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A Morning with tony Gebhard: An Extraordinary Musician, and a Dynamic Individual – Can You Say Metal?
Full Transcription Below:
Blind Abilities presents a special guest, tony Gebhard. Tony is a talented musician who plays multiple instruments, writes performs and produces his mucic on several albums. Tony lost his vision at an early age, and tells his heart-wrenching story of his vision loss and is means for overcoming the physical and emotional trauma that ensued. Listen as Tony describes his blindness training and the critical role played by his TVI. Tony tells us of his discovery of his musical talents and how music, specifically heavy metal music, helped him regain his life and his focus and led him to an already fruitful career as a musician at the early age of 20. As usual, Jeff and Pete delve into the nitty-gritty of Tony’s music: his instruments, his guitars and amps, his production tools and the musicians who influenced tony’s music.
Also, as we do in many of our podcasts, we feature numerous excerpts from Tony’s substantial music library, as well as clips from several of his Youtube videos. In order to help you identify these inserts, we have marked where each clip appears by its time-stamp in the podcast file, as follows:
* Introduction song – Tony Gebhard – Reach Out, Published on Nov 10, 2017.
* 7:07 – Dead Eyes, Published on Jul 12, 2016. The official single off the debut album, Father Forgive Me.
* 8:22 – Piano played by Tony.
* 10:00 – One Man Band totally Possible, Youtube video Published on October 25, 2015.
* 12:00 – Alive Acoustic – Youtube, Published on October 8, 2015.
* 14:48 – Impromptu performance of Van halen clip there in the hotel room, July 6, 2018.
* 15:50 – The Sun, it Shines No More, Published on Sep 6, 2014. Track 9 off Tony’s 6th solo record, NO Limits iii. A very electronic driven track.
* 17:09 – Tony’s Youtube demo of Garage Band using Voiceover on the Mac, version 6.05.
* 23:01 – The ultimate View Of Marne’s Farmlands – Tony and Chris, Published on Dec 28, 2017. Coming at you with something fun and out of the normal realm. Tony had the pleasure to work with Chris Kelley, an incredible guitarist and human being who’s come a long way as a musician. Some may know him as the other guitarist in, I Among Giants.
* 24:17 – Another Clip from the Ultimate View of Marne’s Farmland reflecting more elaborate guitar work. .
* 27:10 – Tony sings and plays his Epiphone acoustic guitar, live with Jeff and Pete in the hotel room, his acoustic rendition of Never, and a discussion of that tune. tony then shares a brand new acoustic song he’s working on, un-named as of the date of the recording.
* Note: This live “in person” performance runs from the 27:10 mark, through the 35:18 mark.
* 37:00 – Delusions, single released from tony’s upcoming Changes album. Check it out on Bandcamp, at: https://tonygebhard.bandcamp.com
* 38:04 – the Closing song is a hybrid mix of Never, beginning with tony’s acoustic performance in the hotel room, blended into the studio version, edited by the Blind Abilities team. This runs through the end of the podcast.
* You can find Tony’s music in all the normal streaming and download locations:
– Itunes, https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/fat…
– Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/Father-Forgive…
– Physical CD, https://tonygebhard.bandcamp.com/albu…
– Googleplay, https://play.google.com/store/music/a…
* You can find Tony on the following social media platforms:
– Facebook, www.facebook.com/tonygebhardmusic
– Twitter, www.twitter.com/tonygeb23
Thank you for listening!
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Full Transcription:
A Morning with tony Gebhard: An Extraordinary Musician, and a Dynamic Individual – Can You Say Metal?
Pete Lane:
Introducing Tony Gebhard.
Tony Gebhard:
It’s been crazy already, first week of conventions. Feels like it’s blown by so quick.
Pete Lane:
We’ll talk with Tony about his blindness.
Tony Gebhard:
If I try and live my life so unaccepted with what’s going on right now, I’m going to be miserable and I’m going to make everybody else around me miserable.
Pete Lane:
And we’ll listen to his music.
Tony Gebhard:
(singing)
Pete Lane:
We’ll talk with Tony about his passion for music.
Tony Gebhard:
If you are obsessed and in love with something, you will find a way to make it work and to make it something that you can listen to. I was just every day, every day, playing guitar, playing guitar, and I got a drum set when I was 10.
Pete Lane:
And we’ll listen to his music. … We’ll talk with Tony about how he coped with his transition to blindness.
Tony Gebhard:
There are good people out there, and you will find them. And if you do have a good TVI, embrace them, because that’s what they’re there for. They’re there to give you that help. They want you to feel like you can have that independence to do what you need to do to be successful.
Pete Lane:
And we’ll listen to his music.
Tony Gebhard:
(singing)
Pete Lane:
Coping with the frustration of blindness.
Tony Gebhard:
Metal music happened to be that one thing that waltzed into my life to give me that frustration and anger outlet for the loss of my sight.
Pete Lane:
We’ll talk more about his passion for music.
Tony Gebhard:
Or the nice Kurt Hammock wah.
Pete Lane:
And we’ll hear more of his music. … We’ll hear
Tony’s advice for young, blind musicians.
Tony Gebhard:
Don’t give up on music.
Pete Lane:
And, yes, we’ll hear more of his music.
Tony Gebhard:
(singing)
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson.
Pete Lane:
And I’m Pete Lane. Our guest this morning is Tony Gebhard. Tony, how you doing?
Tony Gebhard:
I’m good, man. Yeah, it’s been crazy. Already first week of conventions. Feels like it’s blown by so quick, but shoot, man, still three days left.
Pete Lane:
I’m telling you. We ran into Tony here in Orlando, Florida, at the NFB National Convention 2018. I hooked up with Tony because he’s a friend of my son, Patrick, who is a guitarist, as is Tony. Patrick told me about Tony as an accomplished musician, so I picked up YouTube and started listening, and about four hours later I put it down. Tony is a musician, plays multiple instruments, sings, composes, produces, and does about everything possible to produce multiple albums with his music.
Pete Lane:
Tony, why don’t you kick us off? This is a blindness related podcast.
Tony Gebhard:
Sure.
Pete Lane:
Tell us about your blindness, when you lost your vision and how, and a little bit about how you dealt with it at the time.
Tony Gebhard:
Sure, man, yeah. So I’m 21 now, and I have what’s called a … It’s a mouthful. Peripheral vitreoretinopathy. It’s called Stickler’s disease, and it’s a retina detachment. When I was born, essentially what happened is my retinas were weak and smaller than the average size. Granted, I still had legal blindness. I was still legally blind, so I was able to see probably about 20 over 100 or so.
Tony Gebhard:
It’s been a while, and as a child, some memories are definitely faded as far as what all happened, but I was very heavy into sports. I always played hockey. I play soccer and I was heavy into video games, constantly day and night, and that really wasn’t good for my vision either considering how close I was to the fricking computers, those screens, and it was bad with my corneas so I was having cornea issues all the while. So I was destined to lose my vision at some point, but I probably had … it’s slightly an exaggeration but also kind of the truth well over 50 different surgeries throughout my childhood with the retinal detachment, with keeping it attached to the back of my eye, trying to empty out fluids that were building up, blood clots, and just a montage of disgusting things that kept on going on.
Tony Gebhard:
I had lost the ability to see out of my right eye around age two or three from a head impact. I believe I was playing outside, and I ran into something. It’s very faded memory. So I lost my vision completely in that eye, and I was only able to see out of my left. I didn’t need to use a cane, nor did I need to read braille at the time. I was reading large print once I got into school.
Tony Gebhard:
My VI at the time, bless her heart, she was amazing. She kept me going throughout middle school and high school. She was amazing. I love her very much. Shout out to Cami Fortier. She started getting me into braille right when I was in first grade.
Jeff Thompson:
And this is in Michigan.
Tony Gebhard:
Michigan, yes. This is all in Michigan, Jenison, Michigan. So I grew up in Jenison, Michigan, one of the best places in the whole universe. It’s home. Go blue, Wolverines. I also graduated there in 2015.
Jeff Thompson:
So you’re using a TVI though. Did you bridge over into the voc rehab of Michigan?
Tony Gebhard:
Bureau Services for Blind Persons, which is essentially their state agency. Anyway, summer of ’05 comes around, and I was playing with my best friend and my cousin and his family across the street from where my family was living at the time. We were hanging out in the pool. It was hot outside. It couldn’t have been a more perfect August day, and they had a trampoline that was … I still jump on these today, just for a note, but what happened here was they didn’t have a cover around the side, nor did they have a catch net. So I mean if you fall off, you’re going to fall off. You ain’t going to get caught.
Tony Gebhard:
Anyway, we were playing this game called clock where somebody gets in the middle and spreads out their legs and their arms and tries to trip everyone. Some people be like, “That’s stupid.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? That’s what makes that stuff fun.” So my friend’s brother was on the trampoline, and he was doing that and, bam, I was the one that got caught. But, unfortunately, what happened was I had fallen face first into one of these things, and it just so happened my left eye had come right into contact with one of those trampoline springs, and, bam, it scrapes through my cornea and basically demolishes whatever’s left of my vision. I saw [inaudible]. It was just nothing but light flashes, strong, piercing flashes, and all at once, everything went black.
Jeff Thompson:
Wow.
Tony Gebhard:
And basically, I knew. Obviously, at nine years old I was devastated. All I could do was cry and then consider my life to be completely over. Obviously, I was such an adolescent at the time. You don’t know much. You don’t know life. So at that point, I was just so upset. I was rushed home. I had to go to the hospital. They had to do a bunch of all this bullshit like that, and I had to get a cornea transplant about a week later. They were able to heal everything. They were able to take care of it, but then we had to get a cornea transplant, which failed anyway within three years. The cornea started to deteriorate.
Pete Lane:
Was that a result of your video games and viewing and all that?
Tony Gebhard:
Oh, everything altogether kind of just compressed into one big cesspool of, “Hey, this is your fate.” I think it was April of 2009 I had gotten a prosthetic eye put in because at that point they said, “Look, this eye is doomed. You have to get rid of it.” And, of course, I’m a little older, around 12 years old, 13, and I started to really recognize what was going on. I was like, “This is my life. This is it. This is what’s going to happen. These are the cards that are dealt in my life that I have to accept and be completely content with. Otherwise, what am I going to do? I don’t have the kind of magical money to try and fix this, and if I try and live my life so unaccepted with what’s going on right now, I’m going to be miserable and I’m going to make everybody else around me miserable.” And that’s where I’m at today. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. My right eye is still here, but it’s non-functioning, and my left eye is prosthetic.
Tony Gebhard:
(singing)
Jeff Thompson:
However, you picked up the guitar a little bit and some other music equipment.
Tony Gebhard:
I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah, so, we’ll go back here to 2004, 2005. This was pre-accident but also in the midst of it. I had been introduced to the piano and the keyboard around age seven. I think it was my grandma’s keyboard or something like that that she had. It was a Yamaha, and it was given to me. It was one of those kid ones. It was 61 key, but I fell in love with that damn thing, and I was in the basement every damn day playing until 2:00 in the morning just learning the little demos that they had on it, the left and right hand lessons. I was infatuated. I was memorized, and I was taking my dad’s CD book and learning a bunch of music that he had. …
Tony Gebhard:
We can fast-forward here, too. I got into guitar when I was about nine years old. That was the next instrument that I picked up. So I started building this repertoire and little musical chamber in my basement and in the garage. I just fell in love with metal music. I was infatuated with it. I love it, and still, to this day, I don’t want to an ED to any of this because it’s very present. It’s still here. I love it. The guitar was, I think, the big one. The guitar was the one that really just got me to be like, “Okay, this is my instrument. This is the primary. This feels like my motif in life to just indulge in.”
Tony Gebhard:
Shoot, I remember plugging my … I didn’t have a good amp. The amp that I had that my dad gave me blew out within a month, so I took a karaoke machine and I had maxed it out so I could get distortion. So I would plug my guitar into it, and this isn’t meant for a guitar, but I didn’t care. You find a way. If you are obsessed and in love with something, you will find a way to make it work and to make it something that you can listen to. I was just every day, every day, playing guitar, playing guitar.
Tony Gebhard:
And I got a drum set when I was 10, just a small one. It was just a simplistic one, but I still played it, and I learned how to play the drums with my feet and guitar with my hands, and I had a microphone attached to a boom mic arm that I would put over to me so I could sing, play guitar, and drums all at the same time.
Pete Lane:
Yeah, I saw your one man band.
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah. Yeah.
Tony Gebhard:
It’s been a little bit of a hidden talent of mine since I was 10 years old, but I haven’t shown anybody. Sing, play guitar, and play drums at the same time. Why don’t we?
Tony Gebhard:
(singing)
Pete Lane:
It’s like a [inaudible]
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah. Dude, it just all came to me. It all came to me all at once. I’m also a spiritual guy, too, very much a God person. I feel like God did something really significant and is still doing it to me for that very reason to he just gave me this ability, this just huge passion that I can explore for myself and also exploit for others, sell it, but also still, at the same time, use it as a therapeutic tool.
Pete Lane:
Let me ask a question, Tony.
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah.
Pete Lane:
You said when you were learning the keyboard you were doing your tutorials and you listened to your dad’s CDs. What kind of CDs did he have?
Tony Gebhard:
He’s very much a metalhead, kind of like myself. He had Killswitch Engage, Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, Deep Purple, Van Halen, Motley Crew, just the whole nine yards. So it was a lot, all of that, and my mom hated it. She was like, “We ain’t listening to that crap,” just stuff like that. I’m like, “It’s not crap, Mom. It’s not crap. It’s the future.”
Jeff Thompson:
Ritchie Blackmore, Dimebag.
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah, buddy. It was something else, man. And you know what? I think it was ironic because metal music happened to be that one thing that waltzed into my life to give me that frustration and anger outlet for the loss of my sight. I think that’s why I fell in love with metal so much and why I still love it today is it gives me the ability to take out and exploit all of the frustrations and annoyances that I have with societal prejudice or self-doubt or anger, frustrate … anything that exploits negativity. It just gave me the ability to send it in whenever I listen to a good metal album. It even helps me with my happy emotions, too. It’s a soundtrack.
Jeff Thompson:
What tune would you insert here as far as a song that would illustrate your happy stuff. Probably not Jackie and Diane.
Tony Gebhard:
No. No.
Tony Gebhard:
(singing)
Jeff Thompson:
What was your first guitar that really got you into the metal?
Tony Gebhard:
What was my first guitar that got me into it? I started off with a couple Stratocasters, but I think the one that really pushed the whole metal obsession was the Dean Flying V. It was very much a Dimebag Darrell guitar, that 1980s typical glam rock kind of guy. Granted, I think they’re lame nowadays, but back then I thought they were the coolest thing in the universe, so I was just like, “Bam, this is it. This is the guitar that makes me look like a badass. This is the guitar that is going to make me feel super pumped, super jubilant and out there.” You know what I’m saying?
Jeff Thompson:
How long did that one last?
Tony Gebhard:
Probably three, four years.
Jeff Thompson:
Then what’d you go into?
Tony Gebhard:
Schecter. It was a Schecter Hellraiser, and that’s been actually my guitar the last five years.
Jeff Thompson:
What’d you amp it with?
Tony Gebhard:
Right now, I’m using a 6505 Mini Tube Head with a Marshall four by 12 cabinet. For a while I had a line six combo, one of the spider series, and then I made an upgrade. So I actually have a couple of amps. I have the Joyo Zombie, which is a hybrid tube head, 20-watt tube head from … It’s a company from the UK. They’re actually really, really cool, and you know, not to get off and do a tangent, but what’s really nice is lately what I’ve seen in the trend is a lot of these amp companies are actually releasing these mini tubes, these hybrids, for under $200. And that’s crazy because notoriously these amps are thousand-plus dollars, just for the heads, so, but no-
Jeff Thompson:
So you get a mini one and hook up a cabinet to it, and there you go.
Tony Gebhard:
Right. Right. Exactly. As long as it matches the ohms and the impedance with the particular technology that you got it with, it works. It works, so, no, that’s been my-
Jeff Thompson:
Unless you’re Van Halen and want to play around with that stuff.
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah, right, right. Exactly. I love Eddie Van Halen, man. He [crosstalk]
Tony Gebhard:
(singing)
Speaker 4:
That’s great.
Tony Gebhard:
Hell yeah, man. So voice is a little rusty, so I don’t know how well-
Speaker 4:
It’s early.
Tony Gebhard:
He taps. That’s just something else. Eruption. It never gets old.
Jeff Thompson:
No.
Tony Gebhard:
No, it never gets old.
Jeff Thompson:
So what’s your favorite effect?
Tony Gebhard:
That’s a really funny question because I’ve never really been … I don’t use too many effects on my guitar, but if I had to choose, probably wah and delays, a delay or a wah. I mean, I never really … because I’ve always been organic and dry with how I produce. The only thing that I really add effects to is my vocals, which most of the time will be filters, phasers every now and again here, lots of delays, reverb, obviously, to add that spacious effects.
Jeff Thompson:
The old Morley wah.
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah, yeah, or the nice Kurt Hammock wah, something like that. …
Jeff Thompson:
You mentioned a TVI earlier-
Tony Gebhard:
Sure.
Jeff Thompson:
… someone that helped you out. What kind of help did you receive?
Tony Gebhard:
She would … I’ll give you a big example. I’ll just go straight to the chase. I was out of school for three weeks straight after my accident. She came to the house three times a week to help me with braille, to help me with tactile. She brought me homework. She stayed for four hours a day, and she helped me. That’s the kind of help I got.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, wow.
Tony Gebhard:
That was the kind of TVI I had in my life, and to anybody who’s listening who may not have the greatest of TVI, I know there are good people out there, and you will find them. If you do have a good TVI, embrace them because that’s what they’re there for. They’re there to give you that help, and that’s what they want. They want you to feel like that you can have those provisions and have that independence to do what you need to do to be successful.
Jeff Thompson:
That probably changed your attitude to keep on going.
Tony Gebhard:
She really did. She told me that I was a dumbass when I was a dumbass, and she also helped me and made me feel good when I needed to feel good. She held me accountable.
Jeff Thompson:
Awesome.
Tony Gebhard:
That’s what I loved about here. She’d come and hold me accountable. …
Jeff Thompson:
So,
Tony?
Tony Gebhard:
Yes.
Jeff Thompson:
You’ve produced a bunch of stuff, too.
Tony Gebhard:
I do, yeah.
Jeff Thompson:
What kind of DAW do you use?
Tony Gebhard:
I use Logic Pro X for Macintosh. I’ve touched Reaper once or twice here or there on both Mac and Windows, but it never really resonated with me. I really fell in love with Logic. I mean, originally I was a Garage Band user. When I first got my Mac.
Jeff Thompson:
That’s the stepchild of [crosstalk ]
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah, pretty much the step kid that just moved in with dad.
Tony Gebhard:
What’s up, guys? This is
Tony Gebhard, and I wanted to do a tutorial video for the visually impaired on how to use Garage Band version 6.0.5. I’m going to pipe my voice over through the audio so you guys can hear what I’m doing so you can properly do it. To get voiceover set up …
Automated:
Confirm the audio setting.
Tony Gebhard:
You guys should be able to hear voiceover now. If you’re new to Garage Band and you don’t know where Garage Band is, it’s in your apps.
Tony Gebhard:
I just fell in love. I’m like, “I love this flow. I love this setup, the way the tracks are viewed, the way that the mixer is set up. I want something that’s better than this and bigger but similar,” and I found out about Logic. Obviously, not having the money for it at the time, eventually I was able to figure all that nonsense out, and I was able to build my repertoire of plugins that I use, particularly I’m very in love with iZotope and Waves and their bundles that they use because, man, they got so many amazing deals and dynamic plugins that work so well with vocals, guitars, drums, bass. Same thing with mastering that in particular. I started using Garage Band and all that back in 2012, and I didn’t start using Logic until about 2015.
Jeff Thompson:
Wow. What’s your microphone?
Tony Gebhard:
Kind of gone through various microphones. I’m definitely an SM58 guy, the industry standard. I love it, love it, love it. It was a guitar mic and a vocal mic for the longest time, but I also bought a 57, so that’s my main instrumental mic. I had an MXL Guitar Cube Pro for a little while for my guitars. For bass guitars, I usually just record via DI, direct in, through a Livewire direct box, which is really nice. Kind of just plug it into your interface as you go, and it goes straight to the computer with a signal, and all you got to do is run a plugin through it or re-amp it or something like that.
Tony Gebhard:
What was I going to say?
Jeff Thompson:
You were going to say about the 16 mics you’ve got on your drums.
Tony Gebhard:
Oh, no, actually, believe it or not, I’ve never really ever had the space to do drum recording, so that’s the one thing. My limit right now is having the luxury of recording drums. So I stick with samples and do MIDI.
Pete Lane:
MIDI.
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah. I’ve always just done MIDI for drums, obviously with synthesizers and stuff like that.
Pete Lane:
How does MIDI differ in terms of the technique and the hand-feet coordination from a live drum kit?
Tony Gebhard:
Well, there’s definitely a big, significant change. You already have pre-recorded samples and you’re playing it on a keyboard. So you got to have rhythm in your hands. If you’re going to be doing something like that, you got to know where each key is. You have to think like a drummer, too. You have to think like a drummer. How would a drummer play this, and how would they incorporate fills? How would they incorporate how to do this, this, and that? [inaudible] upbeat, downbeat. There’s some fundamentals to it, and, of course, have fun at the same time. I mean I could get here and talk about the fundamentals of rhythm and theory and stuff like that, but that’s not where I’m going with this one.
Jeff Thompson:
But that’s good that it’s started with keyboards.
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah, yeah. That’s what I’m saying. That’s the funny part. I never learned how to play a real drum set first. I learned how to play keyboard drums, so then once I actually got the ability to finally play on a drum kit, I was like, “Wait a minute. I’ve done this before,” and subconsciously, I knew that, “Okay, I can reapply, but then now I have to learn how to do it with my arms. I got to learn how to do it with my legs and incorporate all that muscle memory,” you know what I mean, “to try and figure it all out because now I got to reapply.” I wasn’t like God. I wasn’t Neil Peart right off the bat.
Jeff Thompson:
I was just going to mention Neil Peart.
Tony Gebhard:
So I wasn’t some [inaudible] right off the bat, but I had to spend a few years just taking what I knew with the keyboards and then just building right onto the drum.
Pete Lane:
I wonder how much of the current modern day drumming techniques were actually influenced by the fact that drummers were doing it on the keyboard using fingers instead of their hands and legs. Is the technique and the sequence of your rolls and things like that, has it actually evolved as a result of that? Have you ever thought about that?
Jeff Thompson:
The way I look at it is a lot of people who want to be drummers only have a keyboard.
Tony Gebhard:
Right. And that’s kind of funny nowadays. You see a lot of people who are like, “What? I don’t need a drum set anymore. I can just do it on a e-kit or I can just do it on a keyboard. In a sense, I don’t know how I feel about that, but at the same time, there’s more options. You have more accessibility now, because I know plenty of blind people, especially a lot of blind kids, who love drums but they don’t have a drum set because their parents think it’s too damn loud and they don’t want to buy them a kit-
Jeff Thompson:
[crosstalk]
Tony Gebhard:
… which shame on that because if you want to learn an instrument, you sacrifice, parents out there. Come on. Give your kid a chance.
Jeff Thompson:
Or living in an apartment.
Tony Gebhard:
Oh, yeah. Oh, God. Oh, man. I got stories about that.
Jeff Thompson:
You mentioned Neil Peart. He’s probably one of my favorite drummers for what he does. It’s just amazing. Rush was one of my bands back in the day.
Tony Gebhard:
Fly by Night, man.
Jeff Thompson:
[crosstalk] your top drummers?
Tony Gebhard:
Y’all probably don’t know many of these people, but I’ll give the band name that they’re from. Jordan Mancino. He’s the drummer for Wovenwar and As I Lay Dying, one of my favorite drummers of all time. He started As I Lay Dying back in 1999, 2000. He was one of the biggest drummers that helped influence the second wave of metalcore.
Tony Gebhard:
I’m very also in love with … J-Fo is what they call him. He’s the drummer of Killswitch Engage, also another individual who helped revolutionize that scene. Shoot.
Pete Lane:
Who is the guy from Dream Theater who’s [crosstalk]
Tony Gebhard:
Oh, Mike Portnoy.
Pete Lane:
Portnoy.
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah, Portnoy. I mean I’ve never been a really big progressive drummer, but every time I listen to Portnoy, I’m like, “Yeah, that’s him.” His triggers. He doesn’t use any of that drum alignment crap that they do. He’s all raw.
Jeff Thompson:
When people go back to The Who, Keith Moon, I mean he had, what, a five-piece drum set?
Tony Gebhard:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), and he didn’t need much.
Jeff Thompson:
And he did what he did.
Tony Gebhard:
You didn’t need much. Right. Sometimes little is best or little is more or less is more. That’s it. I was like, “Wait, what?”
Pete Lane:
There you go.
Jeff Thompson:
How about your guitar players?
Tony Gebhard:
Oh, man, that’s an endless list.
Jeff Thompson:
Now, if this was Eddie Van Halen, he would say, “I don’t have any.”
Tony Gebhard:
Right. Adam Dutkiewicz from Killswitch Engage, Nick Hipa and Phil Sgrosso from As I Lay Dying. Let’s see. I’ll even throw James Hetfield in there from Metallica. I mean he was a big one when I was a kid that I got into. Shoot, I listened to a lot of Testament when I was a kid, too. I don’t even remember the guy’s name though. I don’t know. Making myself look dumb that I can’t remember that name.
Jeff Thompson:
Just wait until you get older.
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah, really. Oh, Brian May from Queen. Love, love him.
Pete Lane:
[crosstalk] absolutely.
Tony Gebhard:
Oh, his tone is amazing.
Jeff Thompson:
He makes tones. Yeah, he has tones.
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah. He’s good. He is good.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah.
Tony Gebhard:
Shoot, man, I love so many of them. Influences go on for days. …
Pete Lane:
Tony, you mentioned earlier that you relocated to the West Coast. Talk about that a little bit.
Tony Gebhard:
Sure. A little bit of a long story, but after I graduated high school in 2015, I’d just broken up with my band in high school. There’s no bad blood, nothing negative. We just had futuristic disagreements, and we had to, “All right. Everybody’s going off and doing their own things.” I had friends on the West Coast in Alaska that I did music with online. I did a lot of online collaborations starting from 2010 to now.
Tony Gebhard:
We just got to talking. We’re brothers at this point, basically, and I was like, “What would it take for me to move out there, start over, and play music with you guys?” I stayed out there for two months, played music. I lived in Girdwood, Alaska, which is a ski resort town of about 1,500 people, so once you move there and live there for a couple months, everybody knows you and you know everybody. Whatever happens in that town, everybody’s going to know, so it keeps you in check and I really liked that. And it’s also full of freaking hippies. Everybody is doing you-know-what every day. …
Tony Gebhard:
The music scene was really interesting because it was a montage of hippie rock, blues, folk, and then your occasional banjo player out in the woods and stuff like that. It was a lot of fun, but this excursion didn’t last long. I came back two months later from homesickness because this was my first real move away from Michigan, and I learned a lot from it.
Tony Gebhard:
Instantly, I started writing because this is what gave me a lot of inspiration to start writing my first CD. So I started writing a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton, four or five months passed, after song, song after song after song. I came back to Michigan. I was back in Michigan at the time. I was going to a lot of metal shows. I appeared on TV a couple times for a crowd surfing incident, which was really, really interesting. I decided to go back to Alaska later that fall of 2016 to give it another shot, to try. Emotionally, I felt ready. I felt like I was able to tackle it a little bit better.
Tony Gebhard:
So I got onto a plane, and I was actually in England for three weeks for my friend’s wedding. So we went to England first. We were in London, Brixham, and Plymouth, which was really fun, and I love that place over there. Man, they got good food. They got good community. So September rolls around, and that’s when I flew to Alaska. I stayed there for a year. I was actually there for a year, so everything worked out good at the time being. I started playing drums a lot more, actually. This is when I picked drums back up, and now I’ve been playing drums for over 10 years, but I never played it day after day after day. It was one of those where I touch it when I have the chance.
Tony Gebhard:
So I started playing drums a lot. Me and my buddies, we formed a groove metal band. The rhythm of the metal music is solely based off the drums and the guitars and how they synchronize and how they make you move your body. So that’s why they call it groove metal. So we did that, and it was really fun. We recorded an album. We got everything taken care of. Production has kind of been slacking a little bit as of late because everyone’s been busy, but the album’s basically going to be done and released out soon.
Tony Gebhard:
I’m not doing it anymore only because I had to move. We were called [inaudible], and it was really cool stuff. I also got my guide dog while I was out there. I flew to New York City for three weeks. Speaking of, Guiding Eyes is here. Actually just saw those guys yesterday, so anybody who’s a Guiding Eyes person, woo, I’m with you all the way.
Tony Gebhard:
I had her for a year. We hiked through Denali National Forest, which was really fun, up in Alaska. We traveled through Chicago. We were in LA, New york, fricking everywhere, and it was such a blast. Came home actually this past October. She had to go early this April. It wasn’t anything too bad, but it just wasn’t the best time in my life to keep having a dog. But that was kind of it in a slightly big nutshell.
Pete Lane:
Rejuvenated, reborn, that kind of thing?
Tony Gebhard:
Yes. Yes. Yeah. I would definitely say so. I was able to come back home and reinstate everything that was going on, start from square one again. But it’s been an adventure.
Jeff Thompson:
Why don’t you strap on your guitar?
Tony Gebhard:
Sure. Yeah. Oh, I’m going to play at least a couple songs here. This song is called Never. It’s track 12 off of my CD, Father Forgive Me. …
Tony Gebhard:
(singing)
Tony Gebhard:
Thank you.
Jeff Thompson:
Awesome.
Tony Gebhard:
Thank you, guys.
Jeff Thompson:
Give me a little background on that song. Where’d that come from?
Tony Gebhard:
It actually comes from addiction. I’ve gone through drugs before, and it’s about the infatuation and also the psychotic hatred, then the two-faced attitude that we all have. I mean I bet you everybody in here has had a least one run-in with an addiction or two, and we all have that understanding like, “Look, we hate this,” but at the same time it’s meant to dilute us and make us feel so needy for it like it’s going to bring retribution and all these things. It was written three years ago. I actually wrote this before I moved to the West Coast for a short period of time. As men, we also deal with pornography at times or certain things that can take control. So that’s where that song comes from.
Jeff Thompson:
Thank you.
Pete Lane:
[inaudible]
Jeff Thompson:
Thanks for sharing.
Tony Gebhard:
Yeah. And to be honest, even being cookie-cutter with some of the things I write, I write music for other people, but I also primarily focus on making it a therapy session for me.
Tony Gebhard:
Don’t have a name yet. …
Jeff Thompson:
So what advice would you have for someone who is interested in music, young, who’s at seven, eight, nine, 10, 12, 14, all those stages that you went through? What advice would you have for them?
Tony Gebhard:
I mean, to be honest with you, just keep loving it because it’s … I’m going to keep it basic. Just love what you do. People may complain along the way like, “Hey, you’re being too loud,” or, “Oh, turn that down. We’re trying to sleep.” And if that’s the case, plug in some headphones and just listen to music. Don’t give up on music. Don’t let it ever dissipate. Everybody has their thing, but if you’re somebody who finds a huge infatuation with putting on a CD or putting a record, if you’re into vinyl, or just playing guitar and sitting there and learning something, just don’t give up, okay?
Tony Gebhard:
It doesn’t matter who’s better. It’s not a fricking competition. It’s not a fricking, “I’m better than you,” glam show. No. None of that shit matters because what you do is what makes you you and it allows you to exploit your emotions, your frustrations with your disability. It’s an escape. It’s an escape that won’t judge you. It’s like that perfect person in your life who you can talk to and who can talk to you right back. That’s what music is.
Jeff Thompson:
And if someone wants to hear you expressing your emotions, where can they find your music?
Tony Gebhard:
So my music is everywhere you can stream or download music, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Play. So it’s everywhere for your Android users and your Apple users. Just look up Tony Gebhard on the Play Store or Apple Music, wherever you get your music, wherever you get it. Father Forgive Me is my first album that’s out right now. It came out in July 4th of 2016. We’ve just passed the two-year mark for that thing. Oh my goodness. Woof.
Tony Gebhard:
I have a couple singles out as well, plenty of videos on YouTube that you guys can watch. I do tutorials on programs. I do live videos. I got a lot of my music up there too. Be on the lookout too. My second album, Changes, is on its way as well. I’m almost complete with my second CD. There’s a couple singles out right now, so if you want to play one, yeah, I’d be glad to have that inserted.
Tony Gebhard:
(singing)
Pete Lane:
We’ve been speaking with Tony Gebhard. Tony, thank you so much for sharing all of your stories with us.
Tony Gebhard:
Oh, it’s a pleasure.
Pete Lane:
Cannot say enough about how you sounded right here in the hotel room. Ladies and gentleman, that was live and in person, Tony Gebhard, with his Epiphone acoustic. You can find more from Tony in terms of music on YouTube. He’s got a Tony Gebhard channel. He’s all over the music industry. You can find his latest album, Father Forgive Me, and he’s got one pretty much in the can that we will keep you alerted about as it comes forward. Tony, for Jeff and me and the Blind Abilities audience, thanks so much for joining us.
Tony Gebhard:
You’re very welcome. It was a pleasure.
Jeff Thompson:
It’s our pleasure, man.
Tony Gebhard:
(singing)
[Music] [Transition noise]
When we share What we see Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
For more podcasts with a blindness perspective check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com. On Twitter @blindabilities.
Download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that’s two words. Or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com.
Thanks for listening.