Rick Denzien

Rick Denzien knows what it is like to take the wrong and right exit - he is ramping up with a new CD release Exit 21. The thought for the Exit 21 CD came while driving the German Autobahn. "We were on our way to Switzerland - had no idea where we were going but we saw a sign for a little town called Ausfahrt. So I'm the navigator and looking for this little town on a German map - I can't find it We are flying like 160 miles per hour and here comes another sign for Ausfahrt. So I figure this is a good sized town, and study the map some more. But then after a few kilometers, another sign, then another, and another all pointing to Ausfahrt. Must be some huge city. I'm thinking this place must be the size of New York with all these exit signs." They never did find the Ausfahrt city limits because Ausfahrt means exit in German. "Dah. I felt pretty stupid when they told me that, but it was pretty funny." Exit 21 is that place on the fringe where the age of innocence meets the age of accountability and where opposing truths collide - smashing old realities and creating new ones. "The truth on the road is, you never know what's around the next bend." He knows. Travels have taken him through the Netherlands, Germany and far away as India & Australia. most recently to Colombia, South America. "One morning - 8:00 AM - just before we were going to Europe our new drummer was driving to rehearsal. A car crossed over the line and hit him head on, he was killed instantly. Turned out it was a drunk driver just coming home from an all nighter - that really makes you insanely mad." "Exit-21 is a spiritual quest to me, the road less traveled, 'Life is a Highway' theme is definitely there, but that is only one thread on the CD" Songs on the Exit 21 CD sum up Denzien's overriding philosophy in axioms that relate deep emotions & experiences - expressed as music and words. So Clear lyrics "the path to the sky was empty & Mary was smoking down the hall" evoke a controversial image of the blessed virgin smoking a cigarette outside a parochial classroom on a stairwell to nowhere. Denzien gives listeners a glimpse into supernatural / metaphysical realms while remaining completely skeptical. "I was tortured for my music in grade school. My first music teacher poked my nose with a ball point pen every time I made a mistake until it was black & bloody, it didn't take them long to beat the music out of me." Denzien was 16 before he picked up music again. One night he walked into a wall of fog in his backyard and emerged with a new desire to play music. "I don't understand what happened in there, but there was a transformation, I started to write songs, and I've been at it ever since. Some ancient traditions indicate that fog is considered a threshold to another level or dimension, it was pretty exciting."