Ben Sommer: Hi, this is Ben with BandsLikeZappa.com. I’m here with Joe Deninzon from the band Stratospheerius. Joe, why don’t you just say hi, and just give a little introduction about yourself, the band, and what you guys are all about. Joe Deninzon: First of all, thanks for having me on your program, and my band is called Stratospheerius. I play the electric seven-stringed Viper violin, and basically, Zappa’s one of our biggest influences. In fact, we performed a few of their songs live. The band is hard to describe, but it’s a mixture of Zappa, Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Police, little flashes of Dave Matthews but not too many, and I’m the lead singer of the band, and it’s prog, rock, funk, jam music with the influences of gypsy music and classical music as well. Ben: Yeah. Cool. Now, it’s an excellent and very interesting instrumentation you’ve got, with mix of song styles. I’m not sure if you’re a violinist or fiddle player. Oh, you’re like Jean Luc Ponty or you’re like Dave Matthews. I mean, in this case I guess there is that element of that Dave Matthews angle. You’ve got that bit of a jam band element where you guys rock out and then take trade solos, and then you’ve also got absolutely the prog and jazz fusion element. The precedent there is – I guess – Ponty. I’m not sure who else. Joe: Well, in the worlds of progressive rock, bands like Yes, King Crimson, that’s old school progressive rock and they influenced us a lot, but not so much as a lot of the newer bands out of that genre, but jazz fusion, I would say with Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jean Luc Ponty, Return of Forever, groups like that. We take elements of all that, each of those genres of music that we like, we mix them together. Ben: Tell me about your instrument. You have a name for it. It looks like a tricked out electric fiddle, but you have a different name for it. Tell me about it. Joe: It’s known as a Viper. It’s made by a man named Mark Wood out of Long Island, and he was the violinist for Trans Siberian Orchestra for a while. He’s manufactured these violins for about twenty years now. And they’re shaped like flying-V guitars, and they have a unique harness strap-on system that goes around your back, so it sort of becomes an extension of your body. And me being a singer, it’s very comfortable to play and sing with this instrument, and it’s a solid body violin. Ben: It’s the seven strings? How is it strung? What are the pitches? Joe: Well, the top four strings are regular violin strings, from the highest which is E down to A, D, G, then it goes down to C, like a viola, F and then B flat. And B flat is a whole step lower below a cello. Ben: Oh, awesome. Joe: It’s got a range of most of the bowed stringed instruments. Ben: Basically, it’s a guitar, roughly. Joe: Yes. I put it in through about sixteen different effects pedals. I have a huge pedal board onstage, if you come and see our shows. Basically, if you put a distortion pedal on it, you get those low power cords on this instrument. It sounds really cool. Ben: Cool. Yeah. What’s the training like to take that up? I play five-stringed instruments. I’ve tried out a seven and ten-stringed guitar, and it’s not so weird. You can adjust to it. You’re going to learn. Is it the same deal with the violin? Was it pretty easy to pick this up? I presumed you were trained classically? Joe: Yes and no. I mean classical training is definitely important. I mean it really is a foundation for everything I do, but it takes a bit of adjustment because the angles of the strings are different, the intonation is a little different. It took me about a month of just practicing and getting used to it. It also has frets like the guitar, that’s the other thing and that takes getting used to for a violinist. Ben: Doesn’t that make your life easier? Joe: It does in a lot of ways. Ben: Why did they put frets on it? I