Page 7 - RockRevoltMagazine-Fall2016

in demos. Sometimes that sound no so good, sometimes they sound
really good and he turned in this song that just sounded amazing and
I thought why would you go re-record that (laughing). We already did
the hardwork, he’s already done it. It kind of grew really organically,
me meeting a couple people I really like, we wrote some songs, we did
some recording and I just didn’t expect it to be turned in so fully done.
In the end I’m a huge Churko fan so that was a really cool thing. It’s our
first record we’ve ever done with multiple producers and to be honest I
wasn’t really a fan of that, I really didn’t want to do that. I think that rock You’ve been at this for at least 20 years, I’m curious with the music
albums are different than pop albums. Rock albums are supposed to
have a thread running through them, it supposed to be this rollercoaster
experience. Pop music is all about radio hits. So really didn’t want to
do that but the more I started listening I thought you know we could
probably pull this off. When I listen to the record things don’t jump out
at me but I will say for a Skillet record, between Stars and Out of Hell
those are pretty opposite spectrums. The key is you’ve got to make it
feel like all of you and that’s a little bit of work and that we do more on
my bands end. My wife is a really great keyboard programmer and I
think the way we do our programming, the loops, she has a lot of Trent
Reznor type of production. I think
that is kind of what makes Stars,
Undefeated and Out of Hell, kind
of brings all those songs together.
You are currently on tour through
October, is there anything in the
works beyond that? Maybe hitting
up Asia or Australia, what else do
you have cooking?
First I’ve got to say we are really
excited because we haven’t done
a headlining tour of America, a
Skillet run that wasn’t a package
tour, in like four years. We’re
playing clubs and I’ve been
wanting to do this for so long.
Skillet kind of got to that place
that we were a little too big to play
clubs and not really big enough
to do arenas and that’s where you
get into that hard territory, you
know 3,000 people in a 6,000 cap
venue doesn’t look good and it
doesn’t feel exciting. Selling out
1,500 seats is awesome and people
singing and I just can’t wait to do this. So we are doing the headlining
tour here. Then we are going to Europe and Russia and doing our
headlining there at similar sized venues. We are going to be very, very
busy.
Speaking of busy back in 2011 Skillet was ranked as one of the top five
hardest working bands and it sounds like that is still the case today.
Touring so extensively and with your wife being a member of the band as
well, how do you balance that with your family life?
Yeah, you know that’s always a trick. It think what it comes down to,
it’s kind of a boring answer, but I tell people if you want to know what a
day in the life of Skillet is like it is, we are the boringness rockstars ever.
Everything we do is so regimented and I think that’s been the key. I’ve
got two kids, we do school on the road, I don’t teach them, we have a
nanny that comes and my wife oversees the schooling. Every day the
kids wake up, they’ve got to have breakfast, they’ve got to get ready for
their school. I’ve got to go in the venue at a certain time, there are so
many things that I’ve got to get done in the day and my goal is, I like
to exercise, got to keep in shape. I exercise, I do my interviews, I do
songwriting, I do demos and I’ve got to get it done by 3:30 because that’s
when the kids stop school. Then I get to hang out with my kids and my
wife for a couple of hours until VIP meet and greet, radio and all that
kind of stuff. Everything is very regimented so we can keep
ur priorities straight. I the bands lost it when they got on the road
and don’t make a plan, they don’t want to live like that. They end up
sleeping until 2 in the afternoon and playing video games all night long
and that’s fine unless you have your kids on the road and you want to
see them. That’s how we do it because I want to be a good dad before
I’m a good rockstar, keep to the plan and you’ll be fine.
industry, which is a little different from the 9-5 job, do you have your
own retirement plans or medical insurance? How do you take care of
those things that many of us might take for granted?
It’s funny, I’m kind of jumping into a little bit of another answer but
people ask me all the time if I could go back 20 years and tell the young
me what I would differently or advice for young people who want to be
in the music business. That advice would be you need realize it’s not just
art, it’s show business and the business is very, very important. Just look
at Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne and Alice Cooper, those that realized a
long time ago that this is something they have to do properly. Or you
hear those terrible stories of people
who made millions and millions and
lost their house, that’s unbelievable.
Again I little bit boring when it comes
to that, I’m smart about it. You’re
running a business, we pay our
employees, we have some retirement
plans if people want to participate
in the short of thing. You run it like
you would any other sort of business.
A lot of bands do that these days but
some don’t and they end up
not really having anything to show
for it. Playing in a band is a
little bit like being an athlete, if you’re
lucky you can do it forever but most
people can’t. You know your band is
going to last 10-15 years unless you’re
lucky like Aerosmith or somebody
like that. Skillet is very lucky, this
is our twentieth year. Our story is a
little bit different because we didn’t
have radio hits for the first twelve
years. It was very underground, very
word of mouth based. I learned a
long time ago if you want to keep this
going You’ve got to get your head on straight.
Staying along the lines of touring, the terrible situation with the terrorist
attack in Paris at the Bataclan, did that impact your approach to shows
and do you find yourself taking precautions now that maybe you didn’t
before?
You know I find myself worrying about it which I never did before.
Asking my partners what should we be doing here, it’s such an unknown.
I ask myself, we just got back from Europe, do we really want to go to
Europe? Then someone will say it can happen anywhere. But you are
certainly seeing it there a lot. So yeah I think lots of people including
ourselves are asking what we need to be doing to be a little more on top
of things. We have made some precautions. You know one of the things
that is probably the most practical for me right now would be maybe the
fan interaction I would have personally, it’s probably changing a little bit.
You most just want to meet you they just do some really dumb things
sometimes, they grab you and hug you because they are so happy. These
days I’m kind of like hey none of that, don’t touch me (laughing), you
just don’t know what’s happening. I think that fans need to realize that
to that it is a different world. You’ve got to kind of watch what you do
these days, things are changing quickly.