The United States of America is frequently overlooked when talking about progressive rock. Unfairly, not a doubt, because some of the most outstanding bands in this field came from that country, amidst the difficulties that came with releasing prog rock in the second half of the seventies, mostly. Along with this boom, Mirthrandir from New Jersey arrived.

With a tremendous energy and intricate complexity, they released their only album, ‘For You The Old Women,’ in 1976, with a powerful six-piece lineup consisting of Richard Excellente and Alexander Romanelli on guitars, Simon Gannett on keyboards, James Miller on bass and flute, Robert Arace on drums and John Vislocky III on lead vocals and trumpet. Not only did it become an absolute classic of the global prog scene, but also definitely one of the brightest musical moments of the USA, any year, any genre.

Today, I’m thrilled and honored to be in the presence of Mr. Simon Gannett and Mr. John Vislocky from the classic Mirthrandir lineup, as well as Mr. Alan Benjamin, Mirthrandir fan and founding multi-instrumentalist/composer from the prog band Advent.

Group shot of Mirthrandir (circa 1974) | Back row, left to right: Simon Gannett, James Miller, John Vislocky. Front row, left to right: Alexander Romanelli, Robert Arace, Richard Excellente

“We’d go to Coney Island and ride the roller coaster. Then we’d come back and have a fresh view of everything.”

I’d like to start from the beginning. Could you please tell us more about yourselves, where you were born and raised? How did music come to your lives? Are your families also involved in music? Or is it something that you started on your own?

Simon Gannett: One of the biggest events I can remember is when I saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, when I was a kid. I wanted to be in a band, we had air guitars and mop handles. (…), that’s how it all started for me. I was the first in the family to have that aspiration, to play music.

John Vislocky: I grew up in Fords, New Jersey. Both my parents were singers, my father a multi-instrumentalist. At age 9 I started playing trumpet. In high school I started playing drums as well. There was a time where, if you’re familiar with the group Three Dog Night, there was a song called ‘One,’ and nobody in the band could sing it. (…). I tried it and could sing it, and so I started singing lead from behind the drums. I was about 15 or 16.

Alan Benjamin: I was born in New York City (Manhattan) and raised there. My mom was a tremendous pianist and songwriter. She exposed me to music before I was even born. I always wanted to play music–she used to be very proud of saying that I begged her for piano lessons when I was 2. I eventually became a classical violinist and was in a really good school orchestra. Then I was sent to boarding school when I was 12, against my will, and I wasn’t able to bring my violin for some reason. I discovered rock and roll for real at that time and became a guitar player (…), my identity really fit naturally into prog.

What are some of your early influences? Did you have a sort of music hero in your childhood or teenage years? Or like any piece, song or album that changed your life early on?

Simon Gannett: I loved listening to Lee Michaels and Jon Lord, probably in my 14’s or 15’s. One night I was sitting at a bar, probably a bit underage, and I hear this song come out of a beautifully sounding jukebox, and I’m thinking “is this a new McCartney song?”. I listen to the song, a beautiful song, and then, all of a sudden, I hear this sound coming on that just blew me away, and it was ‘Lucky Man,’ the first time I heard a synth like that. That prompted me to buy the first ELP album and then discovered Keith Emerson with The Nice.

John Vislocky III: For me, it started out listening to big band trumpet players. I used to try to play all the stuff of Billy Butterfield. Once I got into the rock direction, for me it was The Rascals, when I was starting to learn how to play drums and sing, and a real big influence on my vocals was Mark Farner from Grand Funk Railroad, I would try to take on his style and try to sing. Chicago, too, that was a big one for us, trying to sing Peter Cetera’s stuff, and again Three Dog Night, too. Not to mention all the jazz artists I would hear all the time, and R&B, (…), that was there the whole time. My very biggest hero on the jazz side is Chick Corea, I couldn’t get enough of Chick Corea, my whole culture in my head changed.

Alan Benjamin: My mom always had music playing, probably a lot of classical music growing up (…), but she used to listen to all the modern stuff too, (…), like Sérgio Mendes. Probably the first thing that was prog that I actually bought was when I heard the theme from The Exorcist, an excerpt of Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’; that was like the first “prog” album I bought, when I was eleven or something like that, when it came out. When I was sent to boarding school, I had a roommate (early on) who played four albums over and over again, and the one that really influenced me was Queen’s ‘Sheer Heart Attack,’—and that also helped to form a big part of my future guitar identity as well. From there I kind of got into playing more seriously, things like Rush were kind of big, and got more into more proggy stuff like Dixie Dregs. Gentle Giant, whom I discovered through a friend when I was still at Berklee, was the biggest influence for me. Around the time when I turned 17, I bought ‘Octopus’ when I got home, I was just completely floored. And after that, probably Pekka Pohjola.

Do you have formal musical education?

Simon Gannett: I went to Berklee for two semesters.

John Vislocky III: I went to Berklee. I was there for three semesters. I got sick and I missed too much of the semester, so I dropped, and I started a band in Boston, and I used the money the college gave me back to pay my rent. It wasn’t until my rent money ran out that I went back to Jersey, and that’s when I got into Mirthrandir.

Alan Benjamin: I also went to Berklee when I was 16 but dropped out after a semester. I met a lot of great people, it was a really good experience, but I just felt like I had to go through another three semesters before getting into the stuff I was really interested in, and at 16 I didn’t have the patience for that.

Were you members of another band or bands before Mirthrandir?

Simon Gannett: Before Mirthrandir we had bands in junior high school and high school, playing weekend dances. We were busy, we were pretty good bands. But nothing at all like the Mirthrandir stuff.

John Vislocky III: Notably, no. I mean, yes other bands, (…) but not really. It was after Mirthrandir where I actually had some history. Bob (Arace) was in a lot of cover groups. And Richie (Excellente) played in all kinds of groups, he had his own recordings that he did.

Alan Benjamin: Before the reunion I was playing with Advent, and still am. We’ve been around since 1989. I also had a high school band named Amber. We did a three-song demo engineered by Les Paul, Jr., who passed away a while ago. We did that in 1979. Then I played in a cover band based out of Philly called Merlin when I was 18 and 19.

How did Mirthrandir start? How did the members meet?

Simon Gannett: The funny thing is that I lived maybe 5 or 6 miles from John my whole life, growing up, and I didn’t meet him or any of the other Mirthrandir fellas until I met John at Berklee, and he introduced me to them. When I came back from Berklee, John had introduced me to Al (Romanelli) and Jeff and Garry Thompsen, bass player and drummer, still great friends of ours. We started a cover band called Comfort Bodge. Dean Fasano was in that band as well, who was an incredible vocalist. It was a really good band. But we became disillusioned of playing cover music at that point. Some of the band wanted to go in the original direction, and some wanted to continue playing just for fun in a cover band, so we split from Comfort Bodge, and that’s when Mirthrandir actually started. When John came back from Boston, he joined the band.

John Vislocky III: Multiple groups went to Berklee, that’s where I met Simon. We got Simon incorporated in our little clique of musicians. Jimmy (Miller) and I both lived in Fords and met him through a mutual friend, we were friends at about age 11. Jimmy and I had a group together in high school, and then Jimmy was in a pretty popular cover band, and he was playing with one of the original guitar players that would be in Mirthrandir: John Candido “Snake”. From there Jimmy got incorporated with Al (Romanelli), who was writing a lot of the themes that Mirthrandir ended up incorporating. In high school we started jamming with Al. Al and Richie met each other in a guild factory. For 8 hours a day, they were tuning or setting up guitars, and they were just working out the Mirthrandir parts, all day long. When I came back (from Boston) I joined the group, and at that point, there had been four compositions completed: ‘For Four’ had been written already, ‘Light Of The Candle’ had been written already. I didn’t get involved in writing until ‘For You The Old Women’.

Did you have any prior members?

Simon Gannett: I think there were eleven singers before John, at one point or another, auditioning. We had, I think, three cast members of Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway auditioning for the band. They were all very gifted, but were looking for a more commercial project.

John Vislocky III: There were some other people in Mirthrandir when it first started. The person we talked about, John (Candido)…, I can’t remember his last name. And Dean. After those guys that’s when Richie came in and many different singers.

James Miller in the Rahway rehearsal loft

I see that the catalyst for forming the band was that you grew tired of playing covers and wanted to do original material instead?

Simon Gannett: You could say that, yeah.

Who came up with the name? What does it mean?

Simon Gannett: I don’t recall who came up with the name, but I think we misread the word “Mithrandir” from the trilogy Lord Of The Rings.

John Vislocky III: What I heard was that some of the guys had a misprint in the book. I’m sure Al has more insights on that.

How could you describe your beginnings as Mirthrandir back then?

Simon Gannett: Very musically challenging. Before that I was playing cover material. Pretty simple, basic music, and then we were playing at the top of our ability, we had to get better pretty quick.

John Vislocky III: Well yeah, some of those vocal lines, they were… still are unorthodox, so I was like “OK I have to figure out how I’m gonna do this”. I was just singing straight up to rock and roll. I mean, it wasn’t that foreign to me because both my parents were operatic singers, so I heard a lot of that kind of stuff, but I was like “OK, how am I going to execute this?”.

Where did you rehearse?

Simon Gannett: At the very beginning we were rehearsing at my parents’ house, in the garage and the basement. And then, they had enough of that. There was a little photo studio in Clark, New Jersey. They let us rehearse in the studio for a while, until we got booted out of there, literally all our equipment was on the sidewalk. Then we rented a loft in Rahway, New Jersey, a second-floor loft right next to the train station (…), it was a sound-proof room in the middle of a quiet downtown area, no people living there, and that’s where we did the bulk of our rehearsing at that point.

John Vislocky III: The place in Rahway was perfect, we could just do whatever, as loud as we wanted, we could go through the whole night and play, and it wouldn’t bother anybody. It became home for all of us for a while. We were always there.

Where did you play?

Simon Gannett: Our first show was at the (at the time called) Rahway Theater, on December 4th, 1974. A 1300 seat theater (…), it’s now called “Union County Art Center”, ProgStock festival is there. Our studio was literally down the street. We decided to book our first show and sold tickets for 2 dollars. We would get kids from different high schools, groups of five or ten, just to hear the band, nobody knew who we were. We had presale tickets, we sold maybe 200 seats in advance. The night of the show they had the police barricading the street because it was a complete sell-out, we sold all 1300 seats out. There was an opening band, and everyone started to chant “Mirthrandir” while they were on. For us it was like a dream, like walking on a cloud.

John Vislocky III: (complementing on that show): There was no stage, we had these guys that really liked us, our roadies at that point in time, that built it for us.

Ad for Mirthrandir’s debut show at the Rahway Theatre

“We were one big, happy family”

Are those the pictures included in the CD reissue? That’s your first show?

John Vislocky III: Yeah!

Simon Gannett: Some of them are from the Fox Theatre, which was done in 1975, a year later, that was the second big show that we did, which happened to be a midnight show, and it was a sell-out as well, pretty wild night.

Did you ever have some difficulties playing and rehearsing this music in certain venues?

Simon Gannett: We got fired from a few clubs. The owners didn’t appreciate people sitting on the dance floor, and not buying drinks. We were not welcome in more than one place.

John Vislocky III: The club owners would hear this music and go “what is that?”. It made no sense to them whatsoever, especially in the disco era.

What things did you enjoy doing together aside from the band?

John Vislocky III: The band was everything at that point in time, that’s all we did.

Simon Gannett: We were all really close. We were one big, happy family.

Mirthrandir | James Miller and John Vislocky in the Rahway rehearsal loft

I found some references to the Cyclone roller coaster on Coney Island, that’s meaningful for you, right?

John Vislocky III: Whenever we had writer’s block, we jumped into Simon’s van and we’d go to Coney Island and ride the roller coaster. Then we’d come back and have a fresh view of everything. And it’s on the CD. If you see the cover of the CD, you see the roller coaster. And I think Al’s the one who said this, he said: “the music’s very much like a roller coaster. If you go through a roller coaster once, you’re not settled with it, it’s hard. And then you do it again and it’s much easier.” That’s the way he viewed people listening to Mirthrandir for the first time.

Simon Gannett: (Complementing John’s comment) It was very therapeutic and it worked most of the time.

Did you have any collective influence as a band?

Simon Gannett: For sure. We’d be listening to music in Jeff and Garry Thompsen’s bedroom. Hatfield And The North, Gentle Giant, of course Genesis, Yes, ELP. Zappa. We would listen to that stuff constantly.

John Vislocky III: Happy The Man, PFM. We would hear all that stuff.

Was it always original material or did you ever play covers?

Simon Gannett: We did two covers tunes, because apart from the few concerts we did in theaters, we played some night clubs in New Jersey. Some of these were disco clubs, at the heart of the disco scene. We needed a little more material, so we did two covers: ‘Watching and Waiting’ by The Moody Blues, and ‘Spain’ by Chick Corea. Just to fill in the night a little bit.

Mirthrandir | Left to right: Alexander Romanelli, John Vislocky, Robert Arace

Was there something like a “main composer?” Or did everyone compose and provide ideas?

John Vislocky III: Most of that stuff is out of Al’s head. We would jump in and throw arrangements into there, but it was driven by Al. Bob, for instance, the drum parts that he would come up with, I mean, it’s incredible what Bob did on that album. But I have to give kudos to Al, Al was writing themes in high school; he had all this going on in his head. Al is the main composer.

How much more material than the one recorded in the album did you have?

John Vislocky III: There were two other compositions that aren’t on the album that we did: ‘Birth’ and ‘Number Two’. Then there is ‘Another World,’ which was ‘Number Eight’. We started with another one after that, ‘Number Nine,’ which never really got a name, we didn’t get too far into it.

Can you elaborate on the recording? How did the opportunity to record come? How was the experience of going into the studio?

John Vislocky III: That was my first experience. We went into a studio in (West) Orange, Vantone. They were doing disco stuff, like B.T. Express, (…), they were very big in the disco world. We had very limited funds when we recorded the album. Basically, everything was run through once. There was no editing or pasting together. The only thing that was overdubbed…, maybe a few piano parts, and me in the vocals and the trumpet, but I had only one shot through it, too. When it came time to mix, (…)we all sat at the console and ran the faders of our own parts, and just tried to make sure that everything was even.

Simon Gannett: We were well rehearsed when we got into the studio. We worked so much, and we played this stuff so much. The acoustic piano had to be overdubbed.

What’s the meaning of the title? Is there a concept? Who came up with it? Who are these “old women” you dedicate the album to?

John Vislocky III: It’s cynical. My understanding, if I’m putting it simply, it’s how people gossip, how people look at other people and assume things, how people are judged by other people. “For You The Old Women,” you know, like how old women talk. If you read the lyrics, that should come through. The first line “my fears are your delight…”, there you have it.

Simon Gannett: I’ll never know for sure, that’s definitely in Al’s head.

When were the songs of the album written? Do they date back to your early days? Or were they more “current”, speaking of the year the album was made?

Simon Gannett: A lot of the stuff was written before Mirthrandir, especially ‘Light Of The Candle’. Most of the other stuff, we did that every day, Al would bring themes in, and we just worked out minute by minute, piece by piece.

Comments on some of the songs: Number Six: how does the numeration work? Were there pieces “number one” through “number five”?

Simon Gannett: It went up to number nine. Three through seven were on the album. I think there were always initial numbers, names came later. (mentioned sparsely during the whole chat, these are the numbered tracks and its names: ‘Number Three’ is ‘Light Of The Candle,’ ‘Number Four’ is ‘For Four,’ ‘Number Five’ is ‘For You The Old Women,’ ‘Number Six’ stayed the same, and ‘Number Seven’ is ‘Conversation With Personality Giver’).

John Vislocky III: I think ‘Birth,’ which is ‘Number One,’ had its name as ‘Birth’. ‘Number Two’ stayed that way.

For Four:

John Vislocky III: I think it’s reminiscent of four different women in Al’s life who he admired.

‘Conversation With Personality Giver’:

Simon Gannett: The last song that we were working on.

John Vislocky III: We didn’t have the ending. I don’t think we wrote it in the studio, but it was just before that.

Who did the drawings for the front and back covers? What are they supposed to represent?

Simon Gannett: The front cover was done by an artist, Patrick Milbourn, who was a well-known New York artist, and had done some magazine covers. We just liked that piece that he sent us, and we just used it, it had a statement, for us. Don’t know the exact meaning of it.

John Vislocky III: At that point in time, I was going out with a girl whose father was an artist, his name was Harry Meisel. He contributed that (the back cover), it just seemed so appropriate for the album.

Was the album self-produced all along? Were you satisfied with the result?

Simon Gannett: It was completely self-produced. We did it ourselves. We were novices, for sure, and nobody was more surprised than we were, because we thought it came out pretty well. I was very happy with it. Probably, in my opinion, a good performance, but not one of our best performances. It was acceptable, we did OK, but there were nights where we were just incredible, from my perspective.

John Vislocky III: Rarely am I happy with one of my recordings. I actually don’t know what I thought right after it, but after time passed, I just thought I could’ve done a much better job than what I did, but I’m proud of what’s on there.

Do you know how many copies were made?

Simon Gannett: We contracted for 1000 copies, I think we received 970 or something like that.

Did you manage to sell it well at least among your fans?

Simon Gannett: No. We sold maybe 80 to 100 albums, if that, maybe less, maybe 50. Sold it to local record stores, and in my family business, we had a retail store, and it was there. They sat in my basement for twenty-something years. Back in the early nineties, I got a call from a collector, asked for the records and I got a few dollars per piece and got rid of them. We had no idea there was any value to them at all. It became a collector’s item. We’re impressed that people like it, certainly not financially compensated, but that’s OK, too.

John Vislocky III: (Complementing Simon’s answer) I’ve seen them go for like 300 or 400 dollars. (But) until it went digital it was dead, you know, we just moved on with our lives. Everybody was starting to appreciate it because it went into Europe.

Did you manage to come close to getting a deal with a record company or label? Was that something you tried to get in the first place?

Simon Gannett: We tried to go into record labels. John and I went to Boston once, and tried to get into the WBCN radio station.

John Vislocky III: (complementing on Simon’s answer) … And my sister went to the programme director of Q4, which was a big New York station at that point in time, she got him down to listen to us.

What happened after the recording of the album? Did you continue to play and compose?

Simon Gannett: No more big shows. Played a few local places. We decided it was time to call it a day. Rich Excellente left the band early, he didn’t play on the album cut of ‘Conversation With Personality Giver’.

John Vislocky III: It all went downhill from there.

Did he (Excellente) leave the band midway recordings?

Simon Gannett: When we had gigs, he would play the gigs with us, but he didn’t want to be in the writing process anymore at that point. He wanted to go in a more rock and roll direction, and he had a nice little career after that.

Is there any additional recorded, unreleased material? Were you ever recorded live back then?

Simon Gannett: There are a couple of early live recordings of the band. Our first two concerts were recorded. Sound quality was really bad, but it had incredible energy. I don’t think the recordings are good enough to release. There are four-track recordings (…), through the learning process, we recorded a few rehearsals.

John Vislocky III: There are recordings of some of the tunes that we mentioned that weren’t on the album, they do exist, and they’re not half-bad really, for what they are, but they wouldn’t be for general consumption. In 1990 the guys got together, I wasn’t involved, and Al had written a bunch of additional material, they recorded it with a different singer. The one tune that carried over (from Mirthrandir) was ‘Another World’. I got the separate tracks for the eight-track they did and recorded the way I heard it and put trumpet on it too. That’s probably the last thing I did with Mirthrandir but that’s not released either.

Simon Gannett: (Complementing John) That was called ‘Luna,’ that was in 1998. We got together in Al’s basement. Jim recorded that on an eight-track cassette machine, and it sounded pretty good. We never released it for various reasons. But it was Al’s baby; we just played his stuff at that point.

Was there ever a plan for a second album?

Simon Gannett: The original Mirthrandir didn’t have a plan for a second album. (On ‘Luna’) Other than ‘Another World,’ they’re all new songs written by Al, we just played parts that he wanted us to play.

John Vislocky III: Not until ‘Luna’.

For how much longer did Mirthrandir exist?

Simon Gannett: We continued for about another year; I think.

Mirthrandir at the Rahway Theater | Left to right: Alexander Romanelli, Robert Arace, John Vislocky, Richard Excellente, James Miller

What did you do after the band broke up?

Simon Gannett: After Mirthrandir, I was playing in a local New Jersey club band. We worked 5 to 6 nights a week. For about five years I did that, on the road. And that gave me an opportunity to play on some local recordings, and I did one with some of the guys from Bon Jovi, it was a band called Message. I played with Richie Sambora and Alec John Such. That was about as close as I got after Mirthrandir to playing in a real-quality gig. There was also a band called Oliver’s Twist, (it had) cool original stuff, very energetic. We were the house band of The Stone Pony club, in Asbury Park. For a couple of years, we were the opening act for the major national artists coming through, that was a lot of fun. We couldn’t get a deal, we tried. As a matter of fact, we were at SIR, New York, auditioning for a record company, I don’t recall which one, and Kiss was in the next room, and they came in and wished us good luck, it was a neat experience. I worked with Bob in Rivendell, which was the working band for five years, (…) he actually got me into that band.

John Vislocky III: I got signed to CBS with a group called Spy. We released an album, unfortunately there were a lot of mitigating factors that occurred, and it really didn’t go anywhere. Shortly after that, some people that I knew in CBS gave the album to Kansas, because at that point in time Steve Walsh had left Kansas, so I auditioned for Kansas, and I didn’t get it, (…) that was a great experience. Another group that I loved, and Simon was in it for a while too, was a group called Attaboy. That was, to me, from a writing perspective, the most enjoyable time I’ve ever had, actually. I (also) had some day jobs, (…), I had some children and things got real, so I had to get employed.

‘For You The Old Women’ had a reissue in 1992 on the Syn-Phonic label, can you tell us about it? How did you feel about an interest in reissuing the album?

Simon Gannett: We were contacted by Greg Walker. He showed some interest, and we liked it. We were really surprised at the time but were just starting to realize that there was a little bit of a buzz about the band. It was a good opportunity for us, that’s when we were up to remix and remaster the stuff.

Did the whole band take part in that remix?

Simon Gannett: We relied on the engineer; it was a great staff there. We would tweak here and there but they did the mix. There is a part in ‘For Four’ where John’s vocals weren’t working, they were going in and out, so John actually sang a couple of lines differently on the CD. That was redone.

John Vislocky III: Yeah, for the most part, maybe not Richie. Kind of a “yay or nay” thing: “you like this?”, “you like that?”, “here’s what we want to hear, the effect, the balance we’d like”. Waterfront Studios, I believe it was.

Any reason on why the song order is different in the reissue than in the original LP?

Simon Gannett: It was sort of my idea, I must say. I just thought the album should’ve started a little stronger, I just wanted a little more punch in the beginning there. That was just my thought and Al said “yeah, let’s do it.”

John Vislocky III: (Complementing Simon) It was a good idea.

How about the different cover art? Who made it? It’s the roller coaster, right?

Simon Gannett: That was the basic premise. Al used a term: “tension and release,” kind of like a roller coaster experience. It was a friend of Al, an artist, he did an oil painting, and we took the oil painting to another artist in New Jersey, named Valentine, and he took fisheye lenses and created that aspect. That’s one painting through fisheye lenses.

I was very happy to find out you reformed in 2005, can you elaborate on that? How did that initiative come? By whom? How could 4 out of 6 original members reunite after so long?

John Vislocky III: The way I remember it, I was in the Outer Banks, vacationing. It was like around 11:30, 12:00 at night. It was beautiful, I was just looking at the moon…, and I thought “wouldn’t it be nice to do a reunion?”, because we were hearing that there were prog festivals out there. It just occurred, and then we (Simon and John) discussed it, saying like “do we think it’s possible?”. Richie was in a different state, so it was going to be really difficult to get him involved. Al really just had no desire to do it, I don’t know why, but we asked him, and he didn’t want to do it, I can say no more than that. Jimmy of course wanted to do it; Bob wanted to do it. Then someone who we had known who had really liked the group was John Callahan, we had him come over and jam with us on Light Of The Candle, just to see if he had the mindset to do it, and he did. We knew we had to have another guitar player, that’s when a series of people got Alan involved.

How did Alan Benjamin come into the equation for the reunion?

Alan Benjamin: It was the second half of 2005. We were almost ready to release (Advent’s) second album, ‘Cantus Firmus,’ when Advent’s original drummer got in touch with me and he said that he got a call from a friend of his, who was playing with Mirthrandir, and asked if he knew any other guitar player who could be good for the job. He said, “I know the guy.” It was not a good time for me, in terms of what was going on, ‘cause I was so busy, but I was like “man, I’m a fan, I love the music”. I remember looking at the album the first time and seeing that the address on the back was one town away from where I lived at the time.

What did it mean for you (Alan) to be a part of the band?

Alan Benjamin: It was the most incredible thing. The way I discovered Mirthrandir, in addition to being a musician, I was a pretty big fan, and I really dove into a lot of the lesser-known prog music. Especially in the late eighties, early nineties when a lot of reissues started coming out on CD. I used to go to this guy’s house to buy a lot of CD reissues, his name is Doug Larson—I used to go to his house all the time. After a while, we got to know each other well enough that he would just start bringing out albums, saying “this isn’t available, but I know you’re gonna like it”. That’s how I discovered Mirthrandir. When the CD came out, I bought it right away. It’s kind of surreal to get a call about joining. The audition went really well, it just clicked, and I feel like I’ve been there all along, and these guys made me so welcome, I had a great time doing all that stuff. We had a great time, it was so much fun.

How much time did you have to learn the guitar parts?

Simon Gannett: It was quite a process. We were fortunate enough to still have the original 16-track masters of the album. So, we decided to go to a studio and separate the tracks so we could give everybody their parts, ‘cause it’s very dense as you may know, there’s a lot of hidden parts in there.

John Vislocky III: Both Alan and John (Callahan) stepped in, and it was like, trying to learn all that without any real written music, I know it was quite an effort.

How much did the reunion last? Can you tell us some of your strongest memories?

John Vislocky III: Though it was different, for me there were some magical nights in there as well. For me, ROSFest was probably my best experience with having to do it again. Having said that, performance-wise, the whole atmosphere of being in Baja (BajaProg festival) was just mind-blowing. It rained out that day, we were supposed to play in the afternoon, (…) but we just kept going after it all day, and so they got us into the theater, after a lot of different things. It was supposed to start later than that, we didn’t even know if anybody would be there, and when the curtains opened, the place was packed! And all these people knew our music, it was unbelievable. Even though we had no sound check, whatsoever. They were so receptive to it, and all the Internet was going nuts. It was an experience unlike I had never had before with an original group. There was one festival that Bob didn’t want to do, so we had the drummer from the group Spy. He came in for ProgDay, in North Carolina.

Alan Benjamin: Bob Goldman (Spy’s drummer) played with us twice: we did a warm-up show in South Plainfield, in KC’s Korner, and then we did ProgDay. Then Bob Arace came back after that.

I see that you have an official website with some concert dates: three in 2006, one in 2007, one in 2008 and one in 2009, were those the only gigs you played?

John Vislocky III: Yeah, that’s it.

Alan Benjamin: KC’s Korner is the only thing that’s not there. The last one was at the North Star Bar (in Philadelphia, May 17th, 2009), opening up for Mörglbl.

Was there any other big plan? Like recording something new or following up on something?

John Vislocky III: We flirted thinking about a few things. I had a buddy, Phil Romano, an excellent keyboard, drummer, and vibraharp player, who we were going to try to get into the group. He had a bunch of great originals, but it just wasn’t going to work with him. I think that was really the only flirtation with actually trying to go further after that.

What would you say is the current status of the band?

John Vislocky III: Non-existent (laughs).

Simon Gannett: Still friends.

What occupies your life nowadays?

Simon Gannett: I’m retired, doing a lot of travelling. Just enjoying life a little bit. There’s another reunion for a different band, the band Rivendell, we have a couple of shows for the 45th anniversary reunion, (…), I’m working on that. And just trying to keep current playing-wise, I haven’t been practicing quite as much as I used to, but I still enjoy it.

John Vislocky III: I’m down now in South Carolina. I’m playing in two different groups: one is a mixture of music but mostly R&B and some of what’s referred down here as “beach music,” and a little bit of rock; and I’m also playing in a duo where we play to full orchestrations behind us, so I get to sing all kinds of neat stuff. Just prior to that I was in a Chicago tribute band, unfortunately I can’t do that anymore, but that was so much fun, singing that stuff. I just did a jazz thing on drums actually; it was a trio with a female singer. I’m just enjoying whatever music comes my way.

Alan Benjamin: We’re working on our (Advent’s) fourth album. It seems to take us about nine years to get an album done. COVID also shook things up a bit and one of our members moved to North Carolina, and we had some personnel changes as well. (That added another two-year delay.) I’m also looking at releasing my first solo album, hopefully later this year, although I’ve been saying that for a couple of years now. By sheer chance I got a job at the local School of Rock too, so I teach one day and night a week (I retired from my day job near the end of 2020, a technical career that I had for years).

Mirthrandir at ROSfest, April 29th, 2006 | Left to right: Simon Gannett, Alan Benjamin, Robert Arace, John Vislocky, James Miller, John Callahan | Photo by Martha Schenkenberger

Do you keep in touch with the other members? Do you know where are they now and what they are doing?

Simon Gannett: We talk to Jim and Bob quite often. I (played with Bob) too actually. He’s in North or South Carolina. We jammed a few weeks ago. Jimmy is in Florida. We haven’t really spoken to Al in a while, he’s living in New Hampshire now, way up north. He’s doing fine from what I hear, his daughter is my goddaughter and I speak to her quite often. Rich Excellente passed away, it’s going to be two years or a year and a half ago, or so. Great loss, just a wonderful person, and great inventor. One of his guitars is quite popular, the American Showster guitar, shaped like the Fender of a ‘57 Chevy. He was very big with Electro-Harmonix, and invented a couple of pedals for them, as well.

John Vislocky III: I actually played with Bob not that long ago. Bob did a gig with me; he’d just moved down here, and we needed a drummer for a gig. We see here Jimmy and you (Simon) see Jimmy when you drive down.

Mirthrandir at Baja Prog festival, March 11th, 2006 | Left to right: Simon Gannett, Alan Benjamin, John Vislocky, James Miller, John Callahan, Robert Arace | Photo by Brian Schenkenberger

Will we ever see Mirthrandir again? What do you think?

John Vislocky III: If we got some sort of phone call that made it financially feasible for all of us to be put in one spot for a few weeks, and there was some great gig out there…, I don’t think any of us would say “no.” I’m sure Bob and Jimmy would still do it. Doubtful with Al. But because we’re all disjointed all over the place it would be very difficult, because we’d have to have intensive rehearsals to make something that we’d be proud to present to somebody.

Thank you very much!

Dom Márquez

Headline photo: Mirthrandir at Brothers 3 | Left to right: James Miller, Richard Excellente, John Vislocky, Robert Arace, Alexander Romanelli, Simon Gannett

Mirthrandir Official Website / Facebook