Cries of Redemption: “What Lies Beneath”
Punk Head: You’ve described this project as prioritizing freedom over validation. What does freedom actually cost an artist?
Cries of Redemption: It depends on what one values. If clicks, hype, and shares are a currency, then it costs all of that. But if someone is comfortable with who they are and fulfilled in creating material they know won’t resonate with all but a few, then those few people who enjoy the music are the most precious compensation one can have.
I am not someone who woke up yesterday, grabbed a guitar, or prompted “write me a song in the style of…”. No sir! I have literally lived, without exception, the entire lyrics of AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way To The Top…”. I’ve played the midnight Monday night gigs, I’ve had the local paper publish “the wrong midnight gig on a Monday night,” and literally played for the bartender, the flies, and the roaches. I’ve also packed the house on midnight Monday night gigs. I don’t know if it was an Atlanta thing, but if you wanted to rock in Atlanta as an original band in my heydays, it was a rite of passage to play the midnight Monday night gigs in the venues that would not have much of a crowd on Friday and Saturday nights to begin with.
I played in venues with broken monitors and had to rely on the swell of the bass under my feet and the concussion of the drums on my back to know where I was in the song, because we could only hear the crowd and the drums (we can always hear the drums and thank God my drummer was like a clock). I cut myself playing live and could not stop the bleeding and ended up with the highly coveted and sought-after maple neck stained with blood that could not be removed.
My band was very lively and active on stage. Lots of running and jumping, so the bassist and I decided to go wireless. Trying to be clever and save some money, I got a cheap Radio Shack one-band AM receiver and the next thing I hear is a Mexican radio station coming through my amp. While playing a gig! Which, by the way, it was through the notorious Peavey Mace, which I deliberately played without a gate pedal because every show it felt like taming a beast and it got me all hyped up for the post-gig “little honeys,” if you know what I mean. If you have not played a Peavey Mace live without a gate pedal, you have not yet rocked. The force may be strong with you, but you are not a Jedi yet. That was the definition of living on the edge. It is one of those things that defies explanation. You have to do it to understand.
Eventually, I played the weekend gigs; I opened, I headlined. And my most successful band, “Mudbugs,” was booked six months ahead of time. We were often played on the “Locals Only” slot on 96 Rock, scraped every penny to record a demo tape… yeah… I’m from a time when if you wanted to be played on the radio you had to give them a DAT to specs, and the cost of the tape alone was more than most DAWs today that allow you to do it all on your own and maybe even sound better.
There was a place in Atlanta on Buford Highway (it was actually a chain) that was our watering hole—El Azteca… We’d go there after practice. Sometimes we had to do sound checks across town and stop by there on the way to the sound check and then come back and sit there and drink until it was time to head to the gig. We’d get silly and play with the Mariachis, who actually learned some of our songs from tapes circulating at the time. And it turns out the owner of the chain was also one of the big-time promoters in town and sat down with us to discuss possibly opening for Porno for Pyros (Janes Addiction members). At the very same time, we were contemplating an offer from some small record company—$600/month, a van, booked gigs, marketing, and an advance for a record guaranteed. But our bassist already made six figures. It was a no-go for him, and we had a pact that either we all made it together or not at all. No one even discussed finding another bassist. We just disbanded and I did not touch a guitar for three years. I literally swore it off.
And for anyone who bothered to read up to this point, you must be asking: “What is the freaking point?” The point is that I’ve done it all, came to the door of where most people never get to, and did not go through because a bandmate who was not only important as a friend but indispensable as a musician and performer. The decision was made for me, and I don’t know about now but in those days if you passed on the offer for a midnight Monday night gig or a $600/mo record deal, you were blacklisted. Turning down anything in those days was career suicide. You had to show you were hungry and willing. So needless to say, we disbanded at a time when we were booked six months out. For club managers and anyone who knew the story, we were the guys who quit when things got serious. A decision that was not mine and basically defined us in the eyes of many at the time.
I think everyone who is in a band wants to go all the way. To miss the opportunity over a decision that was made for you? What else can be lost by going alone, keeping a low profile and just having fun? This is not a business known for second chances when you are an unsigned local act. At least back in the day it wasn’t. I suspect things only got worse.
Punk Head: When you strip away genre, what emotional space are you actually trying to build?
Cries of Redemption: I think it is harder to try to fit into a genre than to just understand what it is you like, get the basic ingredients for it, and just go. For instance, I like rock, I like it hard, but I do not particularly like it fast. Thrash and Speed Metal are not my thing. I believe they are good for showing off dexterity and stamina, but the absence of dynamics and noticeable melody is just a downer for me. However, as you will soon find out, I do have songs with “spurts” of thrash—but just 8 measures at a very specific time in one of my songs yet to be released. It has the scream, the 150BPM staccato with double kick, and then we have real singing and robust melody. Like everything, when used in moderation and for the right reasons, there are components of the genre that are gold. Go past 8 measures and then it is like driving a drag race car on an F1 circuit. You’re gonna crash! I love properly distributed power and aggression. It is truly beautiful when used to make a point.
So, I do not know music theory. I was off to the races when I learned four chords, because stopping to learn took time away from playing. Since I viscerally abhorred cover bands from the day I picked up the guitar to this day, it did not matter not knowing theory. Not having to copy someone else gave me plenty of room to learn by ear and feel how to express what was in my head. I think if I had actually studied music theory, it would have done more harm than good. Also, not knowing theory forced me to improvise “by feel” when playing live. Mind you that I am not saying it is bad to study and know theory. I am saying it would likely have been bad for me.
So, if I were to chase a genre, I would most likely fall short. If you pay close attention to my profiles of the platforms I am in, I do lead with Modern Rock because it is mandatory to state a genre, but I always put “Experimental” at the end. That is my out-of-jail card because it frees me from the expectations that I have to play a certain way.
The music I’ve always written since I was a kid is a constant. It does things when it makes sense and it is also emotionally synced to the lyrics. Hence why I’ve been using female vocalists for the past 20 years. The melodic female voice, contrasting with down-tuned guitars, added screamo at the right parts and “interpreting,” “living,” “feeling,” and transmitting that feeling gives me a level of joy I cannot describe. “Singers” won’t do. There are tons of singers but few “storytellers,” and that is why I now hire them. The good ones are all taken. To me, genre is an afterthought, but I do like my music heavy and with plenty of dynamic range. In my opinion, the bands that get it right, or at least the way I like music to be, are Iron Maiden (they invented the stuff), Ill Niño, Sevendust, Killswitch Engage, and Bullet For My Valentine. These are bands that know when to pull back. They know when it is too much. They pound you senseless and then allow you to catch your breath before coming back for a second round. These are bands where I can listen to the whole album or watch a whole show. If you were to hear just the melodic parts of their music, you’d say they deviate from their genre. Truth is, these guys understand the power of dynamic range and how slowing down and coming back swinging packs much more of a punch than fast and faster, loud and louder.
Punk Head: You’ve adopted new tools without apology. Do you think resistance to technology is sometimes just fear disguised as purity?
Cries of Redemption: I am old enough to remember when MIDI and drum machines came out and then sampling and then autotune. There is always a purist camp that is going to cry foul and be up in arms with any new technology when it first hits the market. This time is no different, especially with transformative technologies such as the ones available nowadays. Then, after the dust settles these very tools become standard in most modern studios. These tools cannot replace intentionality or musicality. Yes, in some cases, depending how one uses them, they can spit out soulless music. But how long before the market is saturated with the same music because I see people who can’t prompt songs watching YouTube videos and then everyone is prompting “the same secret prompt”? You can’t make this stuff up and it is literally happening as I write this. To make something meaningful and worthy out of these tools still require a certain level of understanding of the fundamentals. And I don’t mean music theory.. I mean understanding of how a song and lyrics would work together.
I’d love to do an A/B test. Let’s get a “fan” that salivates over Malmsteneen’s or Laiho’s stuff and then sit all three side by side with a generative AI music creation in their computers give them, say 5 minutes and check the outputs of Yngwie Malmsteen, Alexi Laiho, and “the fan”. Hell! I am not a computer scientist but I am willing to bet Yngwie and Alexi would not only prompt stuff they do off the cuff anyway but they would obliterate “the fan” with prompts just as they would with a guitar. The “fan” would likely at best end up with something “in that direction” but it’d likely be incoherent and mechanical and an output he could not explain. My point is, the purists forget they actually happen to be the ones with “the home field advantage”. They huff and puff over things they are already better than most solely due to their deep knowledge of music. The garbage in garbage out effect applies to generative AI in all domains.
Also, there is one big difference between my willingness to try all the tools and toys available in the market along with my openness to use them. I do it for a couple of reasons. First, my lack of social media presence does not make me a ghost. I exist! And I can be easily found on the platforms that matter: ReverbNation, Kompoz, BandCamp and others related to music or music collaboration. So any attempt at shaming or dog whistles like I see done to so many others won’t hold water with me. Why? It does not take a deep search to quickly find works of mine in collaboration with heavy hitters in the industry up to including Grammy winners. In Kompoz alone, since 2013 I’ve participated in over 800 collaborations, 700 plus of which I started, dropped nearly 7,000 tracks over the years. And this was long before these technologies were even in the radar. I’ve been privileged to collaborate with “the who is who” of Kompoz. Some in long term projects. I even worked on a project aimed at securing placement on movies and TV where every member was a heavy weight in his/her own right. All were session players at one point or another in their career. You could call it the proverbial “dream team” of rock and roll. It was also a lesson that too many chefs in the kitchen isn’t always the best approach. 2. Verifiable longevity, regardless of how under the radar I managed to keep myself. Cries of Redemption’s first EP, “From A Drunken Heart” was recorded at the legendary and now defunct “Elevated Basement Studio” in Savannah, GA and engineered by “THE” living legend himself and Savannah’s favorite son - Kevin Rose (GAM, Superhorse). And my history transcends Cries of Redemption by well over a decade.
I’m the guy with blood stained guitars, who carried a monster amp in a bus on his way to a gig not because I was a loser but because I was too young to drive and didn’t have money for a cab or anyone to pick me up. (My mom tried to sabotage my rock and roll dream at every turn). I’ve done the live gigs, played entire gigs without monitors and without enough light to see the fretboard. You get the gist… Radio air time, record deal talks and opening for major acts negotiations. I lived a full rock and roll life all the way to detox. In fact, I mentioned before that Cries of Redemption was born three days after I left detox. It was a good three months before I was in the studio recording its first EP and shortly after I suffered a stroke directly the result of my heavy drinking and ongoing DTs that never seemed to stop long after I stopped drinking.
So, according to the book of Ed Silva, I’ve been given permission to do whatever the hell I want. That includes trying whatever tools are available. Let’s put it this way, it it exists, is available and is legal, I have at least toyed with. It does not mean I use them all. I use what I need and makes my songs better. My songs are written before I use any tool. Some songs, now in the major platforms were written 13 years ago. They were just a little rougher versions because they were initial sketches.
And here is another thing. Again, the abscence of social media means just that. I don’t do social media. It is not my thing. I am not that interesting, there wouldn't be any interesting photos or postings. But I do know people. Lots of them. I’m known in music scenes stretching from Atlanta to Savannah in Georgia From Bluffton to Beaufort to Hilton Head in South Carolina. All these old cats know exactly the kind of music I play and my abilities. I’d be fooling no one if I didn’t use these tools transparently, ethically and responsibly. And by that, I mean I don’t use the generative part of it all that much in comparison of how much I use to produce mix and master. But if I do, I never use it beyond my abilities. That is why I think it is important to be open about using and not shame those who uses it. I think it is a great thing. Did you know there has literally been a study conducted to find out why boys are not starting bands anymore? I mean… Dude! Think about it! When I was growing up if you had any aspirations of landing a girlfriend you had to have a car and be a jock or be in a rock band. I happed to be in both. Soccer was my thing but I was also in the basketball, and volleyball teams and was very physical and active. I see kids today… What happened? My mother had go looking for me to come back home. I could not stand TV or video games. If I was not playing soccer I was in whichever garage of a friend’s whose parents had not kicked us out yet. True story man. Our parents (the band members) sure as hell wanted nothing with us rocking in our homes, so we’d plea to our friends with promises of proximity to stardom. How they would be remembered, rewarded and taken care “when we made”. And it always ended up with us being kicked out by their parents and me with all the sincerity I could muster pointing the finger at their parents and saying “When we make it! Don’t come asking for backstage passes. We will not forget this:. I think what makes this funny and worth mentioning is that I was not playing. At that young age I was sure stardom awaited around the corner.
So, there! No, I am not a purist, nor do I have anything against who is. But fellow Atlantan (or Doravillian), whichever you want to call, which I both lived and rehearsed literally within walking distance of his studio back in his days is Rick Beato. And if Uncle Rick says it is okay to use it, then, do it man! If the gatekeeper of purism says it is okay. Do it and own it. Don’t be hiding because you’ll only be fooling yourself.
Punk Head: Many artists chase relevance. You seem more interested in durability. What makes music last?
Cries of Redemption: I think we all “wish for” relevance, but I truly seek “resonance”. I do write songs for an audience I know exists. It is a limited audience “locally”, but if I’m lucky to get the medium to reach them “globally”; they are there.
In fact, that is one of the main reasons why I never bothered with promoting COR. If you read the lyrics, you’ll either get it or you won’t. It is not necessarily coded language but it is a language that comes from the heart of someone who walked a road I wish no one had to walk. Unfortunately, a lot of people out there have travelled the same path and this people dig it. That is the greatest form of compensation I could ever ask for. And it kind of goes both ways. When someone does not get it, I am actually happy for them and when someone does, I know we’re both travelers of the same journey and who managed to still be standing. In addition, I never wanted to commercialize, pain, sorrow, trauma. It was not the time because there was no guarantee I’d stay sober. How silly of me would it be to go out there with… exactly what message? I knew how to get drunk. I had no idea how to live sober. Now, 19 years later (on February 7, 2026 it will be 19 years since my last drink), I have enough life experience from both angles to share. Both as a drunk and someone who has lived life on life’s terms for a few 24 hours.
And to make things more complicated, we live in a time when consumerism permeated music. Once upon a time, you had to go to the store and try out several albums because you only had money to buy one. If you were like me, the stuff you liked did not play on the radio, so you had to own the damn thing. Which added even more value to the music. It was an emotional and financial choice you had to make. That made the song or album something that was not easily replaced or disposable. If you wanted a play list, you either had to have a lot of money or do like I did. Coordinate with friends so we didn’t all have the same albums. Instead we purchased what we collectively loved and then passed it around. That way we could have a much broader collection.
Durability is the result of loving rock and not dying. Sometimes, I swear I wish I could just enjoy playing dominoes in the park with the old timers and feed the birds. But this fever won’t break. It hasn’t from the day I caught it. It is a costly, time consuming, often thankless love. I have literally gone years without even showing my music to friends and family. There is nothing more disappointing than have the people you love and who know you on a very deep level “not get it”. That is why this experience of finally joining the major platforms has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. Yeah, I’m probably one of the original subscribers of ReverbNation, I have been a member of Kompoz for well over a decade. But these are not places to listen to music. They are places to make music or showcase your stuff to other people who make music and we tend to listen to music differently than how civilians do. At least I do.
So… If you come to my ReverbNation page, one of the first thing people say is: “Wow” you have a million streams? And I say: “Dam right I do”! But it took nearly 20 years and 200 songs. So, that is nothing to brag about and it kind of answers this question fully. Longevity is the result of not having quit or died. It was never what I aimed for.
Punk Head: ‘What Lies Beneath’ feels less like a question and more like an admission. What truth were you circling but not naming outright?
Cries of Redemption: That song is one of those songs that makes a songwriter scratch its head. “Technically”, that song should had been a flop. It was written as a duet and the moment the male voice came in for the first time, like a director I said: “cut”! Hell to the freaking no to the 10th power!!! What the hell was I thinking? I told myself. So, what now? I don’t want to change the lyrics or restructure the song. I am kind of emotionally invested. And the time? Man.. all that stuff in the background was manually done. Grid by grid. With samples, from scratch with MIDI and Harmless, Toxic Biohazard, HellRazer, real bass and guitar tracking. The bells tolling were hand made. And I have quite the arsenal of samples and construction kits, but I felt like doing it myself so that it was easier to control the timing and tension via MIDI as opposed to slapping a sample instead. Which, make no mistake! I do with no shame or remorse whatsoever, but only if and when it fits. If it doesn’t and I can’t do it myself then it is time to humble myself and reach out to someone who can.
So the story is about an AI becoming sentient and the user falling in love with her, and her him. That’s the plot. So, if you paid attention to the lyrics, it is actually a dialogue, but since it sucked as a duet, whichever vocalist sings, she has to play double agent. Ultimately, I said to myself: “Damn! I had a purebred, gorgeous, shining, majestic Arabian horse in mind and ended up with an old beat up mule, likely in its last days. And then BANG! People started reaching out saying they liked it. I paid a random sample test and people liked it? Well.. I have not always been the best judge of what I write. There are songs I love and everyone does not think that much of them. The other way around is also true.
But “What Lies Beneath” is not about truth behind anything. It is a warning. The Surgeon General himself and the World Health Organization have both declared loneliness a matter of public health. Bordering a public health crisis. So what is today a song, very likely could become a reality in a future not too distant. Sadly, it will affect the most vulnerable among us (the elderly, the mentally ill, the addict). I hope that when that time comes, we will be better prepared to handle it accordingly.
Punk Head: What made ‘What Lies Beneath’ the right moment to explore the darker undercurrents in your sound?
Cries of Redemption: Technology. I could very easily had done a similar song in Kompoz, split the ownership between 5 to 10 people, never release it and forget about it. Then again, the topic wasn’t even a thing a short two or three years ago. So I would not possibly would have even entertained the subject.
I can do today what I could not do then because the tools have evolved so much. If you were to look at the stems of “What Lies Beneath” and the pain it is to mix “textures” while keeping everything balanced throughout the song. As good as Ozone 12 is, miracle it does not do. I still have to mix the darn thing myself. That means I would have needed a sound engineer from Kompoz or pay one to have it mixed.
In short advancements in technology in every front allowed me to be able to fully produce, mix, and master my songs without help. Then, all that was missing was finding the right female vocalist and I was able to hire not one but two, again thanks to technology as both were hired from online marketplace platforms.
I want to thank you guys for the kindness and interest you have shown in my project. Also, I want to end with this: Anyone out there who is a creator. Be it stills, video, music. AI is awesome, fun, and interesting but AI companies are not your friends. Before you feed anything that is your intellectual property, do yourself a favor and always read the Terms of Service first. They are pulling the wool right over our eyes and it baffles me that people continue to feed the machines without fully understanding what is at stake. And don’t just read the ToSs once; I read it frequently because there is a clause in all of them that says it can change without notice. A lot of AI companies that deal with content creation now that they have reached critical mass are adding “not so funny” wording such as “perpetual license”, “irrevocable”, “no royalties”. In other words, if you are a creator and not careful and end up creating something of value or writing a hit song, you will find someone claiming ownership of it. Be transparent, be smart, and have fun while you are at it.
