Most obvious absence of late was Firefest. 
(NAMM, brother?? be there!!) Vox Tempus, Ted Poley, David Readman, Ramos/Hugo, China Blue, Danny Vaughn, Tony Mills. Dang.
from PerfectProg.com. this one is Vox Tempus. (proggie --you'd love this schutt--check it out)
http://www.perfectprog.com/index.php?op ... &Itemid=95
Interview to Eric Ragno From Vox Tempus
Friday, 07 November 2008
Chuy: Hey Eric, it’s a real honor for me and the PerfectProg people to ask you some questions, thank you so much for your time and availability, please be extensive.
1. Which is the History of Vox Tempus? Why the name? By the way, one of my preferred.
Hey Chuy! Wow…we are starting with the tough questions! The band was put together from the ashes of Equinox, a progressive band whose sole album The Color of the Time did extremely well and climbed the charts around the world. In the process of writing a follow-up record, some of the original members lost interest and had to be replaced. By the time the record was done, the lineup was completely different than the one that recorded The Color of the Time. So we didn’t feel it would be honest to call it Equinox. Ray came up with the name Vox Tempus, which he told us loosely translates from Latin to “Voice of Time”. We are all fascinated by the concept of time.
2. Please tell us about your musical influences.
The band’s influences are pretty diverse. Personally I love the more melodic aspects of rock and prog, while Ray is far more technical. Jim loves the avant garde stuff, while Dan loves powerful singers like Geoff Tate. You put all of us together and you get that Vox Tempus sound. Needless to say, we listen to everything.
3. Are you working on new music?
We are working on the beginnings of a new album. It is going slow, but after the excellent reviews of our debut we feel we owe it to the fans to do this right, and not just throw a new album out there! Like last time there is a lot of melody and a lot of technical passages, but most importantly there are solid songs. It always begins with good songs.
4. Since the debut of In the Eye of Time, what happened with the band?
There was SO much drama over the breakup of Equinox. I joined the band in 1998, and the album wasn’t released until 2004. There were legal issues, money issues, and the band didn’t trust any of the labels, accountants, or anyone who could help. This paralyzed us, so we were unable to enjoy this amazing record or agree on any kind of decisions that would promote the band. Once the album was finally finished, everyone took a vacation that lasted four years! This was extremely frustrating, and a lot of changes had to be made for us to enjoy making music together again.
Thankfully there has always been an interest in our debut disc, especially from dedicated prog fans like the ones on this site! I kept on writing and recording with other artists, and hoped that one day there would be sufficient interest to revisit Vox Tempus and put us back on track. That finally happened this year with Angelmilk Records in the U.K. They are re-releasing the debut album this December, and they have already expressed interest in a follow-up record.
5. There’s a side project for the members of VT?
I wrote a half dozen songs for a second Vox Tempus album, but there was no band to record them anymore. Out of my frustration I put together China Blue (www.chinabluemusic.com), a band made up of myself, Tony Mills (Shy, TNT) on vocals, Josh Ramos (The Storm, Hardline) on lead guitar, Doug Odell (Crunch, TNA, Adriangale) on bass, Pete Newdeck (Grim Reaper) on drums and Ronny Smith (Xenon, Trippin on Dolls) on rhythm guitars. It became a more AOR oriented record with progressive elements, and half of the album is filled with songs I had written for Vox Tempus. The album comes out December 5 through Frontiers Records, around the same time as the Vox Tempus re-release.
6. Are there some tour dates or gigs this year?
There are no Vox Tempus gigs planned at this time, although I will be touring in Europe and Russia in February with a well-known group of guys that I am pretty excited about. (You can always check out the latest at www.ericragno.com.) The guys in Vox Tempus have day jobs and families to worry about, so touring is hard. There was so much pressure the last time around, and this time we’re taking things day by day. It would be great to do a few festival dates.
7. Please talk us about the covers of the album, why the change?
We had two covers done at the same time, and we always planned to use this alternate cover for an overseas release. It is an opposite cover from the U.S. release, and if you put the two images side by side you can see how cool it looks. You are looking through one end of the mirror on the U.S. version, and on the international version you are now looking back! Since the album never had a international release, no one ever saw this alternate cover. We have a lot of extra artwork, photos, songs, etc. that didn’t get used the first time around. We’re excited to finally share this material with the public.
8. From where emerges the inspiration to create the music and wrote the lyrics?
Women!! HAHAHAHA We write about life, love and the human condition. We write about the things we know – less about fantasy and more about what people experience from day-to-day. Ray Mantor (guitars) wrote most of the lyrics, and Dan Reed (singer) wrote the rest. I wrote the final song, Steal the Moment, about saying goodbye to a loved one.
9. Eric, magnificent solos and orchestrations, how you get prepared musically?
Thank you! I try to record music every day. This keeps me in a constant musical mode, so there is no preparation. A lot of what I write gets placed with other artists. This year I wrote and recorded songs with Danny Vaughn & Fabrizio Grossi (From the Inside), and Josh Ramos and Hugo Valenti (Ramos/Hugo). I also did a lot of work on the recent Tony Mills album, and I am currently writing songs for the new solo album by David Readman (Pink Cream 69). You have to keep at it every day, or you lose it! And time just slips away.
10. In the song Voice of Time, who got the idea of play a solo for each member of the band? Simply incredible!
Ray & I came up with that, it was the very last song that we wrote for the album. I flew to Ray’s house and we wrote the last two songs – For Every Life and Voice of Time – in one weekend. Every great progressive band has an instrumental song on their debut album that becomes their signature, so why not us? We decided to give everyone a chance to shine, but we also built a lot of melody around those solo sections so it wasn’t just a bunch of wanking! Even Gregg Bissonette (drums) puts in a pretty awesome solo which blew us all away. I love this piece, it is among my favorites for sure. Lots of melody and technical excellence.
12. Please talk us about the top song What About.
What About is entirely Ray’s baby. It was the first song the band asked to me work on, basically my audition for the band. I wanted to impress the guys, so I recorded a LOT of keyboards for this one – way more than I ever got away with in Takara! Ray wrote it about a situation he was going through which changed his life, and ultimately the direction of this band. The song showcases everybody well, and it’s one of my favorite songs to listen to. There is some great video on our site (www.voxtempus.net) of the making of this song.
16. There’s something that you want to say to your fans or share with us?
Thanks so much for all your support! If you haven’t checked us out yet, please stop by www.voxtempus.net and see what all the fuss is about! We are great fans of this music in addition to being musicians, and we would love to hear from you.
Thank you so much Eric for your words, we appreciate so much, take care, greetings to the band!!!
Chuy Monjarás
Administrator and Webmaster
PerfectProg. Com
Check Vox Tempus Site:www.voxtempus.net
Would have been a cool show to see, great seeing Eric and Mike playing with EM. 
