Originally Posted by
Overworld Dreams
I probably have more knowledge of the band than anyone. I'm Ken Walker, keyboardist and one of the vocalists and writers in the band. Due to personal issues, we hit a very rough patch years ago and stopped work on the album. Unlike some bands, this had nothing to do with core personalities, as all of us (myself, Chris Parsons, Randy Sandmann, and my brother Steve Wells of metal band The Hixon) are still in contact despite being apart for many years. Life simply intruded on the best laid plans and sidelined the project. I became involved with George Johnson, who toured with McCoy Tyner for three years. It's rather complicated as to the circumstances, as core members left to complete educations, a marriage broke up...you probably get the idea. But...
...after years of being apart--with a hundred stories to be told--bassist Chris Parsons contacted me again in November, 2017 with an interesting proposal (despite an earlier rumor, he is not related to Alan Parsons. However, his father was in Bill Haley and the Comets. His father played the iconic rockabilly solo in Rock Around the Clock!). Chris, Randy and I have a mutual friend who writes excellent music. Chris wanted to revive Overworked Dreams as a full collaborative project with writing from myself, Chris, Randy, and a few other musician friends. In his words, it was time to make a mark. We found every old track, hard drive, scarp of paper, anything that had the music. We had recut the tracks Child of Dreams and Voyage to Castilia years ago, with guest musicians cutting individual tracks, including monster fusion guitarist Scott McGill (Finneus Gage, Ecolyn) and Shawn Christie from Zeroesque contributing. All of us lived within 15 minutes of each other at one time. I had even wanted to contact Annie Haslam to see if she would be willing to perform on a track, since she only lives about an hour from us. I just invested close to $30,000 in my home and built a recording studio for this project. We did have a contract with Ed Unitsky for artwork, half of which I paid for already years ago. We plan on having a website up and running in the near future. We are determined to not let anything stop us from getting this project completed. We have about two albums worth of material to record as of today.
We are based in Southern New Jersey. Our state has a rich music history, from Frank Sinatra to Whitney Houston to Frankie Valli to Bon Jovi to Bruce Springsteen to Cinderella. I'd like Overworked Dreams to be the first progressive band from the state to make some noise. The only music we now have "out there" is the demo posted on an old Myspace site that I have forgotten the password for! I can't believe that over the years I have been contacted by people as far away as Japan, wondering what ever happened to the band. I don't how these people found me, but they did. I suppose the progressive rock community is a determined one.
We are shooting for a release by May/June of 2018. I am absolutely humbled that after all these years there are people who still remember and look for music from a little band in New Jersey that never had a single live performance. That too will change. And to think all of this inspiration began many, many moons ago when a friend handed me a newly released album and I heard the first two chords of Watcher of the Skies...
Peace to all my friends!
KPAW
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