The label Lion Music and the rock journalist Nicky Baldrian arranged a tribute album for this outstanding musician, with the title "Warmth In The Wilderness". All artist royalties and Lion Music's label profits from this album are donated to Jason Becker's family. All participating artists have donated their work and recordings totally for free. To support Jason and his music, we try to interview as many participating musicians as possible. Paul Nelson / Jason Becker Tribute - "Warmth in the Wilderness" Interview by Ralph Geiger for RockReunion Online Music Magazine When and why did you decide to take part in this tribute album? Only hearing about the project about 2 months ago I was anxious when speaking with Lion Records to contribute a track to help with the benefit. Jason's playing on all his projects has been very inspiring and I felt what better way to repay an artist than to pay compliment through the interpretation of one of their works and as has been stated, this tribute does much more and I'm very pleased with that. On which song do you perform and why did you choose this one? I chose the instrumental song "Blue" off of his "Perspectives" album, it fit best with my style of playing and seemed like a track I could really sink my teeth into. Which other musicians accompanied you on this song? Tell us more about the recordings. I recorded the track at Carriage House Studios in CT. I wanted to use a real Hammond B3, unfortunately there were none available in the area so I had one driven in from 3 states away! LOL. The musicians I used were: Jack Colombo - Hammond B3 / Ian Callanan - Bass / John Montagnese - Drums and percussion. I had Shinobu Mitsuoka (Dream Theater, Mary J. Blige) handle the recording end and Pro-tools mix and mastering engineer was John Shyloski. When did you first hear about Jason's illness and what was your reaction? I heard about it about the same time as everyone else and I thought how strange life is to deal such a sorted deck. What's your opinion of Jason's musical work (Cacophony / David Lee Roth etc)? To me, out of most of the quote "Shredders" he is a player I consider to be more fusion like in his thinking, more along the Jeff Beck school of thought. Besides being highly skilled and articulate he has great phrasing and feel. Has Jason influenced your playing and / or songwriting? Yes, I'm especially impressed by the moods he has created in his instrumental arrangements that's something I admire. Have you ever met him? Unfortunately no. What are the current plans of your main band and / or yourself? Well, after enjoying composing and playing the guitar tracks for the WWF's extreme football league the XFL I've had an increase in requests to play on more comercials and such which I enjoy. Also my solo instrumental CD entitled "Look" has just been released worldwide and I will be appearing on 2 recordings being distributed by Century Media Records very soon.