When every May 1st, aka May Day, comes around, I am reminded on this day I was arrested by the Washington, DC police for demonstrating in front of the White House against the Vietnam War. Snatched away from my friends, in jail for 10 hours, had to borrow $5 from someone to get out (it was $10 bail) and when I got out, I had no money, no way to get back to college outside Boston, and no way to contact the friends I was traveling with. Needless to say, I was freaking out. (No pagers or cell phones in those days!) I went to a nearby soup kitchen in a local church where a kind woman drove me up to the neighborhood where we had stayed the night before to try to find the house (never noted the address), and low and behold, my friend’s VW van goes through the intersection! We chased them down and what could’ve been an awful situation for me, turned out pretty damn awesome!
I was at the first day of Fort Rock and it was awesome! Got there in the morning and set up shop in the dressing room of Cover Your Tracks, a new band out of the Atlanta, GA area. Good guys. Interviewed their frontman Paul Rose. Love their new album, Fever Dream. You should check them out. They have a music video for “Striking Matches.” It was funny, the guitarist, Omar Magana, started the day with long hair, and ended it with a hair cut from a friend. He looks completely different!
Other bands I got to hang with included Of Mice & Men. Had a great chat with Aaron Pauley and Valentino Arteaga. The band recorded “Unbreakable” with Howard Benson, and obviously have been writing and recording to mask the pain of the departure of their beloved brother Austin Carlile (“AC”.) They told me Austin gave them a thumbs up on when they sent him the song.
Fort Rock was the band’s second show without Austin and the crowd freaking LOVED it! I had a feeling their fans would be there for them! Love those guys so much!
Then it was over to the Three Days Grace dressing room. Neil Sanderson told me the band will start recording in Jul and hope to have something new out by the fall. It was a short and sweet chat, and I discovered Neil has an artist development company he operates with a friend and they have a new artist, in the pop vein, called Bad Child. Neil has always had his hands in other parts of the industry. He’s also an accomplished club DJ ICYDK.
Then it was over to the Chevelle dressing room. Was happy to get with Pete Loeffler and Dean Bernardini. Sadly, Sam, who I really wanted to catch up with, was under the weather (and I think it was going around ‘cuz I wasn’t well Sunday, which prevented me from making it to the second day! I was really bummed out, too!) Those guys have more touring to go, including shows in Russia.
Then down to Seether‘s bus where I sat with Shaun Morgan and I got to tell him how much I love the new album, Poison The Parish, and how cool it is to be Clint Lowery on the road with the band. Clint really adds a cool new dimension: he’s a great guitarist and gives Shaun a strong back-up vocals as well. Although I didn’t get to see that many band performances, I was on Clint’s side of the stage for part of their set. They have this new lighting rig that I got to see last Wednesday night in Nashville. But something happened to cause the rig (a huge 10 ft tall set up on a wheeled stand, that was set up on stage on each side of drummer John Humphrey‘s drum riser) to fall forward, missing Clint by inches. A horrific accident averted, but even with about 10 crew guys who came out to try to lift it, it was too heavy, so they left it til Seether’s set was over. Needless to say, it was scary! Whew! Last time I saw a lighting rig accident, it was during System Of A Down‘s show at an Ozzfest in Donington (where they now do Download.) It grazed the back of drummer John Dolmayan‘s head, knocking him cold for a few moments. THANKFULLY, he was ok.
Next up on the interview schedule was Papa Roach! Over on their bus, I got to chat with Jacoby Shaddix and Jerry Horton. We talked about upcoming plans and they also have dates coming up in Europe (summer festivals) and Russia. With more cool stuff happening this fall. They are stoked their new video for “Help” was just released. Watch that above!
My final interview of the hot, dusty, steamy day was In This Moment’s Chris Howorth. The band was getting ready to do their Monster signing, so we had a short and sweet chat about the upcoming new music! I’ve heard two songs, which are in their set, “Oh Lord” and “River Of Fire.” Love the new staging I’ve seen on line, but since the band wasn’t performing at sundown, they can’t wait til they can tour outside of the festivals so audiences can get the full effect of their production. I also met the two ladies who are also a part of the set.
Meanwhile, the day was great. Despite the heat, there were so many great options for food and drink. Got to see some radio and record friends, too! It was an awesome time for all! Fort Rock = successful two day music event kicking off Rock’s Loudest Month!
In other news, The Pulse Of Radio says Metallica has offered to replace the equipment that was stolen from Metallica tribute band Blistered Earth after the latter group recently played a show in Portland, OR. According to OregonLive, Metallica made the gesture after Blistered Earth’s Facebook posts about the theft garnered hundreds of shares, attracting the attention of local media and, eventually, the members of Metallica themselves.
The incident occurred on Apr 22nd. After their show at the Rock Hard PDX venue in Portland, Blistered Earth spent the night at a motel and woke up the next morning to discover that their trailer and all their gear was gone. The band posted about the incident online, and after a few days a representative for Metallica contacted Blistered Earth and asked for a list of their gear.
Blistered Earth drummer Shawn Murphy told M.I.R.P. magazine, “I got a call from a lady from Metallica HQ who said she was trying to contact me to verify who I was. Then from there they got me in touch with Metallica’s manager who asked me to send him a gear list. And so I did, and it just kind of went from there.” Murphy added, “It’s pretty awesome that they would do that. I guess it was actually James (Hetfield, Metallica frontman) that saw the story on the website for (Portland news station) KATU.”
Metallica begins the North American segment of its “World-Wired” 2017 tour on May 10th in Baltimore. Lou Brutus and the hardDriveRadio crew and out contest winner will be at the show in Philly on May 12th!
Speaking of Metallica, bassist Robert Trujillo joined Korn and his 12-year-old son Tye on stage (Sat, Apr 29) at the Vivo X el Rock festival in Lima, Peru to perform the Korn classic “Blind.” Video footage of his appearance can be seen above.
Tye played bass for Korn during the band’s South American tour after the group’s’s regular bassist, Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu, was unable to make the shows due to “unforeseen circumstances.” Fieldy will rejoin his bandmates at the Carolina Rebellion festival on this Saturday, May 6th.
Korn guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer told NME about the band’s collaboration with Tye: “He knows, like, seventeen, eighteen Korn songs, and he knows them really well — it’s crazy. All the stops, and the breaks… It’s crazy to see somebody that young so talented. He’s gonna be a professional musician, and to know that at that early of an age is just inspiring.”
Robert Trujillo told Brazil’s Globo Play about Tye: “I never forced him on music. I always felt that if he wanted to embrace an instrument, great; I’d try to help him with it. So initially, at first, it was drums. And then around that same time, when he was one, he had a little plastic guitar, and he would play it all the time, just strumming it — always strumming it everywhere, to the point where the plastic was worn down.”
He continued: “It’s a beautiful thing, ’cause he’s still a 12-year-old, and he still acts wild and crazy, as a twelve-year-old should, but when it comes to music, he’s very focused. And with Korn, it’s funny, because I haven’t shown him anything at all for the Korn stuff — I’ve been too busy and I’ve been out of town a lot — and he’s taking this opportunity very serious.”
Robert Trujillo previously told the Huffington Post that Tye was “an amazing bass player and a really great writer. The bass lines that he’s writing and the riffs, I’m like, ‘Man, I wish I had written that.’ He’s coming up with stuff on his own, but he’s also been influenced by players like Jaco Pastorius, but also Miles Davis or Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin.”
Trujillo added: “He’s like a sponge. He loves funk. He loves James Brown, he’s this little 12-year-old who’s soaking up and embracing all this different music and I can tell that it’s helping him creatively in what he’s writing with his band.”
Tye’s own band, THE HELMETS, counts TOOL, Alice In Chains and Metallica among their influences. Tye told Billboard last year, “We hate pop, we despise it. It’s all the same sound.”
One of the bands I missed yesterday, sadly, was Mastodon. There was a chance I was going to get to interview Brent Hinds. I surely would’ve asked about this!
Blabbermouth reports at their show on Friday night in Birmingham, AL, the ‘Bama-born guitarist/vocalist Hinds proposed on stage to his girlfriend, Raisa Moreno. (Twitter photo: Taylor T) And his grandmother was also on stage! Congrats!
(Photo credit: Raisa Moreno Twitter)
Hinds is the sole remaining unmarried member of Mastodon, which is currently touring the U.S. with Eagles Of Death Metal and Russian Circles.
Mastodon‘s latest album, Emperor Of Sand, was released Mar 31. The follow-up to 2014’s Once More ‘Round The Sun was recorded at The Quarry Recording Studio in Kennesaw, just outside the band’s hometown of Atlanta, with producer Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, Neil Young, AC/DC, Rage Against The Machine), who first worked with Mastodon on their seminal 2009 album Crack The Skye.
Stone Sour have revealed the cover and track listing for their new album, Hydrograd, due Jun 30 via Roadrunner. You can head on over to StoneSour.com for an instant-grat download of the single when you pre-order Hydrograd.
Hydrograd track listing:
01. YSIF
02. Taipei Person/Allah Tea
03. Knievel Has Landed
04. Hydrograd
05. Song #3
06. Fabuless
07. The Witness Trees
08. Rose Red Violent Blue (This Song Is Dumb & So Am I)
09. Thanks God It’s Over
10. St. Marie
11. Mercy
12. Whiplash Pants
13. Friday Knights
14. Somebody Stole My Eyes
15. When The Fever Broke
Stone Sour singer Corey Taylor recently said about the full-length follow-up to House Of Gold & Bones: “It is the best stuff that we’ve ever written. It’s got a lot of different directions, but at its core it’s very hard rock, almost in a modern/classic sense. There are some hints of punk in there. There’s some cool hard rock/heavy metal. There’s just all of these really cool elements that we’ve never maybe allowed ourselves to kind of go to.”
This week, Stone Sour’s Corey Taylor is our Featured Artist of the Week on hardDrive XL! Listen for Lou Brutus‘ exclusive interview he got with Corey at the band’s recording studio in LA.
Highly Suspect released the music video for “Little One” from The Boy Who Cried Wolf. And I’ve painstakingly edited their new tour itinerary and you can find it in Road Rage!