David Ellefson and Jeff Scott Soto are icons. Ellefson was a founding member of the seminal metal band Megadeth, while Soto has provided vocals for the likes of Yngwie Malmsteen, Talisman, Sons of Apollo, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and many others. The first Ellefson-Soto record was released in 2022, the pair has now released the follow up Unbreakable, and it proves that these two legends are a musical force to be reckoned with.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Ellefson-Soto interview –
On the idea behind the band – JSS – I’m here in in, where am I? I’m in Prague.
David -I’m back in Arizona.
JSS – We were just together in London. About what, three weeks ago? Where in the world Is Jeff’s Scott Soto and David Ellefson. This trip was actually booked; gig wise it was actually kind of set up in advance. The fact that David was at the Back to the Beginning show he was performing there, and he was spending a lot of time in Europe it just happened to coincide. He said, “Is there any way you can extend or actually start your trip in London? Because we’re gonna meet up there. We could do some more videos, we can do some photos, we can do some more video interviews.” All kinds of stuff we packed into the course of three days since I was able to go there a little bit earlier and start my European kind of escapade there. We got a lot of stuff done and it’s really cool because everything about this, we’re gonna be diving into the whole Ellefson-Soto thing. Everything about it came from pretty much nothing. There was no real agenda. We didn’t sit down and say, “Hey, we’re gonna start a band. It’s gonna sound like this. We’re gonna do it like this. We’re gonna brand it like that.” None of that was an actual conversation. The fact that we’ve come up with some amazing material and just the comradery between the Italian guys that are part of this, between David and I, even the timing, the. The timing has a lot to do with it based on the fact that Sons of Apollo kind of went on hold after the pandemic. Mike (Portnoy) went back to Dream Theater, obviously. Junior leaving Megadeath, everything just kind of worked out so perfectly. We’ve been friends for so many years, and we’ve had so many discussions, “Hey, we gotta do something together. Gotta do something together.” And this is finally it.
On putting Ellefson-Soto together – David – So, during COVID, I’d had my own solo stuff that I started doing while I was in Megadeth. It’s interesting in these bands, for the first 20 years of Megadeth, it was the fist, the four of us together, we never did any solo projects. Then the group disbanded in 2002, and that put very different skew on my life. It was kinda like, okay, I’m not gonna put all my eggs back in one basket again. As I started different things, I got excited about it. It was the thing that kind of gave me, put the spark in my step was to be involved in different things. So even when I went back to Megadeth, for a season, I kind of locked things down a little bit. But even then the group started to have long breaks in between records, records and, and the arrangements were different forthe band, there were no salaries and all the perks you have when you’re an owner of a band. I actually kind of expanded that mindset while I was in Megadeth and I started to do some live stuff, storyteller concerts. And I did that around the world, making some records of my own under my name, It was early 2021. Andy Martongelli, sorry about the microphone. Andy and I had been working together quite a bit since really, I don’t know, 2019. I hired him to play with me and Frank Bello in Altitudes and Attitude. So, we started a musical friendship during these years.
(Andy was) a friend of mine, a musical friend, and we had a group of songs in early 2021 and we wanted to make another record probably under the name Ellefson or Ellefson – something. Andy was the one he said, he goes, “Just call Jeff man. He’s your, he’s your buddy. You love the way he sings. I think he would sound great on this stuff.” ,I’d just pick up the phone and, like many of the best ideas in my career, they weren’t my idea, it was someone else nudging me, “Hey, call Jeff. Call Jeff”. That’s really what got the thing, got the thing going. I sent one tune over, sent a couple more, and then finally Jeff just said, “Look, rather than just sort of pay me to be the sideman guy, I like this stuff. Let’s rally, let’s lock horns and do this.” Just with that mindset, really within a month, I think it was like April or March, I think it was April, 2021, we ripped through that entire first record, which became Vacation in the Underworld. Co-writing, collaborating, sending ideas. I think the funniest thing was Jeff would send us something and me and Andy were like, it was like Wayne’s world. “We’re not worthy. This is awesome. This is awesome.” And Jeff was like, “Do you guys have any critique?” We’re like, “Nope. It’s awesome. Next song.”
JSS – That was the best incentive for me to keep going because you normally don’t get that kind of positivity. Normally when you’re working, especially working with new people, you’ll get the initial enthusiasm like, “Yeah, it was pretty cool” and it’s pretty cool. Let’s do another one. And then as you go along, you eventually get the, “Can you try this instead? I don’t really think that’s gonna work.” You get a lot of that and then you start going, “Am I the right person for this?” You start questioning it. I didn’t get that from these guys. They let me be me. But organically it became us. That was the amazing part. David is speaking about when we first put it together, we still didn’t have an agenda behind it. We still didn’t know that it was gonna become an album for us. At that point, we were still kind of just working out songs. We don’t know where it’s gonna land, David’s got so many other projects or even other people that might be looking for songs. We never went in thinking we’re making a record. We just kept working and just writing tunes that made us happy. Then all of a sudden David said, “You know what? Screw this for anybody else. This should be for us. We should actually release this as a band, as a project, as a new thing.” Here we are on album number two. Clearly that ideal worked. It, it worked so well between us, between all of us. But even with Rat Pak Records, we got Joe O’Brien over there excited about it. There’s just a nice little, cush thing that we have going here.
On being more comfortable for the second record – David – I think too, and I’ll speak with Andy because really it should say Ellefson – Soto – Martongelli, he really is a he’s part of the trifecta here.
JSS – The problem is, you put his initial in the beginning of our two initials, it spells MESS. Mess, I guess in a way we kind of are mess.
David – It’s a beautiful mess. That’s my favorite music. As much as I’m known in the thrash world, I found the kind of my post-Megadeth years in the two thousands, my favorite music is heavy, but melodic. I like the weight of a good riff and something really big. But, to me, if it doesn’t have melody, it’s just sits, it doesn’t connect with me. It just doesn’t, you know? Of course, Jeff, I love Jeff’s voice because it’s manly, it’s big, it’s like a roaring lion. Then to me that fits well in that heavy dynamic. It carries weight. Hetfield is like that with Metallica. There’s the guys we know that are out there doing it. I like that. Yet to be able to have a wide range. Speaking to album two, behind you, you’ve got that Killing Is My Business shirt or whatever, or album cover, and it’s kind of been like that, I think. Album one is the just getting to know, it’s like the first date. Album two is you’re moving in together, and it’s more comfortable. You tighten your sound up. The other thing that I think speaking to the name too, when we first were shopping the, the Vacation In The Underworld record around a little bit you know, I realized it, it has its own unique thing and it’s kind like with Smith Kotzen, Hughes Thrall, Whitford St. Holmes, these records when I was growing up where two iconic guys from big bands would go out and do a record together. I think that’s where Vacation the Underworld was. It was sort of a project.
We played a few shows in Italy. Again, we both happened to be on that side of the world, and, and since the rest of the group is Italian, it was easy to put something together over there. I tell you what, the response was fantastic. People loved it. I think for me the real test was there was a fan with a Lamb of God shirt right down in front of me and Jeff and I’m thinking, “Okay, this is the acid test. Either this is light and wimpy or it’s cool.” After the show this kid was practically in tears, “Oh, please do more. We need more. You guys are great.” “I was like, okay, if we won the guy with a Lamb of God shirt over, I guess we’re doing it right.”
JSS – He didn’t see us as Air Supply. Kind of elaborating what David said about the muscle and melody side of things. That’s always been my forte. I’ve always loved showing people that I can go from one extreme to the other. It’s kind of like when I kind of got flack for singing for Journey. “That’s not the kind of singer for Journey”. I’m like, “But yes. See, I can be the kind of singer for Journey because I can change my tone, I can change my style, I can change the whole output of what I do as a vocalist”. Even when you listen to something like Opeth, the singer of Opeth, Mikael (Åkerfeldt), he goes from something really heavy and then he will give you something really light and really cool and melodic. I love the contrast between the two. Normally you have to have two different singers, two separate people to have that kind of sound. It’s very rare you have an actual singer (who can do both). The Ellefson-Soto stuff really gives me an opportunity. We have a couple songs where I’m like balls to the wall, and then I put it nice and light and you have like a nice melodic thing. And I love the contrast. I love the, the black and white of what we do musically.
On bringing special guests Laura Guldemond and Ripper Owens in – JSS – David’s the king of bringing in our friends. I mean, these are my friends too, but he’s kind of like a casting director. It’s kinda like, “This song, I can hear Ripper singing on this song for some reason with Jeff, I think it would be sound really cool.” The same thing with Laura, the same thing we had on the first record when we did the Riot cover. He just has a kind of a casting director’s mind of voices and, and ideals of what would actually complete the song. So, I’ll let him complete that answer.
David – First of all, Jeff did all the takes. So, he has the ownership of all the songs. Then all of a sudden you start kind of going, “What if we juxtaposed this?” We did it on the first record with a woman named Giada from a little power metal band down in Italy called Frozen Crown, who have gotten quite popular now. She had a great voice. She was a friend of mine, so she joined us on that. We weren’t just trying to kind of lather, rinse, repeat for the second record, but it just kind of played like that. Andy knew Laura from Burning Witches, and Jeff and I, of course are friends with, with the ladies. We’ve been on Monsters of Rock cruises and stuff. So, we’ve been around them. But as their popularity has come up, I was like, it’s a good fit. First of all, it, it has to be a good musical fit. Forget about the fame and the name on it. This is popular. Everybody’s doing this, the country artists do it now, the pop stars have been doing this stuff forever. Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez. That really wasn’t what we were going after from the marketing point of view. It was really more about musically. We’re in a really cool wheelhouse with this kind of power metal and this European sound and this kind of stuff. Jeff and I are, certainly for Jeff, he kind of started his career with this European vocalist thing. These younger power metal groups, they hail him. “I Am A Viking”, that’s like my “Holy Wars” or “Peace Sells”. It’s great that we each have one of those in our career. because it’s kind of a defining sound. So, as I’ve talked to a lot of these people and I say, “Yeah, I’m making a record with Jeff Scott Soto”, they’re like, “Oh my god”. He’s an influence and a real icon to them in that. So, it was fun to bring Laura in. It was interesting because I was chatting with her as we were putting it together and kind of going through the tracks. She said it was pretty low the track. I thought, God, you know, we probably tuned this track down a step which sits well for men of our age, but for a younger woman like her who’s used to belting it up, but she’s got a very versatile voice and, and so she was able to get really in the, in the track with the, with the verse and then do these just soaring, beautiful harmonies in the chorus. That really, to me, sells the story because that’s really all a song is. It’s a story set to some music. It’s a book set to a background of some music. To me, if there’s not a story in the lyric, then it’s like you’re just singing a bunch of empty words. I think we found that on the first album. It’s like, okay, we here, here’s our, our path. This is our Aesop’s Fable, if you will. This is who we are, this is the stories we write, this is what we’re, what we’re telling our audience. I think here on the second record, we just developed it even more. Andy being younger than me and Jeff, younger guys have this different ear too, where they can kind of do, Andy will play some of these kind of octave, more modern rock things.
JSS – The whole European contribution adds a different element to where we would’ve normally thought musically. David and I could sit in the room, those songs would not sound the way they do because of the influence that Andy puts into them.
David -The three of us are really, we’ve really become great writing partners. Even Chris Collier, who mixed the record, he even said when we first sent him the tracks, he goes, “Man, you guys definitely stepped up, brought the goods”. That was good to hear. He mixed the first record, he was making a Korn record at the time when he mixed up record. So, it’s like you’ve got good mirroring imaging around you to sort of base this off of our previous work as well as obviously Korn and things that he’s involved in, which are modern and obviously quite popular. So, it was great to get that feedback on while we were making the record as well.
On sequencing the album as a journey – JSS – We live for people like you, because we think those things too. We think the same way you do, even when we listen to others records. So, it’s just as important when we make our own records. Thankfully, David and Andy think the same way in terms of it’s not just, okay, we have a bunch of songs we can just put that there and put that there. No, it’s really important to have the ebbs and flows of the way the actual album goes because I’m the same way. When I’m listening to a record, if there’s something that’s abrupt along the way, it’s gonna distract me from the flow of listening to a whole record. I wanna listen from soup to nuts. There’s quite a few records in my collection that I can actually listen to from soup to nuts. But actually, there’s very few, let me rephrase that. There’s sometimes you’ll hear a song go, “Oh, that would’ve been better either at the end or maybe not even at all”. It’s so important to find those ebbs and flows when you’re putting the sequencing together because you want to keep them, you want to, when you pull them in, you wanna reel them in. It’s so easy for them to go, “Okay, I think I’m good for today, or I’ve heard enough”. But you wanna make them go, “God, I gotta listen to the next one. That next one’s so great. Now I gotta listen to the next one”. That’s important for all of us when we’re putting those sequences together, especially these two records. I think we did a really good, a stellar job in making sure that the songs just kind of go through different emotions when you’re listening to it that way.
On touring and packaging – David – It’s a good question. We’re on the Monsters of Rock cruise in April, and I know that’s quite a ways down the road. These things take some time to sort of build, to get some attention, to get some traction. Obviously, we’re just stoking the fire again, getting this new record back on everybody’s radar. The good thing about it is the response is great. “Oh my God, I love the first record. This is so great. I can’t believe there’s a second one.” I’ll say this, one of the other real partners on this is Joe O’Brien who owns Rat Pak Records. It went around a few labels to just kind of run it up with some of our usual suspects and it’s not for them, this is not the kind of record for them. But a guy like Joe is a unique breed. You talk about Spotify, he’s making vinyl, trading cards, patches, he’s thinking Wacken, he’s thinking European metal festivals.
JSS – I’m waiting for the Eight Tracks to come out next.
David – Thats the whole thing. I love that he thinks like that because, the fans of our music, we’ve got young fans and we’ve got obviously those who have followed us, who are our age and beyond probably. The vinyl thing is back. So, there’s this whole kind of buying, purchasing process. I always liken it to when you go into Apple Store, you’re not just buying a phone. It’s like an entire experience. You see the logo; it’s not even a name. Doesn’t even say Apple Computer. You see it, you know what it is. You walk in, you get the box, you open it up, it smells cool. It’s this whole process. I think that’s what getting into an Ellefson Soto record is. Joe wants it to be that. He doesn’t do pre-orders till he has it all. It’s not one of these, do the pre-orders, we can take your money and then someday later we’ll deliver. He’s very careful about that. I love that part of it too, shit’s expensive in the world, man. It’s never been more expensive than it is now. And prices go up, they never go down. So just to get a cheeseburger’s expensive. To get In & Our. In fact, I was talking to Joe right as we were getting this record wrapped up. Suddenly, tariffs on vinyl were starting to happen. I said, “Hey, I know some other manufacturers here in America”, so we started talking to some other pressing plants here in America. There’s a lot that goes into just, and I understand it a bit, I guess, having had a record label myself, on the backside of it. I can sort of talk that turkey with Joe. But again, trying to make an all-in purchasing experience for our, for our fans, so that when they get it you open vinyl, it smells good, you read the credits, we go to all this work to make sure the lyrics are right and who did the solos and all this stuff. I think that’s all part of just this experience. So rather than just, “Hey, here’s an album, we gotta get out on tour”, that’s this mindset. I’ve had my own bands where the manager’s, “Oh, we gotta get out and play a show”. He’s like, “No, we don’t. We need to play the right places”. Even those little shows did in Italy, they were far beyond me and Jeff’s comfort levels. This is one and a half, two star, and we’re bitching and complaining. We’re walking across cornerstone roads in wherever towns they were. But you know what, it was worth it because it brought us together as a band and that, and that’s part of it. You just have to do that work in order to be connected as a group to find out what you really have. Making a recording is one thing, getting in on a stage, learning how to work on a stage, and sometimes when the stage is about as half the size of this office that really shows can you get along in that sort of a space? For Jeff and I, we come from this arena rock thing. We’ve done everything in between, from gas stations to arenas and beyond. Gas stations figuratively any place with an outlet, I should say, all the way up to the big rooms and learning how to work together, bringing our two unique fan bases together, our unique musical, you know, experiences bringing those together so that it’s not Ellefson Dash Soto. It’s Ellefson Soto. To make it, to make it really work.
Getting in on the road, I think Jeff has, has talked about this. It’s about building something that has an interest so that when you go out, if you play three or four shows or you play 300 shows, it’s something that really is connecting. You’re not just trying to jam it down people’s throats. It’s something that you’re offering real entertainment to people. That’s what we’re in, we’re in the entertainment business now that the record is made. That’s the music business. Now, when you go live, you’re not in the music business, you’re in the entertainment business. You wanna just be a circus monkey on the stage? Or do you wanna really be giving something of value. Even doing this interview is part of just awareness and getting things out there, so thank you for helping that part happen. So that’s, that’s my thought on it today.
JSS – Elaborating on what David just said, clearly, we want to go out there and play it. We absolutely do. This is where we live. This is where we created who we are. The road created, who we are as musicians, the creative side, that was always there. You just build on that and obviously that’s a whole different animal but getting on the road is something we all live for. But, it should be right. We can’t assume that my fans and David’s fans are automatically gonna like what we’re doing together. That’s why it’s very important that we build our own legs. We build our own fan base on what we’re doing here because we can’t rely on JSS fans who, especially ones who maybe like me in Journey or TSO, they might not like what I’m doing here, so they’re gonna ignore it. The Megadeth fans or the fans of Kings of Thrash that go see David and what he’s doing over there might not like what we’re collaboratively doing together. So, it’s important for me and for us that we gain our own audience, because that’s the audience that will come and see us. Those are the ones we can rely on as opposed to relying on the, the ones who like us for the other things that we do. Until that happens, it’s all a building block here. We’re talking about the album. We’re putting the album out there. We’re making ourselves aware that making the awareness that the band is there, but we also have to make sure that we’re not just releasing an album, book, a tour, and, oh, I hope 80 people show up tonight. You want to make it so everything that you’re doing is an event from the record to the actual shows to the presentation.
