Alone Again – Dokken

“Alone Again” by Dokken, an acoustic cover by Mike Massé, featuring Bryce Bloom and Rock Smallwood

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Liner Notes:

My two favorite songs in high school were arguably this and “Kayleigh” by Marillion (as seen previously on this channel! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6g3jAd-EYs). “Tooth And Nail” by Dokken is a near perfect album, rivaling such other 80’s offerings like “Pyromania” by Def Leppard, but without the extreme production value–which is a plus, I reckon. Don Dokken was one of my favorite 80’s “glam rock” singers–I’m assuming that’s the preferred term, considering the alternative, “hair band.” He had hair with the best of ’em, mind you. But man, Don can sing. And thankfully he did and does, often. In the age of screamers and shriekers, he was and is a singer.

“Alone Again” was sort of my theme song in high school (late bloomer, let’s say). But I had a long and enjoyable “Dokken phase” to help pass the time. I remember the envy I felt as a high school friend, Shelly Nelson, told me of her chance encounter with Dokken somewhere. She said she didn’t really know who they were at the time (what?! she didn’t appreciate it!), but that they told her “Keep rokken’ with Dokken!” (“so cool!” I thought).

The song is sort of between E-flat minor and E minor, pitch-wise. I resolved this by setting my tuner to 449 Hz (not all tuners will do that), and then tuning down to E-flat minor (but just not all the way down, essentially). That matched the pitch of the original pretty well. That tuning just has a certain vibe that you don’t get at E or E flat. Can’t really explain it. But matching the pitch really sets the mood when playing this tune. Maybe it’s just unsettling, being between pitches we’re used to hearing.

We had big “gloves” to fill, playing these parts. Rock and I shared the rhythm parts, but George Lynch is a monster guitarist, so Rock had his work cut out for him on the solos. And Bryce had fun rocking Jeff Pilson’s bass part. And Mick Brown’s kick drum part is there in my stomp pedal, but I had to simplify it a bit. 🙂

Mike Mass̩ Рvocals, rhythm guitar, stomp pedal
Rock Smallwood – lead guitar
Bryce Bloom – bass

Thanks to Wild Dog Stomp pedals out of Australia for providing the awesome stomp. Here’s my model: https://www.wilddogstomp.com/products/bunyip/

Thanks to Nathan Mitchell for filming. The video looks great. We shot this the same day as we did the Berlin cover, “The Metro.”

Rock and Bryce are members of the Mike Massé Band, where we do cool 80’s and 90’s tunes (like this one).

My guitar is an Ovation Custom Legend shallow bowl.

I recorded the guitars and vocals with a Townsend Labs Sphere L22 into my UA Apollo.

I use Elixir Phosphor Bronze Nanoweb Light HD strings.

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Love,
-Mike