Planet Loud heads to Birmingham to catch up with Aaron Lewis of Staind to talk about life as a Dad, connecting with his fanbase and his views on the record industry.
Planet Loud – We’re catching up with you as you’re well underway with the U.K part of this tour. How has it been and what are your thoughts on the crowds over here in general?
Staind – So far the shows have been great, but as far as the past goes, everything has been handled very wrong. Extremely wrong. You know, I think we’ve been over here four or five times in the last ten years and two of those times have been in the last four to six months. So that, to me, says we’ve been mishandled quite extremely. The people in the past that mishandled us over here are not part of it anymore. So hopefully the past is no representation as to what the future holds..
Planet Loud – The lyrics of Staind have always been very raw, emotive and self- honest. Is it easy to delve that deeply into yourself and what sort of process do you usually go through when writing lyrics?
Staind – I usually just sit there in a room with the song on a loop, with pro-tools. Just listen to it and listen to it. I’ll have a microphone in my hand and I’ll put it to my lips and just start spouting stuff. (laughs) There’s not much cognitive thought that goes into it. I find that if I think about it, it jams it up.
Planet Loud – There’s kind of a ‘cathartic’ sense of connection between Staind and the fans. Does this make a live show more compelling and powerful for you personally, when you’re out there sharing that feeling with the fans?
Staind – Maybe a little bit more now than before. Because I take the time to talk to the fans, I go on Staind.com and interact with fans on there and try to answer everybody’s messages. I’ll put blogs up and comment on things, it’s not that I’m starting to realise what I mean to the fans, but I’m starting to understand a little bit more. I still can’t wrap my head around it at all!
Planet Loud – Do you think a lot of critics fail to sometimes see the hope and belief in your music? Maybe it’s something you can only really feel as a Staind ‘fan’?
Staind – Some of them miss it? It seems like all of them miss it. There’s a few out there that don’t..
Planet Loud – Does that bother you at all? Or do you try not to think about it too much?
Staind – I try not to think about it much because it bothers me. What that says to me is that this person passed judgment upon me and what I do creatively and formed an opinion without listening. Because if you listen and, if you need to, read along with the words.. it’s just missed, completely. The fans don’t miss it..
Planet Loud – I suppose that’s the most important thing..
Staind – I’ve said many times before that the fans have helped me a hell of a lot more than I’ve helped them.
Planet Loud – The latest album ‘The Illusion Of Progress’ holds a very intriguing title. What inspired the title?
Staind – Look around you. Are we living the illusion of progress right now in the world?
Planet Loud – In terms of the feeling between the band, the producer, the label and so on, did you feel you had the freedom this time around in terms of the direction you wanted to go with this record?
Staind – There’s always lots of pressure. A lot of it self-inflicted. We don’t want to go into the studio and regress, or write the same thing. So we put a lot of pressure on ourselves and the record business is crumbling so there’s pressure to write the best record that we’ve ever written just to survive in a war-torn business. We still got to be out own boss as far as creativity goes and what the songs ‘were’ but the record label and everybody involved still had to say ‘okay’.
Planet Loud – Did that hold you back, or maybe make you aware in the back of your mind that they would have to say ‘okay’, or is it something you don’t think about and strive to let the songs come naturally?
Staind – We try to write songs that at the end of the day we can walk out of the studio and say ‘they were great songs’. Once it’s at that point you throw it up in the air and hope that everybody feels the same way that you do. Here’s one for you. One of the ‘high-ups’ on ‘Break The Cycle’ heard the majority of the record and freaked out and said ‘you guys are wasting you time, why didn’t you let me hear this earlier? This is crap.’ That’s one example. Another example: ‘Chapter V’. Another ‘higher-up, a different one, but one in the same position that the other one was, heard every single single off the record. Every song that ended up being a single off the record, went to dinner with us, then shut the door behind him as he left and immediately called the manager and said he heard ‘nothing’. That’s two different occasions where they’ve heard what we had so far, but we didn’t let it bother us and we kept chugging away. That record that he said he heard ‘nothing’ on was our third number one release in a row…
Planet Loud – Does that bring you closer as a band..
Aaron Lewis (Interrupting) – ..It tells you that the people in control have no fucking clue.
Planet Loud – Keeping with the idea of bands pushing forward, never wanting to stay in the same place – what were you initial thoughts before going in to write this record of where you were going to go with it, what direction to take?
Staind – My thoughts going into this album got me into trouble! I was quoted as saying this was going to be the heaviest record yet. Those were my thoughts on the record. Then we started kicking ideas around. Mike made the two hour drive up to my house and we hung out and played a couple of songs for each other and the ideas that I’d heard that day, around three or four of them, weren’t heavy. But they were good. And they were different. So a couple of weeks later we got together and within two weeks the entire record was written and ready to go. The skeletal structure, anyway. A lot of the nuances and cool little licks, that all comes in the studio when you’re trying to come up with ways to spruce up the skeletal structure.
Planet Loud – What was the most rewarding and maybe the most challenging factors or events during the recording of this album?
Staind – For me? I was able to stay at home and able to balance being a dad and recording a record all at the same time. To the extent of getting up at six o’clock in the morning with my new-born daughter, getting her all taken care of and waking the two older ones up and feeding them. Then getting the oldest one ready for school and waking mom up when it was time for me to take the oldest to school. Doing all the ‘dad’ stuff. Then at 12 o’ clock I’d go up to the studio. I’d work for a couple of hours, I would stop at 3 ‘o clock and then go pick up my daughter from school, bring her home, go back to work. 20 percent of the time I’d go home for dinner, 80 percent I’d just work right through or else I’d go down and grab some food to bring back up for everybody. Then I’d work until 2 o’ clock in the morning. Then I’d get up at 6…
The ability to have been able to balance all of that whilst I was in the studio for six months. The other thing that we were able to do on this record that we weren’t able to in the past because time was so costly, because we were paying for the space that we were in, being the studio.. whereas recording it in my barn, there’s no studio. So we could do things like spending eight to ten hours trying to find that perfect ‘tone’ for the part, by taking all different old guitars and plugging them into old amps and that type of stuff. That freedom allowed us to sonically go places that we haven’t before.
Allowing our other influences to shine through. Songs like ‘Pardon Me’ where there’s Jimmy Hendrix influences. Those bluesy influences of ‘The Corner’…
Planet Loud – A personal favourite of mine is the country-esque ‘Tangled Up In You’. What kind of ideas, musically and lyrically, went into this particular track?
Staind – That was a song that I wrote by accident. I was in soundcheck for one of my solo acoustic shows and I just started messing around with this chord progression thing. I started singing stuff and my tour manager came walking up to me afterwards and was like ‘What record is that off?’ and I was like ‘I was totally just making it up as I was doing it!’ Then he said: ‘You need to work on that a little bit’ and so I didn’t forget it and I kept working on it.
Planet Loud – Where have you taken the most inspiration from during this particular ‘chapter’ of the Staind journey?
Staind – I’d have to say just being at home alone with the family. That was awesome.
Planet Loud – How is your solo album coming along so far?
Staind – You know I have a bunch of ideas and I have a bunch of concepts as to what those ideas could turn out to become. As far as time schedule wise, at the end of this touring cycle, whenever that may be… I don’t really want to cut THIS short, so I can’t really say.
Planet Loud – Any festival plans for this summer?
Staind – Sure, absolutely. We’re hoping that there’s a spot for us on Download, though we’re not really sure yet. June we’re gonna be over here doing all the European festivals and then we’re going to be going to Japan and doing Summer Sonic.
Planet Loud – Any chance of another live Staind DVD anytime soon?
Staind – The next thing that’s coming up is a DVD of my solo acoustic tour, which should be pretty cool.
Planet Loud – What kind of different elements does an acoustic show bring to the table, in terms of crowd interaction and connection?
Staind – You get ‘me’. I can’t be quiet, I can’t just sit there. Not really saying anything and roll from song to song, that wouldn’t work in that setting as it does Staind. You get to meet me as a person. I guess there might have been a little bit of intimidation factor in the beginning but, I mean, there hasn’t been a bad show. I’ve come out of my shell a little bit and feed off the crowd.
Planet Loud – So what do you hope to get out of 2009?
Staind – Just to make it through 2009. It’s a waste of time thinking about what could’ve been or what has been. It’s all about right now. It’s the only thing that matters.
Interview by Jim Hall
