The Lowdown: John "Slo" Maggard from Unearth
 

Altsounds were lucky enough to catch a quick chat with Uearth bassist John “Slo” Maggard before their recent show at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. Here’s how it went down.

Altsounds: So, tell us about the tour so far?

John Unearth: Well it’s almost done. It’s the last show here tonight in London. We toured a lot of new countries over the course of this one. It was our first time being in Latvia and Finland, Estonia and then back to Sweden, which we’ve been to before and is always awesome. Yeah, so it was cool to see some new places this time round and all that stuff. The tours gone smooth, all the guys in all the bands [Chimaira, Throwdown and Daarth] are really cool and we’re having a really good time. It’s good to go home tomorrow and go see my family.

When you visit new places like Latvia and Estonia it must help to have bands like Chimaira and Throwdown on the line up as well?

Oh yeah of course.

So you can drop in and nail a place collectively.

Absolutely.

So you guys dropped The March last year and it’s done pretty good.

Yeah I guess so. I don’t even know, to be honest with you. I know how it’s done in the states but I never see any numbers for anywhere else. I just tend to let the other guys look at that and I just play the bass.

So you just play bass and do your bit and leave the business side to someone else?

JS: Well, it doesn’t really affect my life if we sell more or less. I see it at the shows, when there’s more people coming out, which is good but a don’t know how many albums we’ve sold, to be honest with you. I know it’s not doing bad.

Well, The March has done over 100,000 units worldwide.

Oh wow, cool, that’s awesome, that’s good news. I didn’t expect that.

[b]So when can we see a new album, because you’ve got a big tour of the US coming up? [B/]

Yeah we’ve got a big tour with Hatebreed coming up soon. It looks like we’re going to start working on it probably over the winter. But we won’t sit down and put together seriously until the end of next summer. So you’ll probably see it by the end of next year.

So you’ll start post-festival season?

Exactly.

Do you write a lot whilst on tour?

We do a little of everything. Sometimes we write on the road, sometimes it’s at home, sometimes one guy writes a whole song and he brings it in and we fill in the gaps. We write any way you can think of writing, because you know we’re older now and we all have families, so we do whatever we can whenever we can.

So you don’t get much time to sit down together?

We do jam and we do get together but it’s not as often as we would like sometimes.

How does it feel to be on Guitar Hero?

I always had a funny joke about Guitar Hero, that it turned all my friends in to Neanderthals because no one go out to the bar and have a beer anymore because they were at home playing guitar hero. But hey, it’s a great way of getting music out there and having kids get excited about your music because they think they’re playing the damn thing. So it’s pretty cool, I’m not apposed to it at all. It’s better than the video games I had when I was growing up.

What tracks are on there?

I know Grave Of Opportunity is. I think Crow Killer is and I think We Are Not Anonymous is, but I’m not sure.

Travelling all around Europe, it must be quite strenuous. Do you guys still try and party along the way?

I party everyday. As a matter of fact our tour laminate says I Party with a shitty dog with a birthday hat on it.

That’s cool.

Yeah, we drink everyday. I can feel it after a month of it. It’s not even a hangover anymore; it’s some other thing.

Then you have to do it everyday just to keep it rolling.

Just keep going.

What do you drink?

I drink Jim Beam and beer. Any kind of beer and lots of it, and Jager.

Gotta have Jager.

Playing metal and drinking Jager goes hand in hand these days.

Do you guys always try to get one up on your last record? Like the technical stuff, because there’s always these little fills and riffs here and there?

Yeah, we like to make it more interesting each time. So yeah I would say that we try to be a little bit more technical sometimes, sometimes try to branch out in a new direction. We’re Unearth, we do what we do, but we try to branch it out in different directions whenever we can, just to do something more and more fun, something that’s a little more interesting for us. We don’t want to just play the same stuff over and over.

You guys started off quite heavy and you’ve pretty much stuck to that. You haven’t changed tuning at all?

Nope

So I guess you could say that you’ve just tightened up the sound and honed it?

That’s it.

Because it sucks when bands go one-way or the other. Becoming softer or heavier and ruining what they originally had.

I don’t think that’s even necessary to do. You can experiment without changing your sound and that’s what we do. That’s what makes songs different, just change it up a little bit but you don’t have to change who you are. Just express it in a different way.

What’s nice about your sound is that when you started you fitted in to a sound where you didn’t have to prove yourself as being fashionable. Where you don’t need to progress as you’ve found your sound pretty early on.

Yep, we just do what we do and that’s it.

Because you write stuff individually, do you sometimes find yourself having to call someone out and say no, don’t like that?

Well yeah, we’ve done that a few times.

So it’s a democracy then?

Oh yes.

Do you ever lose?

I usually have great ideas so I’m fine. What’s funny is I usually have the right idea and then someone will say no no no but then we end up doing my ideas in the end anyway because the other ideas are shot. But because I play bass they don’t want to listen to me.

I’ve been there.

It’s the bass player complex.

So are you in a nicer tour bus than you were a few years back?

We got a tour bus but unfortunately we couldn’t bring it to the venue today.

Well that’s London for you.

We had to take a cab here.

I hope it’s there when you get back. You don’t want the same thing happening to you as Poison the Well.

How awful was that?

Have you seen the t-shirt? The t-shirt (this is a charity shirt to raise money for poison the well for new gear. Buy it, it rocks!) has a list of all their gear that was stolen, printed on the back. You read it and it breaks your heart. It’s all vintage stuff.

It’s terrible. I definitely felt so bad for them. It’s not the first time it’s happened to them. We did a tour with them, I think, in 2001 and we were in Montreal and we had all gone out to eat and when we got back to the vans, our van was fine and was untouched, but someone had broken in to their trailer and taken all their gear. All their nice guitars and stuff. We were like, are you kidding me?

They must have it insured now.

Oh yeah I’m sure. They gotta. If they don’t then, I don’t know what they’re thinking. I wouldn’t even bring gear that’s that nice, out on the road. I wouldn’t want to break it.

Did you bring your own gear over or hire some stuff?

I rented my gear from John Henry.

John Henry? John Henry from Darkest Hour?

It’s a rental company here in London and I have an endorsement through Ampeg now.

As I can see by the logo on your shirt.

So I just get my rental gear from here as it’s too expensive to ship stuff over.

So are you guys all playing Ibanez’?

Yes. We all rock Ibanez’. I was with Warwick but they don’t want to call me back any more. Just kidding. I haven’t really been in touch for a while. I really like the Ibanez bass’s that I’m playing so I’m stocked on that.

Any new material being played tonight?

We’re playing an hour set so there will probably be some stuff in there that we’ve never played before.

So where have you played in London before, I remember seeing you in the Meanfiddler or the Astoria a few years back?

yeah we’ve done a few shows there. It’s gone now isn’t it?

Basically the lease ran out and London wanted to buy it and were offering more money than the venue would offer so it went. So now bands have to play other places now.

Like the Electric Ballroom.

Bit smaller but it’s all right.

Dressing rooms are nicer. The Astoria was terrible. Very Dirty.

So you’ll be drinking after the show?

Definitely.

Well I hope to catch you for a beer later. Enjoy the show.

Thanks.