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It’s been over 40 years since Novo Combo have released a new album, but all of that changed last month when the band released 45 West 55th.   The group features Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer from Santana, Michael Shrieve, Stephen Dees (vocals bass, Jack Griffith (lead guitar) and Pete Hewlett (vocals/guitar.)  

 

The group originally formed in 1979 and released two albums.  They had some success with the tune “Up Periscope” in 1981 and “Animation Generation” reached #5 on MTV’s Video Countdown in 1982.

 

After a few years, the band went their separate ways.  However, a couple of years ago, Dees started going through some old tapes and realized there was some great material that was unfinished.  So he contacted all the original members of Novo Combo and they all worked on the tunes and released a new record.

 

We had the chance to do a Zoom call with both Michael Schrieve and Stephen Dees to discuss the new record and their memories of playing in Cleveland. 

 

GD:  Hey guys, congratulations on your new album 45 West 55th.  It’s a pretty eclectic record with some new wave, reggae and even some prog-rock on it.  Is that what you guys were going for, to have a good mix of songs?

 

Stephen Dees:  Sure! (laughs)  We just come up with songs. We’ve always been eclectic if you listened to us.  Especially the first record. We had everything from Reggae, to New Wave to straight up Rock and Roll, old school Rock and Roll.  We just like good music. 

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GD:  It’s been over 40 years since Novo Combo released new music.  Why did it take so long and why do you think it’s the right time to revisit some of this music?

 

Michael Shrieve:  How time flies, first of all.  Stephen can tell the story better.  Stephen, it’s your story so you tell it.

 

SD:  It’s OUR story for sure. It happened because a good friend of mine passed away a few years ago, Eddie Zyne.  We grew up together and he was a really good drummer and we were in a lot of bands together including Hall and Oates. When he passed away, I started going through all of my stuff, looking for things that Eddie was on to send to his wife.  I came across all this Novo Combo stuff that I haven’t heard in a million years. While listening to it, I was so impressed by what a good band we were. On every track, everyone was pulling their weight and shining. We were really good at coming up with good parts, correct parts.  I’ve been producing acts for a long time now, doing the arranging and producing. It was such a pleasure hearing everyone contributing equally with power, good talented people. That led to, “let’s do something.” I love The Beatles, and when the Anthology came out, they were doing demo’s and songs you never heard, and recording some new songs, I thought in our own humble way, we could do the same thing.  We recorded more new tracks then they did, I believe.  We did a similar thing in putting together the record.  Being a very democratic band, we all had input on what got on the record. We could have put more stuff on, but we didn’t want to over do it. 

 

GD:  I read that a lot of this album was done via dropbox and file sharing.  How was that process different compared to when you guys did it in the ‘80s?

 

MS:  It’s completely opposite, of course. We were a very good live band back in the day. We rehearsed every day and we were pretty serious about the work.  Our energy level was very high and when we went on stage, we performed.  We became known as a really great live band. Being experienced, we were able to pull that energy together as a group, even if we were doing it remotely. It’s almost like an actor, you have to get that level up to a place and picture yourself in that place. You’re playing with those guys anyway, whether it’s in your headphones or not. It sounds like it should be difficult, but it wasn’t really.  We all, kinda matched the levels on each song to make the group thing.

 

SD:  Absolutely!  It’s my experience, in general, if you can keep your health all players that I’ve known for years improve and get better. I always want to expand my horizons and improve. You never got back behind the board back then. Now, were all kinda hands on. We all know what Novo Combo is. Everybody was up to speed and everyone’s been active throughout the years. I was very pleased.

 

GD:  The sound of the record is fantastic. 

 

MS:  Thank you.  The last thing you want to do is to put something out forty years later and sound like a bunch of pathetic wanna-be’s. You gotta have some self respect. We all feel very proud of the record. 

 

GD:  “What’s Been Happening with You” is a really catchy tune. Stephen, you mentioned The Beatles, the opening guitar riff reminds me a little of “Day Tripper” then it goes in a totally different direction.  I really like the vibe of that song.

 

SD:  It is really “Day Tripper” like in the beginning, yes. 

 

MS:  I never thought of it like that. There are so many guitar parts that are like that. I guess it did start with “Day Tripper.”  It’s like Andy Summers with The Police, you hear so many things that are derivative of that, it’s just a part of the vocabulary, it’s a part of the culture. Yeah, that’s a really great song. 

 

GD:  I really like “Don’t Throw Your Love Away,” is a little proggy and  “Hard To Say Goodbye” has a reggae feel to it.  Do you have a favorite song on the album?

 

MS:  I like “Don’t Throw Your Love Away” and I like “What’s Been Happening To You?”  You think “Don’t Throw Your Love Away” is proggy?

 

GD:  It reminds me a little bit of Asia or ‘80s Yes.

 

SD:  I agree with that.  It sounds proggy to me. 

 

MS:  Proggy, I think of someone like Rush, right?  I guess maybe Yes.  I’m not arguing with you, I’m just curious. 

 

GD:  I’m thinking more 80’s where  Yes kinda switched and brought in Trevor Rabin.  That kinda stuff. 

 

MS:  Really!  I was just talking to Trevor Rabin the other day. 

 

GD:  Really?  How about that!

 

MS:  I did a project with Roger Hodgeson from Supertramp at one point. Later, I got together at Roger’s place in California with Trevor Rabin.  So it was Trevor, Roger and myself. We recorded a whole bunch of stuff.  I was going through my stuff and I found a CD of those jams. I went through them and cleaned them up and did a remaster and sent it to Trevor.  It just put us back in touch. Talk about an amazing guitar player, right?

 

GD:  Absolutely!  Is that something that might get released one day?

 

MS:  I don’t think so.  I think what could be done is try to get it to Roger and see if that could spark something in him, to start singing on or something like that. That’s a voice!  Once you put that voice on.

 

GD:  You know who it is!  Stephen, what about you?  Do you have a favorite track on the new record?

 

SD:  In regards to Jack’s tune, “Don’t Throw Your Love Away,” Jack was a big Genesis fan. He also loved Gentle Giant so I know he’s super into prog.  He told me when he wrote that song he was trying to capture “Sorry for the Delay.”  Which is a signature song for us. He was influenced by that song, to write that (“Don’t Throw Your Love Away”) song. Jack is a great riff guy. He comes up with cool little riffs.  Everybody did that.  Pete would come up with a great bass line and I would come up with a guitar part. 

 

As far as favorite songs, I like them all. I dig them all the same, really. I’m really pleased for Jack the way “A Train Revisited” turned out. Jack said for year, “I wish I could record that song over.” He always thought that he didn’t get enough time on that song. He got enough time this time and he’s completely happy.  I like all the songs but at different times, I like different songs. 

 

MS:  Yeah, me too!

 

SD:  When I wake up in the morning, I’ll put on something up tempo like “It’s Only Temporary” because it’s fun and it gets me going.  When I’m chillin’ I’ll listen to something else. 

 

GD:  You guys did something interesting,  you also have two live tracks on the album that’s not on the end, but it’s towards the end  and Michael you have your drum solo. Why did you decide to put a couple of live tracks on this album?

 

MS:  Those are things that Stephen found.  The whole idea of the record is to present to any Novo Combo fans music that they’ve already heard but here’s another way of looking at it or here’s another version of it.  The drum solo, I don’t know.  Stephen found that.  Where’s that from, Stephen?

 

SD:  From some live performance that we did.  We remastered everything.  Jack was the one that insisted on having your drum solo on the record. I put it forth, and there were a lot of thumbs up or thumbs down kinda thing. Jack really fought for that and I’m glad he did because it was a part of who we were. 

 

GD:  The big question is, you have this record out so do you guys plan to hit the road and tour behind it?  We would love to see you live!

 

MS:  I think that’s highly unlikely. Maybe there’s ways we can work something out like maybe online.  Touring nowadays is just ridiculous anyway.  Stephen does more live gigs at this point than I do.  Even bands that were more successful than Novo Combo just have a brutal time at it. It’s a difficult time for a lot of music.  So, I’m not so sure about that but I’d be up for making another record. 

 

GD:  That’s fine.  New music is always great. A lot of the classic era bands just rely on the touring and there’s no new music. I’m always down for new music. 

 

MS:  Sounds like you might be the only one! 

 

GD:  (laughs)  Michael, I have to ask you about your experiences at Woodstock.   I also teach a history of rock and roll class and we are almost on the psychedelic era, what was it like performing in front of all of those people and did you get to see any other performers?

 

MS:  Sure, I got to see quite a few of them. I wasn’t on the site for three days but I did get to see the opening, Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie tripping out, “We dd it, man!” Jefferson Airplane, Sly and the Family Stone.  We definitely stuck around that night to see Sly which was one of the strongest performances as well. I didn’t see Hendrix, that was at eight in the morning. It was an amazing experience of course. It was one of those things where nobody knew it was going to blow up like it did. Even the artists.  We were staying there a week prior and days before we had heard that the throughway in New York was getting really crowded with cars and was backed up so much, people started leaving their cars there.  As a result, we weren’t able to drive to the grounds.  So all the artists met at a Holiday Inn and took a helicopter in.  I took a helicopter in with some of the band and Jerry Garcia and Janis Joplin.  Everybody was looking over the site like, it was nothing like you had seen before. It was the same thing with playing on the stage, as far as you could see were people.  It was like standing on a beach, but the water was people. 

 

SD:  I got a question for you Mike.  Did you see The Who play?

 

MS:  No I didn’t.

 

SD:  It would have been cool to see …(moves his arms wildly)

 

MS:  Yeah, Keith (Moon). I never met Keith.

 

GD:  When did you guys go on?  I don’t remember the order.

 

MS:  It was like two or three in the afternoon.  We were supposed to go on later but they said, “You gotta go on now or you’re not going to play.” And so, we went on. 

 

GD:  Now was “Soul Sacrifice” all ad-libbed?  I had read that Carlos just started doing his thing. 

 

MS:  You have the shape of the song.  All of those songs, even though they sounded like jams, were pretty worked out. A lot of Carlos’ lines sounded like he was soloing, they were worked out.  Which is why they are so memorable because he worked that stuff out like a singer.  My drum solo was completely improvised, of course.  Which would be every night like with Novo.  You start in a certain place and you go.  I think there was a certain spontaneity and a certain intensity about the band.  Carlos tripping his head off and trying to keep that snake in control. I have found it incredible to be meaningful as it is to so many people. It keeps going on and on.  If I do take a look at the video, I understand because there’s some kind of electricity coming off the screen. It’s not one of my favorite drum solos or anything like that. I don’t have a desire to watch it, but I GET it.  After all these years I kinda get why it still moves them. 

 

GD: Fantastic! The first time I was turned on to you, well I wasn’t even born during Woodstock, I came a year later, with the HSAS album.  What a great rock record. Was it supposed to be just a one-off or were there aspirations to do more?

 

MS:  I think it was meant to be a one-off. I was living in New York City so it was around the Novo times. It’s kind of a funny story.  I was talking to Neal (Schon) on the phone and we were both saying what are you doing? He said, “Oh, I’m hanging out with Sammy (Hagar).  We’re talking about maybe putting something together and we’re looking for a drummer.  Hey, what about you?”  It was so well organized, it would go for a month, rehearse for a couple of weeks, go play the gigs, record and go play the gigs and all the gigs are filmed and that’s it. From there, I went to work on Roger Hodgson’s thing.  I’m glad you like the record, but I was drinking coffee and was reading Sammy Hagar’s autobiography and he was talking, “yeah we have Mike Shrieve as a drummer.  Mike’s a great rhythmic drummer but he’s not really a rock drummer.”  I spit out my coffee, I laughed so hard!  He’s kinda right! I’m a lot of things, perhaps but not compared to the real rock drummers.  I played kinda heavy in Novo Combo and kinda heavy in a band prior called Automatic Man.  I kinda fall in between that stuff. 

 

SD: I love your drumming. 

 

MS:  I wasn’t offended by what Sammy said.  I just thought it was funny. Even my young son saw the video and said “You just don’t look right in there.” 

 

SD:  I think what he saw was wrock, with a W.  You’re not that, thank god.

 

MS:  I’m not Alex Van Halen, I’m not as heavy as John Bonham.  Although Jimmy Page did tell me, I finally met him last year, he said “Bonzo was a big fan of mine.” I was like, oh wow! But Chad Smith, I don’t hit as hard as Chad Smith.  Santana had a reunion thing about a year ago or four  years, and it was so loud!  Between Neal and Carlos, I don’t know how to deal with this!  I play light, I played light all throughout Santana. I actually took a couple of drum lessons from Alice Cooper’s drummer. I was asking him, how do I do fills that you can hear? They’re not double stroke fills, they’re single stroke fills that are mighty. He showed me some stuff, but I’m still not that kind of drummer. At least I understand the difference. 

 

SD:  I have to add something to that conversation.  Speaking of Van Halen, I mentioned this to Michael before but I was doing an interview with someone and they were reading Alex’s new book.  On page 24 or something, he was talking about influences and Alex Van Halen said that he was blown away by Michael’s solo at Woodstock.  So there’s a rock drummer blown away by this guy.  Finesse to me, is the shit. 

 

MS:  I’m grateful.  What I know now, that I wish I knew earlier is that you can’t be all things. Whatever and whoever you are, really do it hard. That’s the advice I try to give to younger musicians. Don’t try and be everything. If you find something that moves you, do it and do it the best you can.

 

GD:  That’s great advice.  Stephen, I have to ask you about a little Cleveland connection.  They aren’t necessarily from Cleveland but they were on Cleveland Records and that’s the legendary Ian Hunter and Todd Rundgren.  What was it like working with those guys? 

 

SD:  Michael was on that gig too.  We did a tour with Todd and Ian and I was a big Todd Rundgren fan. My good friend Eddie Zyne turned me on to Todd with his first solo record. We were staying at Michael’s apartment at 44 West 55th in New York, and I was taking a shower and someone knocks on the door.  Michael opens it up and says, “I just got a call from Todd Rundgren and he’s gonna do a tour and he wants me to play drums. I’m like, “wow, that’s awesome.” He goes, “and he wants you to play bass.”  I was like Wooh! That was really cool for me. What was really cool about it was when we went up to where Todd lived at the time, he knew that I was a fan. Todd said, “So what songs do you want to play?”  I’m like ok, because I knew like most of his stuff. So I said “Let’s play ‘Black Maria; and he said ok. It was great and we had a lot of fun and we had a great time.  That’s when Novo Combo was still doing demos.  We weren’t even called Novo Combo yet.  I remember driving somewhere and Ian Hunter was giving us ideas for names. He said “You guys should call yourselves The Needles.  Michael was like that’s a little too punk for us. That was Ian’s contribution.  I was a big fan of Bowie, of course.. So I loved Mott the Hoople’s track “All The Young Dudes.” So that was quite a treat. 

 

MS: Also, Mick Ronson was on that tour.

 

SD:  For part of it, yeah. He came out and he would sit in with us. That was a blast too.  In fact, at The Agora (in Cleveland) we have a picture of us backstage with all of us, including Mick Ronson. Mick was such a sweetheart, what a nice guy. It was so rock and roll.  We were getting ready, literally, to go on stage with instruments on and Mick goes, “I got this new song, let’s do it!”  He was like, it’s called “Let’s get on with it” just sing it, that’s your part. He just told us about that song before we went on and we did fine. He led us through and it was rock and roll, very Chuck Berry like in attitude. I remember Ian Hunter saying to me and Michael in rehearsal, “you guys know too much about music.”  It’s all about Chuck Berry and Little Richard. He had this idea in his mind that we were just session guys or jazz guys or whatever it was. No, we like rock and roll.

 

GD:  What are your future plans?  What does 2024 hold for both of you?

 

MS:  Can I interject right here.  You know, our singer Pete Hewlett has a huge Cleveland background.  He lives in Pittsburgh but he was always playing around Cleveland Heights.  He played with Eric Carman and he was in a band called Euclid Beach.  We have deep roots in Cleveland.  We did live recording from there. 

 

SD:  I’ve played the Cleveland Agora sooo many times over the years with every band I’ve ever been in. Todd Sharp, who played with me in Hall and Oats, he’s from Cleveland. He’s played with Rod Stewart and Fleetwood Mac people. In fact with the Todd and Ian show, we played The Agora.  A lot of these things were recorded in the studio there. 

 

GD:  Ian said it best, “Cleveland Rocks!” right?

 

SD: Yes!  We did that song! 

 

GD: So what do you guys have coming up in the next year?

 

MS:  I put out an album this past May and  I’ve got a compilation album that’s ready to roll and I’ve got other music that I’ve been working on since the pandemic that I’m getting ready to release as well. 

 

SD:  Michael’s album is terrific.  He’s got a huge pallet. Drums of Compassion, you should check it out.  Our album by the way is available at novocombo.com and wildrootsrecords.com What I’ve got coming up, I’ve got another group called The Bandies and we’ve got an album coming out next year.  We will release it a single at a time. I also work with a band called The Wild Roots and we’re in rehearsals now. 

 

GD:  Michael and Stephen, thank you both for taking some time with me today.  I will get the word out about Novo Combo’s new record and we will let people know about it.  You have a lot of fans here and we will support you!

 

MS:  Thanks Greg!

 

SD:  Thanks Greg, we appreciate it!

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Be sure to check out Novo Combo's new record 44 West 55th! 

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You can watch the full Zoom interview below. 

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