is pretty much balls out. People were just still as statues during the song. I was screaming my heart out, slapping my bass, spinning, really putting my heart and soul into it. At the end of the song there was this long moment of silence. Then everybody stood up and just went nuts. They loved it! I just got goosebumps just telling you about it! It was the thrill of my life! I took off my hat and threw it out to the crowd. It was probably the greatest moment of my career! You know, 10,000 people -- and by then, I knew just how big Night Ranger was and nobody knew who the fuck I was. It was an incredible rush.

Jeff Watson was there at the benefit. He was donating a guitar or something. We thought it would be fun to bring Jeff out and it would be great for everyone to see him. So we did. Jeff comes out from behind the amps and somehow managed to unplug my amp. Not sure if it was by accident or on purpose, but we did "Don’t Tell Me You Love Me." We start the song and he comes out and all of sudden, no bass! For the first half of the song there wasn’t any bass until someone figured out it was unplugged. Anyway, the show went off great and from that point on, we didn’t bring Jeff in again. Jeff knew it wasn’t gonna happen with him.

We toured for about three years as a trio, maybe even four years. What was nice about the trio is that Brad played both parts. He’d play Jeff’s parts and his own parts, and sometimes with some of the effects he had in his rack, he could even play some of Fitz’s keyboard parts. We started pulling out some real classic Night Ranger songs, like "Eddie’s Coming out Tonight" and "Night Ranger" and some of the other avant-garde songs that never made it to the radio but people liked.So we needed to step up our sound a little bit, and during this whole time, we were writing songs, trying to get signed. Warner Brothers wasn’t interested because music was starting to change in the 90’s, You know, the grunge was starting to come out, but we were actually playing grunge clubs, and we were Night Ranger! In some auditorium in Seattle, with these mosh pits, and we were Night Ranger! We were hard enough and with songs like "Your Eyes Are the Window," we just rocked! We originally submitted that song for the "Mojo" record but it was too hard. Drive records tried to get it as traditional Night Ranger as they could with my songwriting. So all the songs that were picked, even the remake of the Peter Frampton song with the Beatles ending, were picked to fit a certain mode. We liked the songs they picked, but the audience liked stuff like "Alligator" a lot more because the band showed their colors.

But with Night Ranger, I played better than I ever have and I sang at the top of my form. Kelly never played better throughout his career then on what we were doing right then. Everyone was just blown away with how well he played and how well Brad was playing, and we’re talking about old Night Ranger fans here. They liked us!

So we finally get a record deal through Don Grieson who was probably one of the best known executives in the music business at the time. He was called the "Songman" cause record companies would call him when they needed a comeback song for a band. He found that one hit for Heart ("Never " I think it was called) and "The Flame" for Cheap Trick. He would gather up all these songs and hold on to them for people. He brought people back. And the first time he came over and heard us on a sound stage, we just did a live 10 song audition for him. He just stood up and applauded and said how much he loved it. Coming from him that was a great feeling. So we made a deal that night. We finally had a deal, and with a brand new record company called Drive Entertainment. Don Grieson was Vice President, and with a brand new record company, we figured we’d have more of a chance.

Then we had to find a producer and so we found David Prater who had done Firehouse and Dream Theater. David was also a drummer and he’d actually played on a Santana record. So we thought this is great. We had the producer, a budget and we’re gonna go in and do a record. And instead of a big studio, we went to Austin TX and rented a house and brought in all the gear, lived and recorded there. It was fantastic. We had the guitars upstairs, and a walk in closet for vocals, a pool in the back yard. Plus there was Sixth Street down there, and there were blues clubs like every other building, with open mic nights. Brad and I would go down there every night and everybody knew us, so we never had to pay for a thing. Had a great time and we recorded Mojo.

The story behind the song " Mojo" by the way, was that we still needed a couple songs to balance out the record. It was around Christmas time. We started recording from before Thanksgiving until like, February. So we had flown home for Christmas, and I was on the way back to Texas after our break. I had a mojo bag that I gotten for Christmas from my wife, Cindy. Was wearing it around my neck, had some spiritual medicine in it, some crystals, and some whatever to protect me on the trip. So I was thinking about this gift on the plane and it reminded me of black magic and all the stuff that goes on down in New Orleans. I thought it would be a great song. Did a little research and discovered "mojo" could be this watch or whatever object you wanted – a touchstone, if you will – and you "feed" off it, and it gives you this confidence, or this belief, that you could do anything you wanted to do. So "Feeding Off the Mojo" was this idea and I wrote it down, and started writing down some lines on the plane. And I knew it had to be a little tribal, you know tribal drums and stuff to go along with the whole mojo feel. And when I got to the hotel, Kelly had his little 4 track and I told him "I think I got a song!" We took this drum machine and he got this jungle beat going and we did "Mojo" in the hotel room. We brought it in to David Prater and said "What do you think of this?