BILL HUDSON: Surviving as a hired gun, Why YouTube stars won’t tour, and The limits of a producer

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host, Eyal Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we're now on our fifth year, but it's true, and it's only because of you, the listeners. And if you'd like to see us stick around for another five years, there are a few simple things that you can do that would really, really help us out, and I would be endlessly appreciative. Number one, share our episodes with your friends. If you get something out of these episodes, I'm sure they will too. So please share us with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me and our guests too. My Instagram is at al Levy urm audio. And let me just let you know that we love seeing ourselves tagged in these posts.

(00:00:57):

Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, I want to thank you all for the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never, ever charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way possible. All I ask in return is a share post and a tag. Now let's get on with it. Welcome to the URM podcast. I'm stoked about today's episode because it's the second time having Bill Hudson on the first time he came on, which was episode 1 35, I believe. It was just a great episode. We talked all about overcoming alcoholism, losing a bunch of weight, coming to America, and then playing for huge bands as a guitar player, basically living the dream, making it all happen from nothing and had him back on. And he was just as interesting as last time. The guy just has a lot to say and always has a lot going on from Trans-Siberian Orchestra to Udo to I am Morbid to playing guitar, metal gear, the video game, the guy is the definition, the epitome of a professional guitar player, and he's fucking awesome and super insightful. So I hope you enjoy this episode. I present you Bill Hudson. Bill Hudson, welcome back to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02:29):

How's it going, man?

Speaker 1 (00:02:31):

Coronavirus Town over here.

Speaker 2 (00:02:33):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:02:34):

It's been an interesting few days. What about you?

Speaker 2 (00:02:37):

Well, I mean it doesn't change much of my life when I'm not on tour. I'm hiding from everyone anyway.

Speaker 1 (00:02:43):

Yeah, that's what I've been saying too. Just so for anybody listening, I don't have the schedule in front of me for when it's going to come out, but for people listening, we're recording this on Friday, March 13th.

Speaker 2 (00:02:55):

Interesting day too.

Speaker 1 (00:02:57):

Interesting day. Yeah. After all that's gone on, it's like I wonder what today's going to bring if people are listening to this 10 years from now or 20 years from now. Just so you know, two days ago was kind of like when the Coronavirus situation took a turn for the way more serious when our president shut down, traveled to Europe for 30 days and people started to freak out, really freak out. So we're in the middle of a very interesting time period. I know it's affecting you because all tour are getting canceled and you're a professional guitar player through tours.

Speaker 2 (00:03:38):

Well, I'm actually in a very interesting position when it comes to the Coronavirus because not only does that affect me, my wife also happens to be working in China. I mean, right now she's home.

Speaker 1 (00:03:52):

I guess it's time to divorce, man.

Speaker 2 (00:03:54):

No, right now she is home. And what's funny is she came home on vacation for the first time since she went on the assignment. So it was her first time in the country in several months, and this was about two weeks before the whole Coronavirus thing started being talked about. So what was supposed to be a three week trip has now turned into, I don't know. She's been here for almost a month and a half. So it's good because I also happen to be home.

Speaker 1 (00:04:18):

So this is probably the first time in a while that you guys have this much time together.

Speaker 2 (00:04:23):

Oh yeah. Since fuck, since September last year or something.

Speaker 1 (00:04:27):

I mean, that could be good or bad.

Speaker 2 (00:04:30):

No, it's been good. I mean,

Speaker 1 (00:04:31):

No, I'm no fucking around.

Speaker 2 (00:04:33):

Yeah, she's working her job. She works for Universal Creative, so they're doing all the China stuff from the office here, and I happen to be working at home in the studio as well. So it kind of worked out. It was good. But absolutely, I mean, my first upcoming tour that I have is Doro, the German Queen of Metal on April 15th.

Speaker 1 (00:04:56):

That's not going to happen

Speaker 2 (00:04:58):

As of right now. It's still happening, but

Speaker 1 (00:05:01):

Dude, it's not going to happen. I will bet you, I'll bet you dinner

Speaker 2 (00:05:05):

Nam

Speaker 1 (00:05:06):

Some year.

Speaker 2 (00:05:06):

I know it's not going to happen, but that's the first one. And then it's going to be tough, man. It's going to be tough for everyone. I think the only people that are actually going to start making money are producers actually, because going back home into the studio,

Speaker 1 (00:05:24):

Well, for us it's an interesting scenario because we're an internet company and so our audience watches shit from home, so they're going to be home. So on that side of the equation, I think we're okay. But then there's, there's other stuff that gets fucked up in that we travel to go to nail the mix every month. We're supposed to go to Sweden in April.

Speaker 2 (00:05:54):

Oh shit, that

Speaker 1 (00:05:55):

Shit ain't happening. Fuck no, that's not happening. And since this is going to be released after it's announced, I can just tell you it's OPEC and Lepro a double month. It's like a good one too.

Speaker 2 (00:06:08):

Oh dude.

Speaker 1 (00:06:09):

I mean, we're still going to release it and go forward. We're just going to postpone the live date, but who knows? The one that we have in two weeks, that's probably going to get postponed. Dude coming in from Canada right now travel from Canada is not banned, but I bet you now that the Prime Minister's wife just got coronavirus, shit's going to get interesting between Canada and the us. So one of the major parts of our service is that live stream we do every month. So we've got to figure out ways around that. And then also a big part of our audience are live sound guys. I mean, part of our students, I'd say maybe a small percentage or pros, but still we have a whole category of our students that tour for a living do live sound locally. So it's interesting hearing everybody being like, whoa, I don't have work for three months suddenly.

Speaker 2 (00:07:05):

Yeah, exactly. And I mean it's really happening to everyone. We see it happen in the music industry the most, but everyone is, it is going to be a problem, man. But

Speaker 1 (00:07:17):

This is actually why I'm not very worried about it in the long run is because yes, it sucks, and yes, it's going to suck for a little while, but it's not something that's affecting only one industry and then the rest of the world just goes on. It's nothing. Everybody's kind of in the same boat. So I think when stuff like that happens, it's easier to overcome it together. I don't mean that in a hippie way, I just mean that it's a lot easier for people to be understanding. If you can't make it to something, it's not going to destroy your relationship because you just ditch somebody. Everybody understands what's going on.

Speaker 2 (00:07:56):

That being said though, I think that the hippie aspect of it is actually good.

Speaker 1 (00:08:04):

Yes, it is.

Speaker 2 (00:08:05):

I mean, dude, we are seeing social media. We were talking before this how divided everything has become with politics, but for the first time I'm seeing people agree. I just posted a meme with this old lady trying to get some food at the store, but the store being empty, and I've seen left wing and right wing people post that. I'm like, so people are starting to actually come together and agree and be like, you know what, man? When shit hits the fan, everyone is fucked. Yeah, sure. Jeff Bezos just lost a couple billion dollars, but you lost a couple hundred too. It affects you too the same way.

Speaker 1 (00:08:41):

Yeah. What's interesting is the last time I remember seeing that start to happen was nine 11, and everything that happened afterwards is up to interpretation. I don't want to get into that, but did you live here yet? When that went down,

Speaker 2 (00:08:59):

Man, no, I didn't. And I was supposed to fly. I got accepted at Berkeley and I was supposed to fly the day before to see the campus from Brazil. So I had a flight on September 10th from Sao Paulo to New York, and I was working, I was teaching at a music school at the time, and they delayed my payments. So I changed my flight. I wanted to take my money. I'm like, I'm going to get this money. I want to go spend it in America. So I changed my flight to September 13th or something, and yeah, I saw the whole thing go down. I'm like, oh dude, I'm not going. I didn't live in America, but I was already trying to move is what I mean.

Speaker 1 (00:09:42):

Well, I can tell you that that was one time where people kind of dropped their differences, at least for a little while. So definitely crisis makes people drop the bullshit. True degree. Then again, I am seeing a lot of people posting a lot of really stupid shit,

Speaker 2 (00:10:00):

But

Speaker 1 (00:10:00):

I think that that's to be expected just because we have access to everybody's stupid ideas.

Speaker 2 (00:10:06):

Yeah, there's that too. You follow stupid ideas for long enough. You start seeing them. Sometimes I watch stuff that people post on YouTube from the other side just to speak, just to see and be like, listen to what they have to say, and then I start getting bombarded with bullshit related to that.

Speaker 1 (00:10:27):

Oh, because the algorithm kicks in.

Speaker 2 (00:10:29):

Yeah. It's like, oh, you're watching videos from these people, but it's not for that reason. I don't need to see another a hundred of them. That's been starting to happen, but I don't know, man. Hopefully people will come together. We'll realize that at the end of the day we're trying to do the same thing.

Speaker 1 (00:10:46):

Well, my prediction is just that it's going to suck for a few months and then shit will get somewhat back to normal. The end. It

Speaker 2 (00:10:55):

Will. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:10:56):

So I don't think this is the end of the world. I have had one of these pandemic style illnesses before and they fucking suck. But the reality is, as bad as it is statistically, most people are not going to even get it. Most people that do get it are going to not feel it very much. I'm not downplaying it, I'm just saying that the world is not going to end. It's going to just suck for a few months, and the more that people can have each other's backs, the better the end.

Speaker 2 (00:11:31):

That's it.

Speaker 1 (00:11:32):

Yeah. I don't think that the touring business is going to just disappear because of it. As soon as people feel comfortable, it's going to come back.

Speaker 2 (00:11:41):

Man. That's a whole different thing that I've been thinking because it is a fact that the touring business is diminishing.

Speaker 1 (00:11:51):

Yes,

Speaker 2 (00:11:51):

And it is also fact that the YouTube business is increasing.

Speaker 1 (00:11:55):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:11:56):

This thing has really got me thinking, will this really last that long? I mean, I'm sure in my lifetime it will, but will go in and seeing a band live go, would that be a thing for much longer? I'm not exactly old school. I'm in the middle. I was born in 83,

Speaker 1 (00:12:15):

So you remember the world before the internet. I do kind of like me,

Speaker 2 (00:12:20):

And a lot of the values that I have when it comes to music, they just do not exist anymore, and a lot of people from my generation and especially older, it's not that they refuse to accept change, they don't see it, they don't admit it, and the truth is the best. For example, I play guitar. The best guitar players right now are YouTubers. I mean, these are people that are playing their bedroom and releasing songs or whatever, but I would say

Speaker 1 (00:12:47):

That some of them are fucking incredible.

Speaker 2 (00:12:49):

Five years ago, maybe not five, but 10 years ago, it wasn't the case. It was a bunch of bullshit. It was a bunch of kids just shredding and, oh, look how fast I can play. That is not the case anymore. There's an entire generation of kids that grew up with YouTube, and it's almost like on their perspective, why would they ever go see anything live? It's almost that. In the same way that when I hear criticism of young people going for DJing as opposed to playing instruments, I'm always like, well, think of their perspective. Think of being 14. Someone is telling you that you have to sit for six hours to learn to do these little movements with your fingers that your computer can do better because somehow it sounds better when the fingers do it, even though you can't really hear it. So when you think of their perspective, it's like it's not even that it's scar me because I want to adapt to change. If this is the future, then let's do it like the future. How can you not think that? It's like people already prefer to see videos at home now they don't have the other choice. I dunno.

Speaker 1 (00:13:58):

Well, I agree with you. I don't think that concerts are going to just go away a hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (00:14:06):

Like movie theaters didn't though.

Speaker 1 (00:14:08):

Yeah, people still go. They just only go when it's a special event. And so the YouTube model actually plays into successful live shows if you do it the right way. One thing that I'm sure you've noticed is that nowadays, if you wanted to start a band, if I was like, alright, I'm going to start playing guitar again, I'm going to start a band, I know exactly how I would go about getting it known, getting it signed, everything, and it would not be the way I did it in 2005. I'd get big on YouTube first because I've seen so many people that I know personally grow their bands on YouTube and then go tour and now they're getting real good record deals. They're getting real good tours and they skipped that stage of being in a van for five years. You can argue that it's good or bad, but the point is that's kind of how it's done now.

Speaker 2 (00:15:09):

That is how it's done. And even though, again, as an older guy, I see that as a threat to sort of what I do. It's good. I want it to happen.

Speaker 1 (00:15:19):

It doesn't have to be a threat.

Speaker 2 (00:15:21):

Well, yeah, but what I mean is that there's a lot more talent, a lot more easily accessible. Some of the things that live touring experience, stage experience, some of my selling points don't matter when it comes to YouTube, you know what I mean? People are looking for something different.

Speaker 1 (00:15:40):

True. But it does matter with the artists that hire you though.

Speaker 2 (00:15:44):

As long as they are hiring and I hope they continue. I don't know. I question. It's not that I don't believe that there will be concerts. I question it and it's interesting, dude, you brought up something that I want to talk about this recently. I like you. You said if I went back to starting a band, I would do it differently. Well, I sort of did that with my newest band with Northdale, which I mean it hasn't broken through in America yet, but we have played a festival in Sweden. We have played a festival in Japan

Speaker 1 (00:16:20):

Fairly recent, right? That's 3, 2, 3 months ago, two or so years.

Speaker 2 (00:16:23):

No, the band was started two years ago, but our record came out in August,

Speaker 1 (00:16:28):

So it was brand new.

Speaker 2 (00:16:29):

Yeah. We are already assigned to Nuclear Blast. We already have a booking agent. We did skip the van period for sure, but here's the thing, when we're looking for people or when I was looking for people, I reached out to some of these YouTube people and some of them playing covers of songs I did. I'm like, oh dude, I saw that you did the cover this song. Would you be interested in being a band? Nah, man, I don't want to tour. I do too good on YouTube. I got that response from three or four different people and guys, they're super supportive of the band. They're fans of my work that would rather just sit and do covers at home because that's doing better for them. That is a new thing to me. I've never heard of this before until last year.

Speaker 1 (00:17:16):

That's not new to me because when I was putting doth together, this was before YouTube and stuff, but my whole thing with doth was I wanted to have the very best players possible for the time.

Speaker 2 (00:17:28):

Well, you did a good job.

Speaker 1 (00:17:30):

Yeah, I think I found them, but they weren't really in my town, and so I had to do a lot of talking to people from different cities and try to talk them into doing this thing with me. And one of the responses that I got quite frequently was my job or my life is stable right now. I don't want a tour and dudes that are really good musicians, only thing that's different now is those guys can actually get known for being good musicians.

Speaker 2 (00:18:01):

That's new man. That's an avenue that just didn't exist. It's really cool.

Speaker 1 (00:18:07):

I think it's great. I mean also it raises the bar, but it also, man, it forces people to stand out. So I think that there was a time period for about 10 years where the argument was that heavy music was all starting to sound exactly the same. Productions are starting to sound exactly the same. Musicianship was getting really, really shitty kind Around 2010 or so was kind of the,

Speaker 2 (00:18:33):

Which is honestly true.

Speaker 1 (00:18:35):

It's true,

Speaker 2 (00:18:35):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:18:36):

To a degree. I mean there were badass bands, but

Speaker 2 (00:18:42):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:18:42):

There's some truth to it some. And I think that right now we're in a much, much, much better time period as far as musicianship goes. I think that this is the answer to that. Having this generation that was raised on the internet finally be the ones making music has helped raise the bar for everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:19:06):

I remember last time I was on your podcast, I made sort of a prediction that came true related to this.

Speaker 1 (00:19:13):

What was that? We

Speaker 2 (00:19:13):

Were talking about that we were talking sort of about this subject, about the whole metal core thing in 2010 and how I felt about that and how I wasn't like it, but I mentioned to you that when I came to America, a friend of a friend of mine started showing me metal core bands and I really wasn't into it until I heard Trivium and I was like, oh wait, these guys can actually play solos. All the other guys are just hitting the open string and talking about how they're going to fuck shit up in the pit. Again, these guys though, these guys are doing that, but they can also play the tiny strings as they call. So cool, the hardcore, the metal core Tough guys are starting to play 10 years from now. They might be fucking amazing. Now. We talked in 2015 or something.

Speaker 1 (00:20:06):

16 or 17.

Speaker 2 (00:20:07):

Yeah. I mean I started seeing the Gen thing and quite honestly, I'm not fond of it. There's a lot of it that I don't like, but the musicianship is unprecedented. When Dream Theater came out playing at that level, everybody freaked out, what the fuck? What are these guys doing now? It's like there's 15 dream theaters and they are at the same level of musicianship that they were back in the day. It's just that dream theater came on a much different context.

Speaker 1 (00:20:37):

They had a monopoly on that level of skill.

Speaker 2 (00:20:40):

It was as simple as, wow, it's a metal band playing in seven eight. Who does that nowadays? Knows how to play in seven, eight.

Speaker 1 (00:20:48):

Yeah, who doesn't do that?

Speaker 2 (00:20:49):

Exactly. It's not a thing anymore. If you come up with a riffing seven, eight, it's the same thing as coming up with an minor gallop in 1995. But that is the bar raising, like you said. I don't, and I admit I'm old because I listen to a lot of it. It doesn't move me, but some of it does. Some of it absolutely does. And the other day I was watching a video of these guitar players and people talk about how fake guitar playing, and it was that guy Jared Dines, which that's an example. I'm not a fan of that comedy guitar thing, but I know he has hiss place. I don't particularly like it, but this video I was watching, he was analyzing videos to see who was fake and who was not, and at the end he plays this 17-year-old kid. I'm like, what the fuck? Who the fuck is that this kid is in high school? Because when I was in high school, I thought it was really good. I could play inve at my time. You play those fast scales, three old per strings, you're a badass. And I could do that really clean really fast. At 17, I thought I was killer. I saw this kid play. I'm like, oh my God. If anything like that even existed at my time, people would be crazy.

Speaker 1 (00:22:07):

Yeah, you would've thought that He was like a God, come down

Speaker 2 (00:22:10):

Man. Do you know who I'm talking about? I'm trying to remember his name. I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (00:22:13):

I don't know who you're talking about, but I know what you're talking about and I've had this same thought lately. I just wanted to listen to some stuff that I listened to in the nineties just the other day just to see how it holds up. And I started listening to the solos and I'm not going to talk shit about anybody because all of these people were great in their time, but there are some people that I listen to who are legitimate legends. Everybody agreed were like God's gift to guitar, and I hear them now and it's like holy shit. Bending out of tune, weird notes, all kinds of the same kind of stuff that we used to say in the nineties about seventies recordings.

Speaker 2 (00:22:56):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (00:22:57):

Remember we used to say, God, what happen was so sloppy? Why did you think that was so awesome?

Speaker 2 (00:23:03):

Hendricks I had with my dad. My dad used to say, yeah, all these guys you listen to, they suck. You got to go listen to some Hendricks. I'm like, really? He would play it. I'm like, he's banging out of tune. He's not really, I feel that the kids feel the same way about my heroes now.

Speaker 1 (00:23:20):

I know they do, man. If I'm feeling that way, they've got to be feeling that way. And I was there when the shit came out.

(00:23:27):

It's just I hadn't listened to some of it in over 10 or 15 years. I went back and I listened to the non classics, so the songs by some of those huge bands that didn't stand the test of time, like the ones that only the true fans know. I just wanted to know if it's still held up. And I felt exactly the same way as when I used to hear Classic Rock when I was a kid. It didn't make me sad or anything. I wasn't bummed out. It was more just a realization that I'm not imagining this thing about the bar having been raised.

Speaker 2 (00:24:05):

Well, I mean just think about the whole drum thing as much shit as people talk about.

Speaker 1 (00:24:10):

It's so funny. It's ridiculous now.

Speaker 2 (00:24:12):

Well yeah, because I know that the number one thing that more old school people say is they talk shit about program drums on records, but the fact is these kids grew up hearing program drums, so they just play like it. Dude, I played with Tim Young at one point. That guy was the fastest drummer

Speaker 1 (00:24:31):

I remember.

Speaker 2 (00:24:32):

Yeah. And the other day he showed me someone, he's like, look at this kid. I'm like, oh, can't you do that? He's like, no way, man. No way

Speaker 1 (00:24:40):

Dude. And Tim Young is no joke.

Speaker 2 (00:24:42):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:24:44):

But he's incredible.

Speaker 2 (00:24:45):

But

Speaker 1 (00:24:46):

I do remember when Tim Young first came on the scene, he had the same kind of buzz about him that someone like Alex Inger or whatever

Speaker 2 (00:24:55):

Exactly

Speaker 1 (00:24:55):

Has like, holy shit, this guy.

Speaker 2 (00:24:57):

Oh, that might be who he showed me too. That might be who probably, I can't remember the name,

Speaker 1 (00:25:02):

Dude. Alex Inger is, I don't understand. There are quite a few of them. I just discovered this band Lepers. Are you familiar with them?

Speaker 2 (00:25:10):

Oh yeah, very much. See, they're big in my quote, my Gen Power and P Metal Jenner. They are. They've played Prague Power, USA, the festival I play pretty much every year. They're there before.

Speaker 1 (00:25:23):

It's so interesting to me that they're in that. I know that they make Prague music because it's in weird time signatures and it's just weird music. But they sound like Muse meets a James Bond soundtrack meets tool or something.

Speaker 2 (00:25:40):

I got to show you some other bands like that man that you might

Speaker 1 (00:25:44):

Like. I'd love to hear

Speaker 2 (00:25:45):

Them. Yeah, but they're Sounds band, right? They used to Bean band. Yeah, I saw those Guy live maybe eight years ago or something. Good man.

Speaker 1 (00:25:55):

That drummer.

(00:25:56):

Another example right there is that drummer. So I remember in the nineties tool was kind of the, so you had Dream Theater and then the other musician band was Tool Shuga was starting to kind of get known, but Tool was the big one. But I remember drummers were all about all the time signatures and weird structures that tool used. I was never a tool fan, but I still paid attention to what people were saying. Now I hear lepers and I hear a drummer like that and I'm like, holy shit. This is like if you combine as a drummer, Dave Grohl with the dude from Tool with the guy from Satcon.

Speaker 2 (00:26:35):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (00:26:36):

Basically. How does that even happen?

Speaker 2 (00:26:39):

Well, in my opinion, a lot of the reason that happens, I don't know about the Leros guy, he might be a little older, but stuff like that has been happening with kids. Mainly when we grew up, we were Metalheads, right? We listened to Metal, we're proud, and we listened to Metallica and we listened to Iron Maiden and you Suck for listening to Madonna. Nowadays that doesn't exist. You listen to Madonna, you listen to Maiden, you listen to Metallica for kids. I'm talking about people our age are still stupid. They are. But yeah. Oh dude, some of this shit. I mean, every day I cannot post a pop song on Facebook anymore because I get people talking shit. And the funny thing is Pop has evolved so much from the eighties to here. Like metal, we're talking about the phase of metal. That was shit. Pop has evolved. Pop has always been better and better and better and better. And I don't know if you agree with me or not, but

Speaker 1 (00:27:36):

I do.

Speaker 2 (00:27:36):

I'm not a producer, but I record my own stuff at home and I feel that in terms of production, it's like everyone that does pop and hip hop and rap, they're looking for it. They're looking ahead where everybody else is still trying to figure out how to get a good distort distorting guitar sound. You know what I mean? So I see as a listener that nowadays pop and hip hop music are actually more exciting than some of the metal that's coming out because of that.

Speaker 1 (00:28:04):

I do agree with you. I think that for Metal and Rock to be exciting, what you need are bands like lepers, bands like Sleep Token who are doing something new

Speaker 2 (00:28:16):

That don't have the genre thing.

Speaker 1 (00:28:18):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:28:19):

Don't see them be a metal band.

Speaker 1 (00:28:20):

Both those bands are genre bending and I think people are ready for that. But the thing with pop, and I completely agree, so I have two data points that aren't really data points. They're just my opinion, but I think their data points and someone who deals with data should look at this and come back to me. But the fact that an artist like Billie Eilish is the biggest pop star in the world right now, and that just a few years ago, a band like 21 Pilots was the biggest band in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:28:49):

I love that band, man. They're fantastic.

Speaker 1 (00:28:50):

Yeah, dude, they're Phenomen

Speaker 2 (00:28:51):

Fantastic,

Speaker 1 (00:28:52):

Dude. They're so good. Their songs are so damn good.

Speaker 2 (00:28:55):

That song, car Radio, that song got me crying the first time I heard it.

Speaker 1 (00:28:59):

Heathens. Yeah, like holy shit. But the thing is both of those acts sound like nothing else. They're completely creative, they're dark, they're very, very honest. They're not. Remember that when we were growing up, pop was supposed to be fast food, basically. It was like music you get at the drive-through or something. That was the equivalent. It was garbage. I mean it was well-made garbage, but it was light. My dad used to call it light music. I don't think that you can call what some of these pop artists doing as light. It's not light with the subject matters that they cover and the sophistication of the just of what they use, the production styles like the originality. It's not light music at all.

Speaker 2 (00:29:48):

Is he the song where he talks about, I wish I had chords in a different progression and it's a fucked up chord progression.

Speaker 1 (00:29:55):

No, no, no. That's shit. I love that song,

Speaker 2 (00:29:58):

Dude.

Speaker 1 (00:29:58):

Fuck. What's that song called? I'm looking it up right now. No, heathens is the one from the suicide squad. Stressed Out.

Speaker 2 (00:30:05):

Stressed Out. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:30:06):

Yeah. Stressed Out is a phenomenal song.

Speaker 2 (00:30:08):

And then the song Car radio, the guy is like talking, talking Talk. And then you end the phrase, because someone stole my car radio and I just sit in silence and there's a break in the song. Dude, this is the kind of relationship between lyrics and music. That metal has also lost a lot of metal is written, and I'm guilty of this. I write a song, I write a melody. No, no. And I hand it to a singer, put words to that. This is a different kind of writing. This is conveying emotions very honestly through music, through very simple music. Too

Speaker 1 (00:30:43):

Simple, kind of

Speaker 2 (00:30:44):

Simply perfect is what I mean. Because you mentioned Billie Eish. I made this comment to my wife yesterday, we're listening to it, and I'm like, I think part of why this is so good is because it's stripped down to the very minimal details to convey that one idea. You have a beat, he's at one two, that's a beat, and you start singing over. That's it. You don't need a giant drum set. You have an idea. That's it. You don't need to orchestrate that idea and make it huge. That's it. And I think

Speaker 1 (00:31:18):

However you could.

Speaker 2 (00:31:19):

Yeah, exactly. It's very interesting.

Speaker 1 (00:31:21):

That's the thing with great ideas like that, you could orchestrate them into something huge

(00:31:26):

And they'd still be great. So what you're saying right now, and I completely agree with you, that's something that's been proven historically for hundreds of years. So orchestral music, even the most complex orchestral music from the late romantic period was all written on a piano by a dude sitting there writing it down. It wasn't written inside of a digital performer or with the east west bundle where you could hear the entire orchestra. These pieces were written on a piano. So in the most simple version possible, they were made to work. And then if they worked like that, obviously you could orchestrate them into some grand thing. But the same applies for songs. If one simple vocal and one simple beat touch the public emotionally and work just work, it's going to work in any arrangement. That's the beauty of it.

Speaker 2 (00:32:22):

And when it doesn't work, you cannot polish that third enough

Speaker 1 (00:32:26):

Fuck no.

Speaker 2 (00:32:27):

That's one thing you can produce and make a great song. You just won't reach people. This is part of why I say that pop music nowadays is that, well, you were saying that too. It is a lot more honest. It is actually touching people. It's not McDonald's music. None of it is. And even the idea that it is even that is kind of old fashioned because at one point it was, but people haven't been paying attention to the past seven years.

Speaker 1 (00:32:52):

You said that people in our age group are still stupid about it. When I hear them spout those types of opinions about pop music or hip hop or RB or any of these styles that as metal people you weren't allowed to. I definitely know that that idea that you stop listening to music, new music at like 25, that's what they're doing. They're doing exactly what they used to accuse their parents of doing. I remember these people because some of them are my friends from high school, I remember them criticizing their parents for thinking that all they listened to is noise. Now they're 40 and they say the same shit about young people's music, which by the way, I don't actually think is young people's music. It's just music. And so you can either choose to close yourself off to it or not, but they're doing the same thing that their parents used to do. So I do think it's probably human nature to not want to take in new things. Once you find something that you connect with, people kind of are like, okay, cool, I'm good. But why do that? Especially now, there's so much great stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:34:00):

What's interesting, man, I read on a book a few years ago, it's called, this is Your Brain on Music, and it talks about how the music you listen to at 14 stays with you for the rest of your life. Now with my new project, with the band that I was just talking about a few minutes ago, Northdale, I wanted to embrace that. So basically that album sounds like it came out in 1998, but with today's production.

(00:34:25):

But the only reason I did that was because I know that people relate to production like that. The other day I went and listened to Peace of Mind, one of my favorite records by Iron Maiden. It still sounds fantastic, but in my head it's like, wow, this kick is pretty low in the mix. It is because I'm so used to having these kicks punching you in the face the way it is right now. So with Northdale, I wanted the music to sound like something that I would buy at 14. It doesn't matter to me if it doesn't sell, if people don't buy it. I wanted to tickle that part of my brain because I realized it's there. My 14th birthday, I got a couple albums as gifts and those albums are still my favorite albums to this day. So I think that that does stay with people.

Speaker 1 (00:35:15):

That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (00:35:17):

And I was just talking about Gent back there, dude. I was a lot more vocal about my dislike for that style two years ago, but I had to literally force myself and be like, no, wait a second. People I respect like this. People I find to be good musicians are making, there's got to be something about this. I got to listen to it. But it took me a lot. It took me listening to three Periphery Records, three tests records before. I'm like, oh, wait a second. That's where they're going. And most people are just not willing to do that after a certain age. Yeah, fuck. That song sucks.

Speaker 1 (00:36:01):

I guess you've always been the kind of person who will overcome your human nature to get better, I think.

Speaker 2 (00:36:07):

Yeah, that's definitely because I've done that with more modern metal, but I didn't do that to the previous generation. I fucking hate everything that people listened to between 2003 and 2007. And I did some tours with those bands and I was always like, what the fuck are you guys doing? And I'm talking about bands that people love and die for, and I'm like, I couldn't. I couldn't. But with this new generation, I was open-minded enough and I actually took the time to do it. So it's like how many people actually do that? It's a lot easier to just listen to the same music for the rest of their life.

Speaker 1 (00:36:45):

I encourage anybody who's above the age of 30 to do that.

Speaker 2 (00:36:48):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:36:49):

There's a lot of great stuff out there and we need people to support the next generation of artists anyways. If you want to keep this train rolling, they need the support

Speaker 2 (00:37:01):

And understand they are not trying to be Judas Sp Priest meets Exciter, so don't look for that in a band that tunes to a and that helps.

Speaker 1 (00:37:13):

What's interesting though is man, I tried listening to music from when I was 14 and it doesn't talk to me anymore.

Speaker 2 (00:37:22):

Really.

Speaker 1 (00:37:23):

I think I'm probably weird like that.

Speaker 2 (00:37:25):

There's a record, I don't know how familiar you are with it or any of your listeners, but I grew up worshiping, it's called Keeper of the Seven Keys. It's by Halloween. It's actually a two part record, part one and two. I can't really pick my favorite, but every note in that album raises the arms of my hair to this day, and I listen to it maybe last week. It's like the production is so sloppy. There's all these things that people used to be like, oh man, Halloween is so fast. Well, yeah, but I mean are the notes at the right time? But it still speaks to me. It still speaks to me. And it is very funny again, that my Ben North there was based on that kind of music, I was like, I want to do a record like this. But that sounds modern and that's why I got the producer Yona. She Grande. I told you, you should have in this show, by the way. He's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (00:38:22):

Yeah, I'd love to talk to him

Speaker 2 (00:38:23):

Right now. He has one of the bestselling records in Europe. Saboto is a great war. He did that record.

Speaker 1 (00:38:30):

I would love to talk to him. Yeah, intro me to him. I'll talk to him anytime.

Speaker 2 (00:38:33):

I will do that.

Speaker 1 (00:38:34):

It's interesting, man. I went back and listened to Rust in Peace and Black album and Fulger Display of Power and the old Morbid Angel stuff. And some of it I still really like to a degree, but none of that stuff spoke to me the way it used to because I was trying to see if I had that same thing that you're talking about. I think that's normal to connect with that music. But then I found some, I heard Alison Chains, which I used to really love, and it still felt exactly the same. So I guess there are some that still stand the test of time for me. You probably hated them back then or whatever. But anyways, I loved that band. I connected with them and what they were all about, not heroin, but not heroin, but

(00:39:28):

The feelings were so dark. I always gravitated towards that. And I put it on the other day and was like, wow, those feelings are still real. It's timeless. And there are artists like that. But man, I really think that people should make a point of finding new things. It's so crucial to also just being a person that's interested in the world that you live in and being someone that's interesting to speak to and who's capable of having, I don't know, new relationships with new kinds of people and who approaches life in a way that takes advantage of the way that the world is evolving. I don't think that it has to do with what music you listen to, but the state of mind you have to be in to approach life that way is the state of mind. You have to be in to take in new music.

(00:40:19):

You have to be ready to take in things that are different than what you're used to and apply them to how you live. And that's why I keep trying to take in new music and not let myself become one of those out of touch people who just thinks it was awesome when I was a kid. I never want to be out of touch. Never. And I do believe that the world's going to keep evolving really, really fast. And those of us who don't evolve with it are going to get stuck in the past. And the only ones stuck in the past who will be okay are the ones who are lucky enough to be in industries that don't really change.

Speaker 2 (00:40:58):

That don't change. Yeah, no, it's true, man. It's very true. And what's funny too about music appreciation too, is okay, so when I listen to something new that I'm not familiar with, of course there's things I like and things I don't like, but generally harmonically and melodically, they stay the same across genres and across timelines too. So what I mean is this, you listen to the Octane radio station, a lot of those bands sound the same, but a lot of them are also like they're rifts. They're very pentatonic sounding. They use the Blue Note a lot, the very, even if the chorus becomes more minor, more melodic, the rifts, the parts, the chunky parts, they're normally more pentatonic. I tend to like stuff that's more alien, alien mode, 6, 4, 5 chord progressions. I like that more. So I find myself liking the newer bands that sound like that more than the more pentatonic approach.

Speaker 1 (00:42:08):

I think you're right, by the way,

Speaker 2 (00:42:09):

Which stays the same. I like Iron Maiden more than I like Metallic, although I love them both. Iron Maiden is more minor, more melodic. Well, I always say that the difference between Maiden and Metallica is Maiden is they all in Metallic is Fri, but they do essentially the same thing or they did. I find that interesting because it can be eighties music, it can be 2020s music. My taste works the same way. And I wonder if other people are the same way without knowing. Because if you're a musician, if you're not a musician, you don't know that you're hearing a pentatonic or a minor scale. You just know, I like this. I don't like

Speaker 1 (00:42:48):

This.

Speaker 2 (00:42:48):

But that's quantifiable. That's quantifiable is what I mean. It. I like more the sound of the minor than the I. The sound of the pentatonic of a lot of metal guys think is as easy as Minor is sad and major and happy. It's not like that of stuff. A lot of stuff that sounds sad is actually major, so it's not like that. But it's more like what touches you and what doesn't. And I really believe that the more extreme metal guys don't like the major third because none of the bands use it. So they just grow not to that interval, that particular interval.

Speaker 1 (00:43:23):

So I can tell you, I think you're right. I've always been drawn to things that are in a harmonic miner sort of way. I know Harmonic Miner is kind of an, it's an interesting scale. It's not really a key, it's an altered, it's not real, but it is. But the thing about it is I've just always been drawn to it. I've almost always ridden in it. I've always listened to artists who do it. I think that's why I like 21 Pilots and Billie Eilish and Han Zimmer and this music that I'm attracted to now all kind of tends to use it to some degree. I never was into the Pentatonic thing. So back in the day, even though I did some grunge and stuff, I did not like Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam was a very pentatonic band. There's a reason for why I preferred Marty Friedman over Kirk Hammett. Even though, I mean Marty Friedman did a lot more than just Harmonic Minor. He was a lot more on that side of the fence than the pentatonic side of the fence. Yes, I can trace all of my musical tastes down to individual songs from an artist. And I would say that 85% of the time something in the world of Harmonic Minor is happening from pop to metal to orchestral. And so I do think you're right. I think, I mean, dude, it's like our taste in food

Speaker 3 (00:44:48):

Are

Speaker 1 (00:44:48):

Taste and partners, all that. A lot of that stuff is set.

(00:44:52):

It is who we are. It's our preference, basically. It is who we are. And I think that that part doesn't really change, man. It's just, so for instance, I'm not a Blues fan. Never been a Blues fan. Yes. Here and there, I've seen a blues guitarist and I'm like, fuck, you're awesome. But I don't take it home with me. I don't take any feeling home with me and I don't then go down any rabbit holes. I only learned pentatonic shit once in my life. I had to learn a bunch of Zack solos for a certain project, but other than that, you couldn't pay me to fuck with that shit.

Speaker 2 (00:45:28):

So as a result of that, you probably wouldn't like a band like Cinderella. Right?

Speaker 1 (00:45:32):

Not my thing.

Speaker 2 (00:45:33):

Exactly. That's what I mean. It's quantifiable.

Speaker 1 (00:45:36):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:45:36):

It's funny you bring up the Harmonic mind too, because first of all, of course, I mean as a musician, I have to be able to speak music to people that know music theory and people that don't know music theory. I could never be one of those guys that, oh, you don't know theory, I don't talk to you. So you need to be able to do that. And the thing about the Harmonic Minor man is a lot of the times in metal is used as a mode as the fridge and dominant mode. Really it is. You get the same intervals, but you're coming from the fifth. So I think a lot of metal people are drawn to that because of the Triton, because of the Major seven.

Speaker 1 (00:46:15):

Yes, I agree.

Speaker 2 (00:46:17):

Because you take that away and it's not really minor anymore. It's alien mode, which people still call minor. I always giggle and I see, oh, iron Maiden is all E minor. No, it's all Eolian. Iron Maiden is never e minor because it is not Harmonic minor. The major seventh is not there. And I think that that sound and that augmented second between the sixth and the second degree is what speaks to Metal has because the melodic minor scale doesn't as much. That's one thing. It sounds jazzy. You throw in the major sixth in anything minor and it sounds jazzy if you're playing metal, if you're playing metal. It is really interesting, dude, this is things, I'm sorry if it gets too weird, but I think about these things a lot. I'm like, what the hell? It's just a half step. How come this works so well? This doesn't, how come people can listen to this, but not this? It's really weird.

Speaker 1 (00:47:13):

There is something interesting about what you just said about major thirds, because in Harmonic Minor, when you go from the six up to the root, again,

Speaker 2 (00:47:24):

That's the fridge and dominant

Speaker 1 (00:47:25):

Not give up. But that's a major third interval, right?

Speaker 2 (00:47:29):

Well except that you're doing the minor second before so it doesn't sound like a major third. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (00:47:36):

I'm just saying that the context is everything when it comes to this stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:47:40):

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:47:41):

I'm just going back to when you said that it's a lot more complicated than Major is happy and minor is sad.

Speaker 2 (00:47:47):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:47:48):

Because even in stuff like Harmonic Minor that people love because of the tritone, they love because of the minor six in there as well, there's still a major third that's really, really used a lot. That part of the Harmonic Minor scale, the six to the one

Speaker 3 (00:48:06):

Going

Speaker 1 (00:48:06):

Up, it is used all the time. People love it. And that's a major third I think context all about context.

Speaker 2 (00:48:15):

Well in that case, the fridge and Sound is the metal sound the major. I would agree with you. It is the Harmonic minor. And to me, I think that comes from ve. I dunno, because at least to me I

Speaker 1 (00:48:29):

Agree. So here's interesting. I gravitated towards VE because I liked playing in a Harmonic minor and that's all he does basically. I mean, he does diminish too and 5% blues, but he does Harmonic minor. So that's why I was learning his stuff as a kid. But now I don't listen to that. I don't listen to Neoclassical. That's just not what I'm into anymore. But that harmonic sense or melodic sense or whatever, that's just in me.

Speaker 2 (00:49:01):

It stays with you.

Speaker 1 (00:49:02):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:49:04):

Just like I talked about the core progression, the 6, 4, 5 this time, the five without the major seven, that is the Iron Maiden progression. No matter what you sing over that, it will sound good to us. You can sing anything over that. It will sound good.

Speaker 1 (00:49:20):

This is also why I think that people are severely limiting themselves by not taking on new music. I think that what really sticks is what your preferences are on a deeper level. However, like you said, the majority of the listening public isn't aware of what their preferences truly are, but these underlying harmonic tendencies and melodic tendencies that are genre independent and time period independent that you gravitate to if you like, that you can find new musicians who are using those same types of ideas and feelings and tonalities just in brand new ways and what's not to like about that.

Speaker 2 (00:50:08):

Exactly. And again, the first time in history that this is happening, it's the first time you can find someone that actually likes to do that just by putting a status on Twitter. It's exciting, man. I think it's awesome.

Speaker 1 (00:50:23):

Okay, so how about this question? Obviously we're cool with how things are going, but we know a lot of people who might be a little older than us or in our age group who are very, very negative about the new generation or negative about where the music industry is going. And I know that because you play in the genre that you play in and you're probably around older people, you're probably surrounded by negativity towards the current landscape. So what I'm about to ask you is more on a broad sense. I think people who are trying to make music are surrounded by negativity at all times, regardless whether they're teenagers who have parents that don't understand them wanting to make music or they're musicians who are at the beginning of their career who are doing something that's outside of the box and the local scene doesn't embrace them.

(00:51:23):

Or you're you who are playing in styles of music that have fans that are 35 to 50 years old and players that are in that age too. You're surrounded by just a lot of bitterness towards the way things are going. But you're a very positive person and I think it's important for people who are surrounded by negativity to always try to remain as positive as possible. And again, not for hippie reasons, but for purely selfish survival reasons. Because your mindset determines your actions. How do you not get sucked in to all that bullshit? I know, man, when you're on the road, you're in a captive environment.

Speaker 2 (00:52:05):

But I do, man, I don't know man. I spent the past, I want to say a year, maybe a little longer, trying to change things about my life that weren't working. You know what I mean? And that's one of them because yeah, I want to be in al scene, but there's a whole generation that doesn't even know who he is. And if they did, they would think he's pathetic.

Speaker 1 (00:52:28):

Isn't that funny? But it's true.

Speaker 2 (00:52:30):

It's true. Dude. The other day I read the Kid from Polyus saying something on Guitar World about that, and when I read the first couple lines, I got pissed off. I'm like, yeah, whatever these fucking kids nowadays, just like you were saying, just like you were saying, because I thought like that and then I continued reading what he was saying. I was like, wait a second, he's right. He's like, it's always been cheesy as shit. Just because people didn't see it, that doesn't make it cool. He's always been uncool. And I'm like, it's true. How cool is a guy playing guitar super fast with a hair? It's true. And for our generation it's cool or whatever, but a kid that was born when Guns and Roses was broken up is never going to connect with that.

Speaker 1 (00:53:12):

And you can't fault them for that.

Speaker 2 (00:53:13):

Just like I don't get what the fuck is up with people freaking out about Jim Morrison. It is the same thing. So when I saw that, I'm like, okay, this kid is saying this shit on Guitar World. His band is doing good. Oh yeah, I was in Japan. I was in Japan too with my band and I'm like, oh, you know what? In Japan, these trends don't work here. It's all about the real shit, real musician. Then I'm walking, I see the guy from periphery a picture of him in a music store. I'm like, all right, you know what? I have to embrace this just like I am a total meat eater. I hate vegetables and I'm trying to become vegan because it finally dawned on me about animals really? So I'm literally going from eating meat and nothing but meat every single day to not eating meat.

(00:54:01):

Sometimes you have to hear the other side. Sometimes you got to try the other thing to see where your faults are. You know what I mean? And dude, I was an old bitter guy, just like my friends are old, bitter guys. This is not metal. That's the one number one phrase. That band is not metal. I'm like, who are you to decide who is metal and who's not? I had this conversation with a guy the other day and he's like, oh, avenge Sevenfold is not metal. And you used to say that too. I'm like, oh, I did. I did for a long time. However, I listened to them, listen to this, and I played a song by them that's in a video game that's called Carry On. That song is Power Metal. That is what I listen to every day. It's just that the Adventure Sevenfold crowd doesn't know that they never heard Halloween, but that is a Halloween song sung by an American bro, but still very much a power metal song. And I play that to my friend. I'm like, how is this not metal? This is metal. Just because you say it's not metal. That doesn't make it not metal. And not to mention to the still newer generation, now I'm talking about the 18 year olds. They don't want to be metal. You're not metal. Yeah. Good. I don't want to,

Speaker 1 (00:55:14):

I have a very similar story, man. So after about 1994, that was kind of the peak of major label death metal, if anyone can imagine that.

Speaker 2 (00:55:23):

Major label death metal. It's like

Speaker 1 (00:55:26):

There was a time period where death metal was actually very commercially successful. As in death, metal bands selling hundreds of thousands of albums. More angels signed to a major label, like interesting time period. Anyways, it ended. No

Speaker 2 (00:55:43):

Coronavirus.

Speaker 1 (00:55:44):

No coronavirus. That's right. It ended in about 1994 and Extreme Metal kind of went into a weird repetitive loop, and I stopped listening to it. I just didn't like it anymore. I got completely out of it. Then Slipknot came along and I was not into New Metal, but I heard something. I didn't know what I was in for. And suddenly there's fast double bass, there's blast beats. It's fucking crazy. I was like, wow, this has that energy I've been missing. This is fucking awesome. And so I started to love Slipknot, and to me, I could hear that these guys grew up on Morbid Angel. I could hear all that stuff. I could hear that these guys are actual metal dudes just taking it to a different place. But with that same that I always gravitated towards. And I remember friends of mine were like, that's not metal.

(00:56:40):

What do you mean? And I would play them some songs with double bass at Insane Speeds and Blaby and be like, how exactly is this not Matt? What are you talking about? You just don't want to say it because you don't want to appear uncool. But how can you actually sit here and listen to this and not say that? You can say, I don't like it, but how can you actually make such an ignorant statement? It's blowing my mind. So when you played that Avenge Sevenfold song for your buddy, did that change your buddy's mind?

Speaker 2 (00:57:14):

No. No, of course not.

Speaker 1 (00:57:15):

Of course not. No,

Speaker 2 (00:57:17):

Of course not. And I mean, I'm telling you this one story, but there's a lot that happened before. Talk about Death Metal. As you know, I play some death metal too. And

(00:57:27):

Of course I play with the top guy and he's not like that, but some other people that I know that I worked with, I mean, these are 50-year-old man saying, oh, you're listening to Noodle Ur. I'm like, yes. He's a fucking amazing guitarist. Well, funk and metal don't mix. I'm like, you're 50 years old, man, come on. So yeah, I see a lot of that, but man, I don't want any part of it. It's cool. It's cool. You guys can be like that. I would rather embrace change. Again, my band, my personal band, my passion project sounds like 1997, but that's because I'm making it for me. That doesn't mean that I can't go do something else and that if I want to create music is going to sound like Judah's priest. It is just embrace change.

Speaker 1 (00:58:16):

So I have a question for you. It's from a friend of mine who I'm not allowed to say his name because of agreement he has with this band, but he does similar shit to you. He just played with baby Metal. He gets hired by people to play guitar. He's an awesome guitar player.

Speaker 2 (00:58:33):

Did he play for Baby Metal here in the us?

Speaker 1 (00:58:35):

Yeah, but we're not allowed to say his name.

Speaker 2 (00:58:37):

No, but I know. Okay.

Speaker 1 (00:58:39):

He's a fan of yours, so he has a question for you.

Speaker 2 (00:58:42):

He's a fan of mine,

Speaker 1 (00:58:43):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:58:43):

Good.

Speaker 1 (00:58:44):

He's been a fan of yours for a while. He says, I'd love to know how you keep up with potential gigs. Do you have an agent that tells you when stuff opens up or is it just mutual connections that help you find work?

Speaker 2 (00:58:59):

I have someone that helps me. It's David Vincent's wife, Suzanne Penley. She is like quote unquote, my publicist and a lot of gigs come to her, so her email is on my website. So some things come to her, but the bulk of what I get really is meeting other people and especially when I'm doing other gigs. That's one thing that to me seems painfully obvious, but every time I tell people that, they're like, oh wow, okay, I never thought about that. So I'll say that when you go to a festival, there's 15 bands there hanging out. These are 15 potential employees in two months. You got to be friends with those people. Now, am I saying go and influence them to become your friends? No, but you're going to be around these people at catering say hello. Hey, I'm John. I play guitar for whatever band and good to meet you man right there. You know someone else in Band X. Now maybe that band will need whatever instrument you play next week. Maybe they won't. Maybe their friends will. That's happened a lot,

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):

Maybe five years from now,

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):

Maybe five years from now. One of the best gigs that I've done in recent years, Dirk Schneider, the old vocalist for accept, I got that gig out of a friend of mine called Kendra Jackson, who at the time I barely knew I had met her and them casually just backstage at the dean, at the dean booth, and I'm not a D artist by the way, but I was hanging out there. I got a lot of friends and I met her there and we hung out a little bit. She mentioned that her friend saw TSO or something. We chatted a little bit. We exchanged numbers. The next day she mentioned to me that she was going to go see Udo at the whiskey, and I'm like, oh, so you know those guys, and I kept that in the back of my head when the guitar spot was available. I asked her, I'm like, do you know what's going on with that? Are they looking for someone? She got ahold of them and within two days I was on my way to Germany. That's like a very, very, very, very cliche thing to say, but contacts are everything. They are more than playing. Actually. If someone likes you enough and you're not as good as the other guy, you still get the gig.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):

It's true, and this is very similar to how it works with production and man, that's how it works with Nail the Mix. I know a lot of people and I'm always paying attention to who works with who and who's doing what and what is coming around the corner and what people are paying attention to, and I just ask questions and have kind of figured out who to ask about what and that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):

Make no mistake right now, at this point in my career, I do get called a lot, but I also apply for gigs just as much as I did on day one. There's never been a situation where I heard about a band that might need someone and is a good opportunity that I didn't try to get. So that's very important too because a lot of musicians I know think that stuff will fall in their lap and sometimes it does. It's happened, but it's not always like that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):

What's the ratio of rejection to gigs?

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):

I just got rejected for a pretty big one that I was pretty sure I had it. I don't know. Well, in my career I would say it's not that much. Maybe it's two gigs. I get one I don't. It's still pretty high. Three in every plan's pretty good. Yeah, that's

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):

Good. Even if it was inverted, that would be pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):

Yeah, no. Well, a lot of the time people call me already, I don't have to audition. It happens a lot where people are specifically looking for me.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):

Why do you think that is?

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):

Mainly because I played with a lot of people and I have a track record of doing crazy shit and showing up. The first time I played with Vital Remains, I had no rehearsal really. I was in Dubai with a different band with Circle to Circle. Vital Remains calls me and say, we're going on this boat in three days. You have to learn fucking seven, 10 minutes songs with all these crazy solos that you never heard before. I mean, they didn't say that part, but I'm thinking, I never heard this before. I'm fucked. So I had a 14 hour flight and they sent me tabs. So what I did is I listened to the songs and I was reading the tabs at the same time on the flight. Then I had some time with the other guitarist at the boat at the Barge to Hell. It's a 70,000 tons of metal for death metal.

(01:03:34):

So I got in the cab with the cabin with the guitar player. We went over a couple of the songs and I did a show do last week I flew to Sweden to play with I Orbit and Doro was on the festival as well, but I wasn't hired for it. She was had her guitar player. Well, the guy got quarantined in Italy because of the Coronavirus. So they called me, they was like, do you want to do the show? I'm like, fuck, it's in three days. Send me a set list. I've become reliable in that sense.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):

So basically, not to make this sound like cheesy shit, but you've kind of built a brand for yourself. People know what they're going to get when they hire you, and it fits very nicely for certain types of gigs and they don't have to worry, even if it's a fucked up, fast overnight situation, they know what they're getting with you because of all the work and relationships you've built up over time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):

Yeah, exactly. I have very few enemies, I have very few people. It's happened. But of course there's very few people that don't like me that would say, yeah, don't hire this guy or anything. And I always say, man to people that hire me, you hire me, you're okay. At least on my side of the stage, you're okay. You have to worry about the other people, but I will look the part, I will play the right guitar. Dude, Doro is like eighties hair metal stuff and Morbid Angel is death metal, and I headlined the festival both nights with both of those bands, so it doesn't matter. I'll adapt. And I kind of made a career out of that, which is good in a way, but then people like my fuck my dear deceased friend, Ralph Tala, he used to tell me, you're the best paid cover guitarist in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):

Of course he would say that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):

Yeah, because he wasn't impressed with any of this shit. All that Ralph cared about was making art. He never cared about touring. He never cared about fame. He definitely never cared about money. So whenever I would get a gig, I would like, cool, when are you doing your record? That was always what he would say, and my record came out most after he passed away, man, it sucked.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):

But it's like that was one thing he used to tell me. But on the other hand, on my perspective, I used to tell him, dude, but when I grew up, I wanted to be a guitar player that tour the word playing shows, and that's exactly what I'm doing. Sure I'm not playing my songs, but I am playing songs I grew up listening to. So that's cool too.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):

Hey, everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast and you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is. The beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multi-tracks to a new song by artists like Lamb of God, angels and Airwaves. Knock loose OPEC shuga, bring me the Horizon. Gaira asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others over 60 at this point. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air.

(01:07:12):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jens Borin, Dan Lancaster to I Matson, Andrew Wade, and many, many more. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, which is our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics as well as Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use in your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those of you who really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhance, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain, staging, mastering, low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed.

(01:08:06):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to URM Academy to find out more. I know that Ralph would give you shit about when you're going to do your own stuff and obviously you put out your own stuff, but I mean, I'm not inside your head. I can just tell you that in my own life, I've always felt like there's 8 million things I could do. There's always something I wish I could do better or do more of. I want to have more businesses. When I was doing music, I wanted to do my band and get as good as possible at guitar and then start writing soundtracks and have a rock band too and all this shit, and then maybe go back to Berkeley and just finish it for the sake of finishing it and all this stuff.

(01:09:14):

But the fact is I focused on certain things for a reason because that's what cut through all the noise more than anything. Other people say things to me sometimes, don't you miss this? For instance, now that I do business, don't you miss playing guitar? When are you going to put out another album? When are you going to do this? When are you going to do that? I've never really paid much attention to that. I've always just listened to the voice in my head and where it tells me to go. And I imagine you're much the same way in that I'm sure Ralph's not the only person who's been like, when are you going to put out your own stuff? When are you going to put out your own stuff, right?

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):

Oh, absolutely, yeah, but you're very much right. I sort of focused on what I was good at or what worked. I don't know that I have music inside of me that's revolutionary, that takes a very special person to go back to Ralph. I think he had amazing music inside of him, but nobody ever heard it. He's known as the DS side guy. He's known as the ice Dirt guy. He's known as the obituary guy. The albums that he did put out, it was him listening to himself and people just didn't, it just never worked. Now, I was always afraid of that. That's one of the reasons that I never did my stuff. I was always afraid of it not working, but at first I was always like, what if I never get signed? Then I'm like, well, if I do get signed, what if nobody cares?

(01:10:46):

What if I can't tour? So all these what ifs, what ifs, what ifs? They always kept me from doing it. So last year I did it and I'm still having all kinds of questions about it, the same ones. It is like, oh, now I'm signed great, but I'm not on tour. Oh, great. We are one of the top 10 power metal records. We're sure not the first. We're not number one. So all this shit is still happening in my head. So this is a little too much for me to focus my career so much on the pattern I kind of put together is my day job is playing other bands. My dream is to play my own band. So I just separated it like that because I know I'm good enough that I'll keep getting hired, but I don't know that I'm good enough to put out an album that people will freak out about. So it just makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):

Okay, so I can relate to that very much. Right around 2013 or 14, I feel like with mixing, I was starting to finally figure it out. I feel like right around that time, 2014 ish, 13, I was starting to finally not suck. People are going to think it's funny that I'm saying this, but I was starting to finally enter a level where I was starting to get okay, and obviously I think that if I had kept going, I would've been a lot better now. However, I always felt that I could never be like a Josh Wilbur or an Andy Snip, and I am convinced of that actually, and I always was convinced of that. And if I can't be number one or the dominant force that what I'm doing, this's just not for me, and I get it that that might sound egomaniacal or whatever, but I really do think you have to know yourself and you have to know what you want in life.

(01:12:39):

And not everybody wants that, and not everybody wants to be at the top, and that's fine if you don't. I'm actually jealous, but I have taken a lot of shit in my life for this, and I tried to deny that part of my nature for a long time, and then one day I was like, fuck that. I'm not going to deny this part of my nature anymore. And because not being the best at something, just dude, it fucks with my head. And so I had a voice inside at about 2013, 2014 at the same time that I was finally starting to get entering a good level with mixing. It's like start this business, start this business, fucking start it. Now quit and start it. Quit and start it. And I'm really, really glad I listened. We're the biggest online recording school of this style. Obviously we're not as big as full sail or something, but in this world and especially in rock and metal, we're dominating and this is something that I can dominate in and I feel a hundred percent at home doing this.

(01:13:48):

I'm not tortured like I was before. And so are there other things that I have? Sometimes I'm like, what if I started mixing again? And it's like, yeah, I could probably start mixing and within two months be better than I ever was and start getting clients. Or what if I decided to start a band again? I could play guitar for two months, probably get better than I ever was and start a band, get it signed, do all that, but will it be Slipknot? Will I be as good as Will Putney or something? Probably not. However, this that I'm doing fucking dominates. So I'm doing this for me mentally. That's really, really important and I think that it's important to know yourself and you know yourself clearly. Yeah, there's different things that you dream about possibly doing, but you know exactly what your risk tolerance is and where you fit into the grand equation, and I think that that's awesome,

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):

Man. You just put in words a thing that I've been feeling my entire life and I'm really kind of blown away because yeah, what you just said, why would I do something if I'm not going to be the best at I am like that for absolutely everything I do. You can say that for certain situations. Yeah, well, starting a band or starting a recording school, that's pretty big. But that was one of my arguments back when I lived in Brazil for wanting to move to America because first of all, in my head, still to this day, I don't understand why anybody would not want to do that. So it just feels weird.

Speaker 1 (01:15:29):

They're just not wired that way. That's all it is. We're differently wired

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):

Conceptually. I get that. I'm not able to make the connection.

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):

Okay. Yeah, because not who you are.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):

So this is a conversation I have often with my parents. Ever since I moved to America, I've been able to get them a very citizenship, not citizenship, but immigration privileges to be here and they could move here tomorrow, and technically they did, but they spend a lot of time not here, and I'm like, you guys have an opportunity to live in America. We have everything there. Why are you going to Brazil America? Brazil? Well, for the people only listening to America, Brazil, the concept of not wanting that is crazy to me. It's crazy to me for anyone listening to that's thinking, I'm just being a kisses of America. That's not what I meant. What I meant is that there are better life qualities in America than just about any other place

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):

And opportunities,

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):

But definitely better than in Brazil. So in my head was always like, well, because in Brazil there's very much a tribal thing. They don't, I call it reverse tribal. They don't like local talent. So being successful in metal in Brazil is impossible. It only happened for ura. So it's impossible because the first thing is why would I listen to this since this guy from Brazil, I would just listen to my own music. I guess I get it. But in my head was always like, yeah, but why would I deal with that bullshit when in America people, that's where people do it. So if I cannot be making music in America, I don't want to make it anywhere because I don't want to compete with that. So my career started relatively late, my first album ever. I was like 23 already 20, 22 or something because up to then I didn't fuck around in Brazil.

(01:17:35):

I was just learning music. I knew nothing would come out of there. I see band after band put out record and get trashed by the magazine. I see band put out record, go do a show and get six people. Why would I do that? It's not that the band sucks, it is that the crowd does not accept the fact they're from Brazil and in America is where of all of it is. So if you want to be a musician, you have to be in America. Oh, but you can do it at a good level at your country. I'm not interested in that either I'm going to do it at the highest level or I'm not. You just said very much related to the way I feel about mostly everything. That's also why I was never too fond of the whole local band thing. I make fun of local bands on social media a lot, but the way, have

Speaker 1 (01:18:23):

You seen the memes? I just posted the past three days, the local band shows before Coronavirus, local band show after Coronavirus, and it's two

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):

People because that's a perspective that's important too, and it's related to that perspective because again, I moved to America in my early twenties and the first place I lived in was Nebraska of all places, and then I saw all this bullshit that happened with the local scene there. The band I was in at the time was signed to Metal Blade. We were touring with Bullet for My Valentine, and somehow the local bands was still trash us, and I thought it was a Nebraska thing. So for the longest time I'm like, you know what? Just Nebraskans don't know anything about music. All these bands suck, blah, blah, blah. Then I moved to LA and I see the same thing only with different names. Then I move here to Florida and I see the same thing with different names. It is always the big band everybody hates.

(01:19:20):

Then there's the one band that's not quite as big, but they're friends with everyone. So everyone goes and sees those guys, but they really can't really play, but they bring everyone. And then there's this other band that's friends with them that wants to be like them. So they say, Josh from blah, blah, blah band is producing my record. So I started seeing that pattern and I'm being like, wait a second. It's not Nebraska, it's everywhere. It is the local music scene. I have no interest in that. So if this is how I'm going to have to work in America, I'm done. I would rather be hired by bands that are already big and will take me out. So it's the same sort of thinking that you're talking about only with my subjects, with the things I was trying to do in my life, and I don't understand how you can think otherwise if you're not going to be the best, why even try It sucks to be the fourth

Speaker 1 (01:20:10):

Best. I'll say this though, if someone's listening and are thinking, I just want to be a local level producer, or I don't want to be the next Josh Wilbur, but I'd love to work under the next Josh Wilbur or something, that's cool too. What really matters is that you understand that about yourself. If you are a conqueror and you have to be the best or at the top, it's important to know that too, because if you don't go for that, you're going to be living in hell in a mental hell your whole life. You have to go for it. And speaking from experience

Speaker 2 (01:20:46):

As I do 80% of my life,

Speaker 1 (01:20:48):

Like I said, I'm jealous of people who don't want that. But if you don't want that, that doesn't mean that there's no room for you in the world or that you're less of a person or anything. There's ways to make it work. It's just important that you understand yourself. Now, I think there's something interesting that you said that I actually wanted to bring up last night when I was thinking about our conversation today was so yeah, you came to America because of the opportunities, but you're playing in bands that are mainly fucking huge in Europe, but not here. So how does that work?

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):

There's only true to an extent. The one thing I do in America is the Trans Liberian orchestra, and that is the biggest tour of the year every year.

Speaker 1 (01:21:33):

Oh yeah, okay. Trans Siberian Orchestra is goddamn massive.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):

That's all I want to fuck around with. I don't want to go play. I don't want to go play little dumpy bars and eat backstage nachos. That's what I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):

Yeah, but if Udo plays in the us,

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):

That's what we did. We ate backstage nachos with Udo. But that's what I mean. I mean, I try not to. Anyway, I try. A lot of people do ask me that, why do you play in Europe so much if you live in America? Well, my style, what I like to do, and it goes back to what we're talking about, be honest with yourself and know yourself. What I like to do and what I get hired to do is in Europe asking Alexandra ain't going to call me. I will get the traditional medal stuff. I will get the power metal stuff that works over there. When we come to America, we'll play bars or whatever, whatever. I'll still get my money the same, but if I can choose, if I can choose, if I can pursue something, it has to be at a high level. Man. I don't see the, I don't, and I know I'm talking to a lot of students and I'm sorry, but again, either at the top or I don't want to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:42):

You're not just talking to students. A lot of pros listen to this, but also man, you're talking to, there's a 15-year-old listening to this who has the same kinds of ambitions that we do for life, who is probably surrounded by people who have never thought that way and doesn't realize that it's possible or how to go about it. I think it's important for especially students to understand. That is cool if you think that way.

Speaker 2 (01:23:14):

And to finish that too, were talking, we were talking about Europe versus living in America. That's also still related to that because I go to Europe and I love it, and I always, especially Sweden, I'm always there. Why don't I move here? This place is pretty amazing, but there's no place like America, dude. We have things here. We have facilities here that you cannot find elsewhere in the world. So to me, living in America, despite working mostly in Europe, is very much a part of being at the top because make no mistake, you show up in Europe as a musician from America, people freak out just like they do about the Europeans here.

Speaker 1 (01:23:55):

I don't want anyone listening to think that we're trashing their countries or anything like that. Not, but I know what you mean. My dad, for instance, he's lived in Israel, lived in Rome, lived in Paris, Mexico City, and for the past few years, his orchestra was in South Korea. Before that orchestra was in Belgium before that in Paris, but he still lived in Atlanta the whole time, and he's not American. I mean, he's a citizen.

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):

He's like me. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):

Immigrant like you. He came here for opportunity, and there's a reason for why he doesn't leave, even if the majority of his work is overseas. He barely works here. I totally get it. It is a good base to work from.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):

It's also cheap to live compared to Europe to most places in Europe. That's another thing that if you compare what you end up paying to live in Europe, it is a lot cheaper to live in America for a better life,

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):

Especially in Florida where you live.

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):

Sure. Not in California or New York City.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):

Yeah. Another thing that I want to point out though, about your choice of genre or your preference or whatever it is, what you do, the fact that TSO aside, these are genres that typically you eat backstage nachos in the us, but you're playing huge fucking venues in Europe. What I think is important to point out is that there's usually a market for almost any genre almost, and just because the market isn't where you're from, doesn't mean it's not out there. Now, obviously, if you're going to play Avantgarde Noise, probably not going to be doing huge tours. So obviously this doesn't count across the board, but really at the end of the day, just because the opportunity isn't where you're at, doesn't mean that the opportunity doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):

The world is more globalized than ever, man. You can get anywhere in the world for a thousand dollars. Sure, a thousand dollars is a lot of, but it wasn't possible 10 years ago. It wasn't possible to hit up someone on Facebook and Oh, book a couple of shows. Being local doesn't mean anything anymore, I don't think.

Speaker 1 (01:26:17):

No, unless you behave like a local. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:26:20):

Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:26:21):

Which is

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):

Now, that exists a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):

Yeah. That's a mentality more than anything. Just out of curiosity, man, when you come and you play here, and it's like backstage nachos, this is a good way to put it with the gas station cheese. I know that on tour morale is a very important thing,

Speaker 3 (01:26:38):

And

Speaker 1 (01:26:38):

I remember that sometimes my band's morale would be crushed. We went from doing this tour with Dragon Force one year. It was Dragon Force and Cynic and a thousand to 2000 people a night most nights. It was really good, and

Speaker 2 (01:26:53):

I remember that tour actually.

Speaker 1 (01:26:55):

Yeah, it was. I mean, there were only two bunk shows on the whole tour. So we went from that, and then the next tour, which, and I love Goat whore, but it was Goat Who and Abigail Williams and Abysmal Dawn, and there were like 60 people a night for two and a half months straight, and I got swine flu. That part sucked, but there was a huge demoralizing aspect to it. Does it demoralize you at all?

Speaker 2 (01:27:23):

That's a great question, but the answer to that, it will be the most personal. It's just my personal experience. I don't know a lot of people who share that, but I've been able to detach enough that it doesn't matter because it's not my band.

Speaker 1 (01:27:38):

You're a fucking pro.

Speaker 2 (01:27:40):

Exactly. Well, yeah. Okay. I was going to say, because I'm a hired gun. Yeah, it doesn't matter. But when I say it doesn't matter, the fucked up thing is I've done four or five years ago, the fucking open air show with TSO double stage show everything that any felt the same way. You know what I mean? I wasn't super excited about it. A lot of people ask, how did that feel? That was the biggest show in history. It was a show. People were so far from me that I wasn't really getting that energy, but even if I was, it is just gotten to a point where I do the show and I do it the same way every night, especially on these US shows, they're empty. Because when I did that with Udo, the guys in the band, they were a little more reserved because they're Germans and all that, but I would come out and hang out with everyone after the show, and some of them would too. But a lot of people are like, how do you play a show like this? You're playing a stadium. I'm like, because I'm playing the same show. The show a lot of times, dude, after, I don't know 10 shows on a tour, I'm probably even doing the same moves on stage, standing on the same spot. You know what I mean? It's work. But again, I don't have the ops either.

(01:28:54):

I played with my band. We did two shows in Japan and one in Sweden, and they were my own band, and they were big festivals. Everybody in the band was super pumped, and I was just like, well, this is a festival. People are here anyway. They're not here to see us. So I don't know. I've been able to detach because I've played so many shitty shows,

Speaker 1 (01:29:16):

But there's more to touring than just the shows. When you're playing a massive situation,

Speaker 2 (01:29:23):

You mean the morale, how people feel during the day too, right?

Speaker 1 (01:29:26):

Yeah. Yeah. It's also how your band members feel the vibe of the whole thing. It's not just that time on stage. It's everything. It's the shitty backstage room.

Speaker 2 (01:29:38):

No, I can't detach. I can't detach like, oh, shitty backstage room. I laugh at it. I would just stay in the bus tonight. I'll eat Taco Bell.

(01:29:46):

It's because always, well, not always, but 90% of the time when I'm a hired gun, I am the one hired gun. So the whole band has been together for a while, and I'm the one guy that's different, is not uncommon for me to see people freaking out over shit. And I'm on my phone like, oh, we only have 80 presales, only 80 tickets sold. Okay, I don't know what to tell you. Oh, look at this. Oh, there's no, there's no food. This is not possible. This is no food. Okay, I'll buy Taco Bell. It was like, oh, our lights don't fit the venue. Oh, can't go through the door. I'm like, well, that sucks. Can I am fit? Do you care if I have an amp? I'll play with that one. I don't give a shit. Just pay me. So I literally got to that point.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):

You know what, man? I think that right now what you're saying is part of the secret to your success is just being cool about whatever happens,

Speaker 2 (01:30:43):

And don't be overexcited either. That's a very important side. When something good happens, it's probably only going to happen that one time and next week you're going to be disappointed again. So just keep that in mind.

Speaker 1 (01:30:55):

I'm just thinking, my band took a hired gun. We had to take hired guns a couple times, and there were once or twice that it was fucking terrible and normally had to do not what they're playing, but with their attitude. I remember one of them just couldn't handle the brutality of a winter North American tour in a van. They started to break down mentally. We had a near death experience in a blizzard and a lot of load ins with people slipping on ice and hurting themselves in very violent shows. I remember one show involved 14 people being hospitalized. Another show had a drive by shooting. It was a brutal tour, and this dude just started to crack, and he was a little bit weird. And then we never spoke to him again because fuck that guy for cracking. And on the other hand, on that hell tour, I told you about the goat whore, Abigail Williams, two and a half months in the summer, we had a fill in drummer Zach from Goat Whore, and he's not just an awesome drummer, but he was just such an easygoing dude. 60 people at the show, 200 people didn't give a fuck.

(01:32:12):

Good backstage, back backstage, didn't give a fuck, just cool to hang out with, played the songs, did not mess up on stage, looked cool, always a good hang, never got overexcited about anything, but never was a downer either. Exactly what we needed, dude, who could look the part, play the part and just get along. And so honestly, I think what you're saying is part of your success, because if the band is sitting there freaking out about 80 pre-sales, this and that, this and that, and you're not even in the band. You're just, I don't want to say part of the crew, but you not in the band, you're hired, you probably shouldn't be adding to the drama, right?

Speaker 2 (01:32:57):

Exactly. Exactly. You shouldn't be adding to the drama and man, I mean, I don't know who you're talking about, but what you just brought up the story with your hired gun. I think to anybody listening that wants to do what I do, I think you should listen to this basically in metal because, well, let's face it, metal to a large extent is semi-pro is done in a semi-pro fashion, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:33:29):

Semi? Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:33:30):

Yeah. Yeah. A machine head has a full crew. Some of these bands have a full crew, but sometimes bands are traveling with one or two people or none. And the thing is, there's a camaraderie that ends up happening, and people live on this gray area between band member and hired gun, and this has happened to me several times until I didn't let it happen anymore. Either you're a hired gun or you're not a hired gun. So either you're in the band or you're not in the band. Maybe you're thinking about joining the band and right now you're a hired gun. Hired gun rules will apply, meaning you get paid regardless of the band getting paid. Oh, we did it. We just had a cancellation. Oh, tough shit. We have an agreement now. When you're in the band, we had a cancellation. All right, well, I'll take the hit as well.

(01:34:19):

Those are two different things, but I think in metal, that gray area is actually rather large. So there's a lot of guys that would like to be hired guns, but they're not ready for the road. Like you just said, if you're a hired gun, I don't care what happened. You do the job, you do the fucking job. Unless you break an arm, you do the job. You hate the singer, you hate the venue, you don't like the city. It's too cold, it's too hot. I don't care. You took the job. You fucking do the job. Otherwise you don't take it. For example, I'll stay here and people can call me a asshole, but I don't carry gear. I won't carry your gear, period, unless you're a huge band. But if you're a huge band, you're not going to want me to carry the gear anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:34:59):

Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):

When you call me, I say it right away. I'm like, okay, do you guys have tags? Do you guys have a crew? Okay, well, I do not carry gear. If you don't have a tech either get me a tag or be prepared to carry my gear. I will carry my guitar, I'll carry my camper, but I don't carry gear. Oh, you're an asshole. Okay, well call someone else. To me, it's that simple. People should be like that. Now, if you want to be in the band, then you're investing too. Then it's different. None of this applies. Carry the shit, shut the fuck up, be on time. And because this is your business too, if you fuck it up, you're fucking up for everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:35:35):

I mean, it's the same as being a business owner versus an employee. Man. If we have a rough time as an owner, the employee's pay is not getting cut. The first thing to get cut is my own.

Speaker 2 (01:35:48):

Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:35:48):

As an owner, that's the way it's got to be. I can't expect people who don't own it to be cool taking a cut,

Speaker 2 (01:35:55):

But that only happens in metal. In the pop world, you have a contract. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:36:01):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:36:01):

I like to do contracts. It's not that I only do contracts, but I like to do it because of that. I was in a situation in 2015 where I was working for this band and I made it clear to them that I wasn't going to carry gear, and that caused problems. The band started getting mad at me. Oh, you're sitting around on your phone or everybody else is scaring shit. I'm like, I'm not in your band. I have my shit. Oh, but you got to help out. No, I don't. No, I don't. I actually don't. I can if I want, and some nights I would, but don't fucking expect me to do it. I told you before, oh, you're an asshole. Don't hire me. Hire someone else.

Speaker 1 (01:36:40):

If you wanted to join the band, then maybe you would do that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:36:45):

I don't expect people to do it on my band. I'm not going to hire a guy and be like, carry all this shit for $300. He'll be like, fuck you. No, he probably will carry, because people do. People go into the bullshit, but you shouldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:36:59):

So you just said the rules of being a hired gun. What are the rules?

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):

No, I don't think there's any rules. You can work however you want. I give

Speaker 1 (01:37:09):

In your mind, what's the job description?

Speaker 2 (01:37:11):

In my mind, the job description is to show up, to perform the material, to look good while you're doing it and go to bed. That's it. I have to be there on time. If I'm not on time, I'm being an asshole. My shit has to work, my gear has to work. It has to be in tune. I have to play well. If I don't perform well, I want to hear it. It's happened before. It's happened before when I've been on tour, and it took three shows for me to hear anything about playing part wrong because people were afraid to approach me. Well, man, you're this guy that a lot of people call, no, I want to hear it. I want feedback. I want to know that I'm playing this shit wrong. But that can be also a hit on your ego if you're not ready for it. When you think that you're playing something really good and then the guy's like, oh, that part, you're not playing it right, dude, that's stink. I've had some experiences of people I really respect coming to me and being like, that was terrible, and I thought it was great.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):

I, but you got to hear that.

Speaker 2 (01:38:12):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:38:12):

You're getting paid to play. Right. I took a hired gun gig once for a tour European black metal band. It was actually my first tour. Oh, is it? I don't want to say it on air.

Speaker 2 (01:38:23):

Oh, it's not public.

Speaker 1 (01:38:25):

There's actually reasons for why I don't want to give them any press.

Speaker 2 (01:38:28):

Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:38:28):

Because Nazis, and I didn't know that when I took the tour, actual Nazis Nazi to the level that they took me on a field trip to Hitler's stadium and shit and were crying. It was so beautiful. Just imagine a 24-year-old Jewish guy who is just trying to be a professional guitar player, musician, whatever, takes this gig, and suddenly I'm surrounded by fucking Nazis everywhere, all the bands n like real Nazis in Europe with Nazi crowds. And I don't mean the half-ass Nazis we have here. I mean, people whose grandparents were SS soldiers who like

Speaker 2 (01:39:12):

Real Nazi,

Speaker 1 (01:39:13):

Really, really still believe it, and it's in their blood. It was a very, very uncomfortable situation. So I don't want to promote any of those motherfuckers. However, the way that I approached it was, I don't care about the success of this band. I don't care about anything. All I care about is does my corpse paint look right? And am I playing the shit out of the parts? And

Speaker 2 (01:39:37):

That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:38):

Do I look right on stage? And kind of like you said, your side of the stage shouldn't be a concern. That's kind of how I approached it too, was when it comes to at least my end of things, that is not going to be a point of stress whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (01:39:54):

That's it. You're there to remove stress. You're not there to add anything. You're there to remove stress. It's a band that needs a guitar player. You're there to solve a problem.

(01:40:04):

Particular with guitar players. I have a lot of friends, as you can imagine. A lot of guitar player friends talk to me, how do I do this? How do I do that? And one thing I get a lot is people unhappy that they have to play solos note by note. Now, some artists want that, some don't. And in my head, it doesn't matter either way. If I have to play your solo, that's another part of the song I have to learn. If I don't, then I play my own solo. But I have no feelings of whether or not that's not a make or break. But I've seen motherfuckers get fired because of that. This is in Brazil is a friend of mine who's a bass player. He's playing with this country duel, one of the biggest stars in the country. And there's a break where they're having people clap, and this guy is supposed to hold a root for the bass, just quarter nose, thumb. And this guy goes on a tread bass thing for a couple bars. When the singer was supposed to come back, he missed the cue because he was playing the wrong bass part. He was fired at the end of the show. So it's never about you. It's never about you. It's never about you. It's always about the person hiring you. If they tell you to wear a skirt and play upside down, either do it or don't take the gig. Don't talk about how your jeans look cooler.

Speaker 1 (01:41:28):

Dude, it's the same thing for producers and mixers. We hear this all the time. You are mixing somebody else's song. It's not about you. It's about their song. That's kind of the gig in so many of these different types of positions in the game is you are helping somebody else achieved their vision, and you have to be committed to that.

Speaker 2 (01:41:53):

Exactly. And as a producer, it is the same thing. When you ask me what makes people call me, it's the same thing. At least in my head. You choose a producer because you like their sound, but it's still your music. This is why, I mean, not that I'm against that, but a lot of the time when people get super attached to their song, it can go a little the other way too. I've seen it happen where I've been sitting with producers, actually with people you worked with, and this producer is like, no, this is better. And it was better period. And the artist didn't want to do it. And I was like, you're being an idiot. His idea is better. Oh, but it's my music, blah, blah, blah. I think there's a midpoint where you kind of have to know it's weird, man. Oh, it's an art. It's not a science.

Speaker 1 (01:42:41):

That whole part, the navigating, the psychology of that, what you just brought up, actually, I want to talk to you about that because it's interesting. Normally we have producers on here talking about how to deal with that with musicians. When you have an idea that's better than one of theirs and they don't want to hear it, but you're making their song better, they hired you to help make this album successful, then they've got really, really bad ideas. Or they want something that's just dumb and they're being hardheaded, and how do you deal with it? Because A, it's their record, but B, you're hired to make their record as awesome as possible. So it's this really weird line, and there's a lot of psychology involved with how to make that relationship work. But you as a musician who's worked with producers, this scenario of musician has an idea that the producer does not agree with. How have you been convinced? What has it taken to get you to see the light on an idea that you felt very strongly about, but that the producer disagreed and convinced you to change? How did it work?

Speaker 2 (01:43:51):

It's honestly never happened. I've never been so attached to an idea that the producer wanted to change. That didn't make it better. No. Yeah. Actually, I can't think of anything that didn't make it better. Because the truth is the producer is doing records all the time. He probably has the better idea now, to mention is an outside perspective. A problem I used to have, and I am working on fixing this all the time, is I get attached to my demos to the point where I like the sound of things, but I know they're not better. I use superior drummer, the Andy Knee til tonic drums. So then I hear someone record the real drums. I'm like, oh, but I like my demo better. But no, I'm just attached to the fact that every hit is fucking perfect. I think it takes a little bit of self-knowledge to figure out when it's a good idea or when you've just been an idiot. But this happens between musicians too, because there are scanned phrases, and I bet you anything that your producers deal with this all the time in one way or another, either someone trying to use music theory to prove their point

(01:44:56):

Or to use the fact that they don't know theory to prove their point, how I just play and I don't feel things. Both cases are very annoying because it happens to me as a musician when I'm trying to collaborate and someone will come with an idea that's three chords, and I'm like, okay, now I know what simple is. And three chords can be simple, but you're playing three chords, A, F, and G, and your vocal melody is also a f and g. That's too much. That's too simple. Oh, I'm sorry. I just play what I feel. It's simple. No, see, that's not it. That's not simple. This is dumb. Just like, oh, well, right here, right here is a diminished chord. So I'm throwing the diminished scale. Well, yeah, but that minor second, that is not working. Even if it's theoretically right. Well, but that's how it goes. I've dealt with both, but that's normally with musicians, with producers. I tend to work, well. I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (01:45:56):

Well, I will say that I have never gotten this from a pro producer that I know, but I've definitely seen situations where producers will, they'll use, it's not theory to prove a point, but they'll use their experience to prove a point if they're getting very, which is also bullshit. I've made this many records and my plaques don't lie. So my idea is right. It's like your plaques have nothing to do with this idea that we're talking about right now. Either the idea is good or it's not, but it's got nothing to do with how many gold records you've got on your wall. Those records don't mean shit. When we're talking about this idea, all that matters is this idea and the song that it's in. And so I've seen people try to push that on musicians, which is really shitty also. So I think it's something that people just do and they need to get over themselves. And in all three cases, I think that it's people who get too attached to ideas.

Speaker 2 (01:47:00):

That's what it is. And at least in my head, using outside producers, because you don't want to be attached to those ideas. Absolutely. Because you want someone else to come in and be like, Hey, try this instead.

Speaker 1 (01:47:11):

Well, okay, so have you been in a scenario where you're working with a producer and another musician and the producer wants to change something, and you agree with the producer, but you see that your band mate is just not fucking not going to go easy on this one, and they're wrong. They're just plain wrong. The idea is better. How have you seen that be resolved?

Speaker 2 (01:47:35):

Actually, that's an interesting story too. That happened on my first album. Now, I was in this band, it was Odor. It was on Metal Blade,

Speaker 1 (01:47:43):

I remember.

Speaker 2 (01:47:44):

And we were doing our record with Eric Rutin. Now, Eric Rutin was a death metal producer, and so we were all kind of skeptical about that,

Speaker 1 (01:47:54):

And he's an opinionated guy too.

Speaker 2 (01:47:58):

But the thing is, the leader of the band, the guy who wrote the songs, and now keep in mind, I had just joined the band. At this point, I'm just getting mad and not doing anything about it. The leader of the band, he had some really, really, really, really bad ideas. And I would be on the demos. I would be like, well, I'm sure when you get to a producer, he's just going to get rid of that.

Speaker 1 (01:48:20):

He's just going to fix

Speaker 2 (01:48:21):

It. And dude, and he tried, but several times they were butting heads about the stupidest shit. And I was always like, but he's right. And a lot of the time it's objective. I remember one specific song where one chord that he was putting on the rhythm part was a major second apart from the lead, and it wasn't in a context where it sounds like a minor second. It just sounded tense,

Speaker 1 (01:48:54):

Sour.

Speaker 2 (01:48:55):

Yeah. I'm like, instead of this chord, put this chord instead. Whatever chord it was, he wouldn't budge. He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't do it. Rutan is like, well, that part is weird, man. Let's do something. Rutan couldn't pinpoint what it was. He's like, that part is weird. Let's try something. They tried a bunch of things, but the guy was like, no, I like the way it is. I like the way it is. I'm like, guys, discord. Yes, yes. I'm like, that's what it is. I've been saying this for months, but again, to be honest, this session, the recording of that entire album is because I went into it wanting to be a part of it, and I'm the guy in the band, and I'm the lead guitarist, and I'm also kind of a producer, so I'm also going to help out the tune the vocals.

(01:49:36):

I'm going to help do the drums, blah, blah, blah. Dude, within three days, I'm like, fuck you. It's your band. Just tell me what I have to play and what I have to play because this shit was happening so much. And this album, I mean, dude, listen to this album and then listen to Cannibal Corpse's Kill. Those two albums were done at the same time, with the same gear in the same studio, and they sound drastically different. Kill sounds amazing. This album sounds kind of like a demo. And they were done at the same time, but we were not ready for the studio. And this guy who created the music kept butting heads with the producer. It wasn't about stuff that mattered. Some of the stuff we changed after he left, he flew back home. I still remember a super high pitch vocal party at a random spot in the song. I'm like, dude, just get rid of that. I think that's when I learned that you better just sit back and let it happen. It's not enough reward to get involved. But in this situation, in this particular record, every single thing that I remember Rutan saying would've made the song better. Some of them made it into the album, some of them did not. Some of them, the guy just wouldn't budge.

Speaker 1 (01:50:49):

I always advise people that if you want to get an idea through to a musician when you're producing them, the best way to do it is not to talk about it, but to show them and let them hear it. Because when you're talking about music, who knows? You could say, I have an idea. I want it to sound huge here and stuff. But if you say that to somebody, the way they interpret whatever words you're saying is whatever's going on in their head, you have no idea how they're interpreting your words. So using words to describe a musical idea is super limited at best. And especially when you're trying to convince them that something that they wrote has got to change and they don't want to hear it, or they're at least resistant. So I've always said the best way to do it is find a way to just do it. Show them the end, and let the music speak for itself. I have a friend, producer. What he does is when he's got ideas like that, and he knows he's working with somewhat difficult musicians, is he'll show up an hour early and do a save as on the session so that nothing gets fucked up. He'll do his ideas, and then when they get in to the studio, whenever they get in, he'll play it for them. And no warning, he'll just be like, check out this thing I did.

(01:52:05):

Either they like it or they don't, but at least then they're reacting to the actual idea. And it's not like, I want to try this thing. No, I don't think it's going to work because of reason. Reason. It's like, yeah, but it'll work because of reason, reason, and all these reasons. But who the fuck even knows until they hear it? So what I'm getting at is you played the chord in the room. That was the right chord, and by hearing it, the argument was solved. But I guess it wasn't that simple in real life. That's how I imagined it in my head,

Speaker 2 (01:52:34):

And it wasn't solved either. Went to the record the old way

Speaker 1 (01:52:38):

Bummer.

Speaker 2 (01:52:39):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:52:40):

Some people you just can't be helped.

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):

Yeah, I mean obviously I'm picking, this is a 15-year-old example. I don't even know if the guy is still the same way, but it's just something that stuck with me over the years that I saw that I was like, really? That's really

Speaker 1 (01:52:53):

Stupid. Maybe he evolved and he is chilled out, but people are like that other thing I want to key in on, which is very important for both musicians and producers listening and also, hey, if you're an a and r guy and you hire a producer because you love their work and they have a track record for the last 10 times you worked together, everything's great, and then suddenly the next thing they do kind of sucks. It's probably the band's fault. Whenever you hear a mixer, you love all his mixes, and then suddenly he puts out something new and it's just like what happened? I guarantee you 99% of the time what happened was that it's a miracle that it even sounds that good because whatever he was dealing with took all the time to even get it to that point. That's why Cannibal Corpse Kill sounded amazing.

(01:53:46):

That band is DTF basically when they're making a record and they know who they are, they've got their sound, they're down to make great records and they do what it takes, and I know this because I witnessed Accountable Corpse record being made also. I didn't record it. I did some assisting on it. I was there for quite a bit, and they know who they are. They don't fuck around. Basically, it goes to show that as good of a producer, as good as a producer can be, as good as a mixer can be. If they're spending the entire time fighting the artist or fighting really shitty tracks, there's a strong possibility that it's not going to be their best work.

Speaker 2 (01:54:25):

What you're saying is very interesting because I think that about Route 10, when I think about the Cell Door album, when I hear it, I'm like, I'm surprised it sounds this good poor guy, man. He had to deal with problems of in every stage of the way, and I mean from micing the drums to recording the vocals, there was always one of us being a fucking idiot at some point. Dude, it was so bad that he started calling our drums, our drummer rims. He kept hitting the rims. He couldn't play. We had a 16-year-old drummer and everyone's like, oh, he's 16, he's this good. He sounds like a 16-year-old now the guy from Goat Hob, you mentioned him, he too was 16 at the time, but

Speaker 1 (01:55:09):

He was killer. Oh, he was great.

Speaker 2 (01:55:11):

I kept saying it. I'm like, see, that's a 16-year-old who can play that's just a 16-year-old. I digress. He had to deal with so much shit from that and then to the guy not actually being able to perform the drums, but he also didn't want to program them, so he took us three days. Three days to be like, okay, this is not going to work. Let's program to guitar player fighting me because I wasn't playing the everything. It was horrid and it was my first time in the studio and was horrid. When I think about it, I think about Eric. I'm like, dude, I'm so sorry because you've dealt with a bunch of fucking morons and it still sounds as good as it does.

Speaker 1 (01:55:55):

It's a miracle that it sounds as good as it does, and the thing here that sucks for a producer, this is why I tell producers, when you're in these scenarios, do what you have to do to make it sound as amazing as you can. If you have to rerecord shit when the band's gone rerecord shit, just play dirty. Do whatever you have to do because at the end of the day you're going to get blamed. Maybe 15 years later, the guitar player might come on a podcast and be like, Bo Guy, but at the time the label and the public are going to be like all they know is what they're hearing. They don't know what went into it and the producer or the mixer is going to get blamed for it when in reality the band should get blamed for it. The band will never get blamed.

Speaker 2 (01:56:41):

Dude, in this case, it's 100% a band. We were not ready to do the album. We didn't even have enough songs. I always use that example because it's my first album. I have it tattooed on my arm. I love the album, but it doesn't sound as good as Skill does and it was done at the same time in the same place. It's definitely the band. All those things are true and those sound really is in the fingers, not on Amps. It is really the band that makes music and not the producer. So if you show up with a half-ass song and a half-ass album, yeah, maybe Jason Soff will save it, but it still won't be amazing. It will not sound like the record that made you call him in the first place that I guarantee you.

Speaker 1 (01:57:25):

Yeah, so speaking of SKO KO's best work, especially in that era was with bands that were fucking awesome who he then applied his talents to. So what was he really known for back then? Trivia aside, he didn't mix that, but Barry Your Dead, remember the Barrier, your Dead stuff, the Black Dahlia nocturnal stuff,

Speaker 2 (01:57:48):

That's still their best record probably.

Speaker 1 (01:57:51):

Dude, it's great.

(01:57:52):

I don't know if people remember Barry Your Dead very much, but Barry Your Dead, they're like the original Acacia strain or something, but much different. But they were one of those bands that had all the tone in the hands and were just like All groove and for instance, and I know that they recorded all the drums for the whole album in one day because the drummer, Mark Castillo is fucking incredible, and it was just one of those types of bands that was just all tone in the hands, all talent, just energy. And so then you put that with someone like Soff when he was at that point in his career and you have magic. You take something like Black Dahlia who are an amazing band, I call them consummate professionals, that is a pro death metal band, whether you like him or not, that band is on their shit and always has been through lineup changes through the years, and so you put that with the right producer and you get magic.

Speaker 3 (01:58:55):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:58:55):

I remember right around that time period there was a local band that SKO agreed to do for some reason, and he did his best to save it. I think he was doing a favor for somebody. It does sound a lot better than it should have, and it still sounded great, but it wasn't like Black Dahlia. It wasn't like Bury your Dead. Oh, producer is working with what you bring them. They can take it to the next level, but they're not the band. They're not the artist.

Speaker 2 (01:59:22):

No man, and it's all about that. And that's the one thing that how we were talking maybe even an hour ago about the YouTube generation and all that, that cannot be replaced. The band being prepared and moving air in the studio and all that. It might be pretty old fashioned soon, but cannot be replaced.

Speaker 1 (01:59:41):

So here's something that I would like you to know because we've been talking about how things are changing, but as someone who talks to producers all the time, I can tell you that the old school way of doing things, the old school way might be somewhat dead, but some of the lessons of it are very much being applied by the badasses, and there's a movement right now to make real records again, or at least make whatever that means as records, but to make real songs, albums, mixes. I don't mean real as in no samples or anything like that, but I mean real as in the real feeling of a fucking kick ass band or just a kick ass recording, and people are encouraging real drums. They are encouraging performances and they're using that wisdom from the old school, but combining it with the technology of the new school, and I've noticed that there's a school of bands also that want that, and I think that if you're talking about the 2010 era, that was kind of dead. I do think that URM is in part to blame for it because we've really pushed the idea really, really, really hard to people about how records should be made, but I do think that that feeling that you're saying that's lost is making a comeback, and I think we are entering another golden age for music. I think we entered it about a year or two ago.

Speaker 2 (02:01:19):

I believe that.

Speaker 1 (02:01:20):

I think you're going to be seeing a lot of great music that's very memorable. That sounds incredible too, and that's actually played. I do believe that, and yes, of course you're going to still have the people that just go note by note and construct everything, whatever, but even they know how to make great stuff sometimes, but point being though that I don't think that the good days are over again. I think we just entered a really good period.

Speaker 2 (02:01:48):

I would agree with that. One thing that I thought that would never happen was metal bands filling up arenas. Now that's happening with Five Finger Death Punch here in America and in Europe, but in Europe. Sabo is a Swedish band, a Swedish power metal band. They just sold out their tour in America, and it wasn't bars. It was like 1500 to 2000. That's great. And in Europe is all arenas. Oh, 15, 20,000 every night, and that couldn't happen in the 2000 tens. Fuck. I think this is new. It's also new for people to be a little more open-minded with music like we're talking about. And man, I want to ask you your opinion as a producer. So would you agree that that sometimes the copy and paste has at this point become part of a style, so the GT rhythms, even if you are able to perform them, doesn't it make sense to copy and paste because of the way the records sound nowadays?

Speaker 1 (02:02:48):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (02:02:49):

Okay, so I'm not wrong. I listened to some albums. I'm like, no, I can tell that this is the same pick stroke, but if it wasn't, I don't think it would sound the same way.

Speaker 1 (02:02:59):

That's absolutely right. This is an interesting topic because so many people think that people copy and paste or edit drums or use samples or whatever as an excuse for something sucking, and that's true sometimes. Sometimes you do have to take measures to fix something that sucks. That is part of the job Sometimes, however, these tools are just tools, man, so there are scenarios where the art demands that you do it a certain way and copy and pasting. There's a certain chug that just has the perfect feeling and the song is made better by that chug happening in several different places, or the way that the chorus is copied and is exactly the same, something about that works way better than if it was totally different. It's not always a time saving move. Sometimes it's the artistic choice to make.

Speaker 2 (02:04:00):

See, yeah. That is one thing that I'm starting to learn because, and I might've talked about this on the last podcast because I talk about this a lot and I hear it happening to my ear, autotune autotune people, our generation hear autotune and they're like, yeah, whatever. This singer sucked. No, no, no, no. That's an fact.

Speaker 1 (02:04:20):

No.

Speaker 2 (02:04:21):

Now it's an effect. A side effect of that I think is say that you were born in 1995, okay, so you started listening to music into two thousands. When you go back and listen to Bruce Dickenson in 1982, that's going to sound out attune to you.

Speaker 1 (02:04:34):

It's that way for me now when I hear

Speaker 2 (02:04:36):

Stuff, I mean, it's happening for me, it's happening for me. I go back and I'm like, wow, I didn't realize Bruce was so pitchy here, but the reason is because everything is so out of tune and it's become so he changed our perspective, but it's so common to still hear people talking shit about autotune, and I'm like, it's actually very likely that the person that you're hearing out of tune actually nailed an amazing take that wasn't flat enough, and that's why they used the auto tune.

Speaker 1 (02:05:05):

So there's some interesting things about vocal tuning, much like we were talking about drummers who grew up listening to program drums, and so they play that way. Lots of vocalists grew up hearing tuned vocalists, and so now they sing that way down to the point where I've been in the studio and also on nail the mix tracks. I know I'm not the only person who's experienced this to where the singer's voice sounds like the autotune effect. They sound like

Speaker 2 (02:05:38):

Even the slide.

Speaker 1 (02:05:39):

Yeah, yeah. That weird artifact that autotune does, it's in their voice naturally. It's so crazy, but I've experienced it multiple times and it's always with people under a certain age, so people who grew up with that being the norm, and again, not only have I experienced it on my own recordings, but people I know have talked about it on the podcast and on Nail the mix, and I've heard it on Nail the mix tracks,

Speaker 2 (02:06:10):

So this is not the first time someone is saying this,

Speaker 1 (02:06:12):

No.

Speaker 2 (02:06:12):

Oh, that's cool. I've been thinking that

Speaker 1 (02:06:15):

You're not crazy. This is a real thing. So that's number one. The other thing about Autotune or Meloy or any of these tools is they were made famous, famous to the public via T-Pain and Share, but that's because they were using them wrong, I mean artistically, right? Because they were hits, right? So you can't say that they were artistically wrong, but technically they were using them incorrectly. They were setting them to crazy levels to where you can hear everything that the effect is doing, and it does that robot voice thing. A lot of people who don't understand how this works think that that's what tuning vocals is all about is turning people into robots or that you use it to fix horrible vocalists, and that's not it. In most cases, if something's tuned, you should never even be able to hear that It's tuned. I'd say 90% of the time you're not supposed to even know, or maybe more 95% of the time or more, you're not supposed to be able to hear the tuning. You're just supposed to be able to hear a great vocal that's in tune the end.

Speaker 2 (02:07:28):

That being said, I do hear the TPA a lot just about every song on the radio.

Speaker 1 (02:07:34):

Well, that's a choice.

Speaker 2 (02:07:35):

Yeah, yeah. That's what I mean. It's become an effect.

Speaker 1 (02:07:37):

Yeah. However, though again, that's not always tuning man. Sometimes that's just the way the vocalist sounds.

Speaker 2 (02:07:44):

Yep. That's interesting. All this, it's funny because a lot of people just won't take the time to start and think about that. You know what I mean? They would just say, it sucks because it's autotune, or it sucks because the drums are programmed

Speaker 1 (02:07:58):

And people just want to be assholes. It reminds me of when I was 13 and Guns N Roses was huge, and I loved them talking to a producer who was recording my band and asking him about Guns N Roses, and he said that same kind of shit. It's just modern, slick bullshit. The Rolling Stones already did it, all this stuff, and it's like I go back and I hear the Rolling Stones and I'm like, what are you talking about? Man, this band sucks. Still. It's back to that same thing. People just like to talk shit and be narrow-minded and they don't really think deeply into these topics.

Speaker 2 (02:08:41):

See, in my perspective, I was born in 83 to think that someone at one point in time thought of Guns N Roses as slick bullshit. I can't see it. I see. I think their records are very imperfect, and I always did, but I can see it.

Speaker 1 (02:09:00):

This guy was 37

Speaker 2 (02:09:02):

Back then, right?

Speaker 1 (02:09:03):

Yeah. Back then in 93 or 94, he was 37, and so he had that attitude that those people were talking about have, and this was a producer man. This was not like my parents.

(02:09:16):

My parents actually are open-minded, but this was not like some parent or typically narrow-minded person who was a professional producer who worked with everybody from Tony Braxton to the Black Crows and Sevendust and stuff like all the big Atlanta bands of the early nineties. This guy worked with at some point Collective Soul, all of them, and he thought this way because that's just how people are, man, and it bugs me. That's something about human nature that I wish was different. What is a beautiful thing is when you know someone who used to think that way and they evolve past it, it's cool. So it's not a life sentence to be narrow-minded, I think.

Speaker 2 (02:10:03):

Yeah. I mean, I'm honest, man. I'm very narrow-minded still. There's a lot of things I still don't accept for. I still think that Dream Theater was great on the two first records. I still think that

Speaker 1 (02:10:17):

You got your opinions, dude, but you're like, you're a pretty open person.

Speaker 2 (02:10:21):

Yeah, yeah. I go out of my way to accept new things. There's always a surprise there. There's always something that happens that you're like, oh, fuck, I never thought about this. It's good. It's a selfish thing, really,

Speaker 1 (02:10:33):

Man. There's a big difference between having your tastes and preferences versus being a closed person.

Speaker 2 (02:10:40):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (02:10:41):

Two completely different things. Alright, we're almost out of time, so I just want to ask you real quick what is on the horizon?

Speaker 2 (02:10:48):

Yeah. Assuming that it doesn't get canceled, I have the Doro PE US tour for those unfamiliar with her. She's a German metal singer from the eighties. She used to front the band Warlock and she does US tours basically every year, so I'm doing this one. We're playing, I don't have all the dates, but it's on my Facebook if someone wants to check or my Instagram, so that's the first thing. At the same time I'm writing a new album for Northdale is my band that I kept going back to the power metal band. I'm writing music for it. I have a couple of demos, and now that I'm going to be home, I'm guess I'm going to write some more. I am more of a South American run to happen at some point, but again, who knows? And that's the thing. Now with the virus, nobody knows what the fuck is going on. I went back to teaching guitar lessons. In the meantime, there's two things that I can't really talk about. One is a gig with a bigger band, bigger older band. That may very well happen, but it's not set in stone yet. Yeah. I'm writing some songs for a more mainstream metal singer for some project he wants to do, but it's not announced yet.

Speaker 1 (02:12:02):

Oh, you got shit going on.

Speaker 2 (02:12:03):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the income part right now got compromised, but I got a lot of shit to do. Yes.

Speaker 1 (02:12:11):

I am positive that the income part is a temporary blip on the timeline.

Speaker 2 (02:12:18):

Yeah, absolutely, man. I am too. It is the one that I lama quote that I keep in my head. This too shall pass. It works when things are good. It works when things are bad too.

Speaker 1 (02:12:29):

A hundred percent. That's a great way to end this man. Bill Hudson, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. Anybody who enjoyed this and aren't aware of it, URM podcast number 1 35 was Bill's first episode, and we talked about totally different stuff on it. It's also a great episode all about overcoming adversity and personal demons and the struggle. We talked about you overcoming yourself, alcoholism, losing weight, and then actually creating your career, so totally different topic. If you enjoyed this, go listen to that, but dude, thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 2 (02:13:13):

Yeah, thank you, brother. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure, and if anybody wants to check out my stuff, find me on Facebook, find me on Instagram at Bill Hudson gtr.

Speaker 1 (02:13:23):

Do it. Okay. Then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post them to your Facebook, Instagram, or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levy URM audio, and of course, please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.