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Every Mothers Nightmare Thrill RIde it and the biggest problem was with the record label. They kept wanting “Love Can Make You Blind.” We were like, “You have no idea what’s coming down the pipe.” “Real street music,” that’s what I was calling it, you know, just real rock and roll, low budget, run what you bring kind of thing, Back in the day, when I got my deal, you had to do a formula, you had to have the ballad, you had to have a look. That’s what you had to do and look like. When the change happened, I got kind of lost there for a long time. I really didn’t know exactly what I should be doing. You know, ev- erybody kept telling me I need to be “Love Can Make You Blind,” but I’m looking at the real world in the real world is far from “Love Can Make You Blind.” So you know, I kept it together, I kept writing, I think I took a year off. I went through my, my demons that I had to face and lose. I did that and I’m proud of that. Then I had to find me again and then find what I wanted to do. I rolled back to the beginning to where I was just gonna have to go back to being me and us. video. It was like, oh, oh, what is this? You know, and that same as I found that excitement of, I got to hear the rest of that album, you know, or going to a record store and just flipping through. I picked up King Diamonds “THEM” album just because I thought the cover was cool. You know, I miss all that. It’s so oversaturated. And it’s just so easy to get music any- more, and especially free and have my opinions on the streaming. It’s im- portant. But I mean, as you all know, it kills momentum for the artists to sell albums and things and it’s kind of to me, it’s just a necessary evil. But I kind of like the idea of just going, here’s the first single, no album available yet, you know, and maybe building up some mystique behind it. And just, you know, maybe garnering some excitement. Continued Continued You had a special relationship with Jimi Jamison from Survivor? RICK: We were secret friends for a lot of years, he did a lot of things for me, we talked a lot. People didn’t know that we talked as much as we did, but I met him when I first came to Memphis. He was good, he sang back up on my second record and stuff. Good guy. And so I hope Todd does that forever, actually. He was very accessible. You could call him and ask him anything and he would pick straight up cat, you know, I loved him to death. He was very cool. Yeah, he was definitely a father figure. He’d seen it all and all the things that Survivor had done, you know. They didn’t do re- ally nothing until he got in the picture. If you asked me, I mean, he wrote the stuff. In my book, he wrote the stuff. I was amazed by him. He was incredible. Rick Ruhl appears courtesy of High Volume Music. What are your thoughts on the rash of club closings for original bands? DENNY: Places just started bleeding money. Nationals came through, we try to draw a crowd for like a local, original band. It’s a tough sell around here for some reason, and it’s been for a long time. Back when I was in Silver Tongue, we started to gain some momentum, but it just seemed like we hit a brick wall. You’re gonna play so much in a small area and attract the same people all the time. They started venturing out to like Virginia, and lower Pennsylvania, and started building an audience.  They actually called me up, how many years ago was it now?, five, six years ago or so, to do fill ins for them while they’re on the phone trying to find a guitar player. And we had a blast. It was so cool to be the singer again. He and I are like thick as thieves. But it was cool to go to all these different places with them and see they’re drawing like 300 people, 400 people, and it had some mo- mentum going. I don’t know exactly what happened. But I mean, there’s the last couple things they put out. I mean, it’s quality stuff. It’s not quite what I want to do, because it’s a little more, modern, heavy. Thrill Ride appears courtesy of High Volume Music. Page 78 Photo by: