Sevendust Interview
 

Sevendust interview with Clint Lowery (CL) and Morgan Rose (MR)

RV: How has the tour been going and how have fans reacted now that Clint’s back and you’re on the road with the full band?

MR: They’ve been reacting great. I think that we gained a handful of people when we were apart. I think everybody kind of let the plan and let the band do the talking on stage. Anybody who hasn’t seen us with him may have been skeptical and they definitely support us with Clint.

RV: So when you’re writing set-lists now do lean more towards songs Clint was involved with back in the day as opposed to Sonny’s or do you just put together set-lists based on the music flow?

CL: When I first came in, I’m probably the biggest fan of I guess what you would call the “Sonny Era.” Those three records they did when I was gone, I’m a huge fan of. I was really adamant about wanting to continue the path that these guys were already on. I really love playing the songs that I didn’t actually record or write with the guys because I’m a Sevendust fan you know. I just want to make sure that we kept the flow of what these guys continue to do while I was gone. There are fans they gained while I was gone, and I want to make sure they were taken care of. I wanted the band to know how much I wanted to play these new songs that they did.

MR: It’s pretty funny because I would say that’s the only battle we had with Clint when he was brought back in because we wanted to go and play all the songs that we couldn’t play when he was gone and he wanted to play all of the new songs.

RV: So what are your favorite songs to play live?

CL: Mine are the songs that they did when I was gone – Pieces, Alpha. Clueless is an awesome crowd song. I like Ugly because that was the first song I heard the guys do off the first record that I wasn’t a part of so I was just so proud of the guys and how good the tune was. I remember when I first heard Ugly and I was like “Man I really hate that they wrote such a good song when I was gone. I would love to play that.” For me it’s kind of a sentimental thing to get to play that song because it was just like my beautiful ex-girlfriend was getting fucked by this other guy with a giant dingaling. I was like “Man I’m getting fucking killed here but…”

MR: I like to play the old songs, but not the old ones that we were playing while he was gone. I’m over Praise and I’m definitely over Black and Bitch. We brought back My Ruin and that’s one of my favorite songs to play now because we hadn’t played that song in 10 years and all of a sudden we put it back together and now we never stop playing it – that’s probably my favorite song to play now. Of the newer songs, I guess I enjoy playing the newer songs, because I see Clint enjoying those new songs so much so it’s cool – it’s kind of new to be doing that. I like the songs that we haven’t played 2000 times…

RV: How do you guys feel about the Snot reunion and have you talked to Sonny or Mikey at all?

MR: I talked to Mikey – he came out to the show we played when Clint first came back. I love those guys and that’s why Sonny was in the band. In the Cliff’s Notes version, I’m real happy that they’re playing together. I think it’s real good for Sonny – it would have been a shame for him to stop playing altogether obviously and I’m happy that he got back together with his brothers. Of all the negative things that have been said about how all this went down – we got our brother back and he got his brothers back. We had a cousin come in here and play with us for a while and now we got our brother back and he’s back with his brothers.

RV: When you guys were naming Chapter VII: Hope and Sorrow – all of your music is about Hope and Sorrow, Anger and feelings like that – what made you actually name this album Chapter VII: Hope and Sorrow?

MR: It really wasn’t as deep as what anybody might think. We were actually looking at some artwork that somebody had and we had a track on the record called Hope and a track on the record called Sorrow. We didn’t think of naming it that until we saw this guys artwork and he named all of his pieces and had one called Hope and one called Sorrow – we thought we could name the record one of those. We didn’t want to call it “Sorrow” so we thought we could call it “Hope” but that’s a little contradictory to some of the words on the record so we thought, why don’t we combine the two?

RV: So on this record you had your first guest appearances since Aaron Lewis on Animosity – how did that come about and do you think you’ll continue doing that on future records?

MR: I think we’ll probably do a lot more of it. We haven’t really talked about it – we have a lot of friends in the business and those guys are just friends of ours and friends who we thought would fit really well on the tracks. Since animosity we said we were going to do this on our own and not try to bank off of anyone else’s popularity. It’s hilarious because as soon as we did this (had guest appearances), sure that’s exactly what people said we were trying to do which isn’t the case at all.

RV: How have fans reacted to Chris Daughtry being on a Sevendust record?

MR: What do you think Clint? There hasn’t been much talk about it other than before it happened…

CL: I think that people who have a really negative outlook on it that voice their opinions too much when we see them – there’s always going to be extreme thoughts. There are people who are really big Sevendust supporters that go “Okay, we’ll let them get by with this,” even if they’re not really big Chris Daughtry fans. I think there’s a big group of people who ordinarily wouldn’t listen to the band who say “hey what’s this about?” who are in that Chris Daughtry universe. It’s definitely an extreme situation – you got a guy who’s not in the exact demographic of a Sevendust fanbase and you mix those two you’ll have people on both sides of the fence. There hasn’t been that much of a negative reaction. A lot of people thought that was going to be like the first single that Chris Daughtry card played real hard, but we didn’t. I think ultimately the guys were just friends with the guy, and he’s a big Sevendust fan and they had a track that fit his style and they loved him as a singer, and I did too. They let him come in and sing off the verse. It’s simple, I don’t think there was a big master plan behind it all.

MR: I think he gets the same question from the other side of things “Why did he go sing with that damn death metal band?” From his fans’ point of view we’re probably like Deicide or something like that.

CL: You know what – you might see that song pop up on the (American Idol) auditions next year…

RV: What’s the experience like self-producing with Morgan and John as opposed to working with an outside producer?

MR: Well actually Clint did the same thing with Dark New Day where they kind of self-produced their album as well. The first one (Next) was really cool and the second one, Alpha, was really cool. But when you’re making records once a year you kind of need an outside perspective. That’s the one thing I regret (about Chapter VII) was we took that on our shoulders again. It’s pretty much the majority of the writing were happening from the people who were producing the record. So me and John got in the same mentality off of each other. So it was tougher. I don’t think we’re going to do a full record like that again. I think we’re going to go out and get an outside perspective on a handful of songs at least. Even if nothing else, we’ll get to get somebody else’s mentality in there and we’ll have an easier time for the remaining part of the record. Also, Clint’s back in so there goes your outside perspective. When it was three of us, we kind of self-produced the record anyway even though there were other people on there who had credit. When there was three of us, it was a lot easier.

RV: Have you been writing at all with Clint back in the band? Do you write on the road?

CL: We haven’t really dove into it like when we go into full writing mode. We just kind of told ourselves at the beginning of this that we’re just going to get used to writing together as a band. We’re one of those bands that talks about musical directions and the guys in the band will hear something and say “I like this vibe” and we have a lot of in-depth conversations about direction and things we want to do which is part of our writing process. We’ll start talking and I’ll take those ideas and Morgan and John will take ideas into their memory and we try to take those conversations in mind. I haven’t written with these guys in so long, it’ll be a new experience – even though I’ve written a million songs with these guys it’ll be new. We’ve all grown and they’ve got their producing chops up so I’m really excited to get back to writing with these guys.

RV: So give me some hints towards new musical directions and what you’re responding to right now?

MR: Me personally, I think the conversations we’ve had kind of stemmed around trying to write really really heavy riffs. The only difference between what we did before and what we’re trying to do now is really let the riffs breathe. I don’t want to dumb it down so to speak, but in a sense to simplify it so you get a sledgehammer riff instead of something that’s heavy and real tricky.

CL: More smash, less flash.

MR: That’s a good one “More Smash, Less Flash…”

CL: I think you can be heavy in all different types of ways. You can be heavy with all the metal riffs you can possibly through in there, or you can be like Pantera and leave so much room between their riffs and like Morgan said, let it breathe. We’re a groove based heavy band anyway, we have a lot less scales in our riffs and more just solid note hitting at the right time with the drums.

MR: Just listen to “Walk” (Pantera) and that just sums it up. You know that’s the heaviest riff in the fucking world and it’s not real hard to play that verse, or that chorus or that bridge really.

CL: At the same time, I don’t want to be afraid to do some old-school solos. I want to do all of it. There are times for that to happen tastefully. I want to get the musicianship out of this band because this band has the capability to have that serious musicianship and I want to try it all you know.

RV: What are the plans and recording plans for 2009?

MR: We got a lot of stuff already brewing. We’re going to finish this tour up at the end of October, then we’re going to do a very short thing about a week long in November, take the majority of the month off and start to piece together the record. Then we go to Europe in December for a couple of weeks then finish off the year with the little New Years run we do in Florida. January we’ll take the majority of that off and start writing again in January and do the second phase of that. February, March, April we’ll be on tour. We’ll probably finish the touring cycle for this album in May. This is probably the end of the headlining portion of this touring cycle. We’ve got some leads on three different acts and we’re going to choose which one we want to go out with next year. So we’re going to end this headlining touring cycle out in Europe at the end of this year.

RV: I’ve been hearing rumors of a Live DVD – is that going to be happening?

MR: I don’t know – there was talk of that and there was talk of an acoustic tour and both of them have taken a back seat now that we have these other offers to go out with these other bands. There’s going to be a time the middle of next year where we have to figure something out and spending our time overseas or doing those things.

RV: Anything else you want to add?

MR: Just thanks to everyone for the support. We’re looking forward to getting to the West Coast. We’ll be seeing you soon.

RV: Thanks a lot guys – have a great show tonight!

MR/CL: Thanks a lot – catch you soon bro…

Interview by Jeremy Gruber of The Rockvine