Between The Buried And Me interview

Well, we're home right now. We're gearing up for a DVD release that we're going to be filming, so we're home preparing for that.

No, actually. We're going to film it in Nashville, Tennessee. It's just going to be a live show and then we'll throw some other footage and behind the scenes stuff, I guess. Whatever we can think of, really. We had talked to the label about it a little bit over the last year, but it wasn't really something we were dying to do or anything. But I guess when the opportunity came up, we were like, "alright, guess we'll give it a shot." I don't know, we'll see how it goes.

Well, as far as videos and stuff go, we're definitely kind of an anti-video band. We'd have to edit our songs down and I don't really think videos help a band like us. We're only going to sell X number of records, so it doesn't matter if we have videos out there or not. So it's just kind of a waste of money. DVD is something that a fan can grab on to a little more and get to know the band a little better, maybe. They can pay however much money and see a full concert. It's kind of more intimate, I guess, as opposed to a video which is just a three minute show-off of what kind of money you have and crazy effects. [laughing] Most video directors want to do really cheesy stuff and we're just not into it.

Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that that doesn't really...I mean, we've done videos in the past and it's been kind of a goofy experience. "Now you've gotta put blood on your hands, like you're shredding your hands apart when you're playing guitar..." It's just like, no, not our style.

[laughing] Exactly. Maybe ten years ago we would've done something like that, but when you start coming up on thirty years old, you don't want to do stuff like that. With the DVD, we're kind of producing it ourselves, so we can do whatever we want to do and anything we do for comical value will be on our own terms. More of a true representation of the band that we are.

Yeah, it was about three weeks. It seemed like an eternity we were over there.

Um, yeah. It was our first time over in Europe so we had pretty low expectations. But it was awesome. A lot of people were into it and it went way better than we thought it would go. It was real good, man.

We were definitely sort of the odd band out on that tour in terms of...I mean, Opeth is a heavy band, but, as far as song structures and stuff I think they're more digestible than we are. We were kind of the "crazy" band on tour, if you can imagine that. But it was still good. The crowd response was awesome and we had fans there. People that were exposed to us for the first time seemed into it. Obviously, the older Dream Theater crowd, they're kind of like Slayer fans, but for the most part it was really cool. The most awkward thing about it was that a lot of the venues were all seating - no standing room at all. It was theaters. The people in the front rows were the people who bought the VIP tickets, so those people are there to see Dream Theatre.

Some of the Lamb of God guys came out for the Richmond show. Who else came out...man, I don't even know. There were definitely people out at the shows but I really didn't pay much attention. Just random dudes from other bands. My mind is going blank right now. [laughing] I can't think of anybody, but yeah, older Dream Theater dudes.

All that stuff. If we do a headlining tour, it's so laid back. We just sort of show up and do whatever. We sound check for fifteen minutes and that's that. The show takes care of itself. When you do the bigger tours, it's much more regimented, especially when you have things like catering. Dinner is at a specific time. It's like being at camp. The headlining band sound-checks for three hours, and then you get up there and get a five minute line-check. There's so many people involved at that point as far as production managers and this and that. It's a whole different ballgame. The first time we ever did something like that, it was really a culture shock for us. Coming from Prayer For Cleansing and just playing hardcore shows predominantly for my whole career, it's a totally different thing. For us, I think we prefer more low-key and laid back, in an intimate setting where you don't have to deal with...you know. I think on that Progressive Nation tour, there were sixty or seventy people. It was absurd. There were people I didn't even meet and we were on the road for a month. I was seeing new people every day and like, "I wonder who that guy was."

[laughing] No, actually, no one ever told us "good set," other than maybe the guys in the other band.

Yeah! That's how we got on the tour. He's been a fan of the band for a while, which is weird, because all of us grew up listening to Dream Theater. They've been sort of our idols for a long time. He was really into us and all of those guys are super cool and down-to-earth dudes. He would watch our set and everything. Super cool guy, man. But yeah, they'd say good set or whatever. But the guys on the crew...I don't think they even listened to any of the bands. For them, it's just a job, you know? They're out there trying to make sure the show runs smooth. They could care less about the music.

[laughing] Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's tough. We get a half-hour set and we want to play mostly new material, and those songs are really long. On the Dream Theater tour, we played two songs.

Uh...uh...shit. "Ants in the Sky" and then whatever song is after that on the fuckin' record, man. I can't think. I don't know. Whatever, it was two songs.

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, that was the first song we wrote and I wrote the first half of it, I guess. Our bass player had some ideas and stuff, so we kind of would start with simple ideas, or we'll write passages and go from there. We built that song up and then it just ended up being brutally long. We were just like, "god damn, this is a fifteen minute song." So we figured we might as well make the entire record like one continuous piece of music. We started with "Ants in the Sky" and went from there to the end of the album, and then went back to the beginning and wrote to it.

Nah.

Yeah, especially now. In the past we did sort of limit ourselves, saying things were too long. As we've gotten older and realized...it doesn't matter. We can do what we want. It's not like it's going to effect our livelihood if we write long songs. With Colors, we just sort of went for it. We've always been a band that's never really cared what people thought about us or anything, so we just did whatever we wanted. We had no concern for the consequences or anything. Everybody's on the same page. We all just wanted to push the envelope on that album and just do crazy shit. We didn't care.

Yeah, that's what it was. We've never really made the conscious decision to not do something. We've always just wanted to do it all. We all came from the hardcore scene, I guess, and those are our roots so I think we'll always have that raw and aggressive sound. But we also all grew up on cheesy metal bands and Dream Theater, and all this stuff. We've always wanted to have that element of progressive music. We're always wanting to push it. We're always going to have breakdowns and fast parts, and noodly passages and wankery. It's really just a product of all of our influences and that's kind of where we are as a band. It's always an open book for us. We just love music and we wouldn't be doing it if we didn't love it. Our whole thing is that we want to progress and get better as musicians and songwriters. We're always wanting to challenge ourselves as well as the listener. The next record, I'm sure there will be even more weird stuff and who knows what direction it'll take. Who knows what we'll do.

Man, from the business end of things, not much has changed. It's not like we're getting rich playing fifteen minute long metal songs or anything. Nothing's really changed. We've got a sound guy, a tour manager, and a merch dude. That's how we roll. We usually tour in a van, but occasionally we'll do a bus. But the way gas prices go, we'll probably just roll in a van for the majority of our time as a band. We just kind of keep it real. We've never had a manager and I don't think we plan on having a manager in the future. We just do everything ourselves, from A to Z. We have a booking agent, but we're very involved in what tours we go on. Everything is done ourselves. We handle all the money, all the expenses...everything. Anything you can name, we do it. And that's how we kind of like it. We have that kind of hardcore ethic, I guess. We don't like to put something we've worked so hard at into somebody else's hands. We do it all, man. Even on these big tours, some of the bigger bands were always kind of surprised by how involved we are. We don't have people set up our gear for us and shit like that. We set up our own stuff, tune our own guitars, change our own strings...

Um, yeah. Unless things change a whole lot. We're older guys and we sort of depend on this to pay our bills and stuff. When you start hiring all of these people to give you a better image, I just think it's kind of pointless. You're just taking food off your own table. We just can't afford to pay all these people.

Definitely. We see being in a band as a blue-collar job. You go out there, you load your shit in, you play the show, you load your shit out, and you play the next show. The days of being a rock-star are pretty much over, unless you're selling millions of records.

[laughing] Yeah, we all do. I think our bassist actually doesn't have health insurance, but I'm trying to convince him to at least get that. I had to learn the hard way that health insurance is a necessity.

Man, I got some shit in my eye one time, man. I was sleeping on somebody's floor. We were on tour and sleeping on somebody's floor and something got into my eye and literally scratched my cornea off. It was one of the most painful things.

I woke up and my eye was all tearing-up and shit. I was like, "what the hell happened, man." I thought maybe there was something in it and I thought it maybe was just something in it, but I didn't know how serious it was. We had a show that night and my eyeball was beet-red. I had to go to the doctor multiple times and there was nothing they could really do to fix it. They didn't really know what happened. It had come out at some point, but it had already done the damage. They looked at my eye and said, "yeah, you don't really have a cornea anymore. It's scratched off." I was like, "oh, christ." My eye was constantly tearing for a month. It cost me like, $2,000, for nothing. Just to have them look at it. I decided to get health insurance after that.

That's crazy, dude.

I know, man. Part of me was boycotting health insurance for a few years, because I was like, "fuck it, man, it's such a racket and so much bullshit," but unfortunately when you realize how expensive everything is, you have to break down and get it. Maybe one day we'll get the universal health care like every other first-world country in the world. For now, I guess I gotta pay my monthly bill so they can take care of me.

I mean, it is what it is. I think sometimes people get the wrong idea about record labels. It's not like it used to be because obviously CD sales aren't good, so it's not like they just throw money. It doesn't matter who you're signed to unless it's a major label. Nobody just throws money at bands anymore. Victory's been cool in the sense where they've always let us do our own thing. They've never tried to limit us on what we could or couldn't do, creatively. We produce our own records - they don't put us in a studio with some high dollar producer who is going to fuck with our songs and shit. In that sense, they're cool, but in a sense our relationship is kind of limited. For lack of a better way to put it, we don't really need them. We're self-sufficient on the road. They do their thing and we do ours. They try to sell the record and do ads in magazines, and we go and play shows. We kind of have our own job. It's cool, we've never really butted heads with them. I'll say that. Who knows what the future holds, but like you said, we're kind of a weird band for that label. As weird as we are for them, I think they've done a pretty good job with us. I'm not going to say it's been perfect or anything. I think a lot of bands sign these record deals with labels and they think that all of a sudden they're taken care of for life. The bottom line is, if you're going to play heavy music, you've got to work your ass off. It doesn't matter who you're signed to; you're not going to get a million dollars from your record label. It's easy for people to talk about labels, but until you're really in the relationship...that's the only time you really have insight into it. It's kind of a hard thing. There are things that we would love to have done differently, but you live and learn, I guess. Bottom line is you just have to work hard and tour. That's what we try to do. Labels are there to make money, and unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of money to go around these days.

Jam bands?

I think it's cool, man. That's idea. That's what I want to be doing when I'm 60. Just jamming. I bought an Allman Brothers DVD recently.

Oh, Phish and Widespread Panic? Shit like that?

I'm not into it. I'm not a fan of those particular bands, but I'm all for it. The concept is cool. You get there and just jam out. That's like, every musicians dream when they first start playing guitar. They just want to jam. They just want to make noise. I'm into it, but I'm more of a fan of the classic rock jam bands like The Allman Brothers, Kansas, Yes...that kind of stuff. But uh, yeah, I'm all for the concept. I'm just not a fan of those particular groups.

Well, it was the label's idea - first of all. They approached us about it and we thought it'd be cool. We were like, "yeah, that'd be cool, we'll show our fans what we grew up on and what our influences are."

They say everything's a disaster. Unless it's an obscure death metal band, or like, a doom band or something.

[laughing] We knew a lot of people weren't going to like it. We chose some pretty weird stuff. But, you know, overall it went pretty well. It was more just us wanting to...it was kind of like, "okay, our label is going to pay for us to do this record where we just get to play a bunch of our favorite songs," so yeah, we'll do that shit. It was really cool for a couple of reasons. For one, we were able to show what we were influenced by over the years, and also, it's a really cool way to study older recordings and really see how bands like that got that sound. It taught us a lot about recording, I think, and the importance of layering. A lot of those older bands, they had a much more organic sound, as opposed to modern production where everything is super slick and there's no noise. Everything is really tight. Back then, it wasn't like that. It was totally a good learning experience. We learned a bunch about all recording, layering, and textures. It was a cool experience all the way around for us. Contrary to popular belief, it did not even count as part of our Victory contract, so we did not do it to get out of our contract. It was totally off the books and it was done just to do it. That was it.

Yeah, yeah. [laughing] That's always the case. It kind of goes back to what we said earlier. People who are sort of outside of the loop who don't really know how it works, they always speculate on the band and label relationships and it's rarely accurate. But no, it didn't count on our contract and it was basically done for fun. We had a good time doing it, so that's really all we care about.

Nah, man. I don't even know what I would do if I had to do something else. This is all I've ever really wanted to do and I'm doing it on a small scale, but still, it's sort of a dream come true. I get to travel around, make music, and write songs. It's fucking awesome, man. If I die poor and lonely, then I won't regret a thing because this is what I want to do. I don't think I'll ever want to do anything else. If I do something else, it's still going to be music related. Producing or something like that - something involving musical creativity right now.

[laughing] What would be my recourse after that?

I don't know. I don't know what I would do. I would probably just kill myself. That's a good question, man. I should insure these puppies.

I don't think I've seen that one. Great show, by the way.

Yeah, I know. I read that. Believe it or not, I go to the Goat once and again. I don't go to the board because I don't want to be humiliated because someone is going to talk shit on us. I used to in my younger days, but it's devolved and it's just all-out murder there now. I do go to the Goat though to check out the news. I hang out.

I don't go to the board, man. Occasionally, I'll open it just to see what's going on, but I'll read the first few topics and I'm like, "oh god, I've gotta get out of here."

[laughing] It gets brutal there, man. I've read some brutal, brutal comments on that site.

Oh yeah, yeah. It was nuts, man. Outrageous.

I'm probably the wrong guy to ask for this. All I listen to is bluegrass and classic rock.

Well, lets see. I'm a fan of a guy named Chris Thile. He was in this pop/bluegrass band called Nickel Creek. Fuckin' unbelievable mandolin player. So if anybody likes some shredding mandolin, they should check that guy out. He's awesome.

[laughing] Yeah. Let me try to think of some heavy stuff we're into...man, everybody already knows the band's we're into. Porcupine Tree, Pain of Salvation, Dream Theater and all those fuckin' prog bands. I'll tell them to check out this band called Allman Brothers. They've been around for a while but they haven't...

Nah, they're kind of like...the foundation of black metal. Emerged in the sixties, I think. Really killer band. Gregg Allman - used to be married to this woman named Cher...they had a kid who started this incredible metal band called Deadsy.

Yeah, you didn't know that was their son?

Yep, the main dude in Deadsy, which is highly disappointing. He must be disappointed beyond belief in his son.

He had a few hits, though.

[the rest of the conversation trails off into a discussion of awful bands and Raleigh, North Carolina]