Sledgehammer

with Guy Gelso

Describe your music in three words.

Real Arena Rock

Who are Sledgehammer’s musical influences?

Any 60’s, 70’s & 80’s rock band that had good song writing and good players. Van Halen, Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Deep Purple, Dio, Iron Maiden, Queensryche and of course Led Zeppelin

What is your artistic creative process like?

As a group coming up with new original songs, we refer to our guitar player Steve Blaze who has written 13 albums for his band Lillian Axe and several other artists, so basically he will bring a song to the band complete with all parts and the rest of us will refine the parts to our liking and do any editing of the song parts as a group to fit everybody’s tastes.

Do you have a favorite musical quote of all time?

Long Live Rock!!! (The Who)

How did Sledgehammer come together?

Steve Blaze and I would run into each other over the years whenever Zebra & Lillian Axe had a show together and always talked about one day putting a band together. We finally made contact again through a good friend, Tim McCaskill and found out we lived around the corner from each other and we  started calling other musicians we knew to audition until we had the lineup we were confident could do what we wanted to do.

What does Sledgehammer hope to bring to the city of New Orleans?

New Orleans has never had a good rock scene except in the early 70’s because there has never been respect from the media & festival promoters in this area for Rock, only Jazz, funk and Rhythm & Blues, even though major rock acts regularly sell out at local arenas. Both Zebra & Lillian Axe had to go outside Louisiana to find success. We eventually hope we can turn that around by showing the New Orleans area that great rock has “soul” and is alive and well. Zebra and Lillian Axe were both recently recognized by the state and inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, the only to rock bands to be inducted and maybe Sledgehammer can follow in those footsteps.