements, their imagination goes wild, right? And I guess people think the worst, right? But I'm sure a lot of people, and me and Alan for sure, we're saying it's great to see that you're back, at least in some way or form, right? Well, I mean, yeah, back is a weird word. I wasn't really, I mean, I was gone from touring, and I'm still gone from touring, at this point. But I'm still thinking of music, and I'm still playing, you know, I'm still who I am. It's just that the illness makes it really hard for me to, particularly, to tour and to go do gigs. Now, if it subsides, and it has been subsiding slowly, then maybe we can think about doing something, you know? But in the meantime, I wanted to stay somehow connected, and I figured the best way was, I thought about my pedals, and I thought about over the years, so many people had asked me, how do you get that sound? And I would always tell them, well, I built my own stuff, and I designed my own stuff, and I started thinking, well, maybe I should take these designs and rebrand and rebuild them and let people, let people have a chance to use them. I remember our conversation that we had before COVID when we did an interview with you, and you're telling us about pedals, how you make pedals. You've always made pedals, and not only computers, but everything. And amplifiers. I put out an amplifier, too, and I put out my amp, too, if the laws weren't so stringent about it. There's very stringent laws about putting in an amplifier. You've got to pass all kinds of electrical, you know, by these electrical licenses and stuff like that, because you're using high voltage and stuff, you know, so I don't have the ability to do that at the moment. But I figured pedals, pedals really were the, you know, the sound in the 70s that I had was pedals, because in the 70s, I didn't use a Marshall, I used a transistor amplifier, which is a very clean amplifier, an acoustic 270. And I just used it to amplify what was my pedalboard. My pedalboard was basically making all my sound. So when people heard, you know, the live album or Johnny B. Good or whatever, they weren't hearing an amplifier, they were hearing my pedalboard. And then later on, I decided to design amplifiers that sounded like my pedalboard. And so now I can use a smaller pedalboard with the three or four or five main pedals that I use. And I figured I'd take three of those, which are distortion pedals. And there's three types of distortion. And I would put them out and see if people would like to use them. And the first one, well, not the first one, but one of them is basically a clean boost that drives the front end of your amplifier. It doesn't have its own distortion within it, but what it does to an amplifier is very interesting because it makes an amp sound really good. But Frank, let me ask you this. What would be an example of the first one? If there was a song in your catalog, that would be a good example of the first one. Well, I would use the first one driving the front of the amplifier. If I was doing the blues, like the harder blues stuff, you know, like. King B, right, but not necessarily the solos, you know, like the rhythms, the tough rhythms of like Johnny B. Goode or King B, the other pedals are the pedals I would use for the solos. Turn them on for the solos. One of them has a full equalization base and treble. And nice gain, really beautiful gain. And it would be what you would call from a light aggressiveness to a mid to hard aggressiveness. That would be the thing I would use if I was soloing in, let's say. He's calling or. Something's coming our way or something like that, you know, yeah. And then the third one is a medium and heavy aggressive gain pedal, like it's and it's got two modes, softer mode and harder mode. And you would hear that when I'm doing electric reflections of war, when I'm doing bombs and I'm doing all of the really wild, really, the feedback and all that kind of stuff. So those are the sort of three facets of what I do, the blues, the leads, rock and roll leads and the psychedelic, you know, over the top stuff. Oh, someone's calling. The doorbell. Who's doorbell is? What do you think of the idea? I think it's an excellent idea. Alan. I mean, you've been known for your sound when reading all the comments on the Internet that people just keep talking about your guitar playing, your guitar sound. So anytime you can share that, get it out the genie out of the bottle and then share it. I think it's a good thing for her for everybody. So I think it's a great way to preserve your legacy as well. You know, I think it's a brilliant idea. I think it's in your wheelhouse. This is what you do, at least from what you told us many, many times. And how are you manufacturing these? Well, I'm doing it all myself. So basically these are handcrafted, not manufactured like in it. I didn't team up with a company or anything like that. I have one helper, a kid named Ryan, who helps me. And basically I'm putting together everything myself. I'm going to sign them in here. Like I'll sign the inside of the title. They're very boutique. They're all handcrafted. The designs are all my own. I did the schematics. I did the board layout. I had the boards printed because I wanted I wanted boards. I didn't want all point to point wiring would have been a mess. So I have the boards printed. And basically I make the case and I have it painted beautifully. It really looks good. Like these look really, really, really professional. They look great. And they sound exactly right. You know, we did some. We did some A being, you know, where we could actually press a button and have me going through the new pedal and the pedals I'm making and the pedals that are on my pedal board right now, the ones that I built 40 years ago. And you couldn't tell the difference. Oh. There was no, it wasn't like, oh, well, this one's a bit fizzier. This one's not as strong. This one is a weird mid peak or something like that, which you'd expect with two different pedals. Like if you if you tried to be like that with two two different pedals, you'd notice instantly that they didn't sound the same. For instance, if you took a blues driver in a big month or something like that, you know, but these when a deed with their original counterparts were really, really identical to the point where I didn't know which one was on. So they're they're they're right up there. Are they going to be OK? Go ahead. I'm sorry. What's the go to market strategy, Frank? Is it's got a custom order? Or how are you going to? Yeah, yeah, make the order for sure, for sure. Because how many can I make in a day? Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm I'm literally sitting there doing this, you know, this is handcrafted and so it's not like somebody could say, oh, I want 10. Well, that's going to take me a few days to make those 10, you know, and put them together and make sure they work and, you know, all that stuff. And we've got really nice packaging for them and instructions. And they're very, very it's very pro like it's a very pro kind of setup. It's not doesn't look homemade or anything like that. But but it is. Well, if there's one thing that you're known for, it's a tone. And, you know, you giving this tone or, you know, lending your tone to someone else. I think it's a wonderful idea. And you know what? It's probably. Did it keep you busy during covid? Well, the problem with with covid was I was going through my own problems, you know, like I I wasn't at all worried about covid. As a matter of fact, I'm not even I'm not even vaccinated. So, you know, in some ways, it turned out for the best because let's say I just said I was going to tour. They wouldn't have let me into the States. Yeah. So my getting sick was almost, you know, fair and dip it is like it was almost lucky that I have to stop touring because I wasn't well. And then all of a sudden covid happened and I wouldn't have gotten into the States because of covid. Even if I was well, because I wasn't going to take the vaccine. Yeah. And I still haven't and I won't. You know, how do people order these? How do they get these? Well, there will be a page. It's not the page is not out yet. The thing that I'm waiting for is I'm waiting for I have to trademark. The names so I can't actually put them on the web until I've gotten my not I won't get the trademark, but I get I've got my application, you know. Yeah. And once I get that, as soon as I get that, then we'll make a beautiful web page and some YouTube videos of me demonstrating the pedals. And, you know, there'll be people will know at that point how to get them, but it'll be direct. It'll be direct to me. You know, people will be buying them directly from me. And like I said, I have one partner who's helping me. And I did have to to get some people that I know to put up some money to be able to do this. So so there are other people involved in terms of of, you know, the fact that they're going to make some some some money off of it. I'd like to sell them really, really inexpensively. But my partners my partners are saying that that's not something I should do. Handcrafted by Frank Marino. No, I think you should go the other way. I agree. That's exactly what everyone's saying. And I don't I don't really understand it. And I don't know what the numbers should be. And I've been asking a bunch of people about it. And, you know, I'm deferring to those people who do that kind of thing, you know. I guess they'll tell me. But yeah, they're handcrafted by me. They are my designs. They are my sound and then they're signed. Now, you know, when someone suggested that I sign them, I didn't know what they meant. Like, do I sign them on the outside? That'll make you look bad to be a signature on the pedal. Like that would be like. So they said, no, no, you signed them on the inside. Like on the inside of the cover or something like that. OK. So is that is that how that's done? You tell me, guys. You know, more than I. This is not something I do. I'm a guitarist. You don't get asked very often for our signatures, Frank. So we you're asking the wrong thing, guys. Frank, how about this? I think there'll be guitar players who will be interested in the pedal because it's a pedal and it's by you. And then there'll be collectors who just want to buy the pedal because it's handcrafted and it's signed by you. That's my opinion. And if the price point is right and I'm not saying it's got to be cheap, I'm just saying if it's a right price point where it's affordable, then people will. Yeah. That's my opinion. I think I would even buy one because, you know, even though I play guitar rarely, but I buy one just as a collection thing, you know, maybe I'll buy three. Well, one interesting thing I noticed just the other day was I took the small one there, the clear boost, the clean boost and I tried it on a base. And I was astounded at how good it made the base sound like it really, really had a full, full range, deep, deep frequency response. So I'm wondering if bass players would be very interested in this pedal, too. It's not the fuzzy distorted pedal. It's the clean boost one, you know? And and I was wondering, I was thinking, wow, this really, this bass all of a sudden sounds like really, really, really good, you know, with this thing. So maybe bass players would be interested in the in the first one as well. There. You've already got a marketing strategy. Why limit yourself to guitar players? I'm happy we had this brainstorming meeting here today. Yeah, no, it's like, guys, you know, I'm I'm I'm the musician, guitarist that's sort of been my life. And now to be building pedals, I've only ever built them for me. Yeah. And many guys have come up to me over the years and asked me what I thought of their pedals. So, for instance, I did I did a favor for Tigtronics because, you know, I had I had spoken to them about one of their pedals and they made some changes based on what I had said. And so I helped out by demonstrating some of their stuff, you know, and I did that for a couple of other things. But then there have been other guys that have come to me and said, listen, we want to make a pedal with a signature, I guess they call it a signature pedal with your name on it or your signature on it. And here's the pedal we make and we'll put your signature on it. And I said, no, because the pedal they made just didn't sound good. To me, you know, it's not the one I made. So I never really considered putting my signature on. Pedals or guitars or amplifiers. If I didn't actually approve the way they found it, you know, even even though they offered me, you know, good money to do it. And apparently this is what they do with a lot of guys. They just offer them really good money and they put their name on it and the guys get a little help here or something. But I'm really very, very interested with the sound being accurate. Yeah. And you should say to somebody, listen, I'm playing. He's calling and if you use this, you're going to sound like he's calling. I want it to be true. You know, what seems to work well with pedals is limited edition. You know, you know, five hundred. Well, they are pretty limited to production. Yeah, I'm not going to be. I can't see me doing this. A lot. How much I don't know, but right off the bat, it's going to be limited to those who who order it. And you know what? I don't know when that stops. It's not like I can say there's going to be 20 or 30 or 50 or a hundred. I can't. I don't know the price just went up, Frank. The price just went up. Yeah, I know, but it's going to really depend on like once it starts. Let's say perfect, just run a perfect example. I started, I put out the page. I get an order and somebody wants all three pedals. All right. Now I've got to build those three pedals, so I've got to get the parts, build the pedals, test the pedals, make the pedals, you know, do all that stuff. At that point, I've delivered it to that particular person. Now, how long did that take me? Did it take me a week? Did it take me two weeks? You know what I mean? Did it take me a couple of days? I don't know yet. I'll know when I do it. And that's what's going to ultimately be the factor which says these are limited or not limited because I don't. I'm not trying to start a pedal company where I have an open ended. Hey, you can always buy these from now until forever. I'm sure at some point. I won't want to be doing this all the time. You know, maybe I'll want to be playing gigs. So in that sense, they'll be limited, but I don't know what the number is supposed to be. Well, I mean, does it take you more than two days to to put it together? Let's say somebody wanted three pedals. No, no. Well, it's it's it's hard to say. One pedal. They're not simple inside. They're not. There's quite a few connections to make. It's not just a couple of transistors or something, you know, like there's a lot of a lot of connections to make. There's, you know, over 30 resistors, 20 capacitors for switches, all kinds of JST connectors. You know, there's there's all these the jacks, the light. So this is not something I'm going to build in an hour. But but. You know, it might take a day. Might take might take I might I might be good at it enough that I could do two in a day or three in a day. You know, but then again, Ryan is helping me. So without Ryan, I'd really be screwed. You know, he's sort of really, really, really helping me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you've got to put the price of how long it took you to, you know, make them. And that's just basically what the cost is going to be. And that's that, right? Yeah, like right now at the moment, I'm not even thinking about about price or anything like that, because it's all been cost. Basically, I had to borrow a lot of money to get the parts, get the cases, get the paint done, you know, get all that stuff done, the machine work. I'm right now, it's more a cost thing than a profit thing. But at some point, we're going to decide, OK, here's what the price is going to be. And hopefully people will buy them and will pay off the costs, you know, I'm, I'm this, I'm the. In the whole team, I'm the esoteric guy. I'm the spiritual guy, you know, I'm the one that's talking about the sound and the tone and the blooming, whether it blooms under your fingers or not, you know, pedals have to make it easier for you to play. You can't have, you don't have to, you don't want to have to fight with them. Yeah. They almost like turn you into a better player if they're well made. And you found the secret formula because I can't get my head around the fact that you're building a brand new pedal that sounds like your original pedal from 40 years ago. That's amazing. Well, they are, they are direct copies of what I built. They are going to sound the same, you know, like there's a few different parts because some transistors aren't made anymore. So I have to use substitutions, you know, but I went through a lot of different substitutions to get the closest thing possible so that it wouldn't wouldn't be noticeable. And so that's why we did the A B test, you know, had I had every single part exactly the same as 40 years ago, I wouldn't have even had to do a B test because I would have known what they were. But doing the A B test tells me that, yeah, these, you know, these really sound like they're supposed to sound and they really do what they're supposed to do. And quite honestly, I could go out and gig with these pedals now and not have to have my pedal board. Yeah. When do you call me over to his house or for a jam session, I just put these three pedals under my arm and go now granted when I play, I also use other pedals like echo, delay, reverb, sometimes chorus, those I those I would have to bring also. But I'm thinking of building a fourth pedal, which is this special compressor that I had built for myself a long, long time ago, because I figured some guitar players would like to have this compression. So we'll see. I don't know about that yet. I want to see how this goes first. And if it goes really well, then maybe I'll go to a compressor, you know, go to a compressor or even a flanger or some phaser or something. So Frank, I'll throw out some some of your song titles, some songs to you, and you recommend which pedal you use for those songs. How's that? So people get a feel of what each pedal represents. Does that work for you? Well, yeah, I can know, but I can I can do it the other way around, like, like I can tell you that because the pedals right now have names. I'm just not allowed to say the names until I have the trademark, right? So we'll call it one, two, and three, all right. But they have names and they have and the names that I use are the names of my songs. Oh, okay. So I can tell you that, for instance, I have a song called Ain't Dead Yet that a lot of people like. They listen to it a lot. It's from the power of rock and roll. That would be pedal number two. From the solos? And I have I have a song called Most of Them Would Be Pedal Number Two. Well, let's put it this way. Do you know the difference between doing quote the end of night guitar solo and the guitar solo within a song? So that's pedal two and three. Like the end of night guitar solo is pedal three. It's the one where you really turn on the overdrive and you go crazy and it's amazing sustain and you can make it sound like a bagpipe or wild horses or whatever. And but most of the night you're not using that kind of wild wild overdrive. You're using a kind of an overdrive that's sort of mid-range-ish, you know, halfway there. And that's the kind of pedal that would be number two. So for any songs like that. And the number one pedal, the clear pedal, that would be, for instance, if I'm doing my version of Red House or I'm doing the we have an unreleased blues that we just put out. That was done the night of the DVD but was not released with the DVD. It's called Unreleased Blues on YouTube. I don't know if you've seen it yet. Nope, not yet. We'll check it out. Yeah, but that would be pedal one. I'm still trying to get through the... Look up Unreleased Blues from Frank's DVD on YouTube and you'll hear it. It's basically similar to my version of Red House on the DVD but much shorter. Hey Frank, I think once you said, you told us that, and I find this fascinating and correct me if I'm wrong, every solo that you ever played or maybe not all your solos but many of your solos, you came up with them in the studio. Like there was no planning. Oh yeah, all of them. There was no like map of what you're going to do but prior... Never, never, never, never. Not even once. Well, was that because you wrote the songs in the studio and you just kind of like were like sort of riffing off of each other in a sense and you were inspired or... Well, it's very much like when I play live. Like I don't really play the same exact thing every night but it's a similar thing because the song has already been created. So you want to have somewhat the same, right? But when you're first inventing, basically you just listen and it's like singing along with it. If you sang along the solo every night, would you sing along the same solo? Yeah, well, it'd be very a little bit. Yeah, I got it. You would but it'd be little variances. So let's say there was a new song that you guys went into the studio and you recorded and you played the rhythm track and it's going, you know, it's doing that and then you're supposed to solo over it, right? But you don't solo with your guitar, you solo with your mouth with the kazoo, let's say, right? You'd make stuff up as you go, right? Yeah. And it would probably fit. That's what I do. That's pretty amazing. Invented as I go. As a matter of fact, all of the songs are written that night. You mean like when you go in the studio? Yeah, yeah, we didn't ever go into, only there's been three songs, three, I believe, in my whole career that were being played before I went into the studio. Wow. And that was really early on, like way early in the Maxim days. And so were you able to get, was there a lot of hemming and hawing? What did we do guys in the studio or you guys went in and you just, you were able just to blast them out? No, I would just go in and say, here guys, here's the tune. Invented on the floor. Wow. And they play along with it. And then sometimes I'd say, okay, no, no, no, no, play this instead or play that. You know, everybody's been through that, right? And so they play what I say or roughly what I say, but in their own interpretation. And that would be the song. So like a song like Stories of a Hero, there's no mapping that's just strictly feel right in on the spot. Boom. That's the song. Yeah. And as a matter of fact, interesting song because that one had a change in the middle that went, you know, from D minor to D major all of a sudden. And that was totally spontaneous. You know, when it says, and the stories tell of bravery, it's a different kind of feel at that point. But you also must understand that under none of the circumstances of any of the songs did I write the lyrics first. I wrote the lyrics after everything was always done as an instrumental. Okay. That's right. How long did it take you to write the lyrics? Did you write them? Or was it was it like a lot longer than it took me to write the song? Sometimes it would take me all day because I wanted to write lyrics that fit the music and that said something that was interesting to say at the same time. I wasn't really good at it. I thought you're great. What about your singing? I don't know if you were early on. I thought early on I thought I couldn't sing at all. So I talked my way through a lot of the songs and then later on I started to notice that if I tried singing, I actually could hit the pitches. So I got better as a singer as I got older and because I got more confident and just singing in my own voice. So by the time I get to the last show I did, DVD, I'm probably singing better than ever before. No. I mean, I'm glad we're able to speak to you and delve a little bit further into this somewhat new career path. And I anxious to see when you've got the trademark and then the publicity when you're ready to launch it. So who knows how long it'll last. It might only last a week. We're only going to find out like when I do it, right? Do you foresee like I guess it'll probably take like a year at least, I would think. Take what? A week. A year, a year. Sorry, sorry, a year or two. A year to get it done. No, no. These are going to be out probably within the next two to three weeks. Oh, there you go. Oh, so you're finalizing the trademark then. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you just submitted it. Okay. No, no, no. It won't be, the way it works is as long as you've submitted that's your sort of your okay start, you know. It's pending, yeah, yeah. We could conceivably have these things ready to go. Well, we could conceivably have them ready to go in like the next week. We've got the boxes made and the covers and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, I'm scared to name some songs because it might be one of the titles because it might be one of the titles. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, you're right. I might blow it all for you. I don't want to do that. I'll say had enough. Had enough pedal. I don't think that's right. Yeah, yeah. Well, had enough would be pedal too. There you go. Well, I wouldn't like ditch queen as a pedal, but I'm not saying nothing more than that. That would also be pedal too. Okay, all right. Because I mean that tone on that guitar, you know, that's, you know, that's, that's the greatest tone right there, you know. Well, just remember that the pedal is part of the tone. You do have to have an amplifier. Yes. You're not going to plug the pedal directly into your computer or something like that, you know, according to a mixer. You've got to have an amplifier that you're driving the pedal with. So, the tone is, the tone you get is part of the part of the package, but the amplifier won't matter as much as you think it will. Like, as long as it's a decent amplifier, you know, it's going to, it's going to get you where you're trying to go. I learned something new today. You know, on another note, like me and Alan, we talk to a guitarist, artist, musicians all the time, and it always comes back to you no matter who we're talking to, like we could talk to Chris Holmes from WASP. We could talk to, I don't know, Lips from Anvil. We can talk about, oh, Zach Wilde and even Tesla, Frank Hannon. So many guys cite you as their influence and they're all from different, even Gus G, like, you know, he used to listen from Greece. There's so many guys from all around the world who cite you as as a huge influence on their sound or one of their influences we could also say, right? I mean, yeah, how does that sit with you? Like, do you think about that? I'm flattered by it, but it has more to do with time than anything else because when I came out, you know, I was a young person in the industry and everyone else was older than me. When I made my first album, I was 16. I was touring by the time I was 17. And, you know, by the time I was 19, I had done three albums. So, you know, Strange Universe, Child of the Novelty, Maximum. My fourth album, I was only 20 years old, so I started doing all that touring in the big buildings. So a lot of the guys that saw me then, I was doing the shred kind of, I was probably one of the original guitar players, if you think back to that time, late 60s, early 70s, there weren't too many guys doing the shred thing, you know, like playing at high speeds and very violently. And so I was one of the original guys that did that because my confrears at the time didn't do that, you know, the Eric Clapton's and the other guys like that, they were more slow players, you know? I think that's what caused the influences you're talking about was the fact that I went out there a little further. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Alan, do you have anything else? No, no, no. I mean, I'm in sales, Frank, and all I hear is cash registers going off with your project. I mean, I wouldn't... I know you've always looked out for the fans and like you said, you're more of an artist and you're leaving the business side to other partners, but I think this is just a winning combination for you and your partner. Well, I hope it works. Yeah. You know, I hope it works. I hope that... I hope people like it, you know? Like that's really my biggest hope, hope they like it, whoever buys it. Well, I think first of all, they'll be excited that you're back on the radar. I think that's number one. And then now you have this other project, they'll be very excited and hopefully, hopefully, you know, you can tour, you know? If my health gets better and the government stops its stupidity of saying you can't come in without being poked, then who knows where it goes, right? Yeah. Well, I think they're supposed to remove all restrictions by May. I don't know if that's going to happen or not, but that's what they're saying. Well, they just stopped that tennis player, Jakovic, for the U.S. Open, he wasn't allowed in and he's like a 22-time Grand Slam champion. Wow. He stopped him, but I don't know when the U.S. Open is, if it's before May. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? More like, you know, anything else you want to promote, Frank? No, no. I just I'm just glad to know that you guys are interested and like I said, if you check out the Unreleased Blues song, you'll hear pretty much what the number one pedal does. Sure. Great. All right. On that note, oh, there was one more question I want to ask you. Oh, that's what it was. You know, you read on the internet these bizarre sort of things like you were the incarnation of Jimi Hendrix and yeah, sure. Jimi Hendrix was, you know, you know, what someone who you appreciated his work, but what do you say to that? I say that the people that invented that don't know history because hold on, I'm just swallowing something. While it was true that I went to a hospital and it was true that I learned how to play guitar in the hospital and it was true that it all happened very, very quickly and it was true that the style I played was highly reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix, psychedelic basically. What wasn't true was what the newspapers made up in the media talking about spirits and reincarnations and the very reason that could never have been true was because I went to that hospital in July of 1968, actually August of 1968. Jimi Hendrix didn't die until September of 70. So there was no way to come out of the hospital within a few months and have some kind of reincarnation of a guy who wasn't dead. It's been clarified. It's been clarified. Well, I mean, I've always found it ridiculous to tell you the truth because the guy who wrote that, the first guy that wrote that, that got picked up on the wire and everyone started talking about it, made a huge thing out of it, they should be so ashamed of themselves. He made it sound like you said that, right? He made it sound like you. Well, they made it sound like it and that's why I started doing songs that were very tongue-in-cheek. I started basically rousing them. You know, I did a song called Making My Wave where I'm very tongue-in-cheek saying, oh yeah, yeah, I've come back from my grave. Oh yeah, wow, you know. It's like, I remember when I did All Along the Watch Tower, I did that specifically because I knew that I'd get a hail of people and then press screaming at me over Hendricks again and I could then say, well, it was a Bob Dylan tune. You know, I was always a little pugnacious like that. If people said things, I would push back a little, you know, but all in good fun, you know. But the guys that write the stories like that and reincarnation, then it turned into a car accident and I died and was resuscitated and saw the spirits. And, you know, one thing led to another. How could they not put together the years? The years, 68. Even the ones that said that that happened to me knew that I was in the hospital in 68. It was in their article. Would you call Hendricks more of a spiritual godfather? Well, Hendricks was just, Hendricks to me was the, the watershed like he was like the generational talent that comes along and changes everything and influences everybody in from a guitar perspective and not only from a guitar perspective but from a psychedelic sound perspective. The Richie Havens once told me who was, he was a big friend of Hendricks and he once told me Hendricks didn't play the guitar. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, he played the amplifier and it made perfect sense to me when Richie said that because that's true. Hendricks played sound. You know, people that do their Hendricks impression immediately go off at lightning speed and hit the highest notes they can, right? But if you listen to any Hendricks record, I don't think he ever played anything faster than an eighth or a sixteenth note. It's true. It was always very slow. But he had that sound and he had that ability to put the right note in at the right time. It's amazing notes out at the right time, you know. You know, it's amazing, Frank, how in parallel you're in Canada and you have Uli John Roth in Germany and you're sort of like these two, like you're sort of like a mirror of each other in a different continent, you know, it's, and you're both coming up. It's just incredible. Did you influence him? Did he influence you? Or you just didn't even know about each other back then? No, I did a tour with Uli in the early 2000s. But I'm saying before in the 70s. I never knew about him before that. Oh, okay. I know he was into Hendricks. Yeah. But I never knew about him before that. You have to understand that I tried to stay away from the Hendricks thing at some point because it was just killing me, you know, like the press was killing me. The press hated me. And now, if I ever read that stuff again, I know the guy must be at least 75 or 80 years old, the guy that's saying it. He's got to be from that time. Because lately I don't get that from new writers. Have you been writing any new music? I'm always writing music. Well, how about this? To release? They're not always the same kind of music. Not always the same kind. I've written over 80 pop tunes. Pop tunes, real pop, with the Beatles. But they're not going to show up on Margeny Rush albums. That's for sure. Any chance of any releasing them in near future? You know, I wouldn't release them as me doing them. I'd probably give them to bands that would do them justice because they're, you know, they're pop. I don't really do pop. I mean, I do, but I don't do it publicly. But I've written jazz tunes. And I fooled around with the starting of Blues Album that I never finished. It's been half finished for 10 years. And it's a totally different kind of Blues Album. It's not a Texas guitar Blues Album at all. It's more like a New Orleans Blues Album with piano and B3 and horns. Hey, it worked for Rick Emmett, Frank. I mean, you know, he did all these different albums, Jazz Album, Blues Albums. It could work for you. Yeah. And just that I don't do these things in order to put them out because how do you put these things out anymore? Nobody, who's buying albums? No, that's it. That's a whole other discussion. Yeah. Yeah. An album now is like your calling card. It's like your credit card, like your business card. You know, you give out your album and hope they come and see you live or buy your merchandise. But to try to say that you're going to make money off albums, who can do that? Yeah. Nobody. Yeah. I mean, unless your tail is swift, you're not making any money off that. That's for sure. You know what? On that note, I think the pedal is the way to go. That's the new album. Pish. Yeah. That's a new idea for an album, right? You sell your merch and it's something that people can use and something people can get inspired by. And it's or it could be a nice cool souvenir, right? And if I do another record, I might go with vinyl. Yes. They've outsold CDs, apparently. Yeah. In the last quarter. So why not? And just make vinyl. Don't make any other digital copies of it. Who knows, right? Yeah. The easy, the easy thing about vinyl making vinyl records, you know what it is? They're really short. Yes. Well, that's what that's what made albums so great was the length because, you know, once you start adding, you know, 17 tracks on an album, you know, you start, you know, it just loses the dynamic. I think it's going to be some filler. 10 to 8 songs is a perfect album. The greatest albums were 10 songs. Those were the greatest albums to make them. They're short, you know. Absolutely. And you give it all you got to on every song. Yeah. Frank, on that note, I think they're charging way too much for vinyl now. Absolutely. Like 45 bucks, 50 bucks. It's insane. But I mean, people are buying it. People are buying it. Look, you know, you could have a pedals on one floor and you can have vinyl on the other floor. And, you know, you'll probably make more money doing it that way than going on a record company. Yeah. Well, look, I'm never going to get rich off of pedals. That's for sure. I mean, the margin is, you know, they're not cheap to build. Yeah. And that's I'm sure there's a lot of work to it too. You know, you send out 10. They could be cheap to build. No, you can build them really cheap. You can build them under $100, you know, like if you use cheap parts and you don't care how they sound and look. But if you're thinking the way I'm thinking, where they've got to sound great, they've got to have good parts that last. They got to have a good sound. They got to look good. They got to weather the storm well. That's not something you're going to build with cheap parts. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we wish you much success with this, Frank. And we're anxious to see the packaging. And like you said, it could be as little as a couple of weeks from now. So we're definitely going to keep tuned and anxious to see it. Yeah. Stay in touch. You'll be hearing about it. Great. Send me the link to your web page when it's up and we'll post. And, you know, we'll share links and all that cool stuff. And we'll have you back on again to talk more about the pedals. And if there's changes or any updates, you're always welcome. That'll be great, man. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time, Frank. Thanks, Frank.