“Take the theatrics of Alice Cooper, add the mystique of Led Zeppelin, combine it with the storytelling of Pink Floyd, and you get a pretty good idea of what my music is all about.” -Cutter Savage
Give us some background on Cutter Savage…
Cutter’s backstory is one for the books. It all started a long time ago in the Great Tundra Area where legend has it, he was born of two she wolves. One could say he grew up in the typical way…as typical as having two she-wolf parents could be, that is. He was discovered by humans when he was wandering through a dumpster highly disoriented. It turns out his double she-wolf parents had died. Shot by poachers!
As a musician, Cutter’s influences span the likes of Van Halen, Rush, and Jimi Hendrix, not to mention the shredding influences of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai. “Take the theatrics of Alice Cooper, add the mystique of Led Zeppelin, combine it with the storytelling of Pink Floyd, and you get a pretty good idea of what my music is all about.” says Cutter.
Being a multi-instrumentalist, Cutter writes and performs all of his music himself, recording everything in his own studio called the Wolf Den. While he loves to play the bass and keyboards, the guitar is his main instrument and the one through which he expresses himself the best. “I actually remember the first time I really noticed the electric guitar in a music store and I just knew I had to have one. It’s like it was calling my name. Add to that my love for Led Zeppelin and I was hooked.”
On being a huge fan of the theatrics in rock and concept albums Cutter says: “The KISS album Destroyer changed my life. From the cover art to the music inside, it was everything I could hope for.”
And there’s always a story component to everything he does.
“Edgar Winter’s Frankenstein is a great example. It’s a song where you can visualize the music and hearing it for the first time really affected me. It sounds like the soundtrack to a wild movie and it takes your imagination on a ride.”
Today, Cutter divides his time between the Great Tundra Area, and his second home in Cincinnati, Ohio where he writes and records constantly in his Wolf Den Studio. On a moonlit night, if you turn to the North and listen to the wind, sometimes you can hear him play.
Tell us about your writing process…
Sometimes I have a short riff or chord progression idea and I have a feeling that it could become something, so it sits in my mental queue and I’ll mess around with it from time to time. So, I always have some little musical ideas sitting around in my brain. But what I really try to do with songwriting, even if it’s an instrumental, is to tell a story. So, I’ll have the spark of an idea for a story which for me, always comes with a mental picture of that story. That’s where things start to happen. I’ll think about the scene with the story and try to come up with what the soundtrack for that might be. Sometimes I pull from the riff bank that I have saved up, but other times the story paints a picture of something new. From there I’ll make a rough demo of the song and listen to it to see if there’s anything there. Then I do a lot of restructuring to get the song form right, build momentum, change the placement of themes and generally try to come up with an exciting song structure. From there I just keep refining and refining until I’m forced to walk away. Someone once said songs are never finished, they’re abandoned. I couldn’t agree more.
What is next for Cutter Savage?
This current EP release is intended to be a precursor to a full album launch in 2021. That will be a concept album that tells a story from start to finish through 14 songs. The music is very colorful and ranges from quiet acoustic guitars to all out rockers, always keeping the guitar front and center. It documents great events that are unknown to humanity as of yet but were covered up and otherwise hidden until now. I know because I was a part of everything that went down. Since music is my language, I put the story into the form of a concept album.
About The Revelator EP:
It's the story of good versus evil...the rise and fall of a great instrument......of long held secrets being uncovered...
All will be revealed in time. After all, it’s documented in the concept album that Cutter Savage will be releasing next year. But before any of this, first came the Revelator. This EP of four songs sets the stage for the story in the full concept album while also showing off some of Cutter’s influences, style, and of course, shredding guitar riffs. Specifically, the song “The Revelator” gives hints about what’s to come. Who is the voice in the beginning of the song and what is the powerful instrument he refers to? Fire coming down from the sky? A great divide? You’ll have to follow along the journey to find out what it all means.
From Cutter himself: “I have the concept album together. It documents great events that are unknown to humanity as of yet but were covered up and otherwise hidden until now. So, I thought ‘what could I do while the final touches are being put on the full album?’ Release an EP, of course! And, while I’m at it, why not give some hints about what’s to come in the full concept album? Hence the birth of the Revelator EP. The EP has lots of shredding guitar work and pays tribute to some of my main influences, like Joe Satriani and Jimi Hendrix, while also giving a flavor of what’s to come from me in the future."
The EP is currently available at www.cuttersavage.com for download and on CD.