If there’s any act who has breathed new life into the term “dynamic duo”, it’s Holka-Rondinelli. Consisting of journeyman guitarist Jamie Holka and iconic drummer Bobby Rondinelli, the two have unleashed what’s bound to be the jazziest album this here metal webzine will review all year, if not ever, The Gathering. Surely, an effort this leftfield for an outlet used to the sound of thundering drums, eardrum shattering vocals, and Marshall stacks cranked to the point of no return, deserves a deeper dive. Who better to take us on such a journey than the gentlemen themselves? We had the pleasure of sitting down with Holka AND Rondinelli to discuss how this collaboration came to be, what the future holds, and of course, Black Sabbath.
Greetings Jamie and Bobby! Welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Bobby Rondinelli: I’m good! How are you, Joe?
Jamie Holka: I’m good, very good. Thanks for having us on.
I’m doing great myself. I’d like to thank you two for taking the time to come on, especially on this big day as it marks the release of your debut album, The Gathering. Congratulations!
JH: Thank you.
BR: Thank you.
When did you two first meet, and when did it become apparent that a collaboration was inevitable?
JH: You want it, Bobby?
BR: You got it. You started it *laughs*!
JH: We met at this bar called the Blue Boy *laughs*. No, that’s not how it happened. I was friends with a guy named Colin Hart, who was Bobby’s old tour manager with Rainbow. I was friends with him, and I had had been watching Bobby’s more recent videos. Bobby was my favorite ’80s rock drummer, so when I saw what he was up to these days, more or less, I felt like his style and my style would work together. I reached out to him through our friend Colin and we started with long distance recording one song. One song led to two, and two led to an entire album eventually. It was just something I kind of felt would work, and I had the right connections to find Bobby. It just happened.
BR: It was very natural. We hit it off really quick and we knew we had something.
It sounds like just the process of this album itself was very organic, in that it stemmed from a couple songs first. Was an album not the initial intention?
JH: Well, what happened…go ahead, Bobby.
BR: Well if the first song sucks, you’re not gonna do a second one *laughs*.
JH: *laughs*
BR: It just started to be pretty effortless. Jamie said, “You wanna do a whole record. You wanna produce it?” It worked, so we just kept going. We even have a couple extra songs that we didn’t release yet.
Musically, this album falls squarely into that ’70s jazz rock vein, reminiscent of acts like Jeff Beck, Tommy Bolin, and so forth. What is it about this sound and era that appeals to the two of you?
JH: Well you just hit it right there when you said Tommy Bolin. I told Bobby; I would text him too much in the beginning. He’s like, “Man, who’s this guy who keeps texting me? Oh, it’s Jamie! I’m making the album with him.” But I told him, I said, “I picture the Tommy Bolin Teaser album.” Tommy Bolin was one of my biggest guitar heroes because he was more under the radar. He always had big shoes to fill. He replaced Joe Walsh in James Gang. He took over for Blackmore in Purple. He was always in a disadvantage in his career, but that Teaser album, the interesting thing about that album and this album is that I felt like the Teaser record had different styles on it.
He had vocal tunes on there. We don’t. He had rock tunes. He had some jazz fusion tunes. He had a beautiful Latin tune on there. He had a ballad on there. I just thought, how cool would it be to make…that record really hit me. It should’ve been bigger than it was. The other interesting thing about Teaser is all the cast of characters. Phil Collins is on drums on a tune. Dave Sanborn is blowing sax on a tune. Jeff Porcaro on drums on a couple songs. Prairie Prince on drums. Jan Hammer’s on the album. If you look at our album, and you look at the Teaser album, I think there’s a definite parallel.
That’s a perfect segue into the next question. There’s no shortage of special guests on this outing, amongst them being Danny Miranda, Billy Sheehan, and Kenny Aaronson, just to name a few. Was there ever the intention to nail down a bassist and make this a power trio, or did the idea of different bassists giving their own flavor to the music seem more appealing?
BR: I thought it would be cool and so did Jamie to have people we dug on the record. All world class people, and see who brings what to the people. It really worked out well. If this ever becomes a touring project, we’ll have to nail somebody down. Right now, we got Kenny (Aaronson) for the show, and he’s doing great. We never really wanted to just use one guy. It was never like, “Let’s use this guy on every song.” When you’re using all world class guys, they’re all gonna bring something a little different, which I think was cool.
Amongst the originals on this album is a cover of The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. Whose idea was this, and do the both of you recall your first encounter with The Beatles?
BR: I was the original drummer in The Beatles and they fuckin’ threw me out! *laughs*
JH: It was funny. We were at the rehearsal yesterday and I said something. I told Bobby, “Our version of “Sgt. Pepper’s” is a little slower than The Beatles’ version.” Bobby goes, “Who?” *laughs* Anyway, I had sent Bobby a video of me playing “Sgt. Pepper’s” fingerstyle acoustic, where I keep the backbeat going and playing the melodies and the basslines. Bobby said, “Hey, we should do that.” We felt like we needed a cover tune on the album. That became that. My version that I sent him, like I said, was solo acoustic guitar, but obviously we turned it into a band arrangement and it was a piece of cake.
The Beatles are my favorite band of all time, so I’m very picky when it comes to covers, but this one works!
JH: *laughs* Cool! Bobby had the idea to put that blues jam section in there. You know what? That’s what I’ve always wanted to tell people. We did so much of this recording remotely, different guys in different places, but the “Sgt. Pepper’s” cover was me, Bobby, and Danny Miranda in the same room, playing it live. The way you hear it on the album, it was done like that. I remember we had…I don’t remember how many hours that day we had scheduled to work with Danny. We did the first take, and Bobby goes, “OK, I think we got it. Let’s do one more take.” We do the second take and it was done. Then, it was like, alright. We figured it was gonna take us a couple hours. It took us 20 minutes.
That’s how all the good ones happen! Jamie, Bobby is one of the all time great drummers in hard and heavy music. What was it like working with him on this record, and what aspects of his playing stand out to you the most?
JH: The first time I saw Bobby, I was 14 and it was Rainbow’s Straight Between the Eyes Tour on MTV. MTV actually used to play music, oddly enough. They used to have Saturday night concert every week. It’s really funny. Jeff *inaudible*, who’s playing keyboards with us, was the guy that lent me the VHS tape of this concert. Me and my buddy Carl saw Bobby for the first time since Cozy Powell had left the band. Back then, with no social media, no YouTube, you didn’t know about these things ahead of time. We were just like, “Man, who’s this drummer? He’s just killing it.”
I always watched Bobby’s playing. Bobby has a flow. He flows a certain way that’s very natural. There’s something that, when a drummer can flow like that, it catches my attention. Even last night, when we were going through our tunes for tonight, Bobby started out kind of straight ahead. By the end, he started throwing those flurries in and it was like, “There you go. That’s it.” He’s just a natural flowing drummer. He just flows beautifully.
Bobby, you’ve held down the beat for some heavy hitter axe-slingers in your day: Tony Iommi, Ritchie Blackmore, Buck Dharma. Where does Jamie fall in the mix, and what traits about him stand out to you?
BR: Well, the thing is, all those guys, plus Leslie West, and I played with a ton of guys, have their own style. That’s what makes them different. Tony ain’t Blackmore and Blackmore ain’t Leslie and Jamie ain’t either of those guys. Jamie’s Jamie. Jamie, when I hear him play, I know it’s him. To me, that’s the most important thing for a musician, especially guitar players, to have your own fingerprint on your playing, and not just be a million miles per hour. Jamie’s very unique. He’s got his own way of doing it. I think it’s the water up here in Buffalo or some shit, but it works *laughs*
JH: Pumpkin ale water *laughs*! The other thing, I always gotta mention this because the reason this thing was really able to happen, the way everything lined up, my buddy, we call him Storp, but his name’s Steve Dillon. He was the guy that got behind this and told me, “Let’s do it man. I’ll financially back up this whole project.” What ended up happening from this album is our album’s on Segno Records. He started this record label because of this album, so without that, without him…
BR: We wouldn’t be here.
JH: Yup, a lot of things had to line up. A lot of people helped us. There’s another guy, my buddy Rick Catanese, who has a studio here in my area. That got the ball rolling with all of my guitar tracks, being able to send them to Bobby. He wouldn’t charge me any money. I used to have to force him to take $100 every few times. People just kept getting onboard with the album. It’s a lot of people involved with it. If you took one person out, it probably wouldn’t have happened.
Jamie, leading up to the release of this album, you played guitar in the latest incarnation of Captain Beyond. What was that experience like, and is the band still an active vehicle?
JH: That was my first experience playing with that caliber of a drummer, Bobby Caldwell. It was funny because I had a cover band back in the early ’90s. When everybody was going in the grunge territory, I put together a band that did all psychedelic music. We would do Hendrix and Cream. I got really into Robin Trower. That’s when I was really into Tommy Bolin. I had a buddy of mine who smoked a ton of weed that says, “You gotta hear this Captain Beyond album.” I said, “Yeah, I never heard it.” A couple older cats from the area who were music-heads were telling me, “You gotta hear Captain Beyond.”
At about 21 years old, I heard the first Captain Beyond album and it was amazing. That album, really, it’s a shame it didn’t sell 10 million copies, because it’s really a unique record, especially for 1972. Anyway, that was very interesting to end up playing with that Bobby. I learned a lot from him, but it was tough. There was just no money in it. We did 30 shows all over the country, and a lot of hard miles in the van, us guys. All that aside, the experience of playing that music, I became the band director too. Bobby Caldwell would say, “Jamie, you gotta cue me on this part.” I kind of became the guy for that stuff live. It was cool, man. I felt, “OK, I can hang with these kinds of players.” That’s what I wanted to find out: Am I even good enough to play with this caliber of musicians?
That led to me looking for another drummer that was that good. Believe me, there’s some great players that I play with here at home, but there’s something about the players that came up, learning in the ’60s and ’70s. There’s a jazz foundation to the playing. There’s a swing to that feel that I really love, that a lot of drummers that started later in the ’80s might’ve missed out on because they started listening to more four on the floor kind of drumming. It was a trip to play that music with him. It only made sense that’s the kind of band I got to play with, a weird, under the radar kind of band. That’s what I’ve always been. I’ve never been doing stuff like anybody else, but anyway…if that makes any sense at all *laughs*.
Bobby, you’ve been with so many prominent acts that we’d be here all day if I started going down the list. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you about your time in Black Sabbath. Specifically, last year saw the long awaited rerelease of Cross Purposes as part of the Anno Domini box set. What are your thoughts on Tony Iommi’s remaster, and what are your favorite songs off that album?
BR: I think that’s one of the best unknown Sabbath records. I’m really proud of that record. I thought Iommi, Geezer, Tony Martin, Geoff (Nicholls), everybody played well on it. It kind of got swept under the carpet a little, but I think it’s a great record. I really like “Psychophobia”. There’s so many good songs on it. It’s almost prog at times. It had pretty cool, strange elements. It was a great record. I think everybody should at least check it out. I enjoyed playing with Sabbath.
At what point did you join? Were they still writing the album, or had it been written already?
BR: I don’t remember how many songs were already done, but we started with rehearsals for a couple of weeks. We were still writing stuff. Eddie Van Halen came over and wrote a part to one of the songs (“Evil Eye”) at rehearsal. I don’t know. Maybe 1 or 2 were finished, but the whole album we worked on in a house. We rented a house where we just set up shop and wrote songs.
Expanding upon the last question, do you have any plans on performing at or attending Sabbath’s final show next month in Birmingham?
BR: Hellno! *laughs* If I ain’t playing, I ain’t going!
Over the years, we’ve seen other collaborations of this nature unfortunately come and go. Is Holka-Rondinelli in it for the long haul? In other words, can we expect live shows, and is it too early to ask about album #2?
BR: I would love to do album #2, but we really have to see what album #1 does so we can get the backing for album #2. I think me and Jamie got a lot more music in us, a lot, but we’ll see what happens. Hopefully the stars align.
JH: That’s right. That’s what it all comes down to. I was just telling an interviewer yesterday, I’ve got another album’s worth of ideas. If, God willing, we get the chance to do it again, I’d like to get in the room a little bit more, a little bit more of real live, the way it used to be recorded. I think we can make another album even better, I really do, especially if we can develop a chemistry live and we can get this thing some traction. #2 would be awesome. It’s gonna be a really good one if we get the chance.
The new Holka-Rondinelli album, The Gathering, is available now on Segno Records. For more information on Holka-Rondinelli, click here.