RING OF MYTH

Ring of Myth's origins go back to 1990 when Danny Flores was looking to put together a new rock band. After jamming with many different musicians, Danny felt the time was right to create music with virtually no limits as to style or direction... just music with good vibes.

George Picado answered one of the ads Danny placed in a trade magazine. They immediately hit it off and started jamming with different drummers. "We started writing songs together almost instantly," Danny says, "we also played some local parties as well. George and I started getting really serious about the music and how to navigate the band. The drummer we had at the time was not interested in where we were heading musically, and eventually we had to give him the sack."

Once again, ads went out for drummers; enter Scott Rader. "It was pretty funny, our first meeting with Scott, though not at the time." Danny states. "We borrowed a friend's garage for the audition and I gave Scott the directions, but he ended up getting lost. He had a 20 mile drive from Pasadena to Pico Rivera, but he just drove around for an hour until finally driving back home and calling for the directions once again. This was, of course, before the invention of cell phones."

The audition was a success: they played songs by The Beatles, The Police, Jimi Hendrix, and The Cream. Everything fell together right away. "I noticed how solid, steady and especially loud Scott was as a player; that was something George and I hadn't experienced to that point with other drummers," Danny says.

The first name they chose for the band was inspired by a Jimi Hendrix tune called "Catfish Blues." The trio was known around Southern California as Catfish and they gigged non-stop; they played every club and bar from San Fernando Valley to Hollywood, Los Angeles, Pasadena and Orange County. "We were a very eager band from the start," Danny says, "we played the L.A. Marathon four years in a row. We were basically a cover band mixing in a few original songs here and there." The originals, at the time, were an eclectic mix of pop rock, blues, and hard rock, with a slight nod to jazz rock.

Soon, Catfish started thinking about recording some tunes. It was perfect timing; Scott was attending college for recording engineering, and he offered to record some of the songs to fulfill part of his class requirements. There were late night sessions at the college recording studio almost weekly. The band would record every Thursday and Friday night from dusk to dawn throughout the quarter, and some of the songs would eventually make their way onto the group's first release, Ring of Myth.

With the release came the band's new name, Ring of Myth, taken from a line in a Joseph Campbell book. Danny, Scott, and George formed Cosmic Energy Records label, and they their debuted to very positive reviews in many L.A. based magazines including the Los Angeles Times and La Opinion.

Ring of Myth had been playing together regularly for almost three years when Scott decided to leave the band to focus on his engineering career. Danny and George once more placed ads in the local papers and Rick Striker answered the call, auditioning for the group. He brought unbridled energy and a forceful style of drumming; with a new drummer and more gigs, Ring of Myth charged full steam ahead.

They started writing and rehearsing new material in George's townhouse basement, 'Mung Dungeon' in Pasadena and at Rick's studio in Panorama City. The songs happened rather fast, and soon Danny was calling on former drummer Scott Rader to engineer and co-produce what was to become Unbound. "We did a three song demo to shop around for possible label interest. The songs were "Messanger" "Only A Dream" and "A Transforming". I got a call late one night from Larry Kolata at the record label Kinesis and he was amazed by the songs. He asked how soon the rest of the material would be done as he was really interested and excited to have us on his label." Rick came up with the name Unbound and the band agreed that it sounded just right.

Danny says, "We got some airplay in the Los Angeles market with the demo. Eddie Offord's office called to say that Eddie was interested in the band. The record label Magna Carta was interested in us through the radio airplay, and we were referred to Billy Sherwood as a possible producer. The bottom line, though, was "Big Money" or rather our lack of it." Nevertheless, Ring of Myth pushed onward with Kinesis.

After the release of Unbound, the band started moving toward a more experimental, cacophonous, left field, anything-sort-of-goes mode. Rick wasn't really into it anymore; he had a side group called Mask going on at the time. Rick and the band parted ways.

George and Danny continued to compose songs and put ideas together until they had amassed too many songs to count. They really needed to catalogue them somehow, so once again they called on former drummer-extraordinare-turned-engineer, Scott Rader, for assistance. Scott agreed to help record the songs, play drums, and engineer the project. This move proved the turning point; the official return of Scott to the band.

Ring of Myth's new cd is titled "Weeds" it includes ten new songs: "Offering", "Into Phase", "Plight", "Drone", "Soft Disguise", "Bird's Eye View", "For A Time", "Half Wing", "Drowning In Fire", and "Blue Stem".