MECCA
MECCA frontman Joe Vana has recently released the news of Swedish guitarist Tommy Denander joining the MECCA lineup for the upcoming studio album.
"Tommy Denander is one of the most hired and sought after writers, producers and guitar players today, and has turned down many offers from known bands to join them", says Vana. "Even though he will keep making Radioactive albums, they are only a project and MECCA is a band, and as Tommy puts it "Not just any band! Tommy has accepted becoming a full member of the MECCA family. His track record of more than 1,000 albums and working almost every known name in rock speaks for itself, but as Tommy says "In some ways it's also what's required to become a member of MECCA, anything less just won't cut it, I take pride in the task of creating another dimension to my work together with Joe and the guys in MECCA."
Alongside of the great Bobby Kimball (TOTO) and Joe Vana on Lead Vocals, the MECCA line-up consists of Shannon Forrest (Drums), David Hungate (Bass), Gordon Mote (Keys) and Christian Wolff (guitar), with Steve Lukather and Steve Farris making an appearance as guest players on the album. The line-up is complete and stronger than ever.
That is not to diminish the great contribution that Fergie Frederiksen and Jim Peterik gave to MECCA 1. Joe Vana adds "I can never repay those guys enough for their talent and contribution to making my dream a reality with MECCA 1. Sitting around Jim's piano writing songs for MECCA was a dream realized....I will never forget it."
"As far as the new album Catharsis goes, the writing synergy between Tommy and I so far has been amazing, we think so much alike in terms of melody and space but sounds very different melodically than what we both have done separately, so it truly is a union of ideas... this album will be a mix between Peter Gabriel and Mecca... I am going to push the Hell out of myself and Tommy to play and sing better than we ever have. Plus, I have the one of my closest friends Bobby singing next to me.... not to mention that he is the single greatest Rock singer ever. There is no 'almost good enough' for this album. We have four tunes that Richard Page gave us to record and 8 that we wrote. I waited three years to assemble the needed material to do this album. Every song had to be good enough to be on MECCA 1 or better, or it didn't make it. Bobby will push me vocally to the edge, I'm not playing it safe this time".
Bobby Kimball comments about the songs: "I'm not going to be nice about it, because that's not how great songs get written. We mortals have to put aside our feelings and go for what's best for the song....". Enough said.
Visit www.myspace.com/meccaofmusic to hear samples of the first two songs created by this new writing duo. MECCA will be completed first quarter of 2007 and released on Frontiers Records.