Byron House has played with legends like Robert Plant, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and many more. He now finds himself in a new band, Cosmic Cathedral, alongside prog rock royalty Neal Morse, Chester Thompson, and Phil Keaggy. Byron recently took some time to talk about the debut Cosmic Cathedral record and look back on his career.
Please press the PLAY icon for the MisplacedStraws Byron House interview –
On how Cosmic Cathedral got together – The four of us got together late January ’24. I guess I had known Neal, well, I’d known all these guys for some time known Neal probably the longest. No. Maybe Phil. Maybe Phil I’d known the longest. Yeah. He’s, he’s been around here a long time and, and so is Neal. I guess Chester would be the newest addition to the community. But he’s been here a long time too. So, Neal ended up, I think at a Steve Hackett show where Chester was also there, and I believe they met for the first time there. He felt like, “Oh, I should probably, contact Chester, maybe do some playing”, legendary cat meets legendary cat, I guess. I had just kind of known, Neal and I played a little bit on his Testimony album. We live not too far from each other. Neal had also been wanting to play some with Phil and they just kinda, I think Neal was really the driving force behind the four of us getting together. I used to do a ton of this in my hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, just getting together with no agenda other than turn on and get the, get the sounds going and see what happens. That’s kind of how we got together the first time.
On if prog rock is something that was out of his wheelhouse – You could say that. We’ve all had varied backgrounds. Neal would be the one who’s kind of really made his life in this genre. Chester for example, I’m talking about them now, but I’ll tell you about me too. Chester had never really played prog music until he got in Genesis. Of course he was in Weather Report before that. So this is sort of leading me around to, yeah, I grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky and played a variety of instruments growing up. Five string banjo was kind of my first real chosen thing, although I started on piano and so my interests have just been wild. Across the board from the time I was just a kid.
My banjo teacher, when I first started taking banjo, I saw Mahavishnu Orchestra in concert, and I asked my banjo teacher, “What is that?” He said, “That’s jazz”. I said, “Ooh, that’s jazz. Well, my dad has a Chet Baker record, and they, that doesn’t sound quite the same.” But anyway, so as I was coming out of high school, I heard Joco Pastorius and wanted to play bass. I was already playing a little bit of bass when the bass player in our bluegrass band would play some fiddle tunes he wrote, so I would play some bass. Interestingly enough, my main listening in those days was Weather report. A good bit of Joni Mitchell, but yeah, Frank Zappa, the Grateful Dead, and just my roots too were, that was a connection to country music. Funnily enough, and yeah, you could call that Americana, I suppose. I was a big just in high school, I was a big Yes fan, and King Crimson and, and the early Genesis stuff and, and so much of that Gentle Giant, all kinds of stuff like that. But I just kinda started, once I got into bass the opportunities just started opening up. I was in a local band that worked all the time, and we played some Weather Report and some different kinds of jazzy types of things, but we also sort of turned into a cover band that was sort of top 40-ish with all the oldies and stuff sprinkled.
My earliest really training, or really self-training was on the fretless electric bass, and then I went on to fretted bass, but I owned an upright too. I got to study a bit with that too. My only real studies coming up on bass was like five and a half or so years of classical training and on a Jamie Eversol camp on the jazz tip. I always knew I wanted to be in music in Nashville, was just an hour south of my hometown. Really easy choice to come here. I didn’t officially move here till I was about to be 27.
On how he ended up in Nashville – What brought me here was there was a studio owned by a Belgian family, the Nayan family, who interestingly enough had a sort of a Bluegrass Newgrass family band. They owned this machine called a Fairlight CMI, which you hear on the Peter Gabriel records, and the Thomas Dolby records and Laurie Anderson and all this sort of stuff. Part of my history I guess I skipped over was when I was just maybe eight or so, my uncle switched on Bach, what I thought was best aria I’d heard at the time. So I sort of fell in love with Bach and Moog at the same time. I’ve always had sort of a penchant for messing with synthesizing and stuff.
I got this opportunity to come, kind of intern at the Castle, learn to program the Fairlight. So that was what originally brought me here. I was keen on doing an audition for the Symphony at the time. Then they ended up folding for about two years, so I never played an audition.
During that time, my friend Bill Lloyd, another Bowling Green guy who’s kind of known sort of in power pop circles a bit, and also the country world. He was co-writing with a guy from Texas, Rad Foster, and they formed this group, Foster and Lloyd, and that was my first road gig. So that was kind of my sort of a Byrds meet the Beatles, meet the Everly Brothers entryway into country music and Nashville has always been quite a vibrant community. Any of these kind of studio session driven towns, musicians who have diverse backgrounds in jazz and, and all kinds of music are gonna show up and see what they can do. So yeah, I met some people along the way in country, it was sort of country rock. We got to tour around a bunch for about five years and, and I kept this home at the Castle where I had a steady gig whenever I wasn’t on the road. Engineering, a bit of producing and programming the synths and playing bass as I found the opportunity in the time after about five years of that or a little better had an opportunity to kind of just return to full-time bass playing. That’s where I’ve been hanging the hat since.
On if he had pre-written material or it was all new Cosmic Cathedral songs – I think the only thing I remember bringing in didn’t, didn’t eventually get used. We jammed on it, if I’m recalling correctly. But yeah, I always am a big proponent of just let the ideas fly and see who latches onto what. So, for example, the middle section of “Walking in Daylight” came out of one of the, that was sort of my riff. I’ll start a groove, or all start a riff and, and oftentimes I’ll throw some weird little timing slice in the middle of it. It’s, a funny little thing. The one song “I Won’t Make It” is one Neal just brought in and we kind of played a session on that one that wrote a chart and did it just like we would do any typical pop ballad.
I dig the fact that the record has all these kind of Crimsonish, Genesis-like elements and very proggy kind of classic. Neal, he just owns that kind of genre, that world. He’s so adept at all of that, and he and Jerry kind of were able to assemble the best of the bits that. Just happened on the fly. Some of that may have actually ended up on the record, just things that we were just jamming, and it was well recorded enough at the time that it could be assembled into something then.
On if “Deep Water” was approached as one piece of music or as 9 separate parts – Well, that’s the way we recorded it. So we’ve yet to play it, it’s never been played, start to finish. Yet there’s rumormthat’s gonna happen this fall. No, it’ll happen this fall. I’ve got a lot of wood shedding to do, or just, I need to memorize it.
In order to kind of be efficient about getting the record done, it looked like, okay, well we are gonna get to make a record. So we took a couple of weeks. Just Chester and Neal and myself, and from jams and song ideas and different things like that, that Neal and Jerry had kind of assembled the various sections started coming together and “Deep Water Suite” kept just getting a little longer and a little longer. It’s kind of hilarious that that carries cachet with the with the audience. The Epic. It did with me as a kid too, to some degree. I heard that that was how Bruford ended up leaving Yes. He was like, “Close to the Edge”, had been assembled, he’s like “I’m not playing this”, but I think it’s a hoot. It’d be fun. We’ll do it. Most of this stuff is pretty playable. There’s a few sections that took some extra work in the studio, and I’ll have to sit in the woodshed a little bit with some of those more technical parts. Forgive me if I’m rambling and getting off topic here.
So, many of those things Neal had done little demo mockups of, and so a lot of times there was a bass part and I said, “Hey, send me that MIDI file”. And so I just printed out, I’m a notation reader, be because of my time in jazz band and my classical studies. A lot of ’em were just great parts. It’s going to the notes I play are just part of what they’ve, eventual thing sounds like. It’s huge, but it’s also gonna sound like me just ’cause that’s for better or for worse, that’s what I sound like. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to hang around long enough and the people I’ve hung with and I’ve had, I’ve done a lot of country stuff and different things, but I’ve also done a little bit of kind of the athletic side of that with like Nickel Creek and Sam Bush Band. It’s been an interesting song and jamming kind of it for me. We would track these and I’d go straight really off the printed page for sections then I could find as the theme developed, okay, this, now this is just me, riffing on whatever the three of us or the four of us come up with.
Some of the stuff came outta the original jam, which was the four of us, and then much of the compositional elements and stuff with just Chester and Neal and myself. Aside from “Heart of Life” which is all Neal. He had done this incredible demo. It just needed live playing. I’m sure there are some improvised moments in there for me, but largely I’m just reading the page. For better or for worse, I’ve spent a lot of my career reading some sort of chart and. Ot’s a great way to communicate ideas efficiently. And like I say, for better or for worse, I like to think that I can make music out of what’s on paper. What’s on paper is just math really. But then I fall into this thing of, I’m not all that often called on to fully memorize lots of things, but I have a good ear so I can hear what’s coming next and just kind of remember it.
On playing with Robert Plant – Buddy Miller had been a great friend to me and he recommended me for that. I came in kind of, I don’t know if Robert had ever heard me on anything he’d seen the other players, like once saw Marco (Giovino) I think with Patty Griffin. Buddy was like, “I’ve been telling Robert about you and, we’re gonna book 12 days in December of 2009”, I guess it was. Then he called a couple days before and said, “So if it’s not happening when we get in there it could all be over in a day or two”. Well, as it should be.
I think it was halfway through day two, Buddy was going around to everybody, “Robert really hopes everyone’s gonna wanna go play this stuff on the road”. “Let me check my book”. I didn’t know till the spring after we had, we did those 12 or so days in December, and then in January we came in for maybe two or three more days and I think we had cut 21 songs and then in the spring. I got this sort of lyric book for the tour, and on the cover it said Band of Joy and my heart just kind of melted because that’s the band Robert had as a kid. The world knows now who’s seen the, the documentary, which is fantastic, I guess you call it documentary, Becoming Led Zeppelin. Robert mentioned later, he just felt like he was in a room with guys who had nothing to lose. We were just there to see what can we make something happen? We hope Robert likes it and he’s in a class of his own. As far as you know, the experience I had for two years there with him was pretty incredible.
On upcoming plans – There’s not a lot. I’ve kind of have time off. A nice position now to be able to do some traveling just for fun. My wife and I go around, the next thing on the calendar, I go like week to week, so I’m fanboy a thousand percent this week. I’ve been out for nights of music two nights in a row already, and tonight my wife and I will attend the Kraftwork 50th anniversary show. Huge, huge Kraftwork fan and this will be my third time, Then I’m going over to Knoxville tomorrow to spend four days at Big Ears, which is kind of I guess they’d call it sort of an avant garde music festival. I’ve never been for all four days. So that would be from live wise. Musically, it’s a not a lot scheduled right now. I play with a gal named Sandra McCracken. Who’s mostly known in Christian music. She’s totally a folky and just maybe my favorite singer. She’s great. We’re actually doing some women’s conferences weekends. Got three more of those. One in Chicago, one in Santa Clarita, and one here in Nashville. But that’s April and September. So I’m trying to see what else crops up. I’m, I’m keeping little chunks of my schedule open just for things that I think might happen.
