Ex-MEGADETH Guitarist JEFF YOUNG Checks In From ROKTOPUSS Sessions

Former MEGADETH guitarist Jeff Young has issued the following update:

"I've been up in Nashville tracking with ROKTOPUSS [the new band featuring Young alongside Lorraine Lewis [ex-FEMME FATALE, vocals], Roxy Petrucci [ex-VIXEN, drums] and E.J. Curse [NO DUH, bass]),and my buddy Michael Wagener. Can't wait for everyone to hear our two new songs, 'Away' and 'Desperate'. The tracks have a Southern California fried STONES, AC/DC, T.REX kind a vibe to 'em and Lorraine's vocals are equisitely poignant. So, keep an ear peeled for those two.

"I used my new Gibson Jimmy Page Custom Shop Les Paul straight into the killer Randall RM4's Plexi module with stunning results. For acoustic, both Michael and i were pleasantly surprised at the tones we coaxed out of the new Parker P8E acoustic. In fact, Michael ended up ordering one for himself!! Two days later, there were two Parker P8Es at WireWorld [studio] ;-) Thanks so much to John Vitale at Randall-Parker for his ongoing above and beyond the call care and support. Also managed to get some stuff completed for my album. Thanks so much to the mucho talented Michael Pisculli for lending his awesome fretless bass prowess and Gregg Analla for contributing some magical vocals.

"I just uploaded a VERY ROUGH MIX of a new 'Equilibrium' [upcoming Jeff Young solo album] track, entitled 'Unraveling'. This is just a raw working mix with no effects or candy coating... still, there's cool vibe... so far, so good... so what... so to speak ;-) I wrote this track with Badi Assad. We are both huge fans of the Brazilian experimental group UAKTI and we wanted to come up with a song that reflected our passion for their music. Badi had this cool sounding kalimba she was messing around with and i threw in some flamenco rasgueados to spice things up... big surprise there ;-) At first, we thought the song should be instrumental — like UAKTI — but then we added some vocals anyway. When i was going through chemo, I was listening back to the tracks and the instrumental version seemed to have more of a spark... well, you can see where this is going... what you're hearing on the 'rough mix' is only Matt Chamberlain's wonderfully spontaneous drums and percussion, my 1955 Barbero flamenco and Badi in the verses playing a little kalimba the size of a small book. Pretty cool.

"This one is almost finished. I think?? There may be some parts where a little flute here and there would be nice... or perhaps I'll just leave it sparse, as is. Let's see what happens."