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Over the last 10 months I have been involved in a number of outside writing and recording projects. I have been working with my long time musical partner, Vince DiCola on tracks for the upcoming Thread CD. Roine Stolte, the guitarist from Sweden's "The Flower Kings" is also going to be working on it with us. We have been writing and recording for several months with a view to releasing the record and performing some time later in 2008. We have some great tracks already recorded with possibly enough for a double CD and it is a substantial step forward from the last Thread CD. We're looking forward to getting it out there and performing it.

Recently, I completed composing and recording a solo marimba, percussion and drum piece entitled "Balindian Taiko Skeleton Dance" for a project called "Congo Square", which is a benefit CD that is being put together to directly assist the New Orleans musicians that were affected by Hurricane Katrina. It is a rather eclectic piece, loosely based around my interest in Balinese Gamelan, Japanese Taiko drumming, Indian, African and a little bit of Western music. This will be coming out at the end of 2007.

I have also been working on mixing tracks for a live album from the tour with Martin Barre and Willy Porter that we recorded on tour back in 2004. That is coming together pretty well and we hope that we will also have it out sometime in late 2007, early 2008.

I have recently been writing and recording some instrumental tracks with my old friend and phenomenal jazz-rock guitarist Bill Derby at my home studio and we hope to have our record completed by early to mid-2008.

Finished a trilogy of records which comprises a core group of myself, Vince DiCola-keyboards and Paul ILL-bass. The first record is entitled "Pity The Rich", which also features Reeves Gabrels (David Bowie, Tin Machine) on guitar and Vincent Kendall on vocals. The second one is simply entitled "DPI" (DiCola, Perry, ILL) and is the just the core trio. The third one is being edited and mixed now and will feature some other guest artists. They are all very exploratory, although different from one another and based on a series of extemporaneous improvisations which we have edited down to have some compositional structure. It is very, very different from Thread and certainly Jethro Tull, and probably relates more to Miles Davis' electric improvisational periods and early Weather Report along with some other more obscure influences. It was great fun doing them and I expect we will explore more of that territory in the future with different groups of guest musicians.

Worked on an album called "Roots, Rock and Revolution" with two fantastic songwriters, who call themselves "Emma's Revolution". Great artists and we recorded it "old school" style, with all the musicians playing at once and in real time. What a concept! It turned out beautifully. Check them out.

Played drums on three tracks for an upcoming Led Zeppelin tribute record. Ironically the drum kit that I was playing in the studio where we recorded, belonged to Jason Bonham, John Bonham's son. As we were recording the tracks, I was playing Jason's drums and staring at the drum cases sitting stacked on top of one another in front of me, which all simply read "BONHAM". That was a little bit strange and I had to try to put that out of my mind as we were recording these classic Zeppelin tracks. The bass player was the phenomenal Tony Franklin, Jimmy Page's bassist in "the Firm" plus a constellation of great guest star guitarists and singers. John left a huge paw print on that music and it was quite challenging to try to put my own spin on that music with all of the ties to the band's members, literally surrounding me. It will be released in 2008.

Will be starting a record in late winter 2007 with Travis Dickerson on keyboards and Buckethead (Guns and Roses) on guitars, that is going to be wild, experimental and very different from all of the aforementioned projects. Looking forward to how that will turn out!

There are a few other very interesting writing and recording projects in various stages of development which I will be posting more about in detail on the Tull website, as they progress.

In addition to some essays and other unrelated music writing, I have started work on a book, not an autobiography, that is proving to be a substantial undertaking. Because of the nature of the material, it is going to take some time to complete. There's a lot of research and interviewing involved and that is all I am prepared to say about it at this point. It's going to take as long as it's going to take. It's quite a process and I am doing it between all of these other projects, in addition to the commitments in 2007 and 2008 with Jethro Tull.

Then I hope to have a little rest.
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I will include a link here that may also serve to answer some of the other questions posted. This is a recent interview I did last November on the Tull 2007 tour and may give you a bit more background stuff......maybe more than you ever wanted to know! And that link is:

http://www.vision4music.com/
Then just scroll down where it says Jethro Tull's Doane Perry, CLICK and there you are.

And if you really in the mood for detailed punishment regarding equipment, gigs and past diary entries and musings you can go over to:

www.jethrotull.com and navigate all over the site to your heart's content. I have a whole section on the site. Maybe that will help answer some questions, although it has been pointed out to me MANY times that I need to update some of the pages and I will do it but like most of us, I feel like I am always trying to simply catch up!

OK - I am off to sleep now. Please be patient and I will do my best to try answer things here, if you don't find the answers elsewhere. I am getting ready to leave for the main body of the Jethro Tull 40th Anniversary Tour, which starts in Europe in a few short weeks from now and I have a LOT to do here first. I am trying to finish up some recording of my own stuff with my long time musical partner Vince DiCola, in addition to two other freelance recording projects plus re-familiarize myself with a nearly completely new and overhauled Tull set. I only will have one and a half's day rehearsal with the band before the first concert so I have some very serious homework to do! YIKES!! I better get some rest.

Bye for now.

DP