This is Melissa James Rees from Guns N' Roses, and you're listening to the Jersey Jack Pinball Podcast with Ken Cromwell. Hey, what's going on, Pinball Land? Welcome. It's another episode of the Jersey Jack Pinball Podcast. My name is Ken Cromwell, and I'm your host. Well, if you can believe it, it's been about a month, a little over a month, in fact, that Guns N' Roses' not-in-this-lifetime pinball was revealed to the public. That was back on October 5th of 2020. And in the last episode, we sat down with the co-designers of the game. That was Eric Meunier of Jersey Jack Pinball, an iconic lead guitarist slash of Guns N' Roses. Now, this week, we're going to sit down with Eric again, but we want to introduce everybody to Melissa James Rees. Now, Melissa James Rees is going on her fifth year as the keyboardist for Guns N' Roses. But Melissa has also contributed a ton of voiceover and callouts to the game. Some of the best callouts that I've heard in pinball in quite a long time. So over the next 20 minutes, the conversation with Melissa goes everywhere from her beginning in music at the age of two or three, getting into the gaming industry, which I thought was really interesting, and her involvement with Guns N' Roses and the pinball machine, not in this lifetime. Melissa is a great person to talk to. Her positive attitude is certainly infectious. And I'm excited to be able to bring you the conversation with Melissa James Rees from Guns N' Roses. Let's do that now. joining the Jersey Jack pinball podcast is Guns N' Roses keyboardist Melissa James Rees Melissa welcome to the show thank you thank you I was hoping if you don't mind it can you tell the listeners a little bit about your background because from what I've been reading and from what I know you began singing and playing musical instruments at a very early age I did um like a pretty young age sorry a pretty young age um i yeah i started with uh classical voice and classical piano and um came up that way i started when i was like i don't know like the official start age it's debatable because i've got it's all like hearsay from my family but um like two or three maybe oh wow and yeah it's pretty young and then I just like then I got put into like you know private instruction and um was going pretty hardcore from a pretty young age and then I got more into like jazz and urban music like around like eighth grade and in high school and then I pretty much I got into music professionally when I like wasn't was barely even a teenager so I kind of just got into the industry at like a really really young age actually um and then kind of just never stopped to be honest with you right I mean you've got you've accomplished so much early on how do you make that step from a two or three year old who's kind of getting into music and then now you're on stage and you know your keyboard is for guns and roses and guns and roses is amazing but i mean you've got so much in your in your repertoire as far as what you've contributed on so many different levels within the industry oh i really appreciate you saying that it's so funny hearing you like say the ages back it sounds so gone um right i It sounds so weird, like a two-year-old. I, yeah, you know, I got into just like the writing side and the sort of, you know, behind the scenes side at a pretty young age too. And I think that I really credit that with a lot of where a lot of my success in the industry has been because, you know, I just had a really I kind of had this like funny chip on my shoulder and just didn't want to be somebody who, you know, everybody was just kind of at the time, like being more like, you know, get in the booth, do your thing, singer person. You know, I really wanted to know the ins and outs of how production worked, how to, you know, produce my own tracks, records, get into songwriting, arranging, engineering. I just wanted to come into every environment having as much knowledge as I could and learn as much as I could in every environment so that I didn't feel like I was at the mercy of somebody else kind of steering my life or my career as an artist. It's amazing because, I mean, you bring up excellent points. It's one thing to be able to be proficient at playing an instrument or multiple instruments, and it's one thing to be able to produce maybe an audio package. But to be able to be very well-rounded and be able to be self-sufficient and do all that yourself, I would imagine has to give you a tremendous advantage. Yeah, you know, to be honest with you, it was just coming from a place in me that was just hungry to have that knowledge and to just not feel like I couldn't speak the same language as everybody else. But I think that it ended up having really great, you know, side effects and ramifications later because I, you know, just ended up having all that knowledge and later being able to really utilize that and have it kind of serve, you know, other roles and things from my career later on. Sam, we're going to get into your involvement with the Guns N' Roses pin by Jersey Jack Pinball in just a second. But did you want to talk a little bit about, because I know you're no stranger to the gaming community at all. You've done a lot within gaming. Did you want to talk a little bit about that? Sure. You know, I got into, at a certain point, it was actually like a little, it's going to sound funny, but a little later for me when I was like maybe 16, 17. You were very old at that point compared to your two-year-old. seasoned veteran at that point um but but you know i i got into like composing and um and and writing more and my the managers and people that i was working with at the time um even though that was all sort of falling under more of like artist projects and me kind of going a certain way is just more of the artist even though i was accumulating and cultivating my own um knowledge of of all those other things like I was mentioning before right um they were kind of saying to me behind the scenes like you know you might actually be really dope with this other stuff like you might want to consider that this is like a thing for you and I just kind of went huh and then you know when I sort of opened myself up to it opportunities started presenting themselves You know, I met Brain, who was a former drummer of the band. And he I met him really early on and we were working together and stuff with us just kind of clicked. And he was sort of instrumental, too, and in helping me kind of go, you know, yeah, you should be like open to this other side because you actually might be really good at it. And then when we decided to like formally partner up, then things just started to open up and really had like, we just got these opportunities and particularly in the gaming side of things, that's like where we started with the composing side. And we were given an opportunity. Our first game was infamous, the call, I believe. And, and it, we just got an opportunity to basically like he, He got asked to do all the drums for the game, but he was like, I don't know, can my partner and I maybe try, you know, doing some score for you guys? And they're like, sure, try it. He met up with some of his friends at like the NAMM show and he just started like talking about it because those friends introduced him to some other friends that worked at PlayStation that were the musical directors at the time on this game. Right. Yada yada. So we got a chance to just kind of throw our hat in the ring and it stuck. And we were like, holy s**t. Oh, sorry. No problem. No, hey, the more vulgar the better here on the Georgia Tech Pinball Podcast. No sweat there. Sorry. No, I love it. So we were just like, holy shit, oh, my God. And then they started sending us just some examples of what Almond Tobin and some other people had done on the game previous. And I just remember our funny little memory, the one that we always go back to and just laugh, is like when we first put on this like Amantoban track, it was like a zombie, like a zombie army of basically like drummers drumming with like bones on like these crazy, like a drum line of zombie army drummers using bones to drum. It was like the craziest, most epic sounding shit like I had ever heard. That's awesome. And it legit sounded like, I think they were using bones is the crazy part. How cool is that? But we looked at each other and we were like, there's no way we're going to be like, we were like, we are out. There's this is so out of our league. Like, there's no way we can do this. And we just we both looked at each other and started screaming, like, what are we going to do? We're like pacing around the studio. But we found a way to make it work. And we did our I mean, we weren't quite that crazy yet because we were just starting out. but we basically, you know, got into our own, did our own version of our zombie army. And because that particular game was post-apocalyptic New Orleans. So they had some other, you know, since you have to do like cumulatively like 200 minutes of music for game scores, you know, sometimes they usually need to get like a couple, two or three composers to compile everything. The, you know, the animatics. And then of course like the fight music and, you know, stuff that can loop if you're just, if you want to go get your like slurpee or whatever. Yeah. Right. But so, you know, we kind of like just, we learned through, to be honest with you, like getting the gig and having to be rad at, you know what I mean? We just had to rush the occasion and rip at it. So that's how that started. And then after that, we just started getting, you know, calls for more games. We worked on as random as like, you know, major league baseball to stuff with more light, like Mod Nation. A couple of the other infamous games, I personally ended up working on this game called Bloodborne. Eric Minier's here. Bloodborne's an awesome game. His eyes just lit up there on Bloodborne. Awesome. I'm glad to hear you guys like it. You even had a track in PlayStation Home, if I remember correctly, which was that little online virtual world simulator i remember messing with that a while ago and that was that was pretty fun that was that was like early on that was actually that might have even that was like actually during the time we were also doing the first infamous i mean that was like early on right right and i we did like hella music for home i think we did most of that music actually that's killer that was a really really fun fun great learning experience too um but it was kind of more in our wheelhouse too because it was like you know it was more like they were like you know they'd come to us and say we're looking for tracks like this so it was kind of like more in our wheelhouse because it was like tracks you know like songs that were supposed to be this you know like three to four minutes this was the kind of vibe like this is the era it was supposed to come from this was like kind of what the lyrical content should be it was just super fun um musical little experiments and and just rad little projects to get into but yeah so so most recently um you know both of us actually separately brain we never worked in the studio um on it together he did the the drumming um side and stuff worked with gustavo and i uh did like the vocal production side and was working with ashley who plays ellie on um the last of us two which I believe just came out. Joe Katz, one of the programmers here, has been playing the crap out of that game. Joe Katz, I'm sure he has. He's probably streaming that on Twitch, Joe Katz. We'll have to link to that. What about voice work? Have you ever done extensive voice work for a game before? Because I know as a singer, you've got your own music that's out there, obviously. How about specific voiceover work? Have you ever done call-outs for games? To be honest with you like on like The Last of Us just this last game that I worked on last of us too that was more um in the vocal space but it wasn my voice so it was funny because you know sony and naughty dog had took a risk on me i remember when i first it's it's crazy like i started work on that game before i even got in guns like that's how long this this gig has been going on you've been of Guns N' Roses is it about four years we're in the fifth year now okay five years now yeah so so this this was like more than five years ago we started on The Last of Us 2 and I remember um you know going into the studio and I had horrible I mean I'm talking like horrible strep throats to where I was like talking like it was like so bad but I was so excited to be working on this because you know they were bringing me in and there were a couple occasions in the past bloodborne was one of them where you know like it's nobody's fault like you get to know musical directors and different people and um that you work with at these places and like you sort of they get like a feel for your vibe they don't like automatically like certain musical directors and people um that I was working with just kind of knew me more as like a pop writer in a, in a weird way. Like just for that, you know, that's how those, that particular team knew me. Right. And so for me to come in all of a sudden they, they basically had to like invent a position for me. Like they were inventing this position for me that they had never like tried before. I think that's what Jersey Jack did for me, Melissa. So we have that in common actually. So you totally get it. I totally get it. absolutely it's like weird it's this weird vibe of like you know they're trying it out and you want to like rise to the occasion and rip and um but i i was coming in like basically you know ashley johnson who's who's ellie and she's an amazing amazing singer and artist and actress everything she's so dope she um they needed her to sound you know a certain way they needed her to sound less trained if that makes sense um just like less of a polished rad singer than she actually is because that's not the character and they were just trying to figure out kind of how to do that and one of the musical directors went i know this might sound crazy because everybody thinks of melissa as this but i think that we should call her in and see if she can coach ashley and produce this thing and i remember just neil um druckman when i first met her was just I just felt like he was so suspicious of me and he was asking me all these questions. And here I am with my like strep throat, like trying to, you know, like tell him all the stuff I know about vocals and why I should be useful. Right, right. Like Melissa needs to lay off the cigarettes or something here. What's going on? A little more throaty than I anticipated. Yeah, I mean, it was crazy. So like I went into the studio, it was like all this pressure. And basically I had to demo out this piece for Ashley, this thing. And she had to like basically study kind of and get it in her mind that this was going to be the sound of how Ellie sounded, you know, when she was performing these things. And then that was that piece. And then I sort of followed up with coaching her with actually like, you know, being her vocal coach. And that like turned into just this whole thing. And, you know, like we joke about it now because, you know, we're all friends and Neil's become a great friend. But like we joke about it's just me, like, you know, being so nervous about it at first and going, oh, because, you know, I mean, and then the same thing happened with Bloodborne. They, you know, again, pivoting from sort of this pop thing and this vocal coach thing to, you know, just straight up classical voice. a lot of the people at the company didn't know that I was, you know, trained in opera, like, first and foremost. And so they were just like, huh? And so what ended up happening was, you know, they just did blind, just straight up blind audition submissions for the lead featured vocalist, operatic vocalist on Bloodborne. And the director in Japan ended up with his team, of leave choosing choosing me and everyone was like yeah it's melissa they're like what how cool is that i remember meeting them and yeah it was it was rad it was just it was funny because that dude's like a celebrity um miyazaki-san i believe is his name and he he like seeing him like going to those conventions too where he was at when i first met him in person i mean people like worship this dude and um and i remember like him saying to the translator they thought that i'd be a much like bigger, robust, like, and they just had a different idea, I think, of, you know, who that voice was coming from. But yeah, so I ended up I was I did all the like lead operatic vocals on Bloodborne also. Amazing. So, I mean, you're used to giving the direction, obviously, and it's and I get it and I can appreciate it. So and full disclosure here, Melissa, because I mean, I've been playing the Guns Rose pinball machine pretty much exclusively over the past couple months. And right. It's awesome. But this is what I think is really cool is that for me, audio is such a big deal in a pinball machine. And a lot of times it's focused on on the music and that sort of thing. What I really, really love in this particular game are your specific call outs because they're so genuine. They sound they're so fun. They're so passionate. it. It's call outs in a pinball machine. I'm not used to hearing as far as that passion behind it. And I wanted to ask you about how it was working with Eric Meunier during a recording session to get these down. Because as I'm looking at Eric, I'm smiling. And Melissa, I'm tipping my hat to you over the airwaves here. Because collectively, I'm telling you guys, you guys killed it. It was a lot of fun. If you haven't noticed, Melissa, I'm a little excited about the call So so nicely done right from the super skill shot I was like damn like it just it just hits you like a ton of bricks And then you get a big smile on your face and you ready to rock it out on the machine So it's awesome. But I'm just curious if you guys would talk a little bit about how it was to record those call outs because they're so fun. That was such a fun session. It was, like, so long and, like, fun. And I just remember I was on with Eric and, like, all his team. And Eric, by the way, like, I know we've texted a bunch since then, but like, I haven't gotten a chance to like talk to you on the phone about it, but I just have to thank you because like, he like held my hand through that. Like, I was like, how am I, how do I say this? It was hard to get through because it was so like laughable, but I'm like, I'm going to do it. You know, I was like determined. And he would just kind of like go, you know, try it like this. But I like one thing I'm really, really, really great at is imitating and emulating things. So especially with my voice, I was like just looking to him and going, OK, how do I just like get the sentiment and the spirit of like what he's doing and make it Melissa core? You know what I mean? now I've got to see what Eric was telling you to do because that's a whole other side of Eric that I probably haven't seen yet it was very fun because we were both laughing the whole time when you know I'm sitting there with Melissa the rock star getting her to say quit pounding your pod and play the f***ing game right how do I say that Eric exactly it was hilarious and I remember I think like I talked to I talked to some of the other, I think specifically Dustin Splash about it at rehearsal, like, you know, later earlier this year when we were getting ready to go out on the tour that didn't happen. And they were just like, yeah, I mean, it was they were just basically like confirming what Eric had said. And we were just we were he and I were cracking up about because they were just like, oh, yeah, like some of that. Like, no, that wasn't good. Say some of that. I was like, yeah, like, you know, some of it was a little heavy, but I got through a lot of it. And they're like, well, it sounds like you had, you know, a whole like a big team and everyone was watching you and supporting you. I don't remember having that. You know, they were like poking fun at me. Oh, come on. Oh, no. I fed Duff every single, dude didn't even print out the script when he went into the studio. I literally had to say every line for him and then he sent it back to me and it was hilarious. That's the easiest way to do it. That's so funny. It was awesome. so you guys guys work together pretty well which is nice i don't want to say we're wrapping up on guns and roses because for people that are listening to this show right now it's the first time they've played the game or seen the game and there's a lot of hype and in my opinion i think it's going to go down as the greatest rock pinball machine of all time and one of the best all-time pinball machines if not the best but can you yeah right no pressure can you it's all about heaviness on the Jersey Jack Pinball Podcast. Melissa, can you see yourself creating more content in the future, whether it be music or producing an audio package or even call-outs in a different pinball machine other than Guns N' Roses? I mean, yeah, dude. It was super fun. That's great. Especially with you guys. I mean, if I have Eric as a coach... There you go. He's available. We're going to book you. I will hold you to that. I mean, dude, I am like right there. Like it was, I don't, that type of stuff to me is like so, so fun. Of course. Absolutely. Yeah. And the audio talents, I mean, what you've spoken about in your background, it's perfect for what we need in a pinball machine, right? We need composition. I just have to say like this, this whole thing, like from the, from the second Slash first told me about it up till now, I have just been like so excited about this thing. Are you guys all, I know Eric is, but are the rest of you guys super badasses at pinball? Is everybody there? No, that's why I was brought in. I made the curve of the s*** guy. I love pinball, but I'm not good. Eric and Keith and Joe, those guys are monsters, competitive pinball players. Flash said you're amazing, Eric. I mean, he came in and we played a game together and the polite thing would have been to let the guest win. But no, that's not how I roll. So, yeah, I might have spanked him. All right, Melissa, thank you so much for your time. For me, this was a great thrill to be able to have you on the show and to talk, you know, a little bit of everything, not just pinball. And thank you for being so gracious with your time. And I hope that when the game is out here and people have some more time on it, maybe you'd like to come back in and join us one more time just to kind of get a follow-up on the reaction for the public on the game. Oh, absolutely. I'm so stoked. I'm stoked for the fans, for everybody who ends up playing it. I'm stoked to play it myself, see everything, hear everything, get all freaked out by the sounds and the lights, the whole thing. It's going to be awesome. All right, we're going to wrap this one up. this episode of the Jersey Jack Pinball Podcast. I wanted to personally thank everybody for coming in and joining the show. Whether you're stopping by or it's your first time here, you can reach out to us specifically via email, and that's podcast at jerseyjackpinball.com. Questions, comments, observation. I'll even take some constructive criticism. Feel free to hit us up there. Again, I want to thank Melissa James Rees for joining the show. Infectious, positive attitude, and that's what I think we can all use on a daily basis. So thanks to Melissa. and again if you want to follow Jersey Jack Pinball in general you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. Check us out at those channels and finally if you didn't get a chance to listen to the last episode and it's the one directly before this check it out because it was an awesome sit down conversation with Eric Minier and Slash of Guns and Roses on how they were able to collaborate together to get this pinball out to the masses. So hope you're enjoying your GNR and I hope to have some company news coming up here real soon. We've got some exciting things in the pipeline and more band interviews coming up on future episodes here of the Jersey Jack Pinball Podcast. For Ken Cromwell and for Jersey Jack Pinball, thanks for listening, and don't forget to take some time out of your day and play some pinball. So long, everybody.