Robert Berry Discusses SiX BY SiX's Debut Album
Saga's Ian Crichton and Saxon's Nigel Glockler join Berry to form exciting new power trio.
Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. If you’ve been here since the beginning, you may recall that I spoke with California-based multi-instrumentalist Robert Berry back in January of 2021 about the album Third Impression, which he released under the band name 3.2 — the third album related to his work with the late Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake & Palmer fame.
Robert is back with a new band — not a project! — called SiX BY SiX, which is also the name of the group’s debut album on Inside Out Music. I spoke with Robert about it via Zoom from his home in Silicon Valley.
Let’s get to that story.
[extremely Professor Farnsworth voice]
Good news, everyone!
[/extremely Professor Farnsworth voice]
The power trio is not dead. SiX BY SiX, a new band featuring multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Robert Berry, Saga guitarist Ian Crichton, and Saxon drummer Nigel Glockler, has formed and is set to release the band’s self-titled debut album on Aug. 19 on Inside Out Music. The plan is not for SiX BY SiX to be one of those many supergroup-type projects that seem to pop up endlessly, but to be an ongoing band.
The debut record is a pop/rock/prog hybrid much in the vein of Asia, Trevor Rabin-era Yes, or GTR but with more balls. SiX BY SiX flat-out rocks.
Glockler is a big hitter on the drums and Crichton adds rhythmic crunch to his unique brand of soloing. Berry augments everything with keyboards that give the songs a bigger sound, providing depth and heft. He also plays bass and provides the band’s vocals and production to bring all of the parts together.
Having completed Third Impression last year — the third part of the “3 trilogy” from Berry’s work with the late Keith Emerson — Berry was unsure of his next move. The only thing he knew he wanted to do was to move to a sound that was a little more guitar-oriented.
“I like the perfect mix of guitar and keyboards, which is what Asia was, what Yes was, a lot of bands,” Berry said. “So I put a lot more guitar in Third Impression, and people actually liked that a lot. So it was rewarding in many ways because it also led me to tell my manager, Nick Shelton in England. He said, ‘What are you going to do next?’ I said, ‘I’d really like to find a guy (on guitar) with the genius of Keith Emerson. The songs we wrote and the parts he did — only Emerson could have done them. Like Steve Howe but more powerful.’ And he called me up the next day and goes, ‘What about Ian Crichton?’”
Berry and Crichton met and the Saga guitarist was interested in putting together a trio in the vein of Cream. Berry was looking at doing something more musical and rocky, like Rush. Having worked with Glockler in the post-Steve Hackett version of GTR in some preliminary rehearsals and doing some demos, Berry knew about the Saxon drummer’s capabilities. He suggested Glockler to Crichton.
That gave the band a triumvirate of members from the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. The three musicians kept the band under wraps for a year while they worked on the record together.
The band was nearly called Six-foot-six, which Berry said he liked because it’s the length of human DNA, but someone else had the name. Berry liked the idea of using the ‘S’ in Saga and Saxon and the ‘X’ in Saxon, and Six by Six (stylized as SiX BY SiX) fit the bill.
“I wanted to do something like putting Jeff Beck into Rush. I don’t know how else to put it,” Berry said with a laugh. “Amazingly cool parts but that tone, too. That guitar tone that Ian has.”
The songs were crafted much like Berry’s previous work with Emerson. Crichton wrote parts and Berry found ways to turn them into songs.
“The way (Emerson) voiced things and everything, Ian had that,” Berry said. “He sent me some fragments and some pieces of music that he had just made up — he doesn’t write a whole song, he makes up little pieces — and I heard those. The first one was ‘Yearning to Fly’ that he sent me, and I made a song out of it and sent it back to him. And he went, ‘Oh my God, wow!’ And everything beyond that worked out the same way.”
Berry used Crichton’s brilliant little guitar pieces as the basis for the songs that ended up on SiX BY SiX. He arranged them and filled them in and, once the basic track was written, the three musicians worked together to give them life.
The band did some recording together but Crichton laid down some of the guitar parts in his home studio. Berry said that one of the difficult parts in the recording stage was getting Crichton’s guitar tone to perfectly match the parts he had previously received and which he’d fallen in love with.
“We labored over that guitar tone,” Berry said. “We worked on it. He had quite a few things that he redid, not because the playing wasn’t great, but that little 10 percent of the tone — whatever it was that sounds like him — wasn’t there. So, he really worked on getting that at his studio.”
The band all got together for the final mixes and videos. The final product is, in my opinion, one of the top rock albums of 2022 so far.
Crichton’s guitar work throughout his career is as distinctive as a fingerprint. His playing on SiX BY SiX grabs listeners by the throat at the start of opening track and first single “Yearning to Fly,” and rarely loosens its grip. While listers will certainly recognize some of Saga’s DNA through Crichton’s guitar work, this band bears little resemblance to Ian’s “day job.” SiX BY SiX is very much its own thing.
Berry’s lyrics are positive and he delivers them with honest, confident vocals, but the trio’s playing provides the true magic behind SiX BY SiX.
“China” contains the album’s most infectious chorus and a face-melting solo by Crichton. The rhythm section of Berry on bass and Glockler on drums powers the song forward with the energy of a band one-third the age of the principles involved here.
Crichton simulates Scottish bagpipes with his spotlight guitar on the atmospheric intro to “Reason to Feel Calm Again,” but not in a way that would remind listeners of Big Country. His playing is more angular and dramatic. The first half of the song is grand and cinematic — much less “power trio” than the first two tracks. At eight minutes long, it’s the album’s epic centerpiece. It’s a great song to sing along with, too, and one that Berry envisioned immediately as the perfect opening for the band’s live shows.
“This is going to be our opening song,” Berry said about his reaction at hearing just the ‘bagpipe guitar’ part that Crichton had sent him. “Ian’s going to walk out, white spotlight, guitar that sounds like a bagpipe, and that’s how we’re going to start. He’s going to go out all by himself.”
The song ramps up the tempo just before the five-minute mark and then quickens even more — the musical equivalent of reaching the top of the roller coaster’s big hill, shifting forward for that moment of anticipation, and then plunging toward the ground. It’s an exhilarating ride that finally returns to the atmospherics of the beginning, bringing the coaster back into the station for the next trip.
“This thing needs to take it to another level,” Berry said of the tempo change. “Because I want people — first song they hear of us (live) if they don’t know us — I want them rocking. A shuffle always does that.”
“The Upside of Down” is about being happy when you reach the bottom, because the only change that can happen at that point is for things to get better. Much like Rush, the band makes much more sound than one would expect out of just three performers. This song is among the most accessible offerings from the album for me, along with “China.”
The jazzy/proggy “Casino” is one of the album’s shorter tracks at just a tick beyond four minutes and, although it isn’t exactly showing off, it does display some of the considerable technical talent the band possesses. Like with Saga and Berry’s typical output, there are progressive elements throughout the album but this is more of a rock album. However, the band includes a short, acoustic palate cleanser with “Live Forever.” It changes the tone of the album and provides some color and contrast to the more up-tempo songs. The song began with Berry deconstructing one of Crichton’s guitar fragments.
“Ian sent me an acoustic guitar part, just him fingerpicking three or four chords,” Berry said. “It wasn’t in the order they’re in (now) at all. I said, ‘Well, that’s nice. Can’t do anything with that.’ I came in one day and wanted to work on another one of our songs and I thought, ‘You know what, I’d kind of like to have an acoustic song.’ I sat down and I wanted to write a song about ‘I’ll be talking to you again. I’ll be seeing you again,’ not, ‘Hey, when we die I’ll meet you in Heaven or Hell.’ I just wanted to leave it open and that was the hard part of that tune.”
Berry lends a little Keith Emerson flavor at the beginning of “The Last Words on Earth,” and his keyboard chords in the song add a nice density to it that gives it a bigger scale. “Skyfall” is a cool word, but the message in the song that follows by that name is exactly the opposite. The lyrics indicate that the sky is not, in fact, falling. It’s Berry continuing to throw his positive messages into the lyrical content, and it’s refreshing to hear an album that was put together after the pandemic started that assures listeners that things are going to be OK. There’s enough darkness in the music and lyrics of the past couple of years to last a good long while. It’s nice to have some positivity for a change.
“The Battle of a Lifetime” is a hodgepodge of styles. I can hear a dash of Peter Gabriel reminiscent of “Solsbury Hill” in the guitar, some bits of Yes, an ELP military march by Glockler, and all of it blends together in a unique way.
“Save the Night” has seemingly the most Saga influence, at least during the song’s first half. This closing track stretches out over more than six minutes and seems even bigger when you take into account the final section of the song with its growing intensity and repeated backing vocals, as well as the false ending. It’s the only track in the bunch that could have closed the album.
Berry said the false ending was accidental. The song wasn’t supposed to fade back in. That happened when he faded out the end to shorten it and made a copy to send to Crichton. The copy he made went beyond where the song faded back in, and Crichton told Berry that was a psychedelic ending. Berry had to play it again to find out what Crichton was talking about. The band decided to keep that happy accident in the final mix, although it has been cut from the video.
When one combines the songwriting, messaging, musical chops, and hooks of SiX BY SiX, it’s difficult to imagine anyone in 2022 producing a better all-around, feel-good rock album that delivers from start to finish. You can hear the excitement Berry has for this band, even if you don’t get the opportunity to talk to him. It shines through in the music itself.
“This is a real album. It’s also a real band,” he said. “We’re not doing a project. We didn’t just throw it together in a couple months and put it out. Ian’s guitar parts ignited me, basically. I hope (listeners) feel the excitement of a band that’s really together.”
As if releasing a terrific album wasn’t enough, SiX BY SiX will also be the subject of a graphic novel, which will drop in September. Artist J.C. Baez is bringing the album’s songs to life in a new way, giving visual representation to the SiX BY SiX storyline. Berry is the writer about the journey internal, and it is being colorized by Manuel Avila, Jon Lyons, and Baez.
“This guy in this graphic novel with these songs, he’s going to start out seeing all the ugliness in the world,” Berry said of the graphic novel’s story. “It’s dark. He’s not happy. By the end, he goes through these dungeons and all these things he goes through. In all these things he sees the bad, but as he goes along he realizes that what he can reach in his circle of influence, he could do some good. And he sees his friends aren’t so unhappy with life because they help people. They do things for people. It’s all about: What can I do tomorrow to make a better world?”
Provided the album sells, the band aims to do a tour in Europe in the spring. Berry worked the songs so that he can play bass and keyboards as Geddy Lee did for many years in Rush. He said he wants to take out the trio with a couple of backing singers so they can replicate the big, full sounds on songs like “Reason to Feel Calm Again” and “Save the Night.”
Hopefully SiX BY SiX will enjoy enough success to do some North American shows as well. And this is an album that should sell well. The musicians are talented, and they’ve recorded and produced a great collection of accessible songs that seem likely to appeal to fans of both traditional rock and progressive music.
Seeing the names of the band members attached to the SiX BY SiX name, and not knowing what to expect before hearing a note, listening to the album was like opening a Christmas present and finding something I wanted but didn’t know I wanted. Hopefully that’s the takeaway others will have as well.
Tracklist:
Yearning to Fly
China
Reason to Feel Calm Again
The Upside of Down
Casino
Live Forever
The Last Words on Earth
Skyfall
Battle of a Lifetime
Save the Night
Find out more about SiX BY SiX, check out the official website and/or follow the band on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
For my full discussion with Robert Berry, including our track-by-track discussion of the album, follow-up on my previous discussion with him regarding the final chapter in the 3 trilogy, and more, check out the video below or download Episode 74 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast on any major podcast platform (Apple, Google, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, Goodpods, Podchaser, etc.).
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