Mark Zonder interview (excerpt)

Tony Gonzalez: And what does really happen with Slavior the band?

Mark Zonder: Slavior, what happened was kind of the same thing that happens with a lot of my career. [laughs] Unfortunately... that first record I thought was great. I thought the song ‘Dove’ could have and should have been a big hit. There’s no reason. But we did it with InsideOut and they’re more of a prog label, I guess. And the head of the A&R guy came to me after the record was done and he said, “Hey, you guys got a great record. You’ve got a great single, it should really go to radio, but we don’t know what to do with it.” He told me straight. “We just don’t know what to do with it.” So any band will know, it’s very tough to keep rolling in bands when you do something that you think is great and that should get out there, and they basically just kill it. There were no touring opportunities. Oh, actually there was – I take that back. Inside Out came to us and asked if we wanted to open up for Dream Theater. I said, “Okay, that’d be cool.” But then when they told me the amount of money of the check that I was gonna have to write to be able to do that, I decided to buy two houses instead. It was it was ridiculous! It was like, “You gotta be kidding!” And so I didn’t do it.