INTERVIEW: Nektar are back

Photo: Nektar, a prog rock band that began in Germany, have reformed and will play New Jersey’s ProgStock in October. Photo courtesy of the band / Provided by Glass Onyon PR with permission.

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Prog-rock legends Nektar have reformed and are ready to bring new music to their loyal fans. It has been decades since they first began their rocking and rolling in Germany, and now they have found new energy.

Expect the guys to release new music in 2020, thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, and they will also be making an appearance at this fall’s ProgStock in Rahway, New Jersey. They take the stage Sunday, Oct. 13 at 5 p.m., followed by a meet and greet with fans.

Nektar are made up of Ron Howden, Derek “Mo” Moore, Ryche Chlanda, Randy Dembo, Kendall Scott and Mick Brockett. Their new album will be the first new album since 1977, and the recording will also celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary.

“Ron called me, and he said he was trying to put the band together,” Moore said in a recent phone interview. “We talked about it being the 50th anniversary, so we got hold of Ryche Chlanda, who used to play with us in ’78. And the three of us played, and then we added Randy Dembo, who was the bass player after me. He plays bass. He plays bass pedals, and he plays 12-string guitar. And the sound was getting great, so we added Kendall Scott. He played with Ryche in Flying Dreams, and he’s an awesome keyboard player. I told Mick to do the light show and take all the cobwebs off his light show and get that going. … We started writing music in the beginning of the year. A lot of the music came from sessions in my basement in 1978 that Rich and I put together, and we brought them all out. And we spruced them all up, and we have an album that is 68 minutes long.”

Getting the band back together could have come with a lot of hiccups and headaches, but not so for Nektar. When the guys were in the studio together, the synergy was almost immediate.

“Instantly we were tight,” he said. “I had not played probably in 16 years, and it was like getting on a bike. With these guys it just gelled immediately. Me and Rich gelled instantly. Going with the two bass players, we’ve been working out parts, so it integrated properly. That sounds really good. I mean, Ron and I played together for 55 years, and I just have to look at him and we’re in sync. It’s just a great feeling to be playing with Ron again, and the rest of the band benefit from that.”

The recording of the new album (called The Other Side) is finished, and the band is in the process of mixing the songs. They first plan to mix a single that is 8-1/2 minutes long, with a B-side track that is 9 minutes long. This is pure prog rock after all, so the tunes run to great lengths.

“We want to put something out that we can sell out ProgStock and show that people can start listening to what we’re doing,” Moore said. “I think ‘Sky Rider,’ which is going to be the A-side, is going to be really big. We’re going to give it away. We’re going to make sure that anybody that wants it can get it for free. We will make an actual vinyl collector’s copy, which will have ‘Devil’s Door’ on the backside. ‘Devil’s Door’ we did with Roye Albrighton, the original guitarist back in ’74, and when we came to record [the new version], we listened to [the original recording]. And he plays just guitar on the beginning. It sounds great, so we lifted that from the concert that he played it on. We put it on our recording, and it sounds fantastic.”

Nektar is often billed as prog rock, and they certainly fit that musical bill. However, Moore believes it is difficult to pin down the band’s sound.

“I think it’s very hard to put Nektar in a box,” he said. “It covers the spectrum really. We got labeled prog, and I guess we are in that we have a lot of different time signatures that we play. We have a lot of long pieces of music. On this album, there’s one that’s 19 minutes. On Recycled, I think it was 16 or 17 minutes. A Tab in the Ocean was 15 minutes. Remember the Future was the whole album. I guess we’re considered prog.”

The band features British musicians, but they formed in Germany, a country where they found a lot of success. Eventually they transferred their base to the United States — New Jersey, in particular.

“I was 7 years old when I started playing,” Moore said of his early days. “I started playing classical piano, and then I got into a band when I was maybe 16. And the bass player left, so it was either play bass, or we didn’t have a band. So I made a bass because I couldn’t afford one, and it was miraculously in tune. When I see what goes into guitars today, I can’t believe that I got it right, but I did.”

He added: “I’m enjoying being back playing, to be honest. I haven’t played much in the last 40 years. I played a few gigs back in 2002. … I think we did another five or six gigs after that, and then I didn’t play again until we just played right now. So it’s been a long break for me, and it’s all coming back to me. But I’m enjoying it.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Nektar’s new album will be called The Other Side, and it’s expected to be released in 2020. The band will play ProgStock Sunday, Oct. 13 in Rahway, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.