This interview took place on September 13, 2002 inside the Huludvan. It was during a Plea for Peace
show in Worcester, MA at the Palladium for those of you scoring at home.
Geert is Shai Hulud's vocalist, Matt Fletcher plays the guitar.
Josh: I want to start with something known as the Shai Hulud syndrome.
Geert: What’s that?
Josh: Shai Hulud syndrome is when a band says “we’re going to take three years to write an album whether you like it or not.
Geert: How about four years? The last record came out in 1997, if I’m not mistaken. So it’s actually almost five. So what’s the question? The Shai Hulud syndrome is it took us a long ass fucking time to do this record. What more do you want to know?
Josh: Why does it take so long to make music?
Geert: After the European tour, there was only two members left. Which was Matt Fletcher, then bass player now guitar player and Matt Fox, the only original member of the band left. I joined during the European tour, but it wasn’t really sure yet. There was two guys left, so there was no drummer, not really a singer until I joined- which was on the European tour but not really- so it was those two guys, a fill in drummer and Dave, the bass player, who was ready to quit at any time. It was a hard task for Matt to find all the right people that were willing to commit to the band. I joined and then we were three men. So then we still needed a drummer that was good enough to do all the stuff Steve Kleisath did, which is insane because Steve is one of the best drummers I’ve ever seen play... And then we needed another guitar player. Finding a guitar player- or bass player- wasn’t too hard, but finding a drummer was. We moved up to New York and that whole move and the whole getting settled in there, working with the guy, working with the drummer who didn’t work out right away took a year and we weren’t even writing music then. We writing every once in a while, but we weren’t focused on anything. Then we got this other kid Chris and we worked with him for a year, and we were finally ready. We were writing songs with him and had all these songs ready, then after a year of working with Chris- which is now two and a half years into the whole process- Chris decided that he didn’t want to do the record... That he was too nervous, wasn’t ready and wasn’t serious about doing Shai Hulud. Then we were out of a drummer again for another year. Then we found Tony and had all these songs together and tried to record the new record with our old drummer Steve, but that didn’t work out. Then, three and a half years into it, Tony finally stepped up and we said if you can learn the songs we want to go ahead and record them. He learned all the songs and we went and did it. Mainly it was just getting the band back on its feet and finding the right members. We needed to find someone who was focused on doing the band for more than three months.
Josh: Do you find it to be harder with a sort of rotating member thing?
Geert: We really don’t want it to be that way, but it's so hard to find someone that has the drive and the willingness. Everyone in this band right now has given up everything that we have just to be in the band. Some of the members of the band are tens of thousands of dollars in debt just to keep us doing what we’re doing. And we’re just finally now starting to see something coming out of it. I’ve been in the states now for two and a half, almost three years and just now did I get my working papers and can I go back to Holland. I’m actually going back to Holland next week to pick them up. So it was just like, such a long process with everything. That was one thing that was holding Shai Hulud back- not knowing the certainty of my being in the band. For some reason it’s... Poison the Well syndrome you could call it as well. Except they just rotate bass players. We rotate any member. But yeah, me, Fletcher and Fox have been in the band for almost three years now. It just seemed like every time we started to move forward, we’d have to take a step back and take another month to teach that new guy the songs. That’s just the way the songs are though, you don’t just learn them that quick.
Josh: Is it weird for you to be in a position now that was once played by Chad, who is now doing something on Mtv?
Geert: You know what? Shai Hulud has been my favorite hardcore band since the first EP came out, so for the first year I couldn’t believe it and it was like a dream come true. And it still is, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve been in the band for three years now, I sang on the new record, I recorded with these guys, I’ve toured with them for years so now I’m comfortable with the situation, I don’t feel weird about it any more. But, you know, whenever the message board posts a topic about Geert and Chad, I check it out. Even though people don’t think I look at it, I do. I’m still curious. I still want people to look at Shai Hulud as the best that it ever was or better, and it’s not hard to fill the shoes of Chad Gilbert because I think he has an awesome voice.
Fletcher: He doesn’t like his voice, he doesn’t think it sounds good. But most people don’t even know. Most people don’t know we switched singers. It’s just an angry man yelling his heart out.
Geert: I don’t like it. My voice.
Josh: Does the fact that Shai Hulud seems to be coming back now have something to do with the fact that Rev is sort of coming back now and they seem to have been sleeping for a while?
Geert: No, they’ve been pushing us for two years for Shai Hulud to do it.
Fletcher: They’d call us up like, “What the hell are you doing!!?!?”
Geert: Yeah, it’s not a matter of Revelation not pushing us, it’s jsut a matter of Shai Hulud being prepared enough. And the last time we went into the studio we weren’t prepared enough, a year and a half ago. We just tried to do too much at once. We can’t write an album- even though we did- without a full band and record it. And even though we wrote this one without a drummer and we still managed to make it a drummer album- because there are awesome drummer parts on there- we just needed someone to be there constantly. Matt can think of things in his head that should be played out on drums, but if there’s nobody there to flush it out then, that’s hte problem. Part of the problem was just the desperation where we just said, fuck, if no one’s going to play drums for us, we’re going to take on a drum computer. And that’s when the requests started coming in.
Fletcher: When that got put on the web site, there was a lot more interest in being a drummer.
Geert: That was the catalyst. I think part of it also was that Shai Hulud hadn’t really been in peoples faces like we have been until this last year or so because we’ve just been going out and playing in peoples faces. Everyone was like, “Shai Hulud, I know them, I have their record but they never come out here”.
Josh: Now people can see you three, even four times a week.
Geert: Yeah.
Josh: It’s been what, three weeks since my last Shai Hulud show.
Geert: I hope it will be more. I hope it will be eight months out of the year.
Clair: Why don’t you guys play any of your cover songs?
Geert: We do. We played NOFX tonight.
Clair: Which one?
Geert: Linoleum.
Clair: Why don’t you play Anesthesia? It’s my favorite one.
Geert: We wanna start playing that one.
Clair: I think it’s a good cover.
Fletcher: Speaking of which, Mr. Brett thinks it’s a good cover. Which is a great compliment.
Geert: NOFX really liked it too... the NOFX cover. So that’s really awesome. Mainly just because we haven’t had a chance to practice. Tony lives in Chicago and he drives out so every two weeks I’d say we practice for a couple of days. We mainly do the old songs we have to do, we haven’t had time to really get new songs down. Since we already have Linoleum down we just wanted to do some newer songs and we played a new song from the album tonight. It’s just priority. It’s not that we don’t want to play them, it’s just that eh... Other songs are more important to us than the covers. But we wanna start playing Anesthesia.
Josh: Now I want to go back to what you said about how you kind of blew up more in the past year or so, but you’ve always kind of been a real staple in hardcore- just the name Shai Hulud, you know. Is it harder having to kind of lay low and even now when you come back is it like, people think you’re some new band or something?
Geert: Well, I think a lot of that happened this summer. And when you see kids coming out still... Not to toot my own horn, but kind of to toot the band’s horn, when you can still see kids coming out, I think you can see Shai Hulud as being one of the influencial bands of the ‘90’s and we will still be in five or ten years from now.
Josh: Even if it’s with completely different members.
Geert: Honestly, I would say that as long as Matt Fox is willing to do Shai Hulud, there will be a Shai Hulud.
Josh: Like GWAR.
Geert: Yeah. Exactly.
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