Follow us on
www.livemusicadelaide.com
  • HOME
    • CONTACT US
    • WHO ARE WE?
    • CONTRIBUTE
  • NEWS & INTERVIEWS
    • INTERVIEWS
  • REVIEWS
    • MUSIC REVIEWS
  • PHOTOS
    • July 2012 - July 2014
  • SOUNDWAVE
    • 2015 INTERVIEWS
    • SOUNDWAVE 2014 NEWS
    • 2014 INTERVIEWS

Devin Townsend talks, we make coffee and listen!

10/18/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
There is no one way to introduce Devin Townsend to those that don't know him already. Yes he is that dude from Strapping Young Lad, yes he is that dude that produced Zimmers Hole, yes he is the mastermind behind Ziltoid The Omniscient, and yes, he is even that metal dude that made the skullet almost acceptable... Almost. 

But trying to describe the creative talent that flows from this man is near impossible. He can't be categorised into one genre as his music is that varying that every song is different. And when I say every song, I mean each song off of the 17 (yes, 17!!) studio albums he has released under his own name, not to mention those with SYL or Ziltoid.

He is also one of the most genuine and humble men in the music industry today. There is no ego surrounding this pasty awkward Canadian, I don't think he understands the complex capacity of creativity that draws people into him constantly. I know I have sat many times and listened to his songs or even watched his tutorial videos on youtube and wondered how that little tiny unnoticeable guitar note came to be there, but am stunned at the difference it makes when he shows you the sound without it.

Devin has visited Australia quite a few times in the last few years, playing headline shows around the country as well as featuring on the Soundwave Festival line up. He is coming back again, this time to get up close and personal with all of us, and reveal some of his guitar tricks in guitar clinics that he is hosting throughout the end of October.

Interviewing Devin has always been a pleasurable adventure for me, and talking to him about the clinic was no different. I can't bring myself to just take quotes from it as you'd be missing a lot if I did that, so here is the full transcript...



LMA - We are really excited about this guitar clinic and the opportunity to pick your brain, but how did it come about?

DT - I have no idea (laughs)…. I have been to Australia so many times now that I think my connections with folks there just keep growing. As to how it happened, I think there was a moment on one of the last tours that I did some guitar acoustic clinic and somebody who does this for lets say, real guitar players, took notice and invited me down. I certainly don’t take the opportunity lightly. I’ve got a bunch of things planned that I’m hoping will appeal to people who don’t play guitar too. It’s great.

LMA - Can you let us in on some of that?

DT - Well I think it depends on which direction each night goes specifically but I think that I’ll start with playing along with some stuff and getting into the guitar eccentric elements of the writing process. Ultimately I think that I’m in a pretty neat position as a musician where I have done so many records and I’ve done so many of them on a budget that I’ve managed to find ways around a lot of problems and I honestly look forward to being able to share that with people and also meet people. It’s a great way for me to get to Australia this year and hopefully be able to entertain folks.

LMA - It will be a different context compared to playing in front of a crowd as you’ll be sitting down and interacting a lot more than what you normally would. We like that idea, but how do you feel about it?

DT - Yeah. I like that. I am so socially inept for the most part that using my career as a springboard for some of my social anxieties is really cool. I mean, when you actually interact with people... On the new record I had people sing along and they ended up being made into a choir on the recording, or this pledge campaign that happened recently, or the lucky animals video where people did their own stuff, it allows me to sort of connect with people in ways that I think is important specifically with the internet and how disconnected you tend to get from people in general. It’s really nice to be face to face and have some actual human interaction you know.

LMA - I did see your lucky animals video and it was quite hilarious.

DT - My dad dance? (laughs)

LMA - Its kind of what it looked like actually.

DT - That was a couple years back. Since then it’s got even more tragic! (laughs).

LMA - So, are we going to see you busting moves during the guitar clinic?

DT - I was just thinking as we were talking… that’s how we will start it! You know, come out and do an improv Lucky Animals dad dance and call it a night. (laughs) yep, there you go! "Thanks so much guys, I’ll be out back".

LMA - Well, it would definitely get rid of any butterflies.

DT - We’ll see. If things are a little standoffish at first we’ll go that road.

LMA - I don’t think that would be possible with you though. The crowd loves you, you know it. (laughs) anyway, besides your peavey guitar, will you be bringing any others?

DT - Well yeah, I use the peavey stuff but I’ve been using Framus for the past couple of years and that stuff is cool. I’m  a bit of a slut when it comes to guitars. I mean I work with Sadowski stuff and Fender stuff and Framus a lot, and Peavey, Stromberg gave me a guitar recently but for the most part in my life right now its almost entirely Framus with a Peavey or two. Then when no-one is looking I play Fenders and Sadowski. I’ll bring down a selection of the ones with the fanciest graphics and make it all nonchalant. It's like this, I’ve got an eight year old kid, been married for twenty five years, I’m sober now, so I’ve got to have some toys!  C’mon, guitars are way wicked!! (laughs)

LMA - You do post a lot of tutorial and instructional videos on Youtube about your recording processes. Do you think that might be the sort of thing we might get from the guitar clinic?

DT - Um, do you think that would be a good idea?

LMA - I reckon it would be a good idea.

DT - Yeah I think that would be cool to. I mean maybe what I could do is probably bring up the protool sessions and go through them in a similar way in part of the clinic as I do on Youtube. Perhaps I could take some of the stuff from the new record and say 'well look, this is how the process goes'. I did a clinic recently where I wrote a song and it sort of went through the process from beginning to end with people, and I think more than anything I just want to be able to provide some insight for the way that I do things because I want to share it. I want people to learn from my mistakes (laughs), and see if we can go to another level.

LMA - Your new album Z2 comes out very soon here. Can you tell us what to expect from it?

DT - It’s incredibly confusing. It’s a record about how hard it was to make the record. It’s puppets and thousands of people in a choir and a double record and some songs about death and some about farts and aliens and super heroes. It’s a tonne of information. It took me a month after it was finished just to understand what the hell I'd made! So… good luck (laughs)

LMA - Wicked! Bring it on. And obviously referring to aliens you mean our friend zilltoid?

DT - Absolutely. He had a facelift too since the last time he got all pissed off.

LMA - (laughs) That was my next question…. I’m totally digging his new look and was wondering who his plastic surgeon is?

DT - His plastic surgeon is the doctor of life. Its funny coz the first puppet, of course people are going to be nostalgic about the way things were always but 7 years ago when I did the first Zilltoid record, I did it all on my look. I mean everything. We had just had a baby and I had fucked my head up into a lump of clay and started making an alien. Then all of a sudden I heard a theme song, did some stuff on an iMac and it was just me. Only me. I made the puppet, I did everything. Now on this record, literally there is thousands of people, like with the universal choir. It couldn’t be more opposite from that. Of course there is people that say “oh, I like the first puppet”, and I was like 'yeah well I like this one better' (laughs). I always wanted him to look badass. He turned out goofy both times right? But the whole thing, he’s supposed to be a creature…. Me in some way but its not supposed to be Muppet babies. It’s supposed to be somewhere between science theatre and you know, a shitty JJ Abram’s film right? So I think now I’ve got the opportunity to really actualise it, its wicked. I’m working on improving the first episode of the puppet show which comes up in a week or two on the new website and I mean I’m not a great puppeteer, but its wicked! Why would we do that?! Its absurd and along with it is this crazy layout and orchestras and choirs, its so over the top, but ultimately I’m just so happy to finally be in a position where I can do it. What are people going to think about the record? Am I going to tell everybody it’s the best record of all time? I have no idea, its just what happened at this particular period of my life and it's got puppets too so.

LMA - What we love about Devin Townsend is the fact that you never know what you are going to get.

DT - Neither do I (laughs). That’s my defence mechanism. I’m like, if I can side swipe people every time, then their expectations are just so low that you’re always going to come up smiling right? People are like… wow, it’s a thing you know, congrats. I mean, the Casualties Of Cool record is one that I really liked! My records are always whatever they are supposed to be and they’re honest and I have a great deal of passion I feel I put into them, but Casualties (Of Cool) is a record that I enjoy listening to and enjoy playing everything. The whole concept of Zilltoid is a battle, and ultimately now that it has finished, like every record, I sit back and listen to it and try to have some kind of perspective on what the hell was going on and its like an internal thing. Its like a battle in myself on some level and carries a personification with it. Why is it so big? Why is it so over the top? Why is it son expensive? All these things I’m sure I will understand more by the time I get down to Australia, I mean I never know. It takes so long to put it into perspective because I’m oblivious to my own trip. You know, after a while you figure it out. Your like 'Oh, of course that’s what it was. Of course you’re fighting yourself, of course you need a tonne of people because of social anxiety or whatever'. It's obvious you know, but at the end of it I put a lot of effort into making my trip the focal point. I wanted it to be escapist in a way. You know, there’s so much dark shit in life, I spent so much of my time making music about “it's just me and this metaphor” and all this crap I mean I’m kinda like… even though that’s going to be the case, that’s just how I function. I put a lot of effort into Z2 trying to keep it so you didn’t have to play along with it, you can just listen to it and its fun. I think its super weird.

LMA - Do you find that you surprise yourself as you're doing your albums?

DT - I don’t think of it in terms of “how did that happen?”, I don’t consider myself a musician or guitar player in a traditional sense. I mean when I hear song writers and singers and guitar players do that, I’m always like “ wow, they’re real musicians!' Me, I’m just trying to figure out how to be functional in life and somewhere along the line I picked up techniques to articulate that in this sort of artistic realm, so when I listen back to it, rarely am I impressed by it, I’m more just like 'ha, ok, I can do that' you know? I get excited about it and I like it but it's never like I’m patting myself on the back about things. More just like it just pisses me off, until it doesn’t. Then it’s done. I go to bed and it's like 'no that’s not it', then I wake up and fuck around some more and I’m like 'no, that’s not it either'. Then I just obsess about the fact that it's wrong until it's right, and then I happily never listen to it again.

LMA - If that’s how you create things, with that along with Zilltoid’s late night visits to tell you how much of a shitty human being you are, how do you actually sleep?

DT - I sleep like shit! I am absolute crap at sleeping and every day that goes by I get worse. I just suck at it. Of my life skills, somewhere along the line I totally ceased to be able to do it properly.

LMA - So we could blame three quarters of your creativity on delirium perhaps?

DT - (laughs) More than that!

LMA - Rumour has it that you’re taking a year off. Do you actually think you’ll last the full 12 months without going crazy?

DT - That’s bullshit. I can’t take a year off. Who could take a year off? It's insane. Not only can I not afford to take a year off, but all the guys would have to come off a salary and I'd go crazy and end up starting some stupid project that would cost a fortune. But what I can do is I can stop making records for a while and just focus on other things. Live performance elements. Now that the Z2 thing is done, and the pledge campaign is done it feels like I’ve done the worlds biggest shit and I feel great. It’s a great feeling, so a year off….it would be nice but I don’t think so.

LMA - There is no way your mind could ever stop.

DT - This is what I said to the management too. He was like "What are you gonna do, take a year off?” and I was like “Dude, I just need to know that you would let me if I wanted to”. He knows I’m not gonna, but tells me I can. He says” You wanna take 10 years off don’t ya” and I’m like "yes" and he says "go ahead" and I’m like "great, so what are we gonna do?"
I’m pretty basic when it comes to my trip but I mean I think knowing your limitations is a big part of it so…. Onward!!


LMA - Well we are looking forward to your guitar clinic and its always a pleasure talking to you.

DT - Thankyou so much. Its great talking to you again too! I’ll see you down there and let’s talk again.

Devin Townsend is hosting his guitar clinic at The Gov on Thursday the 23rd of October. Tickets are available here.




Interview by Melissa Donato
0 Comments

15 minutes with Devin Townsend. 

8/17/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
Devin Townsend. You may know him from his days with Strapping Young Lad or Zimmers Hole, or you may recognise him as the man that had one hell of a skullet (probably the best I've personally ever seen!), or even the man with his arm up Ziltoid The Omniscient's bunghole. However it may be, his name is rapidly becoming well known among fans of all genres of metal.

Since going solo in 2008 everything he has put his wacky mind to has proven successful, his latest being a live DVD of the Retinal Circus performance, due out later in the year.

He is also touring Australia in October, and although he is skipping Adelaide this time around, we were very fortunate to be able to steal some of his time and step into his mind for a while... 

So How are you?

Hmmm… Sorry, I have a mouth full of soda here. I am typically me in that on the good days I am confident and solid and on the bad days I have no idea why I do what I do. But the good news is I think I am past the point in life where I take either of those things too seriously so they tend to cancel each other out and in general I’m absolutely fine, if you know what I mean?

Well, I hear congratulations are in order as you’ve been nominated for two awards in the Prog Rock awards this year (One for Retinal Circus in the Live Event category, the other for True North from Epicloud in the Anthem category), these aren’t your first nominations, are they?

No, we were nominated at the Golden Gods Awards as well for several things, and I got nominated for a couple of records now, a couple of years running at the Canadian Juno’s, so it’s starting to become a little more visible. None of them have transpired into an actual win, but for me after 20 years of doing what I do and trying to convince people that maybe the aesthetic of heavy metal is something that I choose to do and is not indicative of the Iron Maiden, Slayer back patch wearing knuckle dragging set, right, it's nice for me to be slowly able to get my foot in the door with multiple genres. The goal eventually, through any of these projects including this variety puppet show we’re working on now is that in a couple of years maybe these things will allow us to be really visible and all of these absurd ideas that I have will be able to come to fruition, I mean, God, that would just be f*cken so great!

So if what it takes is to be visible in ways like that, bring it on!


Picture
I know here in Adelaide your fan base is growing rapidly, the first time I saw you play was in 2010 at Fowers live infront of 500 people, then at Soundwave where the crowd number was significantly greater. You are reaching a lot more people, and it seems a lot more people are liking what they hear and getting into your music, but do you have any goals when it comes to Australia?

Ha! I remember that Fowlers show! 



Australia has always been such a wonderful experience for me on a personal level as well, I've met a lot of people who I relate to there, and I guess there is a connection between Canada and Australia in lots of ways. But do I have any goals? Let me think about it…

My goals are to be creatively free, like creatively liberated and that includes the ability to articulate any idea I have that I think is artistically viable, and I want to assemble a group of people around me that have talent in the ways that I don’t have, that I can delegate these ideas to and keep multiple multiple projects growing. My elements of it are almost exclusively like vision, artistic direction, music, the odd thing here and there but I have no interest in controlling all aspects of these artistic visions. I just want to be free to have an idea and say “we’re doing this tomorrow, we can afford to do it, I want this person to do it, and I want him to do it because I’m satisfied with what he is getting out of it, and he’s gonna do a great job!” This is what I want. And if I can utilize the opportunities that I've experienced through the touring or the nominations or whatever to achieve that, then that is my goal.

In terms of public perception or success or any of those things, that’s never been a motivation. For me it's about having a great time. It really is, and there is a lot of work involved in it but I do like that idea above all of it.

It certainly comes across that you have a great time on stage and in front of a crowd with audience members being captivated. It seems that everyone that knows and likes your music has no expectations of what’s next from you. They just go “Oh, that’s just Devin, he’s so zany like that!”, and that’s gotta feel so much less constricting compared to what most normal artists would feel?

I think there is also an element of my career and my world that’s never really been super cool, in hindsight people tend to romanticize Strapping Young Lad like we were this super cool thing. But I tell you, when we were happening, it wasn’t super cool, we weren’t part of the cool crowd. It was this awkward speed metal industrial thrash thing that was happening on the side of all the cool kids, right? And the same thing is happening now, so as a result of never being completely accepted into any particular genre, it's been liberating because no one really expects anything. If I had a ton of success with something, like if I was in Slayer, people are gonna expect that to be similar to everything else.

Picture
But for me, this next record that I am finishing now, it's kinda folk, creepy, dark, outer space quiet thing that, in comparison with Epicloud, is as polar opposite as you’re ever gonna get and there is gonna be a lot of people that are NOT gonna like it. However, the thing that people will, in my opinion, atleast learn to respect about these decisions that I make, is that they are all based in – this is what I feel I need to do right now. In fact, any time I pick up a guitar, this is what's coming out of me right now. So for me to deny that in lieu of what people expect of me? It's gonna end up being something that people ultimately aren’t gonna have any connection to. So whether or not people like the aesthetic of what I am doing, typically people say “It's not my thing, but I hear that you’re not lying to me”, and ultimately I think that is sort of what is defining where I am at at this point, it’s whether you like it or not, it’s not lying to ya. Without an ounce of pride though there is a lot of pride in it, that’s rare! The industry is in such a way that everyone just wants to make money and they are trying to stick to different models that have worked in the past, and a lot of the time what that ends up with is people who feel they have to dress a certain way or play a certain type of music or say or do something that’s been tried and true in order to feed their families. But I started to realize more and more that as long as what you’re doing is authentic, then just articulate it well and people will be at least vaguely interested.

We’re doing this fucken puppet show right now that’s outer space puppet show with a lot of shit humour and quantum physics references and I love it, it's what I wanna be doing! So when people see it, it's like “Ok, it sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time on that, it sounds great – when does the record come out?”

Would this have anything to do with Ziltoid?

Yeah, this is it! We’re working on the Ziltoid show right now and it’s so awesome!

Again I went into the studio last night to do some voice over work for it and there was a dude there with his buddy who asked me what I was working on, and I told him it was a puppet show thing. He asked me to play it so I did and he was looking at me like I’m wearing a sweater! He was like “Why would you do that?” and I was like “Well because I want to, because I think it's fucken really funny!” 


We’ve got great people guesting on this show, and we’ve got people interested in a syndication of this show, yet it's just so absurd, and so far removed from that sort of creative liberation that it proves a point,  in my mind. You don’t have to follow those rules in order to get into that world, and I am hoping that by sticking to those guns and not only making it absurd, but as absurd as you can possibly take it comfortably, then you're making a point, that, ultimately, underlies the goal of being totally creatively liberated, right?

Picture
I hadn’t heard the actual Ziltoid album before I learned about him, but the first thing I heard was the late night visit he paid you that you posted on Youtube (see here)

Oh my God!

I laughed so hard I nearly peed a little, I found it to be so hilarious!

(Ziltoid: Yesssss)

We’ve got a lot of people working on the Ziltoid show with us now and because his dialogue virtues on really crude shit or misogyny or any of these things, but it doesn’t go there, that’s the thing! It’s a fine line! I think the way that the character can straddle it is, go to these places where you think “if I was your mother I’d wash your mouth out with soap”. However, it’s the over riding psychology of it and of the character that he’s just repressed, and so it never actually goes to a sadistic point or truly misogynistic or truly horror or whatever.  So integrating new people into the process, that’s the thing. Other people will come up with ideas like “right here you could like kill a bunch of people”, but he doesn’t kill a bunch of people. He talks big, but he’s got this conscience that fucks with him. If you go into the back-story of his relationship with his dad which is really awkward, and he had an over bearing mother, so the depth of where you can go with that sort of character is again really creatively liberating.

So at this stage what we’re trying to do is set up that creative unlimited potential with illustrating the character through the show, right? Like when the guy was looking at it, he was shaking his head like “what the fuck?!” and then all of the sudden he is calling over his buddy saying “You gotta see this!” and then his buddy is like “What the fuck?!”

(Ziltoid: I just pooped in your bum)

He just said he pooped in my bum. Sure.

Will Ziltoid be making an appearance on this tour in October?

To a certain extent. He is busy making his TV show so I might keep him back here for a while, but he’s always there my friend.

When you do your live shows you’re so into it and have such a good time, showing that you love doing it. What happens when you come off stage, do you actually have a ‘come down’ from it, or do you just move onto the next thing to be done?

I think music in a live format is good for me because it allows me to be confident. Art in general I feel very confident with – my ability to do what I do, I never question. There is a shocking lack of negative self-image that is often a liability when it comes to doing what I do. However in real life, I don’t like being around people. I don’t like crowds, I don’t like loud things, I don’t like rock shows or loud motorbikes or fireworks. I like it quiet, I like to be on my own, I like it dark, I like nature, these are the things that inspire me. So after a show, my goals are not necessarily to hang out backstage and talk to people. I need to calm down. I wanna go have a bath, you know? I wanna go be on my own and be at peace for a while. If I have the opportunity to do that, which sometimes I am able to, then it keeps it in perspective and it keeps the two sides of my personality at peace with each other. Because if one of them gets all the attention, for example if you get off stage and you have to entertain people and all this shit, then eventually I start to resent playing live just because there is no respite from it.

But on the other end, if I am always at home keeping things quiet and I am always able to go for a walk and be in nature, after a while I just get bored!

At this age I am also luckily getting to a point of where I can be more aware of what my needs are. Whether or not those needs are things that when I was younger I would think were reasonable or rational. I mean shit I’ve been married for so long but I remember in the beginning of relationships I always used to think that I was gonna pretend I was just like them, I’m gonna pretend I’m just like a woman or whatever. But as I’d get half way through it I’d realize that a big part of me is a Neanderthal, that’s how I am wired. That’s how I am.

So for me to pretend I’m not, just ends in dissatisfaction. I think I have empathy and I think I am intelligent and all these sorts of things, but to pretend that I am not a man, to pretend that I am not just as single minded and Neanderthal with the base elements of my life as I actually am, just ends up in frustration. So its great to be able to get to the point of my life where I’m like “you know what? I need quiet” or “I need this” or “I need that” and I don’t give a fuck if people think I am not intelligent or not clever or not in line with what peoples projections of what the music is. 


You know what? 

You are what you are, and the sooner you can make peace with that, the sooner you can be creatively free.

Photos and interview by Melissa Donato

0 Comments

    Archives

    February 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012

    Categories

    All
    All Time Low
    Between The Buried And Me
    Biffy Clyro
    Boom Crash Opera
    Breaking Orbit
    Dave Hause
    Devin Townsend
    Facey Talks Slam
    Fear Factory
    Fozzy
    Frank Turner
    Gary Numan
    Gus G's Firewind
    Hang The Dj
    Hawks Of Alba
    Hoodoo Gurus
    Horrorshow
    Insane Clown Posse
    Jeff Martin
    John Brewster
    Kill Devil Hill
    Nancy Vandal
    Pseudo Echo
    Recoil Vor
    Riot Runners
    Se Bon Ki Ra
    Seether
    Soundwave Festival
    #sw15
    Taking Back Sunday
    Tame Impala
    The Mark Of Cain
    The Presets
    The Superjesus
    The Treatment
    The Used
    Tomahawk
    Trafalgars
    Veruca Salt
    Voyager
    Wednesday 13

    RSS Feed

Picture