Glenn Barry

The haunting melodies and vocals of Kamelot elicit a mystical yearning reminiscent of the place they’re named after, or some crap like that. No, really, their progressive bent and the skill they exhibit is pure storytelling in music. They’ve been around for 17 years or so and are currently touring in Europe (and soon after, Japan). I wasn’t really able to Google much about other members of the band than dynamic duo lead singer Khan and guitarist Thomas Youngblood, so it was a cool thing to be able to interview bassist Glenn Barry, who is temporarily being replaced on said current tour by former Kamelot bassist Sean Tibbets due to family commitments.

This is the first part of an interview I did back on August 19 – the second will be up ASAP – between the holidays, pain, work and travel life has been busy.

MI: Do you contribute to the writing at all?

GB: Actually, not lately, I haven’t been due to my lifestyle. I have a full-time job at home and any kind of activities I have… Tommy and Khan are just kind of writing together and kind of bonding, probably more communicating with the writing now with them two but there were discussions about the next record that each band member, especially with Oliver Palotai (new keyboardist, formerly of bands Doro and Blaze) being a new member as well, is that we’re all going to contribute to the next album, just to kind of see what happens and what comes up, to be a little more creative with each individual as far as the writing goes. As far as the basslines, I design my own basslines for the CD when they write it, with the co-producers and whatnot.

MI: Cool. What’s the job you do at home?

GB: I’m a scenic artist. I do a lot of stuff for the theme park environment, like when you go to Busch Gardens, Disney World and Six Flags. Like all that kind of scenic art.

MI: That’s awesome. Are you from Florida also?

GB: Yeh, I’m originally from New Jersey, from the Roxbury/Denville area. I moved to Florida when I was 12, and I haven’t been back to Jersey since.

MI: OK (reading from the Myspace site)…Kamelot tell the (fictitious) story of a young-and-hopeful opera singer who is attacked, raped and injured on her way to her great debut, she could never recover from this traumatic event and every day and night she wonders what that night would have been like on her debut.

What made you guys come up with that? That’s like, insane.

GB: Oh yeah, I don’t know it was more like a vision of a story and between the words, the story and the song it just kind of came up as more visual, they probably saw it as being more like a video because we already had a vision of what the video was going to look like but we wanted to take it farther with the creativity, with the two together.

MI: (after recorder died, don’t ask) So, you previously mentioned something about making a whole bunch of film quality videos and releasing them on a disc?

GB: Yeah, we’re going to release that next year. We’re actually in the midst of it. It’s hard to get videos done, taking the time to get over there to shoot the videos.

MI: Where do you need to go?

GB: Serbia. We found a really good production company out that way and they’re really good to work with.

MI: What are they called?

GB: The name of the company is Icode.

MI: You’re still working with Patrick Ullaeus?

GB: No, we decided to pick a different person to work on our videos to see how it would go. He’s a really visionary person and he kind of sees what we’re talking about, what we’re looking for and he has his own ideas which is really cool, and between that and corresponding with him about ideas he’s really good.

MI: What’s his name?

GB: I forgot his name – the dude from Icode 🙂

(Here’s the video)

MI: Well, alright. So there’s not a lot of stuff about you online, but you’ve been there since the beginning, no?

GB: Pretty much.

MI: Have you ever thought that you would get as big as you did?

GB: Not really, no. It’s kind of like, when I started with Kamelot at a younger age, it’s always just a dream to tour Europe and play your music and see how other bands react, and it was more like a hobby for me. and not like a business down the road that it’s turned into. It’s a lot of fun now, it’s always growing and it gets more interesting, the fans all over the world are starting to know Kamelot which is a good feeling. It took a lot of years to get there but we’re excited.

MI: I see that you’ve toured EVERYWHERE.

GB: Yep, I’ve been everywhere.

MI: Except Israel! You think you’d ever go?

GB: How’s the metal scene there?

MI: The metal scene is awesome! My site’s about… well, I promote the Israeli metal scene in English. There’s bands like Orphaned Land, who are kind of your cup of tea, and there’s all kind of different types of bands. It’s great, you can check out the site. Hatebreed played there, Therion is playing there, Nine Inch Nails is playing there, Paradise Lost, and they sell out. Like Megadeth came, 5000 sold out.

GB: Cool! I’d love to go to Israel, that would be awesome.

MI: So I see you also go to Japan, and Serbia, and G-d knows where. Was there a culture that you saw, that you were just in shock from, like “Wow,” that was completely different from what you know in America?

GB: Yeah, actually, one of the last trips I took with the band, we were always dreaming of going to Russia. Going to Moscow, y’know, and it’s so far north and we actually have a fan base as far as Russia goes, I should go there and see the country and experience the culture, and experience the fan base a opposed to other countries. That was really cool. That was an interesting trip.

SEE PART 2 OF THIS INTERVIEW HERE!