Guitarist George Lynch has his fingers in many pies. Not only does he have his own band Lynch Mob out on the recording and touring, he has hooked up with Ray Luzier and Doug Pinnick in KXM and Corey Glover in Ultra Phonics, not to mention recording again with his original band Dokken. He also has just released his second Sweet Lynch album, Unified, with Stryper’s Michael Sweet. Mick Burgess caught up with the busy man himself to talk mainly about Sweet Lynch but also about one or two of his other projects too.
How are you feeling now that Unified, your latest Sweet Lynch album is now out??
It’s always an exciting time when you’ve created a record and it’s finally out so people will be able to hear it. The reaction we’ve been receiving has been great and it’s always good to hear that.
This is your second release with Michael Sweet. How do you see Unified as a progression from 2015’s Only To Rise?
I don’t think we’ve really moved on. We’ve applied the same formula where we’re shooting from the hip with the right balance of melodic Hard Rock. Maybe there’s a bit more of a ’70s Hard Rock element in there but we essentially stuck to what worked so well for us on the first record.
You’re a busy guy with Lynch Mob, KXM and your solo work. How do you manage to fit another project in your schedule?
I don’t have a job so I can fit in whatever I can. I’m pretty efficient at writing and recording and I recorded the Sweet Lynch record and KXM record very quickly so I can do a few different projects in a short space of time that way. With KXM we write and record at least one song a day. Sweet Lynch was written differently but still quickly. With that I wrote the music by myself. I sent it over to Michael and the guys on the East Coast to finish it off and I was continuously feeding Michael the songs as I was writing them. Then he’d track the vocals and send them back to me and I’d finish off the guitar parts and I’d send them back again and we’d build them up from there.
When did you hook up with Michael to start work on the album?
We got together in the summer to shoot the videos and we’d started work on the music before that so we’d started working on the music in the early summer and we worked fast on getting the songs written and recorded before we met up to do the videos.
Did you get the whole band including Brian Tichy and James Lomenzo into the studio together to work on the record or did your schedules mean you had to do things separately?
I didn’t see any of those guys when the music was being recorded. They went into the studio and added their parts. Michael, James and Brian worked together for some time in the studio but I did my parts over here.
Michael’s produced the album? Why did you decide to let Michael take on that role?
Well, I didn’t let him, it just happened that way. He was close where he needed to be and was on hand to oversee the recording so it just made sense for him to take on that role. He’s got a good ear for that side of things I think it worked out really well. It saved us a lot of money too as we didn’t need to hire an outside producer.
Which tracks from the album stand out for you?
It’s funny as once I’ve written them and recorded them and sent them away and the album is all done I tend to forget about it and start work on the next one and focus on that. If we were to tour on the back of the record then I’d go back and go through it and decide which songs are the best and which’d work well on stage but at this stage I just see them as a collection of songs that I’m very happy with but couldn’t single one out against another.
What about live shows. You have an incredible band there. It’d be criminal not to hit the road with them?
There’s talk of it and I hope it happens but there’s nothing planned at this point. We are both really busy with our own projects that it’s difficult to find the time to fit it in.
What about touring with Stryper and Lynch Mob and maybe doing something together then?
We have actually been talking about doing a tour with Lynch Mob and Stryper together and that at the end we’d come out and do a few Sweet Lynch songs. So that is something that could happen at some point. I think that’s a really interesting idea.
You have Lynch Mob and KXM on the go too amongst other projects. Does each of these bands enable you to cover a slightly different side to your creativity?
I’m just happy that I am able to do different stuff and people are digging it. Creatively for me, it’s challenging and fun and it’s good for me and my playing to do different things. It let’s me stretch out a little more so that I don’t get stuck in a rut. I’ve also done work with Angelo Moore from Fishbone that is totally different to anything I’ve done before and I just loved doing that so having different projects certainly gives me a great range of styles that I can play which keeps it interesting for me.
Do you have time to fit anything else in during your busy schedule?
Oh yes. I’m doing an album by Ultra Phonics with Corey Glover of Living Colour that’s been done for a while and will be out in March on Odell Records. That’s a pretty interesting project with a lot of variety on it and a lot of strange stuff which was great fun to do and I hope people will like it.
Just on the KXM project, your debut album came out in The States first then in Europe later. The European version was different. What did you do in the European version?
We ended up doing a better mix and did some different versions of the songs and I’d wished we had done that for the whole original album. We also added some extra songs that we went in and did at the last minute because we felt it made the album even better than it was originally. We’ll be going back into the studio very soon to record the third album so that should be out later in the year.
What plans do you have for 2018?
I’ll be recording a completely improvised live album with the Ultra Phonics and will have some video to go with that and of course we’ll have our studio album out in March. Lynch Mob has a lot of touring lined up for 2018. There’s also a Dokken video to do to go with the Japan tour DVD and live album that’s coming out. There’ll be a new studio song called It’s Another Day and a couple of acoustic recordings of old Dokken songs on there too featuring the original line up so that’s exciting. I’ve got a lot on but I’m looking forward to another busy year.
The new Sweet Lynch album, Unified, is out now on Frontiers Records.
See frontiers.it and georgelynch.com for more information.
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