GuitarOne: What was that experience like?

Ross: The whole "cabin" thing is something I hope we never have to go back to again.

Dean: Just trying to make stuff sound good in that place was hell; it was hard. And being in a really nice studio 
this time - it's almost like driving a cheap, little car that's several years old and then buying a Cadillac. The luxury 
of having everything you want puts you at ease, and you can take some stress off. You don't have to sit there for 
hours trying to find the right angle of the room in the kitchen to make to make the drum toms sound good.

Ed: The only way the cabin worked was that it made Disciplined Breakdown sound more "personal." If we had 
been in a big studio, I still would've liked for it sound real personal like that. But we wanted this record to have 
bigger sounds. Y'know, if you're sitting in a kitchen and the drums are around the dining room table, you're not 
gonna get much ambience, so you're not gonna have a huge drum sound. And with this record, we wanted to 
make everything sound a little bit bigger.




GuitarOne: I know you guys were embroiled in a lawsuit with you ex-manager when you began recording 
Disciplined Breakdown. What kind of impact did that have on the creative process?

Ross: It really constrained things in a way because, in actuality, we were told by our lawyers that we weren't
supposed to be recording or playing together or anything. We couldn't be in a studio.

Ed: But at the same time, we had nothing else to do - we couldn't just sit around. And that's one of the reasons
why we used the cabin.

Ross: So we gathered things together and got things going at a little cabin, which is just a little south - about
10 miles of where we grew up.

Dean: We had to basically fund it ourselves 'cause we couldn't get money from the label. And there was a lot of 
stress put on us - everything from dealing with whether or not we were gonne be able to keep the name of our 
band, or if we had signed it away to this guy [Collective Soul's manager] somewhere iin a contract. It was just 
so many little things like that.

Ross: It really affected the whole writing atmosphere. 'Cause at the time we didn't even know if we were gonna 
be able to be a band thereafter. That pretty well sucked. So Disciplined Breakdown wasn't so "bright," just from
the atmosphere we were in. But we got through it all and did the tour. In a way, thisnew album is like starting with 
a clean slate.




GuitarOne: So there was a different vibe in the studio this time around, since all that wasn't hanging over your 
heads?

Ed: Yeah. This time around we were gonna enjoy the process of recording. It was something we hadn't had a 
chance to do in a while - like "real" recording. With the second CD [Collective Soul], which we recorded in a real
studio, we were under such intense pressure to hurry up and get it done within a certain time that we didn't really 
get to play around in the studio like we'd wanted to. So this time, we were just taking our time and enjoying 
ourselves.




GuitarOne: Was it a conscious decision to have Ed write most of the songs on this album, or is that just the way 
it naturally worked out?

Ed: It usually works out that way. I mean, I've written pretty much every one of the songs. Ross co-wrote "Simple"
and "World I Know" on Collective Soul, and on this one [Dosage], he wrote everything on "Dandy Life" and my
brother co-wrote two lyrics with me. It's never been, "Okay, Ed's writing the songs, here we go." It's always been 
an "open" band - anybody who can present a song presents it.


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