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How exactly did SOiL form? Tim: I'm good at this one. Basically, Soil was formed by me, Adam, and Tom our drummer. We had started playing, and we had known Sean from around the neighborhood. So what we did was ask Sean if he wanted to play guitar, and it had been a side project that we were starting at the time. So we got together, wrote some tunes, looked for a bunch of local people to sing and front the band, but we couldn't find anyone in our hometown that fit what we were looking for. Then one day I got this compilation in the mail with about 21 unsigned bands on there. Usually I just kind of skim through the stuff and I was doing that, and every band on there pretty much sucked, and I heard this one riff that came in that sounded kind of like a Pantera riff, and I thought "well yeah, that's kind of interesting, I won't skip to the next track," and I heard Ryan's vocals blaring over it and I was like "Oh my God, that's the singer for our band, this guy is exactly what we need for our music." So I brought the CD to practice and let the other guys hear it, and they were like "yeah, that guy's got a great voice," so we got in contact. He was into what we were doing, so we sent him tapes, and he drove from Indiana about five and a half hours away to come and practice. Two weeks later, we went in the studio and recorded our first demo. Then we signed with a small independent label out of New York called MIA Records, put out an EP called "El Chupacabra" and a full-length CD called "Throttle Junkies", which was recorded by Steve Albini. And two months after we released Throttle Junkies, the record label went out of business, so all of the albums that were on the shelves were just kind of left out there; no promotion, no way to reorder records, it was just gone. So we sat down and were like "so what do we do now?" At the time, we were experimenting with a little more heavy stuff, and down-tuning, so we said "let's hit the refresh button, let's try writing some songs in the new tuning we've been working with," and we wrote three songs, one of which was Halo, and we put out a demo. Next thing we knew, we had record labels coming out to our practices every week. We narrowed it down to the top three labels that we felt we wanted to be on, flew out to New York, spent a day with each label meeting the people we'd be working with, and decided on going with J Records. We signed to them in March of 2001, then went in the studio again with Johnny K. who did our demo, recorded Scars, then mixed it with Kevin Shirley at the Hit Factory in New York, and here we are now. So when did this whole experience start? Since 1997 we've been doing this. Musically, who are your biggest influences? Adam: My influences are probably Ozzy, Metallica, basically anything I listened to when I first started playing guitar. So it was pretty cool to be going out with Ozzy for our first big tour ever. It was pretty shocking actually, kind of hard to take, but it was an amazing experience. Tim: For me, I'd say the first bands I started getting into when I was really little were bands like Black Sabbath, AC/DC, stuff like that. I really liked Geezer Butler as a bass player, and what really made me want to start playing music was when bands like Motley Crue came out. Once that started coming out, I wanted to start playing bass, I was like 16 years old. Then of course over time we got into different bands like Corrosion of Conformity and Down, and we all liked death metal. Now we all like new bands like Stereomud and Systematic and Drowning Pool. Those bands didn't really influence us, but we get into different things along the way and respect those artists along the way. Are there any bands that you look up to now? Tim: I wouldn't say that we're really looking up to people, it's more like a mutual admiration. We're into their band, they're into ours. I mean, going on tour with Ozzy, that's somebody to look up to, that's a role model for music. When you're writing music, do you write what you're feeling, or do you pull things out of thin air? Adam: We write the songs, then the lyrics are written off the vibe of the song. Ryan usually writes the lyrics about his personal experiences, so it's somewhat of a personal reflection of his, so it's not always a group collaboration. Sometimes I'll write a few lines, and that'll be pulling lyrics out of thin air. But for the most part, it's all Ryan coming up with lyrics that go with the music. Tim: Usually someone will come to practice with a riff or a full song, or somebody will pull a riff out of there ass right then and there, and then I'll tweak it and say "well, why don't we play it this way?" It's pretty much a group collaboration on the music. Adam is usually pretty good at coming to practice and saying "guys, I wrote this entire song," and it'll be an amazing song. Sometimes I'll come to practice with a riff, or sometimes Shaun will come to practice with a riff, or we'll write one right there that's an awesome riff…like the song Halo, that was written in 15 or 20 minutes on the spot with the verse riff. A lot of times, somebody will come to practice with a riff that will spawn an entire song, and somebody else will have a riff that'll fit with it. It's pretty cool the way it works. When you recorded the first demo with Johnny K., was that your choice or MIA's choice? Adam: MIA was already long gone at that point. We knew the guys in Disturbed, and that's how we got hooked up with Johnny. The first time we met him was when he was working with Disturbed on wrapping their album up, at the Disturbed party in their studio. So we got to go up and meet Johnny, and everybody was just hanging out, and we gave him a demo of some other stuff that we had been working on. Then he got a hold of Shaun, and said "hey, I want to see you guys play," so he came and checked us out, and we had a decent show that night I think, and he said he'd like to work with us, and we were just like "no freakin problem." We had nothing to lose, and we had all liked the way the Disturbed album had come out, and even though the album wasn't even selling much at that point, we all knew they did a great job and that it was a great album, and we knew we had to work with this guy. We did Halo, Need To Feel, and My Own in that three day session (we recorded in three days and mixed in one day), and now the tracks from that recording are on our album. When you play live, do you play as close to the recording as possible, or do you play it a little differently? Adam: It's usually a pretty accurate recreation of the songs. Sometimes there are some studio overdubs that we don't really have, but for the most part we just do the songs as they're formatted. Five minutes before a show, what's going through your head? Adam: "Where's catering?" Tim: Stretching, wondering what the crowd's going to be like, and just kind of goofing around. On the Ozzy tour, we had catering every night, so Adam and I had a little ritual. Every night when we got done playing we'd run straight to catering because they'd be closing soon. So we'd be scoping out where the catering is in conjunction to the stage. We've been on tour for four months steady now, so it's kind of cut and dry. We stretch, we goof around, throw some shit at each other, and get out there and play. Adam: We didn't have any zombie rituals or anything like that… Tim: No sacrificing small animals… When you first started playing packed arenas, did you get stage fright? Tim: I've never really had stage fright. The first night of the Ozzy tour I was a little nervous, because we didn't know what to expect, we didn't know how the crowd was going to react, we didn't know what it was going to be like on the stage or how it was going to sound, so we all had butterflies in our stomachs that night. Adam: We had done some big shows before, where we were playing in front of all of our peers. Then on this tour, we knew we were establishing a tour where different guys would be seeing us every night, so we wanted to do a good job. Tim: And it's not like we had to be on stage by ourselves. If I had to go up on stage by myself and do a comedy routine or something, I'd probably shit my pants. But I know that I've got four other guys up there with me, so if something goes wrong, we're all going to feel it. But it's kind of like going somewhere with a street gang; as long as we're all together, if anything happens, we're all going to fall together, it's not just going to be me standing up there screwing up by myself. Does the size and energy of the crowd have any effect on how you play? Adam: Absolutely. The energy is what it's all about. You can go into a room and play great by yourself or practice, but it's just not going to be that exciting. Or you could play a place that's packed and huge and everybody's just standing there, staring at you. It'd be the same sort of feeling, it'd be a little scary. You could say that we play large places where people just sort of sit there, and you can tell that they're not getting into it that much, but then we can go and play a 300 person club that's packed and everybody's going nuts, and that'll be an amazing show. How do you think the Static-X tour will differ from the Ozzy tour? Tim: The crowds will be more in your face because it's more of a theater type tour than an arena tour, so it's better than having a ten foot long barricade and seeing people as far as the eye can see. Plus, Static-X and Soulfly are heavier bands and will probably have heavier crowds and be a little more brutal. It's like Adam said, we'll just have to see when we get there. We've got to just do what we do, and hope everybody likes us. What are the best and worst parts about touring? Adam: Lately, it's been pretty cool. We've got our bus, we can sleep when we need to. The worst part is just all the little inconveniences like not being able to clean your clothes, or finding a place to take a clean shower or a shit sometimes, living out a suitcase, and that type of stuff. But the bus is pretty comfortable, and you get to play every night and hang out, it's the best job in the world. Tim: It's like a Saturday night every night of the week. It's like our drum tech was saying, it's like a high-school slumber party every night. We're all talking and all like "what did you do?" and "did you see that person?" It's just fun. It's like going out to a party with your friends every night and not having to drive home. It was a little rough because we went out for two months before the record came out to promote the album, and that whole time, we were in a van. Adam and me slept on the floor the whole time because we were the only two who had the balls to do it, and we're the two largest people in the band, we're over 6 feet tall each. It was a little rough, but it's still cool because we're doing what we love to do, and that's much better than having to wake up at seven o'clock in the morning and having to go to the office or the construction site or whatever. You can't beat it. If you weren't a musician, what would you want to be? Tim: I'd probably work for a record label or something in the industry. I used to work at a children's toy company called V-Tech, so I went from selling children's toys to playing the Devil's music I guess you could say. If you could do a tribute album for any band, who would it be? Adam: Go ahead Tim, I know what you're going to say. Tim: Motley Crue. Adam: I don't know, I love so many bands. I couldn't put a finger on that. Maybe Ozzy, Metallica… Tim: We're already on an Ozzy disc. Our old band was on an Ozzy tribute album. For more infof on SOiL, check out this site: SOiLMUSiC.com |
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