Hello! Please introduce MARIO ROSSI BAND to our readers.
MR: First of all, thanks for this interview!
Well, we are a band who plays blues rock with passion, no frills, no involvement with that show-biz thing. It’s pure, one hundred percent music.
Can you tell us more about your latest album Smoke Burst?
MR: This is a very strong album, we recorded it in the old school way, live. Everybody giving the best, 10, 14 hours in the studio playing and playing a lot.
The repertoire is very rich, heavy songs, blues ballads, improvisation…
As a special guest you can hear the harmonica master Steve Bell from Chicago and the brilliant voice from Lu Vitti from Sao Paulo.
How easy is it to live and survive in Brazil these days?
MR: Well, we are taking more and more great reviews after 4 all original albums, I’m very grateful about it but in Brazil nothing is easy. The music in Brazil is dead, the political scenario is chaotic. Talking about music It’s pure passion for us, a lot of clubs closed the doors permanently after the pandemic period and some rare blues, rock festivals are keeping an elitist attitude. No space for new bands or even blues and rock bands, just “blues” or “rock” as a brand marketing point.
When did you start writing music and who were your early passions and influences?
MR: For the early bands in a professional way I think I started to write songs with 17, 18 years old.
When I started to play my early passions were Chuck Berry, Elvis and Beatles. From the first album ‘Electric Art’ (2019) on I can cite Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin, John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers, Ten Years After, Black Sabbath and all the great blues roots masters.
What are your main impulses for writing metal music?
MR: Well, I don’t consider myself as a metal composer, but in my music these metal origins cited before are my influence. I can also cite bands like Blue Cheer, Motorhead and Thin Lizzy as huge influences too.
What do you personally consider to be the most significant moments and pieces in your musical work?
MR: The first ever song played in an FM Radio, it was in London in 2020. Memorable. Also the albums ‘Heavy’ and ‘Smoke Burst’ both opened good doors for us specially in Europe and USA. We had during in a month and a half around 600 downloads for both albums per day in russia. Fantastic!
How would you describe and rate the music scene of the city you are currently living in?
MR: As I told you in Brazil the things are very weird. There’s no opportunities to keeping playing live and It’s less and less. We’ve been playing sporadically in some festivals, cultural festivals or private events. Before the pandemic years we’ve been playing in clubs…
There’s two agencies from Germany in touch for an European tour, we are looking forward to it happens soon.
When it comes to being a musician, what are your criteria for quality? What are your main challenges and ambitions as a musician?
MR: There’s no musicians or music fans in my family, it’s a real personal thing. I’ve been discovering rock and roll during my childhood and it was a magic portal for a new world with no way back.
My quality criteria I think is the dedication, references from my favorite albums and recording methods.
The challenges are always to keep the rocks rolling. And as musician my only ambitions are play good and make good music.
What do you usually start with when working on a new song or lyrics?
MR: I really, really love to play guitar, I love to play it in a free way, my way, solos improvisations, some covers that I like and always something happens during these lonely sessions. My pocket audio recorder is always around in my studio, I keep recording riffs or chords ideas. Also for the lyrics, I write what I’d like to say. When I have a title or quote idea I write in somewhere. After this process start the hard work, the creative mind exercise.
Please tell us a bit about the selection process for deciding what to write about. What sources do you draw from for research purposes, and how much time do you generally spend on research and gathering material?
MR: I got my titles, quotes notes and a lot of riffs and chords in my pocket audio recorder. Sometimes three, four of these recordings sounds good to work in only one song. I immediately match it to a good song title in my notes.
For example, I think I got material for more three albums, these research and gathering is too fast. In a day I can select what I feel coherent for a new album direction. The process to record ideas and mainly write the lyrics is more long. I can say three to five months.
As more and more people produce and release music, there has been an exponential growth in promotion agencies. What's your perspective on the promotional system? To what extent do you feel it possibly undermines musical freedom?
MR: The perspective is always to find a way to connect the music with the listener who will like it. No big deal. The music is too segmented even more nowadays but I can’t see it as negative to keep the musical freedom.
The rock scene has changed considerably over the past century. What, in your opinion, could or should be new forms and formats for music? Should we preserve the old-school spirit or move forward together with musical "evolution" (or "degradation")?
MR: Well, keep both I’m sure is a good way. I like more the old-school vibes, the soul is there but younger musicians will listen to a bigger variety of new artists and bands. The important for me is in a way keep the roots alive even with new influences.
Music-sharing sites, blogs, and a flood of releases in general are said to be killing music. What's your view on this topic?
MR: Yes. It’s a new era for the music and a lot of bands and artists clearly don’t care about how the album or a single will sound. Good bands, good artists. I mean, the technology demand is producing too much fast processed music. Less and less musicians are interested to keep it organic. This is the main problem, a lot of recordings sounds like a thousand of plugins. You know, computer is a very good friend for many things in musical production but it need to be limited because a computer doesn’t have soul.
Please recommend two bands to our readers that you feel deserve their attention.
MR: JD Simo. A brilliant American guitarist and singer and the young soul of the original blues, Marquise Knox. The man of the real blues for the future.
What are your plans for the near future? Thank you and see you next time!
MR: We are recording right now a new and instrumental album. We also had great reviews about our instrumental songs from ‘Smoke Burst’ so this is an old idea that I feel it’s the right moment to do. Also a live session for DVD/CD will be recorded soon. In a few months I will check my audio recorder to prepare another album like ‘Heavy’ and ‘Smoke Burst’.
Who knows an European tour soon?
Thank you very much for this interview!