"Classic Rockers" The Force Interview
www.TheForce.com
Interview by Roger Zee (04/06/22)
Roger Zee: Who inspired you to sing and pick up the keyboards? Do you play any other instruments?
Jim Haederle: I didn't initially start out as a singer. Rather as a self-taught pianist. I began playing at the age of twelve inspired by Scott Joplin's 1902 ragtime composition "The Entertainer" featured in the film "The Sting" -- an unlikely AM radio hit in the summer of 1973. It hooked me the first time I heard it. We owned a piano at home which I never touched. But that song so grabbed me, I felt compelled to learn it.
I did it by ear at first, though not very accurately, before getting my hands on the sheet music. Then I taught myself how to read notation and so learned the song properly. Over the next couple of years, I mastered a number of Ragtime songs on the piano. That gave me the requisite dexterity to play keyboards in my first Rock band by age fourteen. By then, I became a fledgling singer greatly inspired by the usual suspects of that era, especially Roger Daltry and Robert Plant.
RZ: How did The Force come together?
JH: The Force performed its first show in April 2015. In the Seventies and Eighties, Gary and Roy Renza, guitar and drums respectively, played the tri-state club circuit extensively -- first as Reality and later as Starrfire. I got lucky and played keyboards with Starrfire for a year and a half in the mid-Eighties before leaving the band to pursue an originals project. Vinnie DeBerto played bass in that incarnation of the group.
I lost touch with my former bandmates over the decades until I joined The Lost Soulz in 2014. At the first rehearsal, I learned MaryAnn Renza, one of the lead singers, had married Gary, my old Starrfire bandmate. Thus I reconnected with the uber-talented Renza brothers who, much to my delight, expressed interest in putting a new band together. Would I be interested? Absolutely!
Bass Maestro Vinnie DeBerto also came on board the new project. So The Force really turned into kind of "Starrfire 2.0." In fact, we perform some of the same songs today that we did three decades ago, when those songs first came out! But with modern technology and thirty-plus years more experience, I'd say we play them even better now than we did back then.
RZ: What kind of music do you play?
JH: Our repertoire lands squarely in the Classic Rock category -- but with a twist! Our mantra from day one, "Play songs that everyone knows but other bands don't do." On any given night, we can go from "Baba O'Riley" by the Who, to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir," to something by Kansas, Rush, or Alice Cooper. We mix and match. And it's a formula that works.
We also include a fair amount of dance music, so it's not just "concerty" material. MaryAnn Renza and her very talented sister Kathy Policastro join us onstage most nights for a mini-set of songs that they knock out of the park -- everything from Heart, Pat Benatar, Stevie Nicks to you name it. So The Force's all about diversity. No Hip-hop, though.
RZ: Where does the group usually perform and rehearse?
JH: We mostly perform in Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties but occasionally do gigs in Connecticut.
Here's the short list: The Back Nine in Cortlandt Manor, The Putnam House in Mahopac, Pete's Saloon in Elmsford where you and I spoke the other night, Molly Darcy's in Danbury, District Social in Beacon, Mohansic Grill in Yorktown, Darby O'Gill's in Hyde Park, and Fulgum's in Montrose.
Nowadays we rehearse in Roy Renza's gigantic attic. We originally thought we'd rent a rehearsal space. But the first one we checked out appeared ludicrous. A guy in Cortlandt Manor advertised a building on his property as a rehearsal room. We showed up with equipment in tow, only to find half of a detached garage, a space barely large enough to accomodate Roy's gong, let alone the full band. So that's how we ended up in Roy's attic.
RZ: How has the Pandemic affected you? What's on the horizon?
JH: The Pandemic put us out of business from March 2020 until the summer of 2021. But we managed to keep our name out there. Roy Renza works as a professional recording engineer and a master of video production. He came up with a series of virtual projects for the band during the height of the Pandemic. Each member remotely "phoned" in their parts and he put together amazing content that we offered to our Facebook followers, Friends of The Force. We performed versions of "Hole Hearted" by Extreme; "Let It Be", "Here Comes The Sun," and "Across The Universe" by the Beatles; "Land Of Confusion" by Genesis; as well as one of our originals. MaryAnn and Kathy also contributed to some of these projects, as did a number of other musicians who work the same circuit.
RZ: Describe your most special and/or unusual gig.
JH: A Force gig comes to mind where we avoided, by the very skin of our teeth, getting all of our equipment ruined in a rain storm. In the summer of 2019, we played an outdoor show on the Peekskill waterfront and, after the first set, Gary suggested that it might work in our best interest to cut the gig short and pack up as quickly as humanly possible. A major storm front turned east, rapidly approaching the Hudson.
With more than a little help from our many friends in attendance that evening, we managed to break down our equipment and pack up the trailer in record time. If you've seen our stage setup, you know that's no easy feat! Literally within a half-minute of Roy latching the door to the just-packed trailer, the skies opened up and unleashed a drenching, wrath-of-God thunderstorm. Gary could add a second career as a weatherman.
RZ: How do you see the future of the music business?
JH: I'm clueless. Digital distribution so changed the way the business works, it's impossible to make any kind of prediction.
RZ: What advice do you give up-and-coming musicians?
JH: Keep at it, young lad or lass, and OWN your talent. Don't let anyone undersell or underpay you for what you do. That advice comes strictly from a monetary vantage point, of course. If you perform music just for the fun of it with no desire to earn anything from your talent, good for you! Playing an instrument, singing, or writing a song can serve as an immensely rewarding indulgence -- far more fulfilling than spending countless hours playing Soldier of Fortune.
RZ: Do you live with any animals?
JH: Not that I know of.
YouTube - "Double Vision Medley" - The Force Live at the Hudson Room July 2015
YouTube - "Promotional Demo" - The Force
©2022 Roger Zee
