Mark Zonder has been a fixture in the prog-metal scene for decades as the former drummer for genre legends Fates Warning. In 2022, Zonder teamed up with his former Fates Warning bandmate Ray Adler to create the more straight-ahead rock band A-Z. The new lineup of that band sees Zonder and Adler joined by Philip Bynoe, Nick van Dyk, Jimmy Waldo, and Simone Mularoni and they have released their second record, A2Z2.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Mark Zonder Interview –
On combining members of Warlord and Redemption to form the new lineup – Instead of Warlord and Redemption, it’s more about surrounding myself with friends, pros, and guys that I can really trust and that are mature musicians. Basically, when I started this, I have 18-year-old twins. So, for the last 18, well we have to take it back a few years, but for the last x amount of years, I wasn’t really on the road. I wasn’t really doing the band thing so much because I wanted to raise my kids. So, it got to that point where it’s like, okay, now it’s time to go because they’re fine and everything’s fine. So, when I decided to do this, it was all in, it was going to be album, tour, interviews, blah, videos like old school eighties. That was my philosophy. I decided, okay, at my age, I’m not 25. So, at my age, if I’m gonna do something, I’m all in or I’m not gonna do it. That’s just the way it is and that’s the way I’ve been all the time anyways. I was gonna put my money where my mouth was and I was gonna do everything first class. Whether it’s the artist, the guys in the band, the artist doing the artwork to the guy who’s mixing it to the label. The label was very important obviously as well. We’ve all heard the horror stories.
I told the guys, “Hey, this is what we’re doing. This is not a project. Okay. Get rid of the P word. This is not a project. This is not what I’m doing”. If I wanted a project, I’d go get hired by other people, make money and be on my way. This is a band. I want to go out on tour. I want to do a second record. I want the second record to be bigger and better than the first record and the third one, and whatever. I’m basically acting like I’m 22 years old all over again doing a very eighties style. It was all good and everything was great until the record was done, and it was time to talk about going out on tour and let’s just, I’ll just leave it short and sweet. It wasn’t gonna happen. The whole thing, I just knew this just wasn’t gonna happen. This wasn’t going any further. So basically, I’d already sent the guys 150 different drum ideas to work on. I wasn’t hearing anything back from anybody and so on and so forth, and just really realized, reached out numerous times. Just realized if I was gonna continue this, I’d have to go in a different direction.
I started writing with a bunch of people. Nothing really was happening. Nick (van Dyk) and I go back 30 years or so, we’re good friends. One of the few people in the world that I leave my kids, my car keys and my checkbook with, just one of those guys. Philip Bynoe’s in that thing too, in that club too. We go to see Kansas, and Phil (Ehart)’s a good friend of mine, the drummer, and we go see him and Nick says to me, “Hey, you know, we’ve been talking for a long time about working together. Why don’t we start doing something?” I go, “Cool”. So we start working. Ideas are going back and forth and everything’s going great. It’s cool, it’s great. I play the heavy metal Hall of Fame thing here in Agora Hills where Lou Gramm and Twisted Sister and Chris Impellitteri get inducted and I play with Chris.
We play AC/DC or whatever. It was fun. Great guys, him and James are great guys. I mean, all the guys were great. Really fun. And Nick comes up to me backstage and he goes, “Hey, you know, I’ve been thinking you put so much time, energy, and money and you got A-Z to a certain level.” He goes, “Why don’t we just continue on and use this?” And I literally wanted to kiss him on the lips. I didn’t wanna broach it to him ’cause I didn’t wanna be pushy and try to shove something down his throat. But it made my month, made my year, it got me kind of up off the floor and. The rest is history.
On bringing in back-up vocalists to flesh out the songs – It’s funny you mention that because first of all, I can’t sing, so you don’t even wanna hear that one. It was funny that the story goes. I’m close friends with Phil Ehart from Kansas. When I was looking for a singer in the very, very, very beginning, I called him up and said, “Hey man, who came in number two? When you replaced Steve (Walsh), who’s your number two guy?” He gave me a list of a few guys and I contacted, and I’m talking to this one guy really nice. He says, “Yeah, I sang on this Kansas record and that Kansas record and this record”. I didn’t say it, but I’m thinking “No, you didn’t. Steve sang on all those, or John Elefante did”. I go to the record and I look and there’s his name. Then it dawns on me, even though I kind of knew it, but it dawns on me like, okay, all these bands that have that kind of sound that we’re looking for, and that’s what I wanted was that big, lush sound. Bring in all these other guys. Bring in Tony Shaw, bringing Joe Walsh. You hit it on the head. Ray could sing all those parts. It’s not about Ray singing them or not singing them. It’s that sound that you’re talking about.
Robbie Wykoff was all over the first record. I brought him in. On this one, Robbie’s on it, a lady named Linda Chase, who’s a good friend of Jimmy Waldo’s, who’s a very in demand session singer back in Boston, did som. A buddy of mine, James Welch did some too. That’s the sound that you’re talking about. That’s the big hook. That’s the big chorus. It’s kind of taking it to the next level. That was part of the plan when I first started this was, “Okay Mark, what do you wanna do? You wanna do some prog band? Hell no. I ain’t doing prog band”. It was beer commercials, car commercials, and Cobra Kai, it’s the hook. Usually that hook is surrounded by a nice landscape of vocals. It’s also surrounded by really cool in the background lead playing. That’s Simone Provides like during seconds. It’s not just like, “Okay, here’s your 16 bars, blaze away”, but that Lukather, Neal Schon kinda kind of thing. That’s really evident on this record too as well. I think it’s definitely upper level and again, I just tried to surround myself with guys that I could trust. If I’m gonna give 137% and do everything from get the deal to pick up the towels in the locker room, I need to make sure that everybody is on board and communicates.
Nick told me right from the beginning, he goes, “Hey, this is gonna be great and everything is gonna be fine, but when we go out to play live, if I can’t make it because of prior commitments to work or family or whatever, that’s fine, we’ll find somebody, we know enough people.” He was very honest about it, which made life so much easier for me wondering, “Okay, what’s gonna happen?” Instead of worrying every step that you go, “Okay, what’s gonna be my hurdle?” So again, just surrounding yourself with complete professionals. That’s all.
On the dimension added by Jimmy Waldo’s keyboard playing – I think one of the major changes is the first record, the keyboards were lighter, they were a little bit more airy. It was a certain style. That’s cool and that’s great and that’s fine. But on this one especially when, I knew Jimmy because I played with him.I knew what his style was. The John Lord, Hammond organ, the compliment to the guitar with that little edge thing without having to be, “Hey, look at me. I’m over here. I’m over here.” Jimmy will tell you the story that my whole thing with this band from the beginning is I tell everybody, “Do everything you want. Do whatever you want. Here’s the basic stuff. Go nuts”. Me and Jimmy had the discussion in the very, very beginning, and he goes, “I’m gonna overplay all over the place and we’ll figure out at the end what we’re gonna cut and stuff like that.” The only problem was at that point we were doing that, we hadn’t brought Simone on board yet. What happened is a lot of Jimmy’s parts got cut for the simple fact of, I preferred the guitar stylings of the little things. I thought it was much more of a modern sound. It was also just the sound that I really, really liked. It was also a little cleaner with the guitar than with the keyboards.
After the fact, I had a conversation with Jimmy, I said, “Hey man, I know a lot of stuff hit the floor.” I was honest with him. I said, “Hey, if I would’ve known Simone was gonna do that. I wouldn’t have put you through that”. But Jimmy’s a total pro. He was good for it. He even knew when going in, “I’m gonna play all over the place”. But absolutely, it’s the edge that the Hammond and the keyboards and the other stuff, and the arpeggio kind of riffs that add to it. I asked him to do a couple things like that and and put it in there. Jimmy could definitely play in Rainbow, let’s just put it that way, or Deep Purple.
On if there is a satisfaction to seeing success with a new project this deep into his career – That’s a couple point question. Number one, in full honesty, I don’t know if we’ve hit that (success). The label, we’ve talked about it in depth, where this is the band that they have on their label that can go another direction. We could open up for Journey, you could play it on the radio. My favorite interview of all time, and please don’t take this personal, would be someone who came on and said, “Man, I have no idea who you are, but your record’s amazing.” Okay. That’s where we have to go. I don’t wanna say that. I could put out a horrible record and you would love it, but, but you’d listen to it. But you’d listen to it. A lot of the fans that we treasure will, but we really have to get to that other side of things. I think we produced the record that can do it. I think the first record could have done it if we would’ve went out on tour.
I think the first record would’ve worked too. But, yes, my satisfaction comes more from the fact of starting this X amount of years ago and believing in myself and going with my not sacrificing. Not cheesing out. Even now, there’s like a kind of thing, a little thing with the label. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s like, “Hey, I wanna do it a certain way. I’m gonna take the responsibility, I’ll put my money where my mouth is, but I wanna do it a certain way because I just don’t believe this other way is gonna work and I stick to that. But yes, I get a satisfaction more out of just knowing that you can do it, Mark, because in every band that I’ve ever played in, I’ve always had been involved some way or another. Obviously, Fates Warning, it wasn’t my band so I couldn’t run it. So, this was the whole point of like, “Okay, run it the way you wanna run it. Do the things that you wanna do, take the chances.” There are chances that a lot of bands don’t take.
You have to invest in yourself. Are you gonna spend the time and the energy to do all the interviews? Are you gonna do the special merch and then surprise them with some extra special merch that you send it to them that they’ll tell their friends about or whatever. All those things. In all my years, it’s time to kind of put up and shut up. But yes, the satisfaction comes from just holding the record, listening to it, and just going, “Damn, this is really good. We’re doing everything right”. The packaging is amazing. We have an amazing label. People have to know what it takes to bring six guys from around the world to do videos in a photo shoot. Even Ray said it to me, he goes, “Man, they don’t even do this for Fates Warning”. So they’re into it. The fact that they’re invested, of course I’m gonna give 150%, and, and they know it, because they’re given 150%. I get the satisfaction of knowing that all this hard work is at a point now where it’s like, okay, everybody’s pulling in the right direction, so it’s not gonna be one of these kind of things.
On the effort that went into the sequencing of the record – I would kiss you if I could. It’s funny, I sequenced the record. It sounds funny and I get it on the first one as well. I literally have listened to that record probably 300 times. I can honestly say, every day that I go to the gym, I listen to it down. Or at the time I was listening to the songs. Now obviously it’s down, but exactly what you said. Very eighties. You sit here and go, “Okay, are we gonna open with the ballad?” No. I would just like to think that it, my experience, my age, the amount of music that I’ve listened to, both metal, rock, I’m not a big jazz guy. But some funk and R&B, and stuff and other things that I have a feel for how it should kind of go and how things work. Do I sequence it by the keys of the song? No, because I don’t know the keys. I know the tempos, but it has nothing to do with tempo.
It’s that ride. Like you talked about. I really don’t look at it side one, side two, even though I know vinyl’s happening. But it worked out really well. You start getting into this thing of the timing of the how long the songs are. So, you have that to kind of deal with. But no, I really appreciate it and you kind of made my day with that one. Honestly, if you put five guys in the room, I guarantee you you’re gonna get five different lists. That’s kind of the thing where I knew if I was gonna do this, I want to do it my way. I don’t want, not that I don’t wanna compromise, because I’ll listen and we’ll talk and, and whatever and if it makes sense and there’s plenty of things that have made sense. But at the same time, when I really feel something, I don’t wanna have to not do that, and go, “Man, we really should have done this”. At 67 I think I kind of qualify for a little experience and, no, I really appreciate that, and it kind of laid itself out. It didn’t really require a whole lot of me pulling my hair out. But yes, that whole idea of those first two songs being tied together, that was my idea. I’m thinking, okay, when you go to a concert. They usually bang through three or two. That’s what I was going for. Then I had Jimmy play that intermittent part, and then we kind of went from one tempo to another and it kind of got there and then boom, it’s in and it’s going. Obviously, you’re single number three just kicks your ass and then it’s time to bring it down a little. So, it laid itself out quite easily.
“Now I Walk Away”, which I think, and you can mark my words maybe, hopefully we’ll come back to this. That to me is the song that’s gonna blow it open. Tell me that’s not A-Z’s “Silent Lucidity”. If we were in the eighties, it would be a whole different ball game. Nick always goes, “Man, if this was the eighties, we’d be in a jet. But the problem with that is we, you don’t want to come out as that as you’re single. You can’t, it’s hard to do that. You can’t. What I did, and again, this is just that planning ahead when we were shooting the videos, and, and this was not one of them. The video editor, Robert was great, and I said, “Hey, do you mind, we’re just gonna blow through the song a couple times and get it on film so we can make something later out of it”. We did that and hopefully that’s planning to be the fourth video. Yeah. We’ve kicked your ass a little bit here with some heavier tunes and we’re rocking and here’s this great song. You got the album, you got the whole thing. It kind of reminds me of going back to the Fates Warning thing. Whether it was “Eye to Eye”, that should have went into “We Only Say Goodbye”, which was the one that was supposed to be the “Silent Lucidity”. Obviously it all went in the toilet, but that song attracts the masses. Even if you’re, you know, a 28-year-old girl or whatever, you can kind of get behind that. It is kind of boy girl kind of thing. It’s got the kind of Genesis Phil Collins opening where I’m playing that whole thing with the percussion and it’s got the total power ballad, Black Sabbath, boom, and the lead’s phenomenal. I don’t know, I still think, and I’ve been harping the label on that one. I go, “Mark my words. When I come to you three weeks from now or a month or two, don’t tell me you didn’t, why didn’t you tell us back then?” I just think that song is the song.
On touring plans – We’re working on it now. Anybody that knows the touring thing’s difficult. I’m dealing with Mike over at Metal Blade and he’s talking to the agents. The bottom line is we’ve agreed wholeheartedly, this isn’t about waiting for the perfect tour. This is about getting out on the road now. Well, not now, but you want your record out, but getting on the road, even if it’s two weeks. Because two weeks of us playing live, people shooting videos, people seeing the band, the word of mouth, us shooting the videos of ourselves, or whatever the case may be that we can use later. There’s so much promotional exposure there. It’s not even funny. Quick, real quick story. We’re doing the video. I’m the only guy playing, obviously, everybody else is playing but not really playing. My drums are stuffed with towels, so just to keep it a little quieter in the warehouse. I felt the magic I had to play on every track because I’m sitting in the back, and I was nailing it. I wasn’t like, “Hey, what’s happening, when’s lunch?” I mean, I was like, we’re live. I felt the magic. I felt the power, and I’m not gonna say I wet my pants, but I kind of went, “Oh my God, this is happening”. So just dying to get out and play.
On the impact of cover art – Well, my big thing is when I started it is if you’re gonna go big or don’t go I’m not a fan of, “Hey man, go to our website and check out the pictures my daughter took of us.” Or having my girlfriend, well, I don’t have a girlfriend, I’m married, but having someone, the bass players, well, no, he’s married too, anyways, someone’s girlfriend doing the album cover. Again, I keep saying it over and over, if I’m gonna sell you a steak for 50 bucks I better deliver like $65 worth of steak. I can’t give you a $12 hamburger.
I know it’s old school and I know Paul McCartney puts out stuff and it’s all about going to read the lyrics on the website, but I ain’t Paul McCartney. We’re doing it differently, but yes, it’s just as important as anything else. Also, I wanna look back on the legacy. When you turn around 20 years from now and you see X amount A-Z albums, there’s that constant kind of theme that’s going on from album to album like it was in the eighties. I guarantee, I don’t guarantee, but there’s probably not gonna be any teeth on the next record. I already have an idea concept for what it is, but it’s very important. And again, I work with Mark Cubbage on this and just the ideas, because we throw them back and forth. He’s had people like, and I sent him the bass drum head and everything. He’s had people walk in like 60-year-old ladies that go, “Oh my God, that’s amazing. What is it?” But like you said, my big thing too was just thinking marketing in the back of my mind that when this thing shows up with other album covers, you want it to jump out. You just don’t want it to be like Moses walking through the desert and the pyramids, and the castles, and then there’s some Viking dude there with the sword and the serpent. You know, that kind of thing. It just really has to be something. I’ve had people tell me, oh, well the teeth on the zebra look dirty on the first album. It’s like, I go, “I don’t know any zebra that goes into the dentist. Do you?” I mean, I dunno, but no, it is very important. Very, very important from a marketing point of view and just a personal point of view. Yeah, you wanna look at it and go, “Damn, this is great”.
