***Editor’s note: Our guy Taylor T Carlson had a chance to chat with Chad McMurray before their amazing show at The Space honoring Ronnie James Dio- Here is that interview! Enjoy! 
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TC: Looking forward to the show tonight, and thanks so much for taking the time to let me interview you! How long have you guys been together as a band, and what do you plan on doing next? I’m always delighted when I hear someone is paying tribute to Ronnie, but was also pleasantly surprised by your original songs.
Chad McMurray: We decided our start date was right around 2017. We were doing things before casually, just as we had the time, but it wasn’t until 2017 that we finally said, “let’s kick this thing into gear and do something.” This was after we’d done a tour of Ireland, with a Dio tribute we had at the time called Rising*, which is where the Dio thing came from, but we were getting the urge to do original music again. So, we did an album, and a second album. People started mentioning the Dio stuff, and we wanted to find a way to keep the legacy of Ronnie going. This is when we decided to do a test at select venues, with “RivetSkull Presents Ronnie James Dio,” and then we open for ourselves doing a short 40-minute set of our originals, and 90 minutes of Dio/Black Sabbath/Rainbow. It’s been going good so far; we’re on maybe our sixth show doing it. More like a weekend fly-in thing so we’re not jumping in a van and duking it out…the fly-ins have been working out pretty good.
*This band is not to be confused with the similarly-named Las Vegas tribute band, Dio Rising.
TC: There are many great metal and hard rock artists out there with great legacies. Dio’s an excellent choice! But I am curious… of the many great heavy metal legacies out there to pay tribute to… why Ronnie?
CM: Well… it’s definitely one that’s not done a lot. And… we feel like we do a pretty good job representing the spirit of Ronnie, and the whole style of that era, Jimmy [Bain] and all those guys. When I originally contacted these guys, it was in Seattle, Washington, a Dio tribute up there. I just thought it sounded like fun! I went up there to check them out. When I hear there are Dio tributes going on, my first reason is usually like “yeah, right.” And it was a similar reaction; I went and heard the band’s singer, and was unsure of him but liked the guys. And later, they were looking for a singer, so I said “yeah, let’s see what happens!” The chemistry was there, so we decided to run with it. They already had a thing going, so we just carried on with it. I’ve done a bunch of tributes over the years… almost 20 years playing bass in a touring Led Zeppelin band called No Quarter, and I had a Rush tribute for about 10 years as Geddy [Lee], doing bass, keys, and vocals… I stepped out of the tribute scene for a while; it’s an interesting thing to do, but the original music was starting to take more of a front seat… We’re not trying to bill [the Dio tribute shows] as a “tribute band,” because we’re not doing the lookalike thing… It’s just more of a “RivetSkull Presents” thing.
TC: When it comes to the Ronnie James Dio catalogue, how much of it do you cover in your shows?
CM: Quite a bit. It’s heavier on the [Dio band] catalogue, but we touch quite a bit on the Rainbow and Sabbath eras as well… and Heaven and Hell, when they went and did THE DEVIL YOU KNOW album; we touch on one song from that, and one from DEHUMANIZER, back in [1992]. Then we sprinkle in about three Rainbow songs; a guy last night was asking for [the band] Elf, but we don’t quite go back that far. We have before, but we didn’t include Elf in this round.
TC: That was actually going to be my next question! I was going to ask if you go back to Elf or any of those really early Ronnie James Dio projects!
CM: We have before. We haven’t on this run, but we have “Nevermore” as one we used to do. Just a handful of [Elf band songs] like “LA ’59.” There’s a little tribute to his doo-wop days that’s played before we go on actually. Some of the stuff from the 50s, like Ronnie and the Redcaps and the Vegas Kings. We don’t really say what it is, but fans of Ronnie will know it when they hear the voice.
TC: Yeah. I went and saw the Dio documentary when it was in theaters, and they play clips from some of that early stuff; there’s some great stuff there… anything else you want to add? Any show dates? Further projects? Is there more original music on the way?
CM: We’ve got a couple new songs in the works. One is an original song. The other is a cover of a Taylor Swift song, with a metal treatment to it! So, it’ll be interesting to see how that works out. It was something we wanted to do just for the hell of it! And it was one of my little ideas too, because these days, everything’s about algorithms. What if we could tap into some of Taylor Swift’s numbers? Whether or not they love it or hate it, it’s still engagement! We were working with a PR company in Europe, and they wanted to do a rerelease of our last album, but we’ll do it with these extra bonus tracks for a European release, along with a Dolby Atmos mix of it… In July, we’re also doing three metal festivals over in Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Romania, so that’s exciting. At the Masters of Metal Festival, we’re playing on the Ronnie James Dio Stage! And then we go back to Ireland in September for about two weeks, and that’ll be the Dio and RivetSkull thing again.
TC: I’ll just as one more question, and I’ll let you get back to what you’re doing. It seems like the Dio thing is going pretty well for you guys. Do you have any plans to do another tribute like this to any other artists you admire?
CM: Nothing comes to mind at this point. I’ve done Zeppelin, I’ve done Rush, I flirted with the idea of doing a Police and Rush tribute combo. They’re both trios. Very different styles! If you get the right players, you could pull of something pretty cool. I’ll never say never, but at this point it’s just kind of fun doing the original stuff… With my previous Rush tribute, we covered everything from first album up to, probably, TEST FOR ECHO. We really like the era of HOLD YOUR FIRE, PRESTO, GRACE UNDER PRESSURE, POWER WINDOWS… there’s a big chunk of Rush fans that bailed out there… I feel sorry for them because there’s some really good stuff that was different. That was the genius of Rush. That they could always change. Kind of like Bowie did. He was able to morph. His fans either grew with him or they didn’t.
TC: Thanks so much for your time! Can’t wait to see you guys rocking some Dio tunes, and best of luck on all the upcoming tour dates!