Michael Ehré, Dirk Schlächter, Henjo Richter, Kai Hansen

"I started playing drums at the age of twelve, before that I had played a bit of flute, but that wasn't the real thing, I had always wanted to learn how to play drums. I played for many years then all over the area around Nürnburg (where I was born in 1967) and Würzburg. Later, I went on to study at the Frankfurt music college (for jazz music), that was from 1988 to 1990, and around the same time I also played in a cover band. From 1991 to 1992 I studied at the 'American Institute if Music' in Vienna. That was really a great time, I really learnt a lot about playing drums. After that I went on to tour with the Comedy Rock band Heinz for about a year. After that, Lanzer was following who I was with from 1993 until only recently. I met Kai and Dirk in November of 1993 while we were staying here in Hamburg for the recordings of the Lanzer CD. During that I was working with Dirk, and Kai played a solo on one song. That was a very good colaboration with Dirk, and we got on well with each other right from the beginning and so I also learnt a lot about drumsounds. We also stayed in touch afterwards and in January of this year the Lanzer guitarist told me that GammaRay were looking for a new drummer and as I had told Lanzer that I was leaving anyway because I wanted to move on and leave that cover thing behind because I just wasn't enjoying it anymore I applied for the job with GammaRay then. I did so many cover things over the years, hardly anything of my own, because around the Nurnberg/Wurzburg it's really hard to get gigs whith your own music. Actually, the only way to become a good musician is to play live on stage as much as possible. There are also advantages about playing cover versions: you can make an easy living and you can play live a lot. However, I have reached a certain point now at which I feel I have to push on and go a step further and I'm sure with Gamma Ray that will work well."

Daniel Zimmermann
(written right after he joined Gamma Ray in 1997)

Photo © 2009: Alex Jusseit

Name:
Daniel Hans Erwin Zimmermann

Birthdate & -place:
October, 30th 1966 in Nürnberg

In Gamma Ray since 1997

Dan's personal Website

Michael Ehré is currently not only the drummer for Gamma Ray, Love.Might.Kill and Starchild. He is also a guitarist, songwriter and producer. On many albums he can be heard at the same time, both on drums and the guitar and was also significantly involved in songwriting and production. Worldwide tours and CD releases have made him a world-respected and busy musician who has shared the stage with numerous renowned artists: Robbie Krieger (The Doors), Paul Gilbert (Mr. Big), Jeff Scott Soto (Malmsteen), Don Dokken, Francis Buchholz (ex-Scorpions), Kai Hansen (Gamma Ray), Tobias Sammet (Edguy, Avantasia), Marty Friedman (ex-Megadeth), Alex Skolnick (Testament), Warren DeMartini (Ratt, ex-Whitesnake), Graham Bonnet (ex-Rainbow), Doug Aldrich (Whitesnake), Chris Impellitteri, Roy Z. (Halford, Bruce Dickinson), George Bellas, Steve Smyth (ex-Nevermore), Tony Franklin, Rob Pagliari, Joe Stump, Johnny Hiland, Andrew Shulman ...

Michael Ehré was born August, 1st, 1971. His musical career began at the age of 10 years and led him through various local bands before he joined Pryer in the summer of 1991, which brought him the first nationwide attention.
After countless concerts and an album (Kick'n'Rush) he formed in 1997 together with the Pryer-singer Frank Schütte Murder One, until he joined the Hamburg-based Metalband Metalium in late 2001. With them he  produced eight albums, and a DVD. From 2005 until 2012 he was a member of the band of former Scorpions guitarist Uli Jon Roth, with whom he first toured beyond the borders of  Europe and traveled to countries like Japan, USA and New Zealand. On Uli's latest album "Under A Dark Sky" you can hear that Michael is much more than a pure metal drummer.
From 2009 to 2011 he played with the greek metalband Firewind, the band of the current Ozzy Osbourne-guitarist Gus G. 2010 Michael founded his "own" band Love.Might.Kill and recorded two albums. Since 2012 he is a member of the Hamburg-Metal-Institution Gamma Ray. Their latest album "Empire Of The Undead" claimed the charts in several European countries.

Since his youth, he also plays guitar/bass and composes music and lyrics. This is not just limited to bands in which he is a permanent member - also for other artists (Saeko/Weinhold) Michael Ehré has written songs.

(taken from Michael Ehré personal website)

Photo © 2012: Arne Kowalewski

for MetalTrails.com

Name:
Michael Ehré

Birthdate:
August, 1st 1971

In Gamma Ray since 2012

Links:
HTTPS://www.michaelehre.de/
https://www.unity-rocks.com/

Dirk got in touch with music for the first time joining a music school at the age of 8. At the age of 11 he got his first acoustic guitar followed by an electric guitar at the age of 15. At the age of 19 he turned to bass guitar. During this time he played in bands called Blue Life, Sold Out, Louis Glover House Band and Drivin' Force.

Then, at the age of 25, he went back to guitar only because he wanted to be in GammaRay as the band was looking for a second guitar player at that time. Dirk was only a guest musician in the beginning, playing bass guitar on Heading for Tomorrow, but in 1991 he finally joined Gamma Ray as a guitarist.

Finally, Dirk returned to bass again in 1996 and he describes this change as follows:

"I have already played bass for a long time even though that's been a few years ago. When I first met Kai I was just a basser. So I also was supposed to play bass on the first tour we did, as the idea had been that Uwe Wessel and Matthias Burchardt were to be hired only as studio-musicians for the Heading For Tomorrow-album. Both of them were playing in a bandwhich split up during the recordings of Heading for tommorrow then. Matthias gave up playing drums completely, and so of course, Uwe was really eager on playing the tour then. As I also do a bit of guitarplaying and as Kai now needed a second guitarist for the tour, I said to myself okay, it's for the sake of it and I play guitar in GammaRay although actually I'm a bassplayer. On the first tour I was still sort of holding back and paying all my attention to playing accurately. Once the second tour was done, I started to feel being a real guitarist again and I became much more confident with my instrument. In terms of guitarplaying, the Insanity and Genius-album was the absolute highlight for me then. The production in the studio with all the soloparts, guitar-gimmicks and all these funny sounds was a lot of fun. After all these tours however, some sort of strange feeling came up and I started wondering if I wasn't better at playing bass rather than playing guitar. I mean, in a band everybody should play what he's best at anyway. So I was already thinking about changing quite a while ago, but somehow things just went on the same way. After the Land Of The Free-tour I finally said then: I'm just not the sort of guitarist and ... it was just stirring me up. I just want to play bass again and also get a few steps further with my development as a musician. I think I've got quite an unique style of playing bass, same as Kai has his very unique style of playing guitar. After the japanese tour of Land Of The Free I first talked to Jan about it and he absolutely understood what I meant. He also prefered playing guitar to playing bass. Consequently, all four of us talked about it then. Jan considered that even if he played guitar from now on the change would have a bit of a strange feel and so he didn't really liked the idea of doing it. Nevertheless we agreed to stay together and use the spanish tour as a first test to see how it works. When we met again then for the first rehearsal it surprisingly came to the split. Jan was considering that he couldn't see any perspective in being in Gamma Ray any longer and so he was leaving. It really came as a surprise to all of us as we all had been looking forward to the change. We also would've given him the oppurtunity to do whatever he wanted, but in return he would've had to do a bit more again, perhaps more than playing bass involved."