Shadow Gallery Procrastinated, Then Soldiered On

When Shadow Gallery vocalist Mike Baker passed away last October, Gary Wehrkamp, lead guitarist and spokesperson for the band, immediately went into crisis mode.

"When Mike died, I got the call and was dumbfounded and stunned," Wehrkamp told Noisecreep. "Of course, I thought of about 20 things at once, but my focus was not on what Shadow Gallery was going to do as far as finding a new singer. I did have to still manage the band, tell the record labels, call about 40 people, make press releases, start putting together tributes and be there for his family. None of this is fun to do."

The band navigated the murky, initial waters and only then did they think about what to do next, regarding the band. And even that was slow going while they mourned their tragic loss. "We didn't really discuss much as a band regarding what we would do," Wehrkamp said. "The record companies provided no pressure to finish and allowed us to take as much time as we needed. We were not playing shows at the time, so there was no real pressing issue to resolve it. So we simply did the easy thing: We procrastinated in making a decision. I knew we would finish the record, but we didn't talk much about it for a while. When we did resume, we considered simply singing the parts ourselves, as Carl, Brendt and I all contribute a lot of vocals to all of the records. Eventually we thought it would be good to have a main singer involved." That's when they found Brian Ashland.

"I was building a recording studio in 2006 and the general contractor was also a musician, and we always talked about bands and music," Wehrkamp, a huge sushi fan who admits to gobbling the stuff before every show Shadow Gallery has ever played in Manhattan, said. "Even my framer was a huge progressive rock fan and they all knew all of the Shadow Gallery albums very well. It was flattering. One day, Rich the contractor mentioned a new band he joined and talked about the guitarist, but was only talking about how good of a singer he was. As it turns out, he was not the lead singer, but he composed a lot of the music and sang guide vocals for the actual lead singer." Wehrkamp listened to an MP3 and was impressed.

"There were very talented vocal parts that were like Geoff Tate, but also very different. I loved all the reverb on the tracks," Wehrkamp continued. He sent an email to the singer, praising his vocals and asked him be a part of a record he was producing. It never panned out and three year later, Wehrkamp was of the mindset that that each member of Shadow Gallery should sing more instead of adding a whole new voice and element.

Bassist Carl Cadden-James was into the idea of having a strong frontman with a killer voice ... like Geoff Tate. The band tossed the idea of asking Tate, which seemed exciting yet improbable. "It hit me that I know a guy who sings like that already," Wehrkamp said. "I lost touch with him and then began my search. There was no trace of anything! I called anyone who I thought knew him and nobody had a clue where he was! I thought I tracked him down to Texas -- thousands of miles from here, but when it wasn't him."

By some miracle of fate, the singer worked with Carl at the same company in the same building! "We never auditioned anyone, never considered anyone, but set our sights on this guy, Brian Ashland, and had a dinner meeting and he sang some demos and we moved forward and that was it! The rest of us still sang a lot on the record, and we added some guest singers as well, so it ended up being a very good compromise," Wehrkamp said.

'Digital Ghosts' is that record and it's out now.