Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Leftstetch Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Mark Warton, Lamb of God. He's got
Speaker 1: a new memoir, Desolation. Mark. Why the memoir? Why? Now?
Speaker 2: I wish I had a snappy answer for that. It
Speaker 2: was really kind of, honestly, a dare from a friend
Speaker 2: of mine who wound up being my co writer. He
Speaker 2: didn't really write on the book. He more cleaned up
Speaker 2: my stuff. But I guess that's the closest thing we
Speaker 2: could name it as a co writer. But we were
Speaker 2: friends before this, and we talked a fair amount, and
Speaker 2: we were at the beach. He has a place down
Speaker 2: in the Outer Banks, and my family and I go
Speaker 2: down there quite a bit to that area, and we
Speaker 2: were hanging out drinking coffee, and I was telling the
Speaker 2: story and he was like, man, I think you really
Speaker 2: got a book in you, and we just kind of
Speaker 2: with a laugh, agreed to write a sample chapter. And
Speaker 2: that sample chapter got us a book deal. So then
Speaker 2: I reached this crossroads of like, okay, well you know
Speaker 2: that was a fun chapter, right, and now I have
Speaker 2: this deal offer, Am I really going to write a book? And?
Speaker 2: I guess I don't guess the answer was, in fact, yes, Bob.
Speaker 1: So how long ago did you write that sample chapter?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I don't know it was several
Speaker 2: years ago, it because it took me about two years
Speaker 2: to write the book, and I would say that was
Speaker 2: probably six months before.
Speaker 1: So you say that you literally wrote the book, the
Speaker 1: guy essentially just edit it. You sat down there at
Speaker 1: either of you wrote it.
Speaker 2: I wrote every single word.
Speaker 1: A lot of people find it difficult to write. How
Speaker 1: did you find it?
Speaker 2: I found it. I found it all the things, So
Speaker 2: it was it was difficult. Some of the stuff, I
Speaker 2: will say was a little bit difficult to write about.
Speaker 2: Some of the book was a joy to write about.
Speaker 2: And I found myself chuckling out loud as I was
Speaker 2: writing stuff because it just brings back, you know, it's
Speaker 2: a memoir, so it's things that have happened in my life,
Speaker 2: and it brings back this flood of a lot of
Speaker 2: really really fond memories, a lot of funny stuff. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of you know, there's tragedy, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of dark stuff in my story as well, and
Speaker 2: I covered a lot of that pretty in depth. So
Speaker 2: some of that was challenging to write. About There were
Speaker 2: a few chapters, a couple chapters, but specifically when I
Speaker 2: was writing them, I was in a bad mood for
Speaker 2: those few days. One kind of funny and unexpected, although
Speaker 2: only unexpected because I didn't think about it. Challenge is
Speaker 2: that I don't type very well at all. I just simply,
Speaker 2: on a very practical level, can't type. So that made
Speaker 2: for a real challenging write because you have to type.
Speaker 2: I'm the one writing everything, so it really would. My
Speaker 2: wife would make fun of me. I would go up
Speaker 2: to my studio and say, I'm just gonna write five
Speaker 2: hundred thousand words to day, and I'd be up there
Speaker 2: for a couple of hours. Or what is what are
Speaker 2: you doing up there? Like hint, pecking away at this book?
Speaker 1: Well, by the time you were done, were you a
Speaker 1: better typist?
Speaker 2: I think I must have been. Yeah, I must have been.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm a very I'm still a very
Speaker 2: conventional typist, but I can. I can bang out some words, okay.
Speaker 1: In the sample, a lot of the book has to
Speaker 1: do with drug addiction. Was the sample heavy on the
Speaker 1: drug addiction and Hashet, which is a very major publisher,
Speaker 1: wanted to buy it because of that story or was
Speaker 1: it more that they were good buy it because you
Speaker 1: were and liamb of.
Speaker 2: God, Well, I never really asked them, Bob. I would
Speaker 2: imagine from what I've learned in this process is that
Speaker 2: in the modern day book world, much like I think
Speaker 2: in the modern day music world, I think whoever is
Speaker 2: making these decisions is quantifying someone's social media presence, quantifying
Speaker 2: whatever their marketing value is in their given field. And
Speaker 2: I'm sure they have algorithms or formulas that help them
Speaker 2: predict how successful something is going to be commercially. I
Speaker 2: can't imagine that they didn't plug in those types of
Speaker 2: things for me, with music and social media and that
Speaker 2: kind of thing, and come up with the fact that
Speaker 2: they could probably market some books. No one told me that.
Speaker 2: I'm just guessing that, And then hopefully they thought that
Speaker 2: it was a good sample chapter and that it was intriguing.
Speaker 2: The gentleman that that signed me to the book deal
Speaker 2: was certainly very entertained by the chapter that the chapter
Speaker 2: that I turned in as a sample was. If you've
Speaker 2: read the book, it's a chapter about me being on
Speaker 2: tour in Europe and being in this beautiful alpine setting
Speaker 2: on a day off and instead of doing the things
Speaker 2: that any noise normal person would do in that setting
Speaker 2: and taking in the sites and enjoying the environment, I
Speaker 2: was focused on some real hair brained idea on how
Speaker 2: I was going to create a high for myself that day.
Speaker 2: And it really it's parts of that story are kind
Speaker 2: of funny, and then parts of it are really very
Speaker 2: sad because it represents the way that addiction just completely
Speaker 2: takes over your mindset and very much possesses you to
Speaker 2: the point where you can't really see reality as it
Speaker 2: is because you're just chasing this solution to a problem
Speaker 2: that you keep creating for yourself.
Speaker 1: So, now that the book has been out, what has
Speaker 1: been your.
Speaker 2: Experience, Well, my experience with the book and the feedback
Speaker 2: I've gotten has been a lot of people have come
Speaker 2: to me and say that the book really touched them.
Speaker 2: And I think, Bob, this story is not just about
Speaker 2: alcoholism and drug addiction, and that's certainly a component of it.
Speaker 2: There's a several stories going on in the book. And
Speaker 2: I didn't have an intention for this when I sat
Speaker 2: down to write it. I honestly didn't know exactly what
Speaker 2: I was going to write. And I'm like that with
Speaker 2: music as well. A lot of times I'll sit down
Speaker 2: and I won't necessarily have a plan. I'll just kind
Speaker 2: of start poking around and see if something starts taking
Speaker 2: shape and coming into form. And I wrote each of
Speaker 2: these chapters very much the same way, although of course
Speaker 2: I had the guide of time of sequence of timelines
Speaker 2: to help guide me. So, you know, a lot of
Speaker 2: people talk to me about the alcoholism and the addiction
Speaker 2: and the recovery component of the book, and that is
Speaker 2: certainly one of the storylines in there. There's also the
Speaker 2: storyline about navigating and grieving the loss of my infant daughter,
Speaker 2: which was a part of the book that was real
Speaker 2: difficult to get through for me to write. Although it's
Speaker 2: my story and I live with them, I'm very familiar
Speaker 2: with it, writing about it in detail was challenging, and
Speaker 2: I think I was pretty authentic and honest through that.
Speaker 2: And there are people that share that unfortunate experience that
Speaker 2: have come to me and talk to me about what
Speaker 2: that meant to them to read my telling of my
Speaker 2: experience with that. And then there's the story of the
Speaker 2: really very very unlikely success of a basement metal band
Speaker 2: that should have, you know, on paper, probably never even
Speaker 2: made it out of our hometown, but was able to
Speaker 2: a lot of times, in spite of ourselves, create a
Speaker 2: really exciting and really thriving career in heavy metal music worldwide.
Speaker 2: And it's a real unlikely story and one that we
Speaker 2: still collectively get a kick out of ourselves. And I
Speaker 2: think it's a fun read that part of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, one thing that's me in the book. Because you're
Speaker 1: grown up in Williamsburg and you're gonna go to college,
Speaker 1: you're a reluctant to go to college. You go to Richmond,
Speaker 1: you feel sort of out of place, you make a friend, whatever,
Speaker 1: But not only you finish college, you end up going
Speaker 1: to graduate school in Chicago. Okay, you've been around. I've
Speaker 1: been around. That is not the common route of a
Speaker 1: heavy metal musician, of any successful musician.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a few of us out there that were
Speaker 2: sort of simultaneously pursuing education. I think when when you're
Speaker 2: playing music, particularly any kind of underground punk rock or
Speaker 2: heavy metal music, but probably just music in general. I
Speaker 2: think when you're playing music, you're always met with this
Speaker 2: voice or voices that are telling you you'll never make it.
Speaker 2: It's one in a million. Think of how many people
Speaker 2: would love to make it in music, be a rock
Speaker 2: star however you want to, you know, can't characterize that
Speaker 2: it's like hitting the lottery. And the truth is a
Speaker 2: lot of that is true, you know, So the whole
Speaker 2: time you're pursuing music, I think for me, and I
Speaker 2: think for a lot of people, because I've heard this
Speaker 2: from a lot of people too, that psychologically you're you're
Speaker 2: constantly battling this notion that you were trying to achieve
Speaker 2: the possible, or you're wasting your time, or you're deprioritizing
Speaker 2: things that you should be prioritizing. You're supposed to go
Speaker 2: get a career for yourself, so you're supposed to, you know,
Speaker 2: find some stable job and do the thing that we're
Speaker 2: all told and socialized that we need to do. And
Speaker 2: that was true for me, So I think I was
Speaker 2: always kind of spinning plates, pursuing this music thing that
Speaker 2: I'd love so dearly and as it turns out, really
Speaker 2: couldn't have ever not done, but also trying to cobble
Speaker 2: together some version of a backup plan for myself so
Speaker 2: that I could feel like I wasn't going to wind up,
Speaker 2: you know, sleeping in a car somewhere for very long anyway,
Speaker 2: and so there's a story in there as well, even
Speaker 2: during college where I or after college after I think
Speaker 2: it was after Yeah, after I dropped out of grad school,
Speaker 2: I came back home and I'm doing music, and I'm
Speaker 2: applying to the fire department because I'm just of this
Speaker 2: notion that I'm getting too old to be running around
Speaker 2: making all this noise with this band I'm doing, and
Speaker 2: I need to get a real job, and so I'm
Speaker 2: going to cut all my hair off and go get
Speaker 2: a job as a firefighter. And you know, I got
Speaker 2: sort of on the way to doing that and had
Speaker 2: this self realization of just I'm just never going to
Speaker 2: be a normal nine to five or kind of guy.
Speaker 2: And if I am, it's I'm not. I'm going to
Speaker 2: make sure it's not. Because I didn't pursue this all
Speaker 2: the way to the even though I didn't know what
Speaker 2: pursuing this meant, because for us, for Lamb of God,
Speaker 2: every step of the way seems so unlikely and so
Speaker 2: unrealistic because our music was just so extreme that it
Speaker 2: never seemed like the kind of thing to any of
Speaker 2: us that would land us on tour buses and arenas
Speaker 2: and opening from Metallica and doing all these amazing things
Speaker 2: that we've gotten to and continue to get to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're growing to graduate school when you're looking to
Speaker 1: sell out. Why a firefighter as opposed to any other career.
Speaker 2: Well, I my brother was a firefighter. He was a
Speaker 2: career firefighter, and so I was very familiar with fire service,
Speaker 2: and I thought it was a very very and I
Speaker 2: still think it is a very, very worthwhile noble cause.
Speaker 2: And everyone likes who doesn't like a firefighter?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: They're heroes, right, They run into burning buildings when everybody
Speaker 2: else is running out of them. That's the kind of
Speaker 2: guy a lot of us want to be. And I
Speaker 2: wanted to be that kind of guy too. With grad school.
Speaker 2: I was really good at school, particularly at college and
Speaker 2: grad school. I was very good at being a student,
Speaker 2: and I was pursuing political science and international relations. And
Speaker 2: it's I think that for me, And this is not
Speaker 2: a knock to people that do that. I'm sure that
Speaker 2: there are people that do go on to do very
Speaker 2: worthwhile things with that. A lot of lawyers start there
Speaker 2: and that kind of thing, and not that teaching isn't worthwhile.
Speaker 2: It's very worthwhile. But it's also one of those tracks
Speaker 2: where it's sort of it creates, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 2: self fulfilling. Right. You go through college, you go through
Speaker 2: grad school, and then you just stay in academia and
Speaker 2: you just become a professor and become a teacher. And
Speaker 2: that was sort of my thinking as well, I'm pretty
Speaker 2: good at school, so if I just keep doing school, well,
Speaker 2: eventually I'll just become school, you know. And so that
Speaker 2: was one of my backup plans. Wasn't a bad.
Speaker 1: One, Okay, not only with your degree in your post
Speaker 1: graduate work and the book, but talking to you right now,
Speaker 1: you're articulate, you're intelligent, you're educated. Generally speaking, it's a
Speaker 1: dumb business. So what's it like with a smart guy
Speaker 1: like you going on the road with all these people.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a dumb business at all, Bob.
Speaker 2: I think some of the practices within the business and
Speaker 2: some of the business model is dumb. But I find
Speaker 2: that and maybe I'm lucky. Well I'm certainly lucky. But
Speaker 2: I think one of the reasons that Lamb of God
Speaker 2: has had the success we've had is because we are
Speaker 2: all very deliberate and very intentional, even at times when
Speaker 2: we were you know, all the cliches of the drinking
Speaker 2: and the drugging. And I won't speak for anyone but myself,
Speaker 2: but I certainly, as you would know from the book,
Speaker 2: have gone off the rails on all that stuff. But
Speaker 2: even in the cloud of that stuff, there were always
Speaker 2: when when there was decisions being made, when there were
Speaker 2: business choices and pursuits that we were focused on. We
Speaker 2: really have always been very thoughtful and intentful and in
Speaker 2: large part engaged and intentional about how we are conducting
Speaker 2: this group that we have. And I don't think that's
Speaker 2: unique to us. I think at a certain level, you
Speaker 2: got to believe that, you know, somebody behind making these
Speaker 2: things successful is doing some thinking.
Speaker 1: Well, usually the business guy is the drummer, although when
Speaker 1: you're being you replace the drummer. Who's the business guy?
Speaker 1: In Lamb of God?
Speaker 2: Is the business guy? Usually the drummer that's funny, Almost
Speaker 2: always really yeah, Well, you know, they say, you know,
Speaker 2: what do you call that? A guy that hangs out
Speaker 2: with three or four other musicians drummer? Who's the business guy?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm one of them. I think we
Speaker 2: do everything very collectively, but sometimes there's a point man,
Speaker 2: and often on certain things I tend to be that
Speaker 2: point man, not always.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about growing up in Williamsburg. Many people
Speaker 1: on the East Coast, including myself, have been there. I've
Speaker 1: been to the Maze in Williamsburg.
Speaker 2: Oh cool, that's cool.
Speaker 1: You know, the first famous musician I think of Williamsburg
Speaker 1: is Bruce Warnsby. That is not the same kind of
Speaker 1: music you play, but in nineteen eighty six you become
Speaker 1: very successful, proving that it can be done. You're living
Speaker 1: in Williamsburg. Is there any consciousness if this guy from
Speaker 1: your area is successful?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Absolutely. When Bruce hit, it was such a pop sensation,
Speaker 2: and you know he hit from La but as a
Speaker 2: very just getting started with music that was very much
Speaker 2: on my radar. I was in seventh eighth grade. I
Speaker 2: want to say when that stuff really started hitting for him?
Speaker 2: And I don't know a lot about Bruce Hornsby's sort
Speaker 2: of trajectory to get to the point where he had
Speaker 2: a major label deal and had a hit, but I
Speaker 2: know he had hit right off of that first record.
Speaker 2: I got to see him play with the Dead. I'm
Speaker 2: a big Dead fan, and I saw the Dead in
Speaker 2: the nineties and Bruce was playing playing keyboards with him
Speaker 2: at Hampton Coliseum. So that was a real thrill for me,
Speaker 2: especially knowing too that Bruce was from He's from Williamsburg.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that did register with me. I mean by
Speaker 2: that when when Bruce was hitting, I was more of
Speaker 2: like a punk rock kind of thrash metal, just get
Speaker 2: just starting to figure out that, Wow, maybe I can
Speaker 2: play music. But that was that definitely hit on my
Speaker 2: radar for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, your father is overseas, he meets your mother who's
Speaker 1: from Germany, They get married, they grow there's a point
Speaker 1: in the book where you're talking about things are not
Speaker 1: really that good between him home life is not that good,
Speaker 1: and you're reading the book and go, oh, they're going
Speaker 1: to get divorced. But they don't get divorced. They never did,
Speaker 1: so you know, it's tough for anybody when they're one
Speaker 1: of the parents born overseas. Can he tell us more
Speaker 1: about the relationship between the two of them and what
Speaker 1: it was like growing up with one parent who was
Speaker 1: non American?
Speaker 2: Oh cool, what a fun question. Yeah. I love that
Speaker 2: you point out that they never got divorced, because that's
Speaker 2: just such a small little detail, but it's so important
Speaker 2: to me, you know, because that's my mom and my dad,
Speaker 2: and they went through really hard times and I don't
Speaker 2: think that's that's certainly not unheard of. And you stay
Speaker 2: married long enough, you're going to go through some stuff.
Speaker 2: And my mom and dad suck it out. And when
Speaker 2: my dad passed away, I think they'd been married for
Speaker 2: fifty two years, and I'm glad they stuck it out,
Speaker 2: you know, even maybe sometimes they weren't always glad, but
Speaker 2: that's just that in that how it goes, right. What
Speaker 2: was it like growing up with a mom from another country, Well,
Speaker 2: it was great. So, you know, my dad worked in
Speaker 2: a beer can factory most of his adult life. My
Speaker 2: mom worked as a bank teller, and they both worked
Speaker 2: really hard and we were very, you know, middle class family.
Speaker 2: But what was really important to them as a couple
Speaker 2: was that my mom be able to go back to
Speaker 2: Germany periodically, pretty frequently to maintain visits and touch with
Speaker 2: her family over there. She had a big family over there,
Speaker 2: and when I came along, she would take me. So
Speaker 2: some of my very earliest memories as a toddler are
Speaker 2: in Germany, and I remember the sound being just a
Speaker 2: little kid on the playground playing with kids who I
Speaker 2: didn't speak the language, really, and it didn't matter. And
Speaker 2: it's funny how kids that don't even speak the language
Speaker 2: can manage to play together for hours. It just doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: And I remember the sound of the you know, police
Speaker 2: cars and ambulances and stuff. In Germany. There's a different
Speaker 2: kind of siren over there, and I remember the sound
Speaker 2: of that. I remember the sets, the smell of my
Speaker 2: my grandfather's cigars and his car and that, and you know,
Speaker 2: those are things that anyone remembers or their earliest memories,
Speaker 2: but mine were in Germany. And other than that, I
Speaker 2: think there wasn't probably that much difference. Really. We grew
Speaker 2: up in a really kind of a small town in
Speaker 2: Southeast Virginia, and the things that I experienced culturally were
Speaker 2: very small town Southeast Virginia. But there always was this
Speaker 2: component that I knew that we were also German, and
Speaker 2: that I would hear German around the house my mom all.
Speaker 2: You know, the few German ladies that were in this town,
Speaker 2: and there were more than you would expect, they all
Speaker 2: found each other and they would get together and socialize,
Speaker 2: and so you would walk in on a Sunday afternoon
Speaker 2: to our house and see some German ladies sitting around
Speaker 2: smoking cigarettes, talking German.
Speaker 1: You know, well, as a little kid, you want to
Speaker 1: fit in the fact that your mother was German and
Speaker 1: probably had an accent. Did you think about that bringing
Speaker 1: kids to the house or when she would go to
Speaker 1: some function. Was that an issue?
Speaker 2: It was not an issue. But it's funny that you
Speaker 2: mentioned that, because I didn't know my mother had an
Speaker 2: accent until kids would point it out, or I would
Speaker 2: even after I had heard it before. I would forget
Speaker 2: and someone would say something about my mother's accent, because
Speaker 2: to me, that's just what my mom sounded like. It
Speaker 2: didn't sound like a German accent. To me, it sounded
Speaker 2: like my mother.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about your parents going through ups and downs.
Speaker 1: My parents certainly screamed and went through up and downs,
Speaker 1: but stayed together. Do you think it was just that
Speaker 1: it was your appearance or did they really go through
Speaker 1: tough times? Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, they went through tough times for sure, and I
Speaker 2: don't want to air out any of their stuff, but
Speaker 2: they certainly went through some tough times.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess what I'm asking is we're the tough
Speaker 1: times that they came from different countries.
Speaker 2: Right, I never thought of it that way. I think
Speaker 2: the tough times maybe had to do with they came
Speaker 2: from different backgrounds, and I think they could have come
Speaker 2: from those different backgrounds and been from the same country,
Speaker 2: but they weren't. But they came from different backgrounds, and
Speaker 2: they had different expectations about what family meant and what
Speaker 2: their roles were in there, I think, and you know,
Speaker 2: you can see where those would be some sort of
Speaker 2: very foundational challenges, and I think and there was a
Speaker 2: lot of change, and I talk about that in the book.
Speaker 2: You know, there was my dad was getting promotions and
Speaker 2: I think they fell and you know, you'll remember from
Speaker 2: the eighties there was very much this less so I
Speaker 2: think now then, you know, there was very much this
Speaker 2: implied pressure to succeed and to get ahead, and very capitalists,
Speaker 2: very like, you know, get make more money and move
Speaker 2: into the nicer neighborhood and drive the nicer car. And
Speaker 2: I think to a degree, I don't I wouldn't characterize
Speaker 2: either of my parents have ever having been materialistic, but
Speaker 2: I think to a degree that was the culture that
Speaker 2: we were all living in at the time, and I
Speaker 2: think that there was some pressure there and I think
Speaker 2: some of those you know, I was just a little boy,
Speaker 2: but from looking back on it and sort of surveying
Speaker 2: the situation from memory, I would imagine that some of
Speaker 2: that pressure and some of that drive to like push
Speaker 2: forward and get ahead probably got in the way of
Speaker 2: what might have otherwise been some more serene times.
Speaker 1: I don't want to hammer this, but your mother's from Germany,
Speaker 1: your father's from America. Is that the difference you're talking
Speaker 1: about a more socioacono one is of a higher status
Speaker 1: than the other.
Speaker 2: No, I think they were both. They both came from
Speaker 2: relatively poorer families. It was my mom was a refugee
Speaker 2: in post World War two and my dad just grew
Speaker 2: up in the woods to very, very poor, poor parents.
Speaker 2: I think what they had in common, honestly, is that
Speaker 2: they both were running as far away as they could,
Speaker 2: as quick as fast as they could from the environments
Speaker 2: that they were in. And I think that early in
Speaker 2: is what they shared in common. But I think I
Speaker 2: just think over time they probably had different expectations from
Speaker 2: each other. But again, at the end of it all,
Speaker 2: they found a way and had a very very long,
Speaker 2: thriving marriage.
Speaker 1: Okay, you go to college. Most of the people that
Speaker 1: you grew up with stay and go to a local college.
Speaker 1: What drove you? Was there parental pressure or were they
Speaker 1: completely checked out? You were doing whatever you wanted.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: What drove me to go to Virginia Conwell University in Richmond,
Speaker 2: which was an hour from where I grew up, was
Speaker 2: that I knew that VCU in particular, and Richmond in general,
Speaker 2: I had a very very fruitful, very very energized art
Speaker 2: and music scene, and so by the time I was
Speaker 2: getting out of high school, I had already been playing
Speaker 2: in bands. In fact that I already been playing in
Speaker 2: clubs with the bands that I had put together. So
Speaker 2: what really drew me to Richmond was less. It wasn't
Speaker 2: as much anything specific about the university. It was more
Speaker 2: about where it was, and it was relatively close to home,
Speaker 2: but far enough away where I could be pretty immersed
Speaker 2: into what was going on in Richmond. It felt different,
Speaker 2: and it felt very exciting, and I wanted to be
Speaker 2: a part of that. And that would be a theme
Speaker 2: because later when I went to Chicago to go to
Speaker 2: grad school in ninety five inte ninety five, in Chicago.
Speaker 2: Chicago had this really really cool underground scene Touch and
Speaker 2: Go Records, and the Jesus Lizard was from there, and
Speaker 2: Shellac and Tortoise was just getting big, and so it
Speaker 2: was this really cool underground scene there that was happening,
Speaker 2: and for me, I just wanted to be near it
Speaker 2: because I thought being in the proximity of something that
Speaker 2: was cool and happening would increase my chances of being
Speaker 2: becoming a part of something that was cool and that
Speaker 2: was happening. So I was trying to put myself close
Speaker 2: to the epicenter of something that I thought might be
Speaker 2: you know, that I might be able to get absorbed by.
Speaker 1: But your father said he wasn't going to pay if
Speaker 1: you were studying music.
Speaker 2: I wanted to go to music school, and Vcus has
Speaker 2: a good music school, and so for me, I want
Speaker 2: to play music, I want to be enrich, and I
Speaker 2: want to go to music school. And my dad's deal
Speaker 2: was my dad had a deal for me, and he
Speaker 2: dropped out of high school. In fact, as far as
Speaker 2: I know, and I think I say this in book,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure I'm the first person in either side
Speaker 2: of my family to ever graduate college. And my dad's
Speaker 2: deal for me was I will pay for your school.
Speaker 2: You get a full ride from me for college because
Speaker 2: you got your you got the grades to get in,
Speaker 2: and I believe in giving you this opportunity. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to pay for you. But there are there's one rule.
Speaker 2: You will take no breaks. You will take no semesters off,
Speaker 2: you will take no years off. There's no gap year.
Speaker 2: I don't think people even use that. Turn back. Then
Speaker 2: you will start and you will go until the end
Speaker 2: and finish. If you stop, I stopped paying. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: That's the deal. That's the deal. I want to go
Speaker 2: to VC music School and he's like, that's the other rule.
Speaker 2: I'm not paying for music school. So I went for
Speaker 2: mass communications. That's where I started. I started as a
Speaker 2: mass communications major because again that was to me, the
Speaker 2: closest thing to music. If you're studying mass colm, you
Speaker 2: might be in radio, you might be in TV. It's
Speaker 2: something to do with music. I was just my mind
Speaker 2: was just trying to connect dots.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about your father being more successful and
Speaker 1: moving and you had to go to a different school.
Speaker 1: There were opportunities there, but you'd also talk about it
Speaker 1: being traumatic to what degree. Was that a big deal
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think, you know, to say it was
Speaker 2: traumatic U is probably uh, you know, it's hard to say. Oh,
Speaker 2: the trauma of moving from the lower barely middle class
Speaker 2: neighborhood to the upper class neighborhood with the tennis courts
Speaker 2: in the swimming pool. Oh the trauma. You know, it
Speaker 2: wasn't traumatic. It was you know, there was a component
Speaker 2: of it to me, to us that felt a little
Speaker 2: bit Beverly Hillbillies a little It felt a bit like
Speaker 2: we were this family that moved from the edge of
Speaker 2: the woods with our you know, our dirt bikes and
Speaker 2: our old cars and stuff, and we moved into the
Speaker 2: nicer neighborhood and there was a little bit like these
Speaker 2: kids were like who are you? Like, what are you
Speaker 2: doing here? Kind of thing that that was traumatic. I
Speaker 2: think it was more of a learning curve for me.
Speaker 2: But I think really more than that, I think I
Speaker 2: was just kind of a shy and an awkward kid,
Speaker 2: and that combined with being put into a new neighborhood.
Speaker 2: These are sort of universal things. You take any shy,
Speaker 2: awkward kid and you move them, you know, down the
Speaker 2: road to a different school and a different neighborhood and
Speaker 2: it's it's gonna be tough, just kind of life being
Speaker 2: doing what life does. But I took those things real
Speaker 2: hard because of just who I was and my inability
Speaker 2: to really have tough skin at the time. And all
Speaker 2: of that stuff wound up feeding into why music and
Speaker 2: why playing guitar was so important to me so vital,
Speaker 2: because it gave me something. Once that guitar got in
Speaker 2: my hand, it gave me a way to make none
Speaker 2: of that stuff matter. I happened to be really good
Speaker 2: at guitar really quick, and I could recognize that, and
Speaker 2: it also made me feel complete in a way that
Speaker 2: nothing else had. I had tried skateboarding with the neighborhood kids,
Speaker 2: I had tried, you know, joining the sports teams. I
Speaker 2: wasn't good at any of that stuff. But as soon
Speaker 2: as a guitar fell into my hand, like that made
Speaker 2: sense to me, and I was really able to navigate
Speaker 2: that and make sense of it very quickly, and it
Speaker 2: made me feel a part of something, and I just
Speaker 2: didn't want to let it go. So I think all
Speaker 2: of that anxiety and all that social awkwardness set the
Speaker 2: scene for me to really be relieved and be completed
Speaker 2: if you will by music.
Speaker 1: It's in the book, But tell my audience how you
Speaker 1: end up playing the guitar.
Speaker 2: I ended up playing guitar because my dad wouldn't let
Speaker 2: me get a drum set. We had. I talked about
Speaker 2: it in the book. So this is the early eighties,
Speaker 2: the early into the mid eighties where MTVS had been
Speaker 2: around for a minute, but it didn't make it to
Speaker 2: us right away. So it made it to it made
Speaker 2: it to you know, Southeast Virginia, and like every other
Speaker 2: kid in America, I was glued to MTV. Latchkey, kid,
Speaker 2: come home from school. You're not gonna see your parents
Speaker 2: for three hours, and you're just sitting there watching MTV,
Speaker 2: which was great. And so I'm watching all this music
Speaker 2: in a way that I'd never seen it before. And
Speaker 2: I wanted to play drums. And you know, my parents,
Speaker 2: I described it in the book. They were always very,
Speaker 2: very supportive of me and things I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: I really had a great childhood, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: play music and asked for a drum set, and my dad,
Speaker 2: very wisely, I'm not getting a drum set was too loud.
Speaker 2: He knew enough about music to know you can't turn
Speaker 2: a drum set down. So my second choice was guitar,
Speaker 2: so we got the back. Then they had this thing
Speaker 2: called the Trading Post, which was a newspaper full of
Speaker 2: you know, ads of people selling secondhand stuff, and we
Speaker 2: found a guitar in there about a half hour away
Speaker 2: for fifteen dollars and that was my very first guitar.
Speaker 1: I can tell us about your brother buying or you
Speaker 1: a left pool.
Speaker 2: Junior, my brother did. My brother was very supportive of
Speaker 2: music as well. I think he's he such a music fan.
Speaker 2: He was excited to see me getting involved. And again,
Speaker 2: I was just pretty naturally good at guitar, so it
Speaker 2: was pretty clear early on that I was making sense
Speaker 2: of it pretty quickly, and I think that excited him
Speaker 2: and he bought me my first less Paul. He used
Speaker 2: to take me to music stores in a couple of
Speaker 2: towns over where they had malls and they had shopping districts,
Speaker 2: and there would be music stores and we would just
Speaker 2: go on a Friday night just to hang out there,
Speaker 2: and I would just walk the walls and stare at
Speaker 2: these incredible guitars, which at the time looked to me
Speaker 2: like otherworldly. Just to be in the presence of a
Speaker 2: Gibson left Paul. Was such a thrill for me at
Speaker 2: twelve and thirteen years old, just to be in the
Speaker 2: room with one. I haven't even put it that way
Speaker 2: until I'm talking to you, but it's really how it
Speaker 2: was to be in the room with the Gibson less
Speaker 2: Paul let alone get one in my hands. And after
Speaker 2: we start going there for a while, we got to
Speaker 2: know the guys that were running the shop, and they
Speaker 2: heard me play and they realized that this kid can
Speaker 2: kind of play, you know, so they started handing me
Speaker 2: really cool stuff. So I got to play less Paul's
Speaker 2: and I got to play real strats, and I got
Speaker 2: to play Charvel's, which were like super cool modern guitars
Speaker 2: of the day, and I could play them. So I
Speaker 2: would be this little kid, and I looked even younger
Speaker 2: than I was at the time, so I would just
Speaker 2: eyes closed playing Randy Rhodes rifts, and I would, you know,
Speaker 2: look over my shoulder, and there were three, four or
Speaker 2: five people standing around watching me play because I was
Speaker 2: pretty good, and I looked I was thirteen, looked eleven,
Speaker 2: and they're like, wow, look at this could go, you know,
Speaker 2: So my brother was really supportive about that, and I
Speaker 2: think he enjoyed those trips and I really did. And
Speaker 2: on the way to and from, you know, those hour
Speaker 2: long drives, we would listen to music. And my brother
Speaker 2: had really, really good taste in music, and he was
Speaker 2: significantly older than me. So that was a real advantage
Speaker 2: for me because I was hearing toys in the attic.
Speaker 2: I'm twelve years old, thirteen years old. I wasn't the
Speaker 2: only twelve thirteen year old hearing that, but I was.
Speaker 2: I don't know that I would have otherwise, you know.
Speaker 2: So I was hearing these cool like Leonard Scanner's CCR.
Speaker 2: All this cool stuff that he was into was just
Speaker 2: absorbing into my brain. And those were those were really
Speaker 2: really great memories and really great trips, and I got
Speaker 2: to play some really cool guitars at an early age.
Speaker 1: Do you still have that Leshpool Junior?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, so that's really how we got to this.
Speaker 2: So a Christmas or two and after that, he, unbeknownst
Speaker 2: to me, had put a deposit down on a les
Speaker 2: Paul Junior. I absolutely still have that less Paul Junior.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not getting rid of that.
Speaker 1: Are you a gear guy? Use somebody with one hundred
Speaker 1: guitars twenty am so youse someone that's not your thing
Speaker 1: as only as you have one.
Speaker 2: So I think I'm a little bit in the middle.
Speaker 2: I have a pretty cool vintage guitar collection these days.
Speaker 2: I have some cool old stuff, not a ton of it.
Speaker 2: I have also, Bob, you know, we tour a lot.
Speaker 2: Lad with God tours a lot, so I have a
Speaker 2: touring gear. We play in three different tunings and need
Speaker 2: a backup, so I pretty much need six guitars to
Speaker 2: do a show without fear of, you know, a hiccup.
Speaker 2: So there's the touring gear. So I probably have twenty
Speaker 2: thirty guitars that we use between the europe rig and
Speaker 2: the US rig and the fly rig, and those are
Speaker 2: all very very nice guitars, and I love them all,
Speaker 2: and I curate that collection of live guitars right. But
Speaker 2: then I have the guitars I have here at home,
Speaker 2: which are a couple that would make it into that pile.
Speaker 2: But I have also a vintage collection of I don't
Speaker 2: know six eight guitars that are old and very collectible
Speaker 2: but super great examples of what they are, and those
Speaker 2: are those I'm really fond of those, and they're very
Speaker 2: inspirational when I play this. So I'm not a crazy
Speaker 2: like need a need a separate, need to rent a
Speaker 2: warehouse for all my gear kind of guy. But I
Speaker 2: do have some cool stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're taking lessons to what degree? Can you read music?
Speaker 1: Or could read music? Back then?
Speaker 2: Very little and maybe better than than I do now,
Speaker 2: because then I was closer to having teachers. You know.
Speaker 2: I took some lessons and they would try to teach
Speaker 2: me some just basic site reading, and you know, for
Speaker 2: a minute, I could do that stuff, but I really
Speaker 2: found it for what I wanted to do on the
Speaker 2: instrument to be all not all that important. It's funny.
Speaker 2: I recently did a session with with Tim Leffay who
Speaker 2: play Tadashi Trucks, and he played based on Bowie's Blackstar record.
Speaker 2: He's all over that record and I did a session
Speaker 2: with him and he comes in with these charts he
Speaker 2: charted out the teens were doing and he handed me
Speaker 2: a chart. I was like, I don't know what to
Speaker 2: do with this. I was like, I just had to
Speaker 2: listen to the tunes and know them, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. And we had a chuckle about that. But
Speaker 2: so yeah, I don't read music very well at all.
Speaker 2: In fact, I frankly don't read music at all. But
Speaker 2: I have a really good year, and I think that
Speaker 2: there's no unless you want to be just a higher
Speaker 2: on session player, which is great. That's the world needs those,
Speaker 2: and there's some amazing ones those guys need to read.
Speaker 2: But I've been fortunate enough where most of the stuff
Speaker 2: I do is just writing, or most of it's doing
Speaker 2: my own stuff anyway. So a couple of times I've
Speaker 2: had guys chart out stuff because they're doing sessions with me,
Speaker 2: but I'll have to take word for that that's what
Speaker 2: the chart is, because I can't call them out and
Speaker 2: tell them it's wrong.
Speaker 1: One of the themes in the book is you're weep,
Speaker 1: talk about sit in front of the TV eating junk food,
Speaker 1: talk about ultimately losing the weight, but always thinking about
Speaker 1: the weight.
Speaker 2: Tell us about that, Yeah, you know, it's a chubby kid,
Speaker 2: and just felt really self conscious about that always. And
Speaker 2: I think, like most chubby kids, I got teased a
Speaker 2: little bit for being chubby kid. And that's no fun
Speaker 2: for any chubby kid. Other kids get teased for other things.
Speaker 2: It's it's not this unthinkable, unimaginable trauma again. But for me,
Speaker 2: it just stuck. For whatever reason, I just didn't want
Speaker 2: to be the fat kid. And I've at some point
Speaker 2: I think I just hit a little gross burt and
Speaker 2: I just decided not to eat very much and I
Speaker 2: got skinny, and you know, became the thin kid with
Speaker 2: the Les Paul and the Rockberry rock and roll, and
Speaker 2: that worked for a long time. But it's still all
Speaker 2: my life. I just always still have what I call
Speaker 2: that fat kid mentality. And you know, as I've gotten older,
Speaker 2: you know, I still struggle to not have extra weight on.
Speaker 2: But it's always, uh, it's always it always takes me
Speaker 2: back to that mentality, that fat kid mentality, that feeling like,
Speaker 2: you know, the the ashamed of oneself and one's and
Speaker 2: having this sort of I guess over can I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's over concerned, but just sort of being a self
Speaker 2: obsessed with weight and with my body image and that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. I think I think that's pretty normal stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't think a lot of men talk about that,
Speaker 2: but it was part of the story, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, you start off playing classic rock, how do you
Speaker 1: end up getting into metal? And then the kind of
Speaker 1: metal Limb of God plays well.
Speaker 2: I started out playing whatever I could play, and it
Speaker 2: was a blend of classic rock and there was some
Speaker 2: sex pistols and ramones kind of thing going on in there.
Speaker 2: And you know, the beauty of punk rock is that
Speaker 2: it has a great energy and it's often not very
Speaker 2: difficult to play, not always, but often, so that's a
Speaker 2: great place for a young guitar player to start. And
Speaker 2: then the same thing can be said for ac DC.
Speaker 2: I mean that is some of the most classic hard
Speaker 2: rock that exists, and it stands the test of time.
Speaker 2: But a lot of take the you know, the solos out,
Speaker 2: a lot of like Malcolm's parts, you know Angus' stuff.
Speaker 2: He's a shredder to a kind of a blues like
Speaker 2: he's very very fluent blues player. But Malcolm's parts are
Speaker 2: pretty simple to play. It's just great songwriting. So there's
Speaker 2: there's all these examples of great bands and great kind
Speaker 2: of timeless hard rock music that's really relatively simple to play.
Speaker 2: The Cult is the same way. I think I think
Speaker 2: I mentioned that in the book. The Cult Electric is
Speaker 2: like one of the first records I could play, you know,
Speaker 2: from song one all the way to the end and
Speaker 2: just play along to it. So I just started playing
Speaker 2: along to what I could play, and then as my
Speaker 2: tastes evolved, I got more and my skill set evolved.
Speaker 2: I got into meggot Eth and Metallica because I was
Speaker 2: an eighth ninth tenth grade kid, and that's what eighth
Speaker 2: nineteenth grade kids listened to, you know. And but for me,
Speaker 2: my ability was growing and in a way that I
Speaker 2: could start to match that playing as well. So it
Speaker 2: was just all kind of fueling each other. As I
Speaker 2: became able to be more fluent on the instrument and
Speaker 2: was getting into music that was more technical, those two
Speaker 2: things kind of it created the synergy which really carried
Speaker 2: me to thrash metal, which it can be very technically proficient,
Speaker 2: technically demanding music, but also has this cool kind of
Speaker 2: dark and high energy, powerful thing that was really vital
Speaker 2: for me as a teenage guitar player. Teenage kid.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have a long story about a battle of
Speaker 1: the bands, which is certainly more serious than the battles
Speaker 1: of the band that I grew up with that you
Speaker 1: had to basically qualify. Then there was a different school.
Speaker 1: You won once, then you were with a different band.
Speaker 1: You thought they were better and you didn't win, but
Speaker 1: you still knew you were best. What was that experience like?
Speaker 1: And what music were you playing? In the battles of
Speaker 1: the band?
Speaker 2: That battle of the band, we asked what the experience
Speaker 2: is like? It was the pinnacle for me and my
Speaker 2: vision of where we existed in this small town world
Speaker 2: of music. To play and to win Stockwood it was
Speaker 2: called you didn't get much better in Williamsburg, Virginia if
Speaker 2: you were a rock band. You know, that was that
Speaker 2: was the heights. So it was a big deal. I
Speaker 2: couldn't wait to do that every year, and we did
Speaker 2: it for a number of years. What kind of music
Speaker 2: we were playing? We were playing both. You know, you
Speaker 2: talk about two different bands, and they weren't all that dissimilar.
Speaker 2: One was but a little better than the other one.
Speaker 2: But we were playing a blend of sort of older
Speaker 2: heavy metal Black Sabbath and we played the first band.
Speaker 2: We played Hand of Doune by Black Sabbath, and we
Speaker 2: played Crazy Train and I think we did some like
Speaker 2: the Motley Crue version of smoking in the Boys Room
Speaker 2: and that kind of stuff. I think we did an
Speaker 2: our main song. And then the second band, which was
Speaker 2: sort of a spin off of the first one was
Speaker 2: doing similar stuff but a little more, a little more
Speaker 2: thrashboid and I think Megadeth and Metallica and that kind
Speaker 2: of thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know you're in your first band, guys, graduate,
Speaker 1: they moved way before we go to college. There's another
Speaker 1: incarnation of one of these bands, and ultimately you're left out. Okay,
Speaker 1: the band is formed. You know that could be heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: You sort of pass over it there. Well, there really
Speaker 1: wasn't a place for me. What was he experienced like
Speaker 1: when it actually happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was devastated. You're you're talking about this now
Speaker 2: I'm in college and in the book, I sort of,
Speaker 2: as you're doing, I string together this this story of
Speaker 2: these different bands that I was, you know, bouncing from
Speaker 2: one and forming another and doing this, and one of
Speaker 2: them turned into this very kind of noise. By now
Speaker 2: we're in the nineties and the metal thing, the head
Speaker 2: bangers ball era kind of metal thing is falling out
Speaker 2: of favor, and now it's all about underground and grunge
Speaker 2: and punk, and so there was this and I followed
Speaker 2: right along through all that stuff, and it was really
Speaker 2: interesting for me to look back on because I knew
Speaker 2: I did I didn't know, but I sort of intuitively
Speaker 2: unlearned a lot of what I had learned. You know,
Speaker 2: you and I were just talking about the technical aspect
Speaker 2: of metal and that's where I came from. But by
Speaker 2: the time I got to Richmond and the culture around
Speaker 2: rock music was changing, and you know, with grunge and
Speaker 2: Nirvana and the success of bands like Fugazi and Sonic
Speaker 2: Youth and that kind of stuff that was it was
Speaker 2: very noisy and not frankly as technical or often as musical,
Speaker 2: but it had this passion and this energy that was
Speaker 2: just really attractive about it. So for me as a player,
Speaker 2: I almost unlearned a lot of what I had learned
Speaker 2: how to do in that metal stuff. So here we
Speaker 2: find ourselves now in the early nineties, and me and
Speaker 2: my friends are putting this band together and it's this
Speaker 2: very feedback e noise, scapy, sonic youth y kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And despite my efforts to unlearn my uh you know,
Speaker 2: technical goal approach to as a player, I'm not the
Speaker 2: most technical player, but in that room, I was the
Speaker 2: most technical player, and it, uh, you know, it just
Speaker 2: didn't work out. I think I was making it sound
Speaker 2: a little too clean, So I was left out. And
Speaker 2: they went on to do some and these are every
Speaker 2: one of those guys are still a really good friend
Speaker 2: of mine. But they went on to do some really
Speaker 2: cool stuff in that time and did some touring and
Speaker 2: did some made a lot of noise literally and figuratively
Speaker 2: in that scene, and I was left out. And that
Speaker 2: was That was tough for me to take because even
Speaker 2: outside of music, I had to learn a life lesson,
Speaker 2: which was you have to root for your friends, even
Speaker 2: when they're doing what you wish you were doing.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's a lot of ignorance in the North about
Speaker 1: the South, not as much as there used to be. People,
Speaker 1: you know, think of the South. They think in Nashville.
Speaker 1: Richmond the way you painted in the book, it was
Speaker 1: like an epicenter of punk music. Tell us about Richmond
Speaker 1: at that time. In Richmond today, I'm.
Speaker 2: Happy to I have so much love for this city.
Speaker 2: I'm still here a little ways outside, I'm back in
Speaker 2: the woods, but I'm still I'm still a stones throat
Speaker 2: from Richmond, and I intend to stay that way. I
Speaker 2: love I love our city, I love our music scene.
Speaker 2: As I told you, earlier there because VCU has such
Speaker 2: a strong art school, it attracts people from the region
Speaker 2: creative minds, and you know, it attracts artists, it attracts musicians, sculptors,
Speaker 2: theater people all sort of flock to Richmond because of VCU,
Speaker 2: And you know, I was a part of that during
Speaker 2: that time. So Richmond had this interesting thing in the
Speaker 2: nineties where you know, and in the nineties it wasn't
Speaker 2: unique just to Richmond, but in the nineties, different cities
Speaker 2: had different sounds. So and back then, and you'll remember
Speaker 2: this Bob. Back then, you could say a band sounded
Speaker 2: like they were from Minneapolis, or they sounded like they
Speaker 2: were from Austin, or they sounded like they were from
Speaker 2: New York, or they sounded like they were from Chicago.
Speaker 2: And you would almost ask, as a music fan, or
Speaker 2: as someone that was into particularly underground music, you would hey,
Speaker 2: have you heard so and so? No, where are they from?
Speaker 2: And that I still do that. I'll be like, where
Speaker 2: are they from? And it sort of matters less now,
Speaker 2: but it's just kind of intuitive question because where they're
Speaker 2: from could give you an idea what they might be doing.
Speaker 2: You know, So Richmond's personality in that sense was pretty
Speaker 2: unique in that there was a real angular kind of
Speaker 2: off time approached, a lot of just odd time signatures,
Speaker 2: a lot of instrumental bands, a lot of like influence
Speaker 2: from bands like Wire, you know, the UK band, this
Speaker 2: real sort of brittle, abrasive kind of thing that wasn't
Speaker 2: quite punk rock, but it was real raw and real
Speaker 2: stripped down. And Richmond would blend that with sort of
Speaker 2: this sort of pseudo psychedelic component and it was just
Speaker 2: a real artsy and real abrasive version of underground punk
Speaker 2: and hard rock, and that in time sort of evolved
Speaker 2: and blended with some metal bands, so it created bands
Speaker 2: like Breadwinner, who is a sort of underground legendary instrumental
Speaker 2: band from Richmond, put out a record on Merge Records,
Speaker 2: and that was just absolutely, like so important to me.
Speaker 2: Everything on that record there wouldn't have There was barely
Speaker 2: a vocal on the record in it. I would just
Speaker 2: listen to it like like like someone who listened to
Speaker 2: their favor pop song that would just listen to it
Speaker 2: over and over, and the grooves the way there were grooves,
Speaker 2: but that weren't straight grooves. It would sound like you know,
Speaker 2: it sort of to me sonically, like if you rolled
Speaker 2: an egg down a hill, it had just like this
Speaker 2: this like very it was had this very loping quality,
Speaker 2: but it was consistent, consistently stretched out and consistently off.
Speaker 2: Or if you did the same thing and just and
Speaker 2: like pushed a box, it would like it rolls and
Speaker 2: then it stops, and then it rolls and it stops,
Speaker 2: and it's very you know, predictable. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: off time, there's another band called slang Lous that did
Speaker 2: the same thing but then blended that approach with this
Speaker 2: sort of dark, kind of theatrical vocal element that wasn't
Speaker 2: really metal, but it was really dark and really kind
Speaker 2: of obscure but strangely intellectual lyrics, sort of poetry dark
Speaker 2: poetry lyrics. And these were just local bands, and these
Speaker 2: were the bands that me and my friends wanted to be.
Speaker 2: Like we loved the Melvins, we loved Slayer, but we
Speaker 2: really wanted to be like slang Laws, who were just
Speaker 2: down the street and probably playing a party on Friday
Speaker 2: night or at the small bar on Saturday night. And
Speaker 2: you know, so it became this very It was insular
Speaker 2: in the sense is that all the bands influenced each
Speaker 2: other more than outside bands influenced us. And Lamb of
Speaker 2: God started as a band called burn the Priest and
Speaker 2: we were an instrumental band when we were Burned the Priest,
Speaker 2: and then we added a singer and then eventually changed
Speaker 2: the name the Lamb of God. But what Burned the
Speaker 2: Priest started out as was trying to be a little
Speaker 2: more extreme version of Breadwinner or slang laws.
Speaker 1: What was the dream you know in the area you're
Speaker 1: talking about before they run DGC and Nirvana was independent
Speaker 1: You mentioned Merge, etc. In the nineties, even though on
Speaker 1: MTV goes more hip hop, there's a whole burgeoning independent
Speaker 1: rock scene. So did everybody say we're just doing what
Speaker 1: we're doing, or they say, I want to go to LA,
Speaker 1: I want to get a major label deal, I want
Speaker 1: to conquer the world. What was the mindset well for us.
Speaker 2: Burn the Preeze and not only.
Speaker 1: You, but the other rack you talk about, Red Winter.
Speaker 1: There's a whole scene in Richmond. Was everybody happy where
Speaker 1: they were or did people have a desire to be nationwide?
Speaker 2: I think in that time from what I could tell
Speaker 2: in the circles that I was in in the circles
Speaker 2: I was playing in. The dream was to get in
Speaker 2: a van and to go play shows to thirty forty
Speaker 2: people in a basement or maybe in a bar, and
Speaker 2: then do that for a month, and if you came
Speaker 2: home with a couple hundred bucks, that was you were
Speaker 2: a rock star. You know. I think the dream in
Speaker 2: a lot of those scenes was just it was this beautiful,
Speaker 2: mindful approach to creating music that was just to do
Speaker 2: it because it felt urgent, and it felt authentic, and
Speaker 2: it felt natural to do that. There's I'm sure still
Speaker 2: people that that. I mean, that's what art is, right.
Speaker 2: I really think any form of art is really that
Speaker 2: at its core, if it's really art, And and so
Speaker 2: I think that still happens all the time, you know.
Speaker 2: And I don't know that we're going to get into
Speaker 2: this structured position of what the music world is like
Speaker 2: now versus what it was like in the mid nineties,
Speaker 2: but that that was the dream for us for sure.
Speaker 1: So how hard was it to leave Richmond in your
Speaker 1: music advance there and go to.
Speaker 2: Chicago, Well, it was it was difficult. That the timeframes
Speaker 2: in terms of what you and I are talking about
Speaker 2: are darting around a little bit. When I left Richmond
Speaker 2: to go to Chicago, Burn the Priest had started, but
Speaker 2: we weren't really doing a whole lot, and I could
Speaker 2: tell it was really cool, but I just had bigger
Speaker 2: sights on wanting to get into a bigger city and
Speaker 2: have a bigger kind of pool of people to pick
Speaker 2: from to play with. When I went up there. For
Speaker 2: a couple of years, I've never really got much going
Speaker 2: on up there, and Burn the Priest was still kind
Speaker 2: of bubbling here and starting to drop people and starting
Speaker 2: to go up to Philly and play shows, and I
Speaker 2: really wanted to be a part of it, so I
Speaker 2: came back. But leaving Richmond it was a weird thing
Speaker 2: because it was it was a lesson for me in
Speaker 2: terms of, like, you don't really know what you got
Speaker 2: until it's gone. Because I while I can sit here
Speaker 2: and talk about how essential and awesome Richmond was and
Speaker 2: it was all these things, I knew it was great
Speaker 2: to me. If I went somewhere bigger and somewhere more
Speaker 2: I don't know, big city, more more happening, then it
Speaker 2: was gonna be even better. And what I learned was
Speaker 2: bigger isn't necessarily better, And maybe what we had going
Speaker 2: on here was cooler.
Speaker 1: I think it was, Okay, when you leave Chicago to
Speaker 1: go back to Richmond, how much of it is you've
Speaker 1: burned out on Chicago, burned out on graduate school, and
Speaker 1: how much of it is I gotta go back and
Speaker 1: play with burn the Priests.
Speaker 2: It was one hundred percent of one and one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of other of the other. I think I would
Speaker 2: have gone back to Richmond if Burned the Priests weren't
Speaker 2: even there. I was just ready to come back to
Speaker 2: Richmond and go home. But I was also just dying
Speaker 2: to get back with those guys, because I just I
Speaker 2: the whole time I was in Chicago, I was kind
Speaker 2: of mourning leaving that because it felt so fulfilling, the
Speaker 2: only be with a group of guys that I just
Speaker 2: could felt like I could do no wrong with. And
Speaker 2: just as soon as that came together, I had already
Speaker 2: had plans to split, and so I was just following
Speaker 2: through with what I had been planning on doing. Anyway,
Speaker 2: So I think I think there was no angle that
Speaker 2: had me staying in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Okay, you say you go back to Richmond, the band
Speaker 1: welcomes you with open arms. My experience in life is
Speaker 1: usually not that way you leave, they continue without you,
Speaker 1: if they lay you back at all, there are a
Speaker 1: number of hurdles, So tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it speaks to just how
Speaker 2: natural it was and how correct my part of that
Speaker 2: equation fit. There was a new guitar player that had
Speaker 2: come in, and so that was a little bit of
Speaker 2: a hurdle because he's like, wait, who's this guy that
Speaker 2: I don't really even know coming back to reach this
Speaker 2: band that I've never been in a band with him with?
Speaker 2: But we hung out for a day or two and
Speaker 2: it had a completely had a great understanding, and he's
Speaker 2: he's still a friend. I've talked to him recently, and
Speaker 2: they had had They had had Randy, our singer, join
Speaker 2: and Randy and I knew of each other. We weren't
Speaker 2: really friends, but Randy, Randy and I talk about this.
Speaker 2: I talk about this in the book too. Randy had this.
Speaker 2: He was a punk rocker. He didn't have anything to
Speaker 2: do with the metal at all. He was a punk
Speaker 2: rocker in a metal band, and he had this understanding
Speaker 2: of all right, well, if you're in our band now,
Speaker 2: then you're in our band, and it's right or die,
Speaker 2: And that was just the way he worked. I think
Speaker 2: he might have been like that with anybody. It certainly
Speaker 2: given him that chance, but it was just he was
Speaker 2: of the mindset of like, okay, well then then then
Speaker 2: we're part of the same tribe. Let's go, let's I'm
Speaker 2: all in okay for years.
Speaker 1: You go back to Richmond, he dropped out of graduate school.
Speaker 1: But you're working as a roofer, your work in construction,
Speaker 1: while you're playing music, and you're getting older. Is there
Speaker 1: any part of you that says, shit, you know, I
Speaker 1: should have a career, I should have something more serious
Speaker 1: than this.
Speaker 2: Yes, there is, And you know you and I were
Speaker 2: touching on this earlier. There's all the while this component.
Speaker 2: Now I'm in my mid twenties, approaching the later twenties,
Speaker 2: people I know are starting to have kids and get married,
Speaker 2: and I'm riding around in a vand playing just kind
Speaker 2: of screamy heavy metal, punk rock hybrid, playing warehouses in Philly.
Speaker 2: So there is this voice in the back of my
Speaker 2: head saying, you know, you need to get serious about something.
Speaker 2: You need to you need to get your ack together,
Speaker 2: you need to grow up. And again, you know I
Speaker 2: talked about the firefighter situation, that's there's a cut all
Speaker 2: my hair off and when applied with the fire department.
Speaker 2: But pretty quickly into that process, just came to this conclusion,
Speaker 2: this this self knowledge of It's just I'm never gonna
Speaker 2: be happy unless I'm just playing guitar. So I guess
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna be the broke guitar player guy forever.
Speaker 2: And I found acceptance around that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the band is offered a deal from these
Speaker 1: guys who work for Middle Blade with a new label.
Speaker 1: You know, conventionally people say, oh I'm signed, We're on
Speaker 1: the way, We're on the road. What was going through
Speaker 1: your head? And the band said when that came.
Speaker 2: Together, oh well yeah. So the deal with Prosthetic Records
Speaker 2: was such a small deal. It wasn't like the movie
Speaker 2: deal where you know, we got it, we finally made it,
Speaker 2: we got a big record deal. It wasn't that at all.
Speaker 2: These These were guys that were gonna give us a
Speaker 2: couple thousand bucks made to go put together a recording.
Speaker 2: And then they then they had the resources and the
Speaker 2: connections and the inroads with which to release that recording
Speaker 2: and hire a publicist for it. And so they were
Speaker 2: completely honest and realistic about their presentation with that, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, no one's quitting a job. We're just going
Speaker 2: to get this record in reviewed in magazines and it's
Speaker 2: going to get in some stores, and it's going to
Speaker 2: get it's you know, we're going to help you get noticed.
Speaker 2: And that's what they did and it was a great relationship,
Speaker 2: and then we went on to do a second record
Speaker 2: with them as the Palaces burned, and based on the
Speaker 2: reaction that the first record got, we had a little
Speaker 2: bit more money to work with, and we had, you know,
Speaker 2: more resources available to us, and we made some videos
Speaker 2: that were a couple of them. Want in particular was
Speaker 2: really cool, and it just all lined up with the
Speaker 2: way MTV was promoting heavy metal at the time and
Speaker 2: the platform they had re established with Headbanger. All of
Speaker 2: these things sort of syncd up for us time wise,
Speaker 2: and we made the right video for the right song
Speaker 2: at the right time, and got it on the right
Speaker 2: platform and had the right people behind it. That really
Speaker 2: got us noticed, and that ultimately is what sort of
Speaker 2: blew the band up to the point where we started
Speaker 2: getting looked at by major labels.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about going to Massachusetts to cut this
Speaker 1: record first record. In the second record too, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about the travel, the bands, etc. I
Speaker 1: read that and I say, it's so fucking dangerous. People
Speaker 1: aren't wearing seatbelts, things aren't maintained, You got ball tires.
Speaker 1: Were you thinking about that at all? And were there
Speaker 1: any bad experiences?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man, I don't think we were thinking about that
Speaker 2: much at all. I think we knew that if, you know,
Speaker 2: somebody fell asleep driving and this thing flipped over, that
Speaker 2: was gonna be the end of it, you know. But
Speaker 2: I just don't think we worried about that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: I think there was a real, just a real kind
Speaker 2: of caution to the wind kind of thing. And what
Speaker 2: was the second party? Oh? Were there any instance? Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was little stuff. One time the steering went out
Speaker 2: while we were going off an exit ramp fortunately there
Speaker 2: because we were slowing down and the van didn't turn
Speaker 2: and went straight. We had to get that fixed. And
Speaker 2: one time we were leaving for a trip up north somewhere,
Speaker 2: and for whatever reason, there were only two or three
Speaker 2: lug nuts on the rear wheel of our van, and
Speaker 2: I remember noticing that and tightening up and they were loose,
Speaker 2: and I remember thinking a three is probably just as
Speaker 2: good as five. And on that trip on the way home,
Speaker 2: the wheel came off the van that was that was
Speaker 2: a scary one, you know, but fortunately it didn't flip
Speaker 2: over or anything like that. So yeah, there was little stuff.
Speaker 2: I think we just got really lucky and honestly, a
Speaker 2: lot of the time, I mean, there was a lot
Speaker 2: of drinking going on, and we didn't exactly pay much
Speaker 2: attention to designated drivers. I don't say that proudly. I
Speaker 2: think it's just how it was.
Speaker 1: Okay. In the book, you're surprised if the acceptance of
Speaker 1: the music once you make recordings. Why do you think
Speaker 1: people embraced it?
Speaker 2: Well, I think there's a number of reasons why the
Speaker 2: music reacted like it did. I think so much of
Speaker 2: all of this story is timing. I think maybe if
Speaker 2: someone had made similar records to the records we made
Speaker 2: five years earlier or five years later, they may not
Speaker 2: have mattered the same way that those records mattered to
Speaker 2: our experience. I think there was just a moment where
Speaker 2: this thing that we were a part of accidentally was
Speaker 2: connecting with different scenes and different groups of of hardcore
Speaker 2: kids and metal kids and punk rock kids. It was
Speaker 2: all sort of connecting at that point in time. And
Speaker 2: as I said earlier, I think there were platforms popping
Speaker 2: up that were supporting that. There's a thing called Much
Speaker 2: Music at the time that was like a video platform,
Speaker 2: and there was MTV Two was MTV's rebrand where they
Speaker 2: were instead of where MTV was playing all this reality
Speaker 2: show stuff on their big corporate channel they had, they
Speaker 2: had a second channel that was more music oriented, and
Speaker 2: they were really giving a lot of attension to underground bands.
Speaker 2: And so there was this whole just connection going on
Speaker 2: between the independent scenes and the bands that were starting
Speaker 2: to pop up, and the platforms that were made available
Speaker 2: to us, and it all synced up. And I think
Speaker 2: it's the kind of thing like if we were out
Speaker 2: in the water on our board when the wave came,
Speaker 2: if we had been on the beach complaining that there
Speaker 2: aren't any waves, we wouldn't have caught the wave, if
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. If we came the next
Speaker 2: day with our board and there were no waves, we wouldn't.
Speaker 2: It was just the right time and it was there
Speaker 2: and we were doing the right thing, and we that
Speaker 2: was the luck part and it's still luck. In my mind,
Speaker 2: it's still good fortune. But the thing about us is
Speaker 2: we have always been very, very genuine. We weren't doing
Speaker 2: something trying to catch a trend. We were just being ourselves.
Speaker 2: And there is something about this group of guys that
Speaker 2: is some often to a fault, just so genuine, warts
Speaker 2: and all, and we were just being We were there.
Speaker 2: This band has always been very real, and we were
Speaker 2: very real back then, and I think that was pretty
Speaker 2: undeniable that anyone that might happen to pay attention, And
Speaker 2: I think that was intriguing jumping all the way forward.
Speaker 1: There is no MTV of any note at this point
Speaker 1: in time. There are a million different outlets. To what
Speaker 1: degree is your career's lamb of God hurt by the
Speaker 1: fact that we live in this modern world where there
Speaker 1: are a million options and hard to flow to the
Speaker 1: top of the pile. In areas where people were unaware
Speaker 1: of you might become aware of you today.
Speaker 2: You mean, yeah, yeah, I don't think it's hurt at all.
Speaker 2: I think I think it would be really really challenging
Speaker 2: from my mind to navigate today's landscape escape as a
Speaker 2: new young, emerging artist, a new ambitious band trying to
Speaker 2: figure out how to get hurd or how to get seen,
Speaker 2: or how to make the right noise in a world
Speaker 2: full of all these options. I wouldn't know how to
Speaker 2: do that today. But I think because Lamb of God
Speaker 2: came from the time that we came from and we are,
Speaker 2: we built this into what we are now. The band's
Speaker 2: bigger now than it's ever been, and so I don't
Speaker 2: know that any of it hurts us. I mean, we
Speaker 2: play huge shows, we get these great festival opportunities, and
Speaker 2: we play you know, small sheds on our own and
Speaker 2: arenas and that, and so I don't know. Again, it's
Speaker 2: sort of that theme. I can never imagine it getting
Speaker 2: any bigger than it is, and I felt that way
Speaker 2: the whole time through so you know, here at you know,
Speaker 2: and I turned fifty two yesterday and the band, thank you,
Speaker 2: and the band's still going strong. So I don't I
Speaker 2: can't really say we're hurt by anything. I'm just ecstatic
Speaker 2: and thrilled and grateful that people still care to listen
Speaker 2: because we sure we still have a great time making
Speaker 2: this music. For sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, you make a couple of independent records, Epic comes
Speaker 1: calling a did you have any trepidation signing with Epic,
Speaker 1: or you say we're in the big League's b you
Speaker 1: say in the book, you're just doing your usual thing,
Speaker 1: and Epic is pushing and pushing for a record, and
Speaker 1: your normal process is to collect riffs and other ideas
Speaker 1: over a year and then this time you have to
Speaker 1: do it in shorter. I thought you were setting it
Speaker 1: up for like, well, it wouldn't be successful. It's a
Speaker 1: classic second album syndrome, But in this case it was
Speaker 1: so tell me about signing with the major label men
Speaker 1: making that record.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's coming off the experience of that second
Speaker 2: record called As the Palace Has Burned that we did
Speaker 2: with the Prosthetic Records. We made the right video for
Speaker 2: the right song, We got the right attention, and it
Speaker 2: caught people's eyes at the next level, at the major
Speaker 2: label level, and they signed us. And they told us
Speaker 2: when they signed us, Kaz, the legendary A and R
Speaker 2: guy Caz came down and with Scott Greer, who is
Speaker 2: you know, working in conjunction with him at the time,
Speaker 2: and they came down and said, listen, we don't want
Speaker 2: to change anything about who you guys are. That's why
Speaker 2: we're signing you think you guys are the best example
Speaker 2: of this scene that's blowing up right now, that we
Speaker 2: just want to be part of it and we want
Speaker 2: you to be our engagement with that world. And they
Speaker 2: have proven true to that word because we're still on
Speaker 2: Epic records, and that was twenty years ago, more than
Speaker 2: twenty years ago. So but for me at the time,
Speaker 2: and I think for us collectively, we felt like a
Speaker 2: major label us, Okay, sure, let's do it. Let's make
Speaker 2: sure we do the right one, because there were several
Speaker 2: that came or that were sniffing around, and as I recall,
Speaker 2: Epic wasn't the they didn't have the biggest offer financially.
Speaker 2: As I recall, I remember there being another option that
Speaker 2: was for more money. But they didn't have that conversation
Speaker 2: that I just told you about. They didn't they didn't
Speaker 2: say we don't want to change anything. We think you
Speaker 2: guys are great, We just want to we just want
Speaker 2: to be a part of it. And that resonated with us,
Speaker 2: and again talking about sort of intention and deliberate things,
Speaker 2: and some of it's luck, but we believe that, and
Speaker 2: I think us paying attention and kind of tuning into
Speaker 2: that part of their presentation wind up being really a
Speaker 2: good move because we're still here, We're still on Epic Records.
Speaker 2: So but for us at the time, we were like, Okay, cool,
Speaker 2: we'll sign with your label, and that means we probably
Speaker 2: don't have to have a job for at least a
Speaker 2: year and a half two years until we get dropped.
Speaker 2: And that was the way we thought about it. We
Speaker 2: were just sure we were going to make a record
Speaker 2: for him and get dropped. But for me, meant I
Speaker 2: probably wouldn't have to be on a roof for at
Speaker 2: least a year, and that sounded like a great deal
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Okay, couldn't Eventionally, BAM's complained the label is telling us
Speaker 1: what to do, and there's pressure. What's your experience bit.
Speaker 2: I don't remember ever hearing pressure to change anything about
Speaker 2: anything musically at all. I just remember, and I don't
Speaker 2: tell this story in the book, and I won't say
Speaker 2: the gentleman's name, but there was a record executive that
Speaker 2: came down early in and we were going to play
Speaker 2: him some new material and he was all jazzed up about,
Speaker 2: you know, we're gonna do this, and we've got this
Speaker 2: number for a budget for your first video, and we
Speaker 2: played him a couple songs and then on his way out,
Speaker 2: that sounds great, guys, we're gonna get right going. Don't
Speaker 2: forget we've got this number for your next video. And
Speaker 2: it was half that he had cut the budget between
Speaker 2: the time he'd walked in the room at the time
Speaker 2: he walked out. But I understood, you know, this is
Speaker 2: a hard sell. You know, this was really really extreme
Speaker 2: music for the time, especially We're we're you know, we're
Speaker 2: not so extreme anymore because things just continue to get
Speaker 2: heavier and heavier and more abrasive. But at the time
Speaker 2: for a major label band, we were we were really
Speaker 2: really heavy, really you know, verging on you know, to
Speaker 2: conventional ears unlistenable, right, So I understood that. I thought
Speaker 2: it was really funny. But to that point, no one
Speaker 2: ever ever said, hey, you guys, think maybe you want
Speaker 2: to sing a little more on this thing, or maybe
Speaker 2: we can we can shine this up a little bit.
Speaker 2: They really didn't. They really didn't. They let us be
Speaker 2: us and they and they still do. And I think
Speaker 2: that I hear all the horror stories and the complaints
Speaker 2: about major labels, and I don't discount any of them
Speaker 2: It's just not been my experience with Epic. We've just
Speaker 2: had such a great relationship with that label and had
Speaker 2: such a good run with them that fortunately for us,
Speaker 2: we've always always been really happy with our situation.
Speaker 1: Any pressure to be the deadline.
Speaker 2: Oh none. That I recall only that first record, only
Speaker 2: that first record, because and that was pressure just by
Speaker 2: nature of the situation. We had very recently released the
Speaker 2: as the Palaces Burn record, and then Epic signed us
Speaker 2: kind of right off the heels of that because it
Speaker 2: was it was popping. So when Epic signs you, when
Speaker 2: a major label signs you from from an independent label,
Speaker 2: they don't really care about you cycling out that record
Speaker 2: you just put put out and you going on tour
Speaker 2: for a year and a half to promote a record
Speaker 2: that is not theirs. You know, to hell with that record.
Speaker 2: We want our record. Now you're with us, Now, let's
Speaker 2: let's hear some music, you know. So in that sense,
Speaker 2: I felt a lot of pressure just to kind of
Speaker 2: catch up with the situation that we had just entered
Speaker 2: into the relationship we had just entered into creatively, I
Speaker 2: had to catch up and be ready to give the music.
Speaker 2: And I had really just kind of squeezed myself out musically,
Speaker 2: me and the guys I'm write with, we felt kind
Speaker 2: of purged, and then all of a sudden, You've got
Speaker 2: to make the most important record of your life at
Speaker 2: the time, and frankly, probably still was the most important
Speaker 2: record in my life, although I don't think of it
Speaker 2: that way until now, but you know, it was a
Speaker 2: very very pivotal record in your career. And certainly at
Speaker 2: the time it wasn't lost on me that I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I gotta make a hell of a record. This is
Speaker 2: my first major label record, and I don't have anything.
Speaker 2: I don't have anything, So in that sense that there
Speaker 2: was pressure, but it wasn't someone saying, hey, guys, you're late.
Speaker 2: It wasn't that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Okay. Throughout the book there's a theme of addiction. Hey
Speaker 1: you're a middle class guy, be your intelligence. See you're educated.
Speaker 1: D It's a cliche. Wasn't there part of you saying,
Speaker 1: wait a second, what am I doing here?
Speaker 2: The thing about addiction and alcoholism, Bob, if it was
Speaker 2: a matter of intelligence, or if it was a matter
Speaker 2: of morality, it would be it would be eradicated. Some
Speaker 2: of the most intelligent thoughtful, kindest, most creative, most exceptional
Speaker 2: people I know have been drug addicts and alcoholics, and
Speaker 2: I think it can sometimes be mischaracterized as a lapse
Speaker 2: in judgment, or elapse in planning, or ellapse in consideration.
Speaker 2: And in my personal experience and the vast experience I've
Speaker 2: had with other addicts and alcoholics, none of those things
Speaker 2: are factors.
Speaker 1: Well, looking back at your not brief period with drugs
Speaker 1: and alcohol, what flip the switch? Let me just give
Speaker 1: a couple of concepts. I mean, for me, if you
Speaker 1: you're in a band, and you're a successful band, you
Speaker 1: go and you play the thousands, they go home, you're
Speaker 1: on the bus, It's impossible to calm down, it's impossible
Speaker 1: to sleep. You got to get up and do again.
Speaker 1: What were the driving forces of your addiction?
Speaker 2: I believe that I would have been an addict alcoholic
Speaker 2: if I had been a roofer, if I had been
Speaker 2: a political science professor, or if I had been a
Speaker 2: rock star, if you will, I believe that drugs and
Speaker 2: alcohol react with my chemistry and my emotional and psychological
Speaker 2: makeup in a way that has a very very soothing
Speaker 2: and calming effect, in a way that is different than
Speaker 2: how it might react with you physiologically, which in my opinion,
Speaker 2: hijacks my reward system or my sense of wellness. And
Speaker 2: I'm not a doctor. I'm not an addictionologist, if that's
Speaker 2: actually a thing, or I'm not a therapist. I'm not
Speaker 2: any of those things. But I am an addict in recovery,
Speaker 2: and so I have lived a life before drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 2: I have lived a life extensively ruled by drugs and alcohol,
Speaker 2: and I have a life now that doesn't include them.
Speaker 2: And based on that experience, it's my understanding and my
Speaker 2: belief that the relief and the sense of security that
Speaker 2: the addict feels when they're exposed to their drug of
Speaker 2: choice is something that is so compelling and so necessary
Speaker 2: for their kind of mental state that uh, it can't
Speaker 2: be out intellectualized.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's to the degree you can. Can you separate
Speaker 1: your addiction from alcohol to your addiction primarily to opiates.
Speaker 1: Were they two separate things? Was essentially the same thing?
Speaker 1: Did one lead to another? What can you.
Speaker 2: Tell us as it's as far as I believe, the
Speaker 2: only difference between an addiction to alcohol and an addiction
Speaker 2: to opiates is it's the same as you like Thai
Speaker 2: food and I like Indian food. It's addiction is addiction
Speaker 2: and alcohol is a drug. There is a difference in
Speaker 2: the sense that one is legal and the other is not,
Speaker 2: except under specific circumstances. But I don't think the legal
Speaker 2: status of a particular substance and really governs many people's
Speaker 2: attraction to one versus the other. I don't think that
Speaker 2: is a very guiding premise when it comes to one's
Speaker 2: engagement with alcohol or drugs. For me personally, as you asked,
Speaker 2: I think I drank alcoholically for a very long time,
Speaker 2: and I think I was what we sort of colloquially
Speaker 2: refer to as a high functioning alcoholic. I drank every day,
Speaker 2: and I drank heavily, but it did not impact my
Speaker 2: daily routines and my relationships to the degree that my
Speaker 2: opiate use eventually did. It certainly impacted those things, but
Speaker 2: not to the degree and not with the same dire
Speaker 2: and consequences with the same expedients that my opiate.
Speaker 1: Eustd Okay, you a couple of times in the book
Speaker 1: you say you talk about the drugs and addiction being equal,
Speaker 1: but you really do not enjoy cocaine.
Speaker 2: For a guy that hates it, I sure did enough
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Well, that didn't come across of the book, and the
Speaker 1: book it sounded like you did it rarely. So what
Speaker 1: was your problem with cocaine?
Speaker 2: I just don't really like the buzz man. It turns
Speaker 2: it's instant asshole powder. I've never met anyone that was
Speaker 2: more fun to be around when they're doing cocaine, unless
Speaker 2: I was doing it and they had some.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you're taking opiates, you're kind of checking out
Speaker 1: and you're kind of removed alcohol. You know, it can
Speaker 1: make you more of a party person, make you more verbal,
Speaker 1: make you more of a fighter. But did you find
Speaker 1: the the effects of opiates? What was it like being
Speaker 1: the person taking the opiates?
Speaker 2: For me, it would early in. I mean, there's there
Speaker 2: is a so there's a curve to this stuff. You know,
Speaker 2: at first it works, and then for a while it works,
Speaker 2: and then it stops working, and you wonder why it's
Speaker 2: not working the same anymore. So you do more, or
Speaker 2: you do different versions of it, or you administer it
Speaker 2: in different ways, trying to find a reason why it's
Speaker 2: not doing what it used to do. As it turns out,
Speaker 2: that's just how addiction works. But when you're in it,
Speaker 2: you don't realize that, so you're chasing it. The question
Speaker 2: is how did opiates make me feel? And I think
Speaker 2: what you're getting at is why in particular was I
Speaker 2: drawn to that type of drug. For me, it created
Speaker 2: early on a sense of well being and it's a
Speaker 2: cure for anxiety that I tend to carry with me
Speaker 2: through my day to day life. And you know I've
Speaker 2: said before and this is by new means trying to
Speaker 2: promote or glamorize anything, but to me, for me, at
Speaker 2: least not to me, but for me, ope, it's were
Speaker 2: the best anxiety medicine I'd ever come across, far better
Speaker 2: than alcohol or anything else. So when I became exposed
Speaker 2: to that in a recreational sense, I realized that, without
Speaker 2: really getting too detailed in my analysis of it, I
Speaker 2: just knew that that made me feel very, very okay,
Speaker 2: and I liked that feeling. I wasn't worried about much
Speaker 2: of anything.
Speaker 1: Okay, anxiety, I would assume. You know, if you're clean now,
Speaker 1: anxiety is popping up all the time. When do you
Speaker 1: encounter anxiety? How do you cope with it without drugs?
Speaker 2: Well? I still certainly experience anxiety. I think I don't
Speaker 2: really know how to answer that, Bob, except to say, you.
Speaker 1: Know, let me ask a different way.
Speaker 2: Okay, do you take Xanax.
Speaker 1: Or out of van or any other anti anxiety medications?
Speaker 2: No? I don't take any mood or mine altering drugs. Oh, okay, don't.
Speaker 2: I don't take niqlo when I have the flu.
Speaker 1: Okay. So let's just assume I say, hey, Mark, tomorrow,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to the airport, not private, we're flying commercial,
Speaker 1: and then we got to be here by this time.
Speaker 1: Is your anxiety starting to rise?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It is? It is it? Actually it is. But
Speaker 2: don't you think these are life on life's terms kind
Speaker 2: of things? I mean that this is, you know, I
Speaker 2: think I have been able, through a process of recovery
Speaker 2: to put myself in a state of kind of mindfulness
Speaker 2: and acceptance of the terms of my life on any
Speaker 2: given day, which is a very good life, by the way.
Speaker 2: And more than anything, I have learned that at whatever
Speaker 2: anxiety I might be feeling or confronted with at any
Speaker 2: given time, or whatever self doubt or self loathing, or
Speaker 2: all of these things that were for a time treated
Speaker 2: successfully by drugs and alcohol and then later treated entirely
Speaker 2: unsuccessfully by them. What I have learned is that whatever
Speaker 2: I'm experiencing is temporary and is never worth going back
Speaker 2: to the way I was living, because I live under
Speaker 2: the assumption that if I use drugs or alcohol at
Speaker 2: all of any kind, then I will in short time
Speaker 2: be where I was at the end of my run,
Speaker 2: and that is a place I never care to be again.
Speaker 1: So your philosophy is it self created or is that
Speaker 1: a result of therapy? You're a twelve step program.
Speaker 2: I certainly work a recovery program, and I've also have
Speaker 2: a good therapist, and I've also done a lot of
Speaker 2: thinking about this myself and have a lot of experience
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 1: Okay, a lot of times, you know, you're talking about things,
Speaker 1: especially guys, they don't talk about it. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people with anxiety issues deal with this via avoidance. Okay,
Speaker 1: But in your case, you can say, hey, it's gonna
Speaker 1: upset me, it's gonna make me buzz, but I can
Speaker 1: go forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I think knowing the depth that
Speaker 2: I have dug to in my life trying to hide
Speaker 2: and escape and make myself disappear, you know, you just
Speaker 2: wind up in a room by yourself, angry, doing drugs alone.
Speaker 2: I don't want to live like that anymore.
Speaker 1: Okay, you detail that you have a girlfriend in New
Speaker 1: York working in the music business. Ultimately you marry someone
Speaker 1: in Richmond. You have the unfortunate experience of the first
Speaker 1: child not continuing to live, but you have the second child,
Speaker 1: and then the woman you're married to moves out. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of discussion about that. Later in the book,
Speaker 1: you say, well, she wasn't the right one. Was she
Speaker 1: not the right one and you didn't marry the right one?
Speaker 1: Or was it drugs? What was going on in that
Speaker 1: first relationship.
Speaker 2: I don't really think it's fair too tell other people's
Speaker 2: part of this story that aren't necessarily involved in the storytelling.
Speaker 2: So there's some components of along the way that I
Speaker 2: left out or that I glossed over, and that was deliberate.
Speaker 1: Okay, you ultimately meet another woman. She's a bartender and
Speaker 1: she's a big drinker. This isn't a red flag.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, you're asking a guy that's throwing red
Speaker 3: flags everywhere he walks to have a red flag.
Speaker 2: Right at that point in time, I was a red flag.
Speaker 2: I was a blinking red neon sign.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But the way the book is written, which of
Speaker 1: course written words and emotions are two different things. You know,
Speaker 1: you kind of say that this person was testing the limits,
Speaker 1: and okay, you're overseas and she starts to recover. To
Speaker 1: what degree was her decision to recover impactful on you?
Speaker 1: Would you have recovered at that point in time if
Speaker 1: you were not involved with her and she had not
Speaker 1: start did recovery?
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a great question, all of that question. I
Speaker 2: think when I met that person, the fact that she
Speaker 2: didn't do hard drugs was you know, you characterize her
Speaker 2: heavy drinking as a red flag. To me, the fact
Speaker 2: that she didn't do hard drugs, which is contrary to
Speaker 2: my philosophy that I that I pointed out to you earlier,
Speaker 2: which is true. What I truly believe that alcohol is
Speaker 2: a drug like any other. But at the time I
Speaker 2: was engaging in this sort of cultural you know, mischaracterization
Speaker 2: as alcohol as being the lesser of evils, right, So
Speaker 2: I was I was subscribing to that notion, and to me,
Speaker 2: the fact that she didn't do hard drugs was a win.
Speaker 2: So I certainly liked her quite a bit and had
Speaker 2: a lot of feelings for anyway, But I was able
Speaker 2: to convince myself that she is this is great because
Speaker 2: all she does is drink, and that's going to help me.
Speaker 2: Is because I'm gonna be with her, you know, obviously
Speaker 2: we spend a lot of time together. That's gonna help
Speaker 2: me stay away from hard drugs. Turned out not to
Speaker 2: be true. And I used to tell her all the time,
Speaker 2: I'm postponing the inevitable. I really really need to get clean.
Speaker 2: I just you know, I just haven't seen it. And
Speaker 2: you know, I had already been to treatment and that
Speaker 2: didn't work, and so I was, you know, I was
Speaker 2: starting at by this point in the book, and by
Speaker 2: this point, my story is starting to bounce back and
Speaker 2: forth between these attempts to at the time what I
Speaker 2: thought would be able to control my addiction, and it
Speaker 2: turns out that I can't control it.
Speaker 1: Okay, getting off opiates, just like Pete Townsend said, getting
Speaker 1: off heroin was nothing compared to getting off out of
Speaker 1: man getting off opiates. Even if you know, I just know,
Speaker 1: if I have an operation, whatever I'm taking opiates, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be one night where I just cannot fall asleep
Speaker 1: at when I'm stopping them. Okay, so you talk about
Speaker 1: going cold Turkey a number of times just because drugs
Speaker 1: aren't even available. Never at that time do you say
Speaker 1: that was such a painful process. I'm going to think
Speaker 1: twice before I start again.
Speaker 2: You are again applying this notion that logic and intellect
Speaker 2: plays a factor. And I understand why one might feel
Speaker 2: compelled to do that, but for me, it was never.
Speaker 2: You know, I think you know, I considered myself all
Speaker 2: along to be a relatively intelligent guy. It wasn't a
Speaker 2: matter of don't touch the stove because last time you
Speaker 2: touched it, it burned you. You know, the addict's brain
Speaker 2: tells you, h, well, it's not going to burn you
Speaker 2: this time, and you really should touch it.
Speaker 1: And what did your parents say about your addiction?
Speaker 2: Well, they were well. My father passed away while I
Speaker 2: was in treatment. The first time I ever went to treatment,
Speaker 2: which I talk about in the book, was really a
Speaker 2: godsend because the hospital he was in dying in was
Speaker 2: just down the street from the treatment center I was in,
Speaker 2: so I was able to go see him, and I
Speaker 2: was able to go see him during a forty five
Speaker 2: day window that I was not strung out on drugs.
Speaker 2: So my dad and I were very, very very close,
Speaker 2: and he knew I had a problem, and for the
Speaker 2: most part, I managed to still engage with my dad
Speaker 2: in a way that didn't directly confront him with my addiction.
Speaker 2: But for those last couple weeks I was clean. And
Speaker 2: then he passed away, and that was such a gift
Speaker 2: for me. Gosh, it's such a gift for me to
Speaker 2: know that I had that clarity and that pure time
Speaker 2: with my father while he was dying. Such a gift.
Speaker 2: Of course, didn't keep me clean, but I did have
Speaker 2: that window, and that's so valuable to me. It's priceless.
Speaker 2: And your mother, my mother was you know, she was
Speaker 2: probably the only effort. There were times when she was
Speaker 2: probably the only person in the world that believed it,
Speaker 2: that was left that believed in me. She as she
Speaker 2: tells me to this day, my mom's still here and
Speaker 2: she's an incredible woman, and she tells me this today.
Speaker 2: She said, I always knew you were going to make it.
Speaker 2: It was tearing me apart to see what you were
Speaker 2: going through, but I always knew you were going to
Speaker 2: make it.
Speaker 1: Okay, stopping the way in the book, it seems like
Speaker 1: it's a personal decision in twelve step program. Is that accurate.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't want to talk too much about program,
Speaker 2: because you know the program.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm just trying to say I don't need to
Speaker 1: know the specifics. What I'm trying to say is some
Speaker 1: people go to rehab, some people have medical intervention. The
Speaker 1: way the book read, it seemed like the program, along
Speaker 1: with a desire, was all it took to quit permanently.
Speaker 1: Is that true?
Speaker 2: Well, I never say permanently. Good point, I never say permanently.
Speaker 2: I do it a day at a time, and it's
Speaker 2: been five years and eleven months a day to time.
Speaker 2: So I think for me it took this well, as
Speaker 2: we call it, this gift of desperation. I was so
Speaker 2: just dead inside. I was so there was nothing was working.
Speaker 2: I couldn't the relief I was chasing through drugs and
Speaker 2: alcohol was no longer available from drugs and alcohol. And
Speaker 2: after beating my head against that wall so many times
Speaker 2: and not getting in, I finally began to concede that
Speaker 2: this just wasn't working anymore. And it just seemed to
Speaker 2: consistently be not working. So if it wasn't working then,
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do. So what I did
Speaker 2: was I started putting myself around people that had been
Speaker 2: through that as well and just started taking their advice
Speaker 2: and hanging out with them and doing the things that
Speaker 2: they did. And over time, very sort of I was
Speaker 2: angry about it. I was resentful about it. It felt
Speaker 2: like breaking up with a girlfriend that was madly in
Speaker 2: love with. But over time I started collecting a little
Speaker 2: bit of sobriety time and my life started to get better.
Speaker 2: And coincidentally, the woman that I was in a relationship
Speaker 2: with was doing that across the Atlantic at the same
Speaker 2: time as me, and we, you know, we're she's down
Speaker 2: the hall. We're married today, we have we have a
Speaker 2: child together, and we you know, reflect on that time
Speaker 2: and say, you know, we didn't get sober together. We
Speaker 2: got sober at the same time.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about Randy the lead singer, being clean
Speaker 1: when you're addicted. The members of the band listen to
Speaker 1: most bands drink, you know, they party whatever were you
Speaker 1: were addicted. Was there anybody else in the band who
Speaker 1: was addicted?
Speaker 2: I don't I wouldn't answer that if there was, or
Speaker 2: if there wasn't. You know, that's not the kind of
Speaker 2: thing you say.
Speaker 1: That I don't need to know names. I'm asking a
Speaker 1: different question. Are you the lone outsider or is this
Speaker 1: the nature of the act?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think everyone in our band at
Speaker 2: some point has had their own relationship with alcohol and
Speaker 2: or drugs. You know, Randy is vocally and publicly sober,
Speaker 2: and I am as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is the state of metal music today?
Speaker 2: Well, that's a great question. The state of metal music today.
Speaker 2: It's exciting, it's really exciting. There's a lot of young
Speaker 2: bands that I see popping up that are referencing bands
Speaker 2: that I remember when we were coming up, and so
Speaker 2: it's it's I'm old enough where I can see things
Speaker 2: to come back around and see like a lot of
Speaker 2: the Scandinavian influence and a lot of like the symphonic
Speaker 2: Norwegian influence of metal is kind of popping and sort
Speaker 2: of being reformulated and popping up into very hip young
Speaker 2: bands now and seeing that stuff react. A lot of
Speaker 2: the hardcore stuff, the more traditional kind of Northeast hardcore
Speaker 2: sound is getting repurposed and coming up in these young,
Speaker 2: exciting bands, and it's really a thrill to see I
Speaker 2: don't personally spend a lot of time in young heavy
Speaker 2: metal scenes. I'm fifty two years old, I have a family,
Speaker 2: I have, and I also and this is out of
Speaker 2: no disrespect or no disconnection from the music. But I
Speaker 2: will say that, like I always use this example, if
Speaker 2: you make your living running a pizza shop, when you
Speaker 2: have Sunday off, you probably don't order pizza, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. So I am so connected to metal
Speaker 2: via the band and the music that we make that
Speaker 2: I don't rely pursue a lot of stuff. But I
Speaker 2: do listen from a distance, and I see a lot
Speaker 2: of exciting a lot of exciting metal bands happening.
Speaker 1: Let me put it a different way. I remember when
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin was considered heavy metal and Black Sabbath was
Speaker 1: too far out. Today, if you listen to the format
Speaker 1: active rock, most of the bands I'm generalizing here derivative
Speaker 1: of Metallica, And although Metallica had its moment with the
Speaker 1: Black Album nineteen ninety one with Enter Sandman, et cetera,
Speaker 1: where it matched the mainstream, generally speaking, most of what
Speaker 1: the bands in the bands in that framework, thrash metal,
Speaker 1: et cetera has a wide but does not reach everybody.
Speaker 1: It's sort of its own ghetto. Do you perceive it
Speaker 1: that way?
Speaker 2: Do I perceive thrash metal as being a heavy mate.
Speaker 1: I don't want to make a valet metal different things.
Speaker 1: What I mean, the way I put it is, to
Speaker 1: listen today's medical music, you need a handbook. You have
Speaker 1: to go through the history to get all where it is.
Speaker 1: And if you haven't followed the scene or you're not
Speaker 1: natural the scene, people aren't going to hear a song,
Speaker 1: Oh I like that metal song, It's like they're playing
Speaker 1: it in another universe.
Speaker 2: Well, Bob, I think for guys like me and you
Speaker 2: to to really sort of try and unpack today's metal.
Speaker 2: I don't think we're the target audience, right.
Speaker 1: I don't want to make it that. What I really
Speaker 1: want to say is how large is the metal market
Speaker 1: in general? Old bands, new bands, they go on the road.
Speaker 1: Is it growing? Is it decreasing? What's your perception?
Speaker 2: I think it's really healthy, you know. Would I say,
Speaker 2: has heavy metal ever been bigger? Probably so? But I think,
Speaker 2: you know, I just finished the tour Lamb of God
Speaker 2: finished a tour with Macedon. We had very very well
Speaker 2: attended shows at the LA Forum at Red Rocks in Colorado.
Speaker 2: I within the last year year and a half, I
Speaker 2: played Madison Square Garden, Pantera, and Lamb of God. These
Speaker 2: are huge historic venues, you know, and the fans are
Speaker 2: still coming out. Slip Knot is doing huge numbers and
Speaker 2: they're as heavy as it gets. Really still, metallica is otherworldly.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's you know, as big as you two.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think it's super healthy, man. I think
Speaker 2: I think it is. I think it's probably easy to
Speaker 2: miss because I don't think that you hear the same
Speaker 2: about these events that you might hear about I don't
Speaker 2: know Morgan Walland, for example, the biggest country star in
Speaker 2: the world right now, or you know any you know,
Speaker 2: any of these sort of crossover pop acts or whatever,
Speaker 2: or they get maybe they get more visible attention. But
Speaker 2: I think there's huge things going on in metal, and
Speaker 2: I think that that the fans are there and they're
Speaker 2: they're showing up.
Speaker 1: Well, can you tell us about the fans of metal?
Speaker 2: The fans of metal are lifers. Is it's a lifestyle music.
Speaker 2: It's it's something that a real metal head was a
Speaker 2: metal head when they were fifteen, and they're a metal
Speaker 2: head when they're fifty. We do a thing called Headbanger's Boat.
Speaker 2: We do it every year. It's a it's a cruise
Speaker 2: ship and we pack it full of like twenty bands
Speaker 2: and Lamb of God's the headliner. It sells out every year.
Speaker 2: We were on our what are we You're I think
Speaker 2: Herefore we just announced and it's almost sold out, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know it's it's families. It's I see people in
Speaker 2: their fifties bringing their teenage kids and making it a vacation,
Speaker 2: and it's just you realize, I'm reminded in I'm bringing
Speaker 2: this up because we just did it recently, and I'm
Speaker 2: just reminded at what a lifestyle this is, and the
Speaker 2: same way that you know, I told you earlier I'm
Speaker 2: a dead head, grateful dead is the lifestyle, right, it's not.
Speaker 2: It is the music, but it's also there's kind of
Speaker 2: a culture around it, and heavy metal is that way.
Speaker 2: It's that way the fans recognize each other and there's
Speaker 2: a familial kind of relationship between metal heads and metal fans,
Speaker 2: and and you know it's not specific to that. Punk
Speaker 2: Rocket is very much the same way, but it's just
Speaker 2: one of those music, one of those genres of music,
Speaker 2: where certainly there are lots of subgenres, but metal fans
Speaker 2: feel a kinship to one another.
Speaker 1: Okay, without mentioning names. Although I know these people historically
Speaker 1: over decades, they have been Republicans, they have been right wingers.
Speaker 1: They may not have been advertised. Again, okay, do you
Speaker 1: find the metal audience more right than left?
Speaker 2: I don't find it to be well, it probably. I
Speaker 2: think it depends where you go. Honestly, I think it
Speaker 2: depends what part of the world you're in, what part
Speaker 2: of the country you're in. I think more than anything, Bob,
Speaker 2: I think again, based on our last point, I think
Speaker 2: metal transcends that. I think for an hour and a
Speaker 2: half at a Lamb of God show, nobody in that
Speaker 2: audience that's got their hands in the air gives a
Speaker 2: hoot about who the guy next to them voted for.
Speaker 2: I think they're hoping that the band plays their favorite song.
Speaker 1: Traditionally, heavy metal has been the sound of the alienated.
Speaker 1: Do you find that, oh?
Speaker 2: I think that there are I think so. I think
Speaker 2: it's a bit counter in the sense that it's never
Speaker 2: been fully popular music. Maybe some versions of it were
Speaker 2: in the eighties. I think there's an underground spirit to
Speaker 2: heavy metal, and I think the imagery and the fashion
Speaker 2: associated with it, I think it all feels a little
Speaker 2: there's a thread to it that people feel a little counter,
Speaker 2: a little outside of the mainstream, and that's probably well,
Speaker 2: that's probably earned.
Speaker 1: Is inherently there a mode between metal and other formats
Speaker 1: or if we lived in the days of MTV too,
Speaker 1: never mind regular MTV when they played videos. Do you
Speaker 1: believe there are certain metal materials, certain metal songs, that
Speaker 1: if people just heard them, they would embrace them?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man, that's a great question. Do I believe that
Speaker 2: a certain metal songs that if people just heard then
Speaker 2: they would embrace me at all? Uh? Yeah, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: I mean Inner Sandman. Have you seen that footage of
Speaker 2: the Virginia Tech football team coming out to Inner Sandman?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm trying to say that happens
Speaker 1: in a different era in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: The song did, but the phenomenon around the song is
Speaker 2: modern contemporary.
Speaker 1: I guess. Let me be very clear, bands that started
Speaker 1: post mass exposure this century, are there songs equal to
Speaker 1: innersian Man that if they got the same exposure as
Speaker 1: Inner sand Man, they would have the same adoption.
Speaker 2: Well, inner Sandman is a high as a high benchmark.
Speaker 1: That that's a very high bar. Doesn't have to that's a.
Speaker 2: Very high bar, man. I think that might be up
Speaker 2: you talk about I mean, I'm getting off off the
Speaker 2: monoail here, but we talk about inner sam Man. You're
Speaker 2: talking about you're talking about paranoid, you're talking about breaking
Speaker 2: the law, You're talking about you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: That is one of the you're talking about. Smoke on
Speaker 2: the Water your Dad is like one a classic, classic,
Speaker 2: legendary zeitgeist capturing song. I wonder, man, I would love
Speaker 2: to know if those guys felt that lightning the first
Speaker 2: time they heard back a mix of that or the
Speaker 2: basic tracks of that come up, because it's just it's
Speaker 2: not even my favorite Metallica song, frankly, but you cannot
Speaker 2: deny and if this is what you're talking about, you
Speaker 2: can't deny that the universal connection and power to that song, right,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Is there another song? Are you asking me?
Speaker 2: Is there a song like that? Sense?
Speaker 1: Is there a song out there played by metal acts
Speaker 1: today that if they were exposed they would have the
Speaker 1: same level of acceptance or is the music so self rent,
Speaker 1: rential and different than really that's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: Oh, it'll happen again. It'll happen again.
Speaker 1: Okay, moving on to what degree? To what degree are
Speaker 1: you on social media and to what degree do you
Speaker 1: interact and know your fans.
Speaker 2: I am on well, I used to be on Twitter
Speaker 2: some years ago. I was on there quite a bit,
Speaker 2: and I just, man, it just really was. It was
Speaker 2: a strange addiction because I would catch myself on there
Speaker 2: arguing with people. So I'm not on that platform it's
Speaker 2: called X Now, I'm not on that platform here as much.
Speaker 2: I'm not on Facebook hardly at all. I do post
Speaker 2: pretty regularly on Instagram, and most of my Instagram has
Speaker 2: to do with vintage guitars and gear. I'm kind of
Speaker 2: a gear nerd, and we also do a little bit
Speaker 2: of homesteading and kind of farm chicken kind of stuff
Speaker 2: around here. So my Instagram is largely just scenes from
Speaker 2: my home and and then kind of gear nerding. But
Speaker 2: I'm on it quite a bit. My platform is it's
Speaker 2: I'd say it's reason reasonably known. It's I think my
Speaker 2: Instagram accounts about a hundred thousand people.
Speaker 1: So you know, bands have arcs, they tend not to
Speaker 1: have the same level of success consistently. To what degree
Speaker 1: are you concerned with maintaining audience and what is the
Speaker 1: status of Lamb of God today.
Speaker 2: I'm not concerned with maintaining audience. I'm grateful that we do.
Speaker 2: I think we have flirted at times over the course
Speaker 2: of our career, flirted with just dipped our toe in
Speaker 2: the water of like starting to make decisions based on
Speaker 2: what we think our fans might want to hear, or
Speaker 2: what they might or maybe sometimes even doing something that
Speaker 2: we think they expect. One thing, so let's do this
Speaker 2: and and and that starts feeling really unnatural, and we
Speaker 2: really try to avoid that, so I don't we don't
Speaker 2: make choices in the band with the fans in mind.
Speaker 2: That sounds off putting, but it's I think it's really
Speaker 2: in an effort to stay pure and stay generine, stay genuine.
Speaker 2: But I do. Uh. I'm astounded again. I talked about
Speaker 2: this story we just did. I see I see parents
Speaker 2: bringing their children, and I see fourteen year old kids
Speaker 2: with Lamba gotchers On singing songs that we recorded, you know,
Speaker 2: when they were two years old, and I'm just nothing.
Speaker 2: It's just the greatest, you know, besides like my children
Speaker 2: and my family. It's the greatest joy in my life
Speaker 2: to see fathers making connections with their kids on the
Speaker 2: front barricade of a LAMB show and just the joy
Speaker 2: in their eyes when the lights come up, and seeing
Speaker 2: them scream the songs together. And I'm just astounded at that.
Speaker 2: I get to be a part of that small little system,
Speaker 2: that circle that happens there, and so I know that
Speaker 2: we're creating new fans, or that new fans are being created,
Speaker 2: and I know that it's so much bigger than me
Speaker 2: or even the five of us, or even that song
Speaker 2: or whatever. It's just such a it's such as really
Speaker 2: I'm kind of hippy man, but it really is just
Speaker 2: sort of the supernatural, kind of spiritual phenomenon that music
Speaker 2: has that connection between people. And so I get to
Speaker 2: see that, I get to witness it, I get to
Speaker 2: be a part of it, and I'm just thrilled by it.
Speaker 1: Okay, in the book, you talk about yourself and another
Speaker 1: band member not going on certain tours for certain reasons,
Speaker 1: usually good reasons. Frequently that ends a band. How does
Speaker 1: everybody feel when you say, well, you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: sit this one out, or we gotta sit that person down,
Speaker 1: or they're gonna come back.
Speaker 2: I just don't know why it should end a band,
Speaker 2: or it should end someone's participation in a band. But
Speaker 2: maybe I take it for granted that the level of
Speaker 2: support and the level of brotherhood that we feel amongst
Speaker 2: ourselves is that sometimes your life is more important than
Speaker 2: your life as a member of Lamb of God, and
Speaker 2: sometimes you have something going on that you need to
Speaker 2: be available for that prohibits you from taking your seat
Speaker 2: in whatever this thing we have is going on, and
Speaker 2: we find ways around that, We find ways to love
Speaker 2: and support each other.
Speaker 1: At this point in time, have you been financially successful
Speaker 1: enough with the Lamb of God that if you wanted
Speaker 1: to call it a day today, that you have enough
Speaker 1: money to get to the end.
Speaker 2: I think so. I think I would probably have to
Speaker 2: adjust some things about my lifestyle, but I could probably
Speaker 2: figure that out if I had to.
Speaker 1: Okay, a lot of bands, as time goes on, they
Speaker 1: work less. In the book you're talking about when the
Speaker 1: band is really starting to break, as Lamb of God
Speaker 1: as supposed to burn the priest. You're work in morning, noon,
Speaker 1: and night, what's the philosophy today in terms of how
Speaker 1: much you work hiatus, solo albums, solo tours.
Speaker 2: So with with Lamb of God, it's a collective and
Speaker 2: it's it's you know, everyone has a voice, and we
Speaker 2: talk about as tour opportunities get presented to us, we
Speaker 2: talk about how long we've been on a cycle or
Speaker 2: how many times we've played in that you know, that
Speaker 2: continent or that territory, and is it do we want
Speaker 2: to go back again? And do we want to take
Speaker 2: a break, how we're feeling creatively, do we feel like
Speaker 2: we have material piling up? Is it time for us
Speaker 2: to start thinking about compiling new material and getting a
Speaker 2: record together. So those are all things we could just consider.
Speaker 2: And tours are usually these days, you know, discussed and
Speaker 2: starting to get planning a year out. So I always
Speaker 2: know almost at any given time with LAMB what my
Speaker 2: next eighteen months is going to look like. And that's
Speaker 2: a conversation we have internally. We have great management, we
Speaker 2: have a great booking agent, great team around all that stuff.
Speaker 2: So those are things conversations that are always happening about
Speaker 2: you know, you know, I have discussions today about what
Speaker 2: we might be doing or may or may not be
Speaker 2: doing in twenty twenty six, right, So we kind of
Speaker 2: are always ahead of ourselves and that look forward thinking
Speaker 2: that way, and the decisions are made collectively as time
Speaker 2: goes on. Yeah, I am interested in you know, there
Speaker 2: were in those early days. I wanted to be on
Speaker 2: the road when we first got one, and I wanted
Speaker 2: to be on the road all the time, just because
Speaker 2: my mindset was different. And that was twenty years ago
Speaker 2: and I was a much younger man, and my responsibilities
Speaker 2: and my whole lifestyle was completely different. And these days
Speaker 2: it's it's you know, it's different. I have children, I
Speaker 2: have a young daughter, I have a teenage daughter, I
Speaker 2: have a wife, I have a home, I have all
Speaker 2: these relationships and all these things that are that are
Speaker 2: high priority to me. The band is as well, So
Speaker 2: it's about fine. I think, you know, home life, homework
Speaker 2: balance is something that everyone probably struggles with most people,
Speaker 2: and that's no different for us with solo stuff. As
Speaker 2: you brought up. That is something that I just went
Speaker 2: on this complete tear, and I think some of it
Speaker 2: has to do with sobriety. I wrote the book and
Speaker 2: I've worked on a bunch of solo music recently, and
Speaker 2: it's just kind of like just purging all this creative
Speaker 2: energy out and it's been super productive and super fun,
Speaker 2: and I'm ready to let all that stuff get out
Speaker 2: into the world and happen, and you know, just enjoy
Speaker 2: the fact that I was able to be a part
Speaker 2: and be in some of those rooms.
Speaker 1: In a man that's on the road so much. What's
Speaker 1: the key to maintaining your relationship.
Speaker 2: Well, to be available and to stay engaged. And for me,
Speaker 2: the key to all of it is to have an
Speaker 2: identity and maintain an identity and maintain a life that
Speaker 2: exists outside of the band, both you know, in real
Speaker 2: terms and practical terms and also mentally. I love my
Speaker 2: role in Lamb of God. I love Lamb of God.
Speaker 2: I love everything that we get to do, and I
Speaker 2: exist wholly and completely outside of it as well. And
Speaker 2: for me, with my kids and my wife and my
Speaker 2: home life, Lamb of God doesn't necessarily come up all
Speaker 2: the time, you know.
Speaker 1: So you've had incredible success. You've gone on the record
Speaker 1: that you didn't anticipate that this music would have as
Speaker 1: wide of acceptance as it does. To the degree you
Speaker 1: look forward, what's the dream going forward.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate that question, and I think for me
Speaker 2: the dream is to just continue creating music that I
Speaker 2: enjoy making and to be able to help maybe help
Speaker 2: other people write songs. I've had the chance to work
Speaker 2: with other artists and putting their thing together, younger artists
Speaker 2: and people kind of up and coming trying to create
Speaker 2: their own career, and I really really love being a
Speaker 2: part of that stuff. And I love being, you know,
Speaker 2: the elder experienced guy in the room. That's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. And I love creating, writing and producing with artists.
Speaker 2: When it's not my thing that I'm going to perform,
Speaker 2: that's really exciting to me. And when I get a
Speaker 2: chance to do that stuff, I always find it very
Speaker 2: fulfilling and it's something I would love to continue doing.
Speaker 1: Okay, Mark, I think we've covered it for now. For
Speaker 1: those of you who want more detailed, much more detail,
Speaker 1: you can get Mark's book, Desolation really holds no punches.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for taking this time with
Speaker 1: my audience.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you, Bob, thanks for the opportunity. I really
Speaker 2: invite before.
Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob left Stets