Filter is currently Richard Patrick and a collection of assistants. Though in the past, Filter has been in a different form. Durring the production of Filter's debut album Short Bus, Filter was Richard Patrick and Brian Liesegang. The two worked mutually on the same music creating the album in a small brick house in Chicago. Filter hired a live band to play for concerts when time for the first tour came around, Frank Cavanagh played bass guitar, Geno Lenardo played live guitar and Matt Walker played drums.
Short Bus was released April 25, 1995 and almost two years of non-stop touring followed. After September of 1997, Filter finished it's Short Bus Tour and Richard Patrick soon began work on Filter's second album.
Filter was formed by ex-Nine Inch Nails member Richard Patrick (of the original live-band playing electric guitar) and Chicago computer programmer Brian Liesegang (a founding but now former member of Filter) around 1993-1994, after meeting on the set of NIN's "Gave Up" video . Patrick's first known band to actually produce an album was a U2-sounding group called The AKT in the late-'80s durring Patrick's High School experience. In 1987 they printed a vinyl under the name The ACT. The story behind the name change for The ACT/AKT remains unknown, like much of Richard Patrick's past.
"Filter," was originally the name for a demo tape Patrick was shopping around during his NIN days. Filter really began when Patrick signed with Reprise Records during a stay in Los Angeles. There were reports that when a Reprise official came to see Patrick's equipment he'd used for creating the demo, it was said that one of Richard Patrick's cat's had eatten a hole through one of his monitor speakers that he was still using.
Patrick's ablity to work around his equipment difficulites helped lead to a prompt signing. Soon after, while traveling through the Grand Canyon with Brian Liesegang, they decided to work together on the album Patrick was planning. They returned to Cleveland to record most of their debut album, Short Bus (named for the small buses taken by mentally and physically handicapped children) in a small brick house in Rocky River, Ohio. The end product was a more than platinum album that yielded the MTV and radio hit, "Hey Man, Nice Shot."
Born on May 10th, 1968 and Guitar player since the age of nine, Richard Patrick names U2 and The Cure as primary musical influences. Specifically, it was the flood of sound and the inventive use of technology employed by those artists to which he was drawn. "I remember picking up a delay pedal and showing my teacher what I could do with it," Richard Patrick recalls. "I was doing all that triplet stuff and making all these crazy sounds, and he was like, 'Well now you're relying on a box. You've got to learn how to read music to be a real musician.'From then on I just kind of took a very anti-schooled philosophy on the guitar.
I tried to rely on what it is about the guitar that I like, which is mainly rythm and texture." Rich had some fun with his unorthodx aural stylings when he spent two and a half years as the touring guitarist in Nine Inch Nails until he chose to leave the band to do bigger and better things with his life in 1992. "I want to make the best decision for Trent [Reznor] and me," said Richard in 1993. Both Richard and Brian Liesegang (former Nine Inch Nails and Filter member) felt, "What the fuck are we helping this guy out for when we can be doing it ourselves?" Because he had such a bad time from his association with Nine Inch Nails, he's unbelievably sensitive to the members of his touring band. A perfectionist and a tough but fair boss, he told them the prerequisite for employment was learning to play the parts from the record, as he had written and recorded them, without improvision. Take it or leave it.
Brian Liesegang was a leading member of Filter with Richard Patrick untill he left the band in the summerof 1997. Brian worked on Short Bus with Richard Patrick and played guitar for the band durring live shows.
Brian had a history with Nine Inch Nails as a keyboardist and a programmer for the band. Richard Patrick and Brian Liesegang met through a friend while in the Nine Inch Nails experience. The details of Brian Liesegang's departure haven't become public, but it is known that Brian Liesegang has been working with a new project called 'Ashtar Command' that has had two tracks on The Avengers movie soundtrack.
Durring the live shows, there are support members to play with Richard Patrick. Durring the Short Bus Tour, Filter had a whole live band to cover all of the parts of the music.
Starting from the left of the stage and going right: Brian Liesegang played electric guitar, he had an old YAMAHA (DX-9?) keyboard that sat on the floor in front of him. Whenever a sound sample came up, Brian would step on part of the keyboard and the correct sound sample would go off. Brian played Richard Patrick's Strat copy the "Race Car" live, until Brian started playing two '70s style body Fender Custom Shop Stratocasters. In the center was Richard Patrick, he does all of the vocals for Filter and on some songs he plays his Fender Telecaster, or Fender Stratocaster (a Buddy Holly remake).
Behind Rich was Matt Walker who played live drums. On small stages, Frank Cavanagh the bass player, played between Richard and Matt, but in larger venues, he played to Richard's left. Frank played with two different electric basses while playing with Filter. Frank's second guitar is an Fender Custom Shop active electric bass, (the first model Frank used remains unknown). Frank Cavanagh played through mostly Mesa/Boogie equipment (amplifier cabinets, amplifier and Mesa Twin-V pre-amp foot pedal). And to the left of Frank Cavanagh was Geno Lenardo. He was the second guitar player next to Brian and Rich was sometimes third. Geno played through Fender Stratocasters, Mesa/Boogie and Marshall equipment.
In Filter's first album, there wasn't much room for solos so there wasn't anyone real time that Brian or Geno would drop out for the other guy to go at it, Filter's guitars supports the rest of the music like the music supports the guitars. In Filter's most recent tour since the debut of the second album, Geno has switched sides and plays both parts that he and Brian used to play. Though Matt Walker is not playing live with Filter anymore, Steve Gillis has taken over filling those shoes very comfortably.
Filter's original live band wasn't exactly just people off the street, (well maybe Frank, he was found in a bar). At the time, Geno Lenardo couldn't seem to get a good career as a recording engineer/producer so he toured with Filter as their live band guitarist shortly after touring with another mid-west band called "Chemlab." Geno spent four years at Berklee College of Music in Boston studying Music Production and Engineering, and has actually done some work as an engineer and even a songwritter with bands like Ministry, Sister Machine Gun and Chemlab.
Touring with Chemlab lead to more touring as the lead guitarist for Filter- or as much as the songs allow for one lead guitar. "We tend not to play alot of lead," says Geno. "If you're going to play something of that nature, it should be a 'part.' There's no solos. The music's definitely more about the songs." Filter's Bassest Frank Cavanagh is no one new to European tours. Frank Cavanagh's first tour of Europe bypassed all the tourist hot spots and went straight to the infamous Eastern Front.
That was at age 16 in a skate-punk band called Outface he formed with his high school friends in Cleveland. "We did it all by our selves too," said Frank. "It was a blast! We called over there and we just kept trying to sell ourselves to all these different little touring companies who said 'you guys are nothing.' Then we found these punk rock kids in Berlin who were doing it in the Easternbloc countries. We went over there and didn't do England, didn't do France. We just did Germany and Poland-the Czech Republic. It was great!" Frank hung out with guys who skateboarded and listend to skate-rock bands from California: The Faction, Agent Orange, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys. "Then we decided that we wanted to jam and they were like, 'here dude, here's a bass.' and that's how I got started." Matt Walker played drums for Filter on the Short Bus Tour.
In September of 1996, Matt jumped on with Smashing Pumpkins as their live drummer while Filter just finnished their last tour and was about to begin the work on the new album. Matt Walker left the Smashing Pumpkins to start a project called "Cupcakes" on his own. Filter has chosen a drummer named Steven Gillis the new Filter drummer. Steven Gillis played drums on a few tracks on the new Filter album in addtion to playing live for the band. Not much is known about Steve's past work.
