Bio:

Combining the best elements of heavy metal and acid jazz, Walter Head Experience burst onto the L.A. club scene in 1989 and has been a permanent fixture in underground metal for nearly two decades.

The story of how a young native of southern Alberta took his musical dreams as far as he could starts in 1978, when Walter Head turned fourteen years old. His father, a mill-worker, visited a pawn shop in Calgary and bought his son a Fender Wildwood for fifty Canadian dollars.

"Thing changed my life," Head recalls. "I didn't really know what I was doing at first, so I just fucked around until I started hearing stuff that sounded good to me... I'd also play around to records I had — rock, jazz, even classical. I taught myself improvisation, figured out keys and scales, all by myself. Wasn't 'til years later when I picked up some music theory books that I knew what it all meant."

In 1985, Head moved to Los Angeles, where he became one of the founding members of an extensive jazz-improv co-op called Jazz Lung. They played two to three times a week, each time with a different, rotating line-up of musicians who had a pure love of jazz. It was in this group that he met the musicians who would eventually form Walter Head Experience. Even after the band's foundation in 1989, most of the players continued in Jazz Lung's rotating line-up. However, the co-op's membership dwindled and eventually disappeared by 1992, freeing up the Experience to tour.

One can hear how Head's self-taught improvisation techniques have influenced Head's compositions. His music, noted for lengthy, jam-style solos, is rooted not only in jazz but in symphonic forms as well.

"Yeah, that was one of the weird things I figured out years later," Head says. "I guess I was influenced by those classical records I had as a kid. I had this LP — one side was Beethoven's third symphony, the other was his fifth. I wore that fucker out pretty fast... It's always been in the back of my mind, I guess. See, I learned that in symphonic structure, there's a pretty traditional thing involving themes. Almost like the verse and chorus of a song: introduce one theme, one set of chords, then introduce a second. Maybe it uses the same chords, maybe it uses something new.

"The big advantage, and the thing they tell me sets us apart, is that 'development' section. You have your chords and melodies, right? You repeat 'em a couple of times, then suddenly — you're out to sea. The melodies recur, but you introduce variations on them, and you veer off to strange and wild places. And this could go on who knows how long, until — BAM! you're back to your themes again.

"That's always how we've written songs."

Although Walter Head Experience's 1997 album The Déjà Vu of Saffron-Blue was critically acclaimed and is arguably Kelleystein Recordings' most commercially successful album, the Experience is in no hurry to record a follow-up. Many critics, while positive, have noted that this style of songwriting is not necessarily conducive to recording. Walter Head Experience tried very hard to maintain their "live act" feel in the recording, and it is agreed in the band that they may as well just continue playing live to sold-out shows in Los Angeles and around the world.

An important element in a band that has lasted seventeen years and counting is the camraderie among band members. Many groups are plagued with egos, jealousy, and authoritarian leadership. In that light, it's interesting to note that Walter Head Experience has retained the same line-up since its inception, and nobody is willing to budge. The line-up includes:

Walter Head – guitar, vocals
Joe Ashford – guitar
Toddy Walstrom – tenor saxophone
James Godínez – piano
Willie Carson – bass
Tommy "Snare" Willis – drums