When good luck happens, it happens in threes, and this power trio is no exception. KXM is a force to be reckoned with, displaying a talent so raw that you can’t help but to succumb to its power. KXM is dUg Pinnick of King’s X (vocals/bass) George Lynch of Lynch Mob/Dokken (guitars) and Ray Luzier from Korn (drums). Their self-titled debut, KXM, just released last month, and is still kicking ass and taking names.
Once again, RockRevolt Magazine is humbled to bring to you a candid interview with none other than the infallible Dug Pinnick.
When it comes to KXM, you’re teaming up with George Lynch and Ray. What kind of things do those guys bring to the table that might be different from collaborations you’ve had in the past?
In most of the other collaborations that I’ve done, it has a lot to do with one person coming up with a song concept or somebody taking the helm, and then we build a song around something somebody had already written. In this situation, the rule was: Nobody brings anything in; we build everything from scratch. I’m so pleased with what everybody did, because there were no preconceptions; there’s no disappointment. It is what it is. For me, I’ve gotten to play and sing exactly what I feel with them. There was no compromising and there was no struggle; everything just seemed to fall into place.
You recorded the album in eight days. Are you used to having more time in the studio?
In the early days we’d spend a month in the studio, which drove me crazy. Nowadays it’s almost too much. The thing is, I’ve been doing this for so long: 40 years of making music, maybe a little longer. George and Ray have that much experience or maybe more. At that point in your life, it just doesn’t take long. You know what’s going on; you know what you want. We’re not young and trying to learn. We have so much information in our brains, we struggle trying to get the creativity out! There’s so much we’ve watched and listened to and been inspired by. So, it hasn’t been hard. I think the hardest thing was to reel ourselves in from not putting too much in! We’ve got four parts, we don’t need to do another part. We’re not going to make it a Magnum Opus, lets just write a good song! Maybe the next record, if we have more, will turn into 20-minute songs with a zillion parts. For the most part everything came quick, smoothly, and was satisfying. It wasn’t a lot of, “Oh man! I don’t think this song is right yet. We’ve got to work on it some more, we’ve got to figure something out!” It was more like, “Okay! Done; let’s move on.”
I would get asked, “Do you think you can make up a melody to this?” and with my asshole self, I always go, “Yeah.” Then I get home and panic, because making melodies and words are not the easiest things for me to do, even though it’s what I always have to do. Making this record was a lot of fun and very VERY challenging. That’s the point though. I knew it was going to be scary, but it was also challenging, and I like challenging things. If you can pull it off then you’re ready for the next challenging thing. That’s what life is all about!
What kind of challenges did you run into?
I don’t know, actually! I think the challenge is just getting together and making music. The challenge is whether you can make music with this person or not? I guess it’s like having sex, you know? Is this going to work? Well, let’s try it! Then, if it’s good, it’s good, and we keep going. If it ain’t, it ain’t, and you don’t want it no more. That’s the way it is with us. So, I don t know if challenging is the best word to describe it. I don’t like a lot of the stuff that I do. When I get done with a project, I listen to my lyrics and my voice and my bass, and I think it sucks because I’m just a little insecure about that. So, with this project I actually like what I ve done. So that was a challenge for me: to get to the point at which I can look at something I’ve been a part of and actually like it. That’s where the challenge came from, is to love myself in it.
KXM ‘RESCUE ME” OFFICIAL VIDEO
[embedplusvideo height=”300″ width=”590″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1hHAKtk” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/cD40-CJljas?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=cD40-CJljas&width=590&height=300&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep7451″ /]
I really enjoyed the lyrics on the song “Gunfight”. What inspired it for you, and what were your thoughts on it?
I watch CNN and Fox News all the time, and I listen to Alex Jones AND John Stewart and Colbert, so I m getting information from every which way; plus I watch the anonymous YouTube videos and then all the conspiracy stuff, so I’m getting all this information from two extremes. I’ve just gotten to a point where I think that both extremes are complete bullshit,and somewhere in the middle there is a truth, or somekind of balance. As I watch all this stuff, I think about guns, on how people are fighting about them: some people want guns to be taken away and some people want them to stay. I’ve spoken to both sides, and there is no compromise. The point is, if something came down in America with the government and all the people with guns rise up…well, there’s going to be a gunfight like you’ve never seen before, period! So that is what the concept is and where it came from. I didn’t want it to be so political that I would alienate myself from people, but the bottom line is my political beliefs are: “It’s all bullshit, and we re all being duped from both sides. Don’t believe anything that they tell you, because I’m confident that’s it’s bullshit and we’re being duped right now.”
I tend to agree with you, and it took a while, but I’ve kind of gotten to the same conclusion myself. I think either extreme is there to almost distract you from what’s really happening it seems.
Oh yeah. I think it’s purposely put there to distract us. It’s just hard to believe that people can believe some of the extreme things they believe. It just blows my mind are they that closed-minded? I understand some things, in the Christian world, there are rules you have to follow no matter what. And I get that they’re never going to agree with abortion or gay rights or anything like that; they can’t. So, why does the media always keep us arguing about it? Why can’t we find other things to bond on and move forward? They just don’t want to do that. I’m also finding that people seem to want to hear other people’s pain, and they want to argue about things they don’t know anything about. I mean, look at all the reality shows and how people watch these fucking stupid reality shows about other people. It’s like God. Have we gotten to that point?
The thing is with reality shows, I’ve actually worked on one, no joke they’re all scripted. They’re all laid out. It’s all plotted and planned. There’s no reality in a reality show.
None of them. I’ve got friends on them too, and that’s when I found out. It was a shock to me, I thought they really were real at one time. When I watched the Ozzy thing, and at the end of the Osbourne’s show, the season finale, they did all the outtakes. <<Okay, one more time Ozzy, say it again!>> And I’m going are you kidding? This is all acted? That’s when it really hit me. I was a late bloomer, but you got to be fucking kidding. We’ve all been duped.
You brought up the Christian aspect of things. You go from a song like “Over My Head” to “Faith is a Room” on the new album. I wondered if you wanted to talk about the Dug that may have worked on those.
Well, people don’t understand. Everybody thinks King’s X was a Christian band, and we were Christians when we started out. None of us are anymore; we see the bullshit. But when we started out we were believers. Everything I sang about was questioning my faith, because I had lots of questions. I let so much of the Bible be preached at me for so long and I’d go out into the world and go, “but this is not the way the world works, this is not right!” I’d go back to these preachers and ask them, “Well what about this? What about that?” and no one could give me an answer. They would give me some bullshit scripture, which made me realize that people aren’t open to really learning what the truth is. They want to stay in their comfortable place because that’s where it’s good for them. So, I realized that, if that’s what you’re comfortable about and that’s what gives you peace, then be there, and I got to move on. But with King s X, it was always me questioning things. What is this that gives me hope? That was the question that was on the first record, the power of love takes me from here. Love is powerful. I know people say God is love, but I wasn’t singing about God. I was singing about love. The same thing on the first album, I was just saying there’s a sign up ahead and it says it will be okay. Makes me wonder what the hell is really going on. I’ve always questioned. But Christians took King’s X as a Christian band and said, “ Hey everybody listen to this band. They’re Christians!” And I’m going, “That’s not what I planned,” but that’s what happened, so that was the past. I’m 63 years old. I’ve finally learned what gives me peace and helps me get through life. So I just want to sing about that. That’s why when I saw that movie “The Life of Pi” and his teacher said to him “Faith is a room with many doors,” and I went, “Wow!” I’ve never heard it said in that way, and it was the chorus after that: “Faith is a Room with many Doors, don’t be Afraid. ” I put “ Don’t be Afraid” on it because there are so many people so immersed in their beliefs that they are afraid to step outside of them. As a Christian, I was always told, “don’t go outside the box because that s where the devil is and when you go out there you’ll never come back.” Well, I went outside the box, and what is out here showed me that I could never go back; being a Christian would be the most miserable thing for me to be. Now other Christians, that’s the life they’re living and I’m so happy for them. Some of my best friends are Christians, and I don’t complain to them. I don t argue with them about their life. They’ve got great families, great kids, and their lives are going great. But it’s not for me, so I sing about it, and I try to open people’s minds to the concept of opening your mind.
Who all worked on the backing vocals on the KXM album?
I sang them all. That s why so many people say it sounds like King’s X!
KXM (Full Album Audio Teaser)
[embedplusvideo height=”300″ width=”590″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1hHAiv2″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/2Zq3KpcK_lE?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=2Zq3KpcK_lE&width=590&height=300&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep3973″ /]
That’s what I thought! I used to attribute some of those vocals that I was hearing to Ty, when in reality it was you, and I just didn t realize it.
You know, with King’s X it was sort of 50/50 thing. Ty makes up a lot of melodies and harmonies and we seemed to sort of click. When we’re coming up with harmonies for King’s X, I’ll come up with a harmony, and he’ll come up with a harmony, and then when we listen to each other’s harmonies, they are pretty close together in some ways. So we modify them to make them right. I’m very a big part of the vocals of King’s X and the songwriting, I’ve written over 80% of the songs, so when I play guitar and bass in anything, it’s going to sound like King’s X. I have no choice! I never learned how to play guitar, but when I was 20, a friend of mine had a guitar and I used to write songs on it. I’ve been writing songs on guitar for 40 years but I never practiced guitar. I learned how to play guitar by writing songs but I don’t know what I m doing, so I use two or three or notes and people think it’s these jazz chords, but it’s just me trying to find a note. I just do these primitive guitar riffs, and somehow they seem to come out cool. I hope, anyways! (laughs) And that’s why people just don’t understand what I’m doing, because I don’t know what I’m doing!
One of the things I ve noticed, as far as the current album, you’ve got some really interesting, strong personalities: George is definitely George, and Ray seems to be a totally different feel. Were there any surprises while you were making the album? Things you wouldn’t have expected to happen?
Yeah. George is the funniest guy in the world. His humor is so dry sometimes that you don’t know how to take it, but I know George so I take everything with a grain of salt and laugh. Ray is just a workaholic man! He is just ready to go, all the time! I’ve never seen that guy slow down or get tired. And between the two of them, there is just so much energy that they keep me pumping. There weren’t a whole lot of surprises because I know these guys. I think the pleasant surprise to me was what they did in all the songs. I’m not saying that I thought they were going to suck or anything like that, it had nothingto do with that. It was just really nice to get to know them musically outside of their respective boxes. So I got to hear Ray really play drums like he wanted to, and I got a brand new appreciation for George, because he is amazing. What he does behind closed doors when nobody else will see just floors me.
So, Ray had actually followed beforehand in King’s X. What was it like to get together with him and work together, him having been a big fan of yours?
Ray’s been a fan of King’s X for a long long time. He used to come see us play and we’d talk after show, and that’s before he played with David Lee Roth or anyone! We’ve known each other for a very very long time. When I was out in LA about six years ago, before I moved out here, I was doing my Strum Sum Up solo album and Ray came in and drummed on a couple songs for me. That was the beginning of playing with him, but he just played a song I’d already written with a drum machine. He was happy to do it, but this project, KXM, is where he could just do what he wanted to do. Ray has all the confidence in the world. He’s not star-struck at all. Ray is my buddy and he just loves what King’s X does. George is the same way. George is a big King’s X fan, which I didn’t realize until after we started hanging out. Ty told me that George is a big influence on him and told me to listen to “It’s Love”. He said that was inspired by George Lynch. I was going, “Whoa! We’re in a big soup here! It’s awesome!” So, as for surprises, I don t know. I think it was all pleasant and another page in the history of Uncle Dug.
~Interview by Patrick Desmond, RockRevolt Videographer and Contributor
~Support by Amy (Bee) Brown, RockRevolt Content Manager
CONNECT WITH KXM:
CONNECT WITH DUG PINNICK:
FACEBOOK | TWITTER
RockRevolt™Magazine has proudly saved over 11,000 trees to date by publishing in digital format-SAVE THE PLANET-ROCK THE WORLD!
