Discussion: DevilDriver

Written by Steven Kowalski

Tuesday, 18 August 2009 23:15

Few bands in today’s scene bust their asses as hard as southern California’s thrash quintet DevilDriver.  The band’s rough tour schedule and unequivocal desire to remain in the ears of all is a direct reflection of their uncompromised love of metal as an art.  This relentless passion is in many ways encompasses what Dez Fafara – the band’s legendary front man – is all about. “I got my work ethic from my pops,” he admits backstage prior to the band’s set in Atlanta. “Up at sunrise and you don’t stop until the sun comes down.  I learned that at a young age.”  The man comes from humble beginnings and it’s clear he’s reached a point in his life where he’s no longer fazed by the usual distractions that are associated with being a musician on the road.   “Rock star for me is such a dirty word.,” he confesses as he takes a phone call in the back room of his tour bus. “It conjures up images of backstage parties with cocaine, groupies, ego, and all these other things that I’m absolutely not a part of.” Currently serving as the headliners for the 2009 Thrash & Burn Tour, the band is working tirelessly in support of their recent release, Pray for Villains.   Sitting with Swigged! before hitting the main stage(Heaven) at the Masquerade, Dez talks about why he left Coal Chamber,  his concerns as an American, and the five temptations that inevitably lead to a band’s demise.   The band recently released a new record which debuted in the Top30 Billboard charts, a bit of an increase from the last one.  When it comes to the days following a new release, does the band get caught up in all the numbers or do you simply sit back and let the cards lay as they fall? At this point I really don’t get nervous because I’ve been in [the music business] for 13 years now, so I know what downloading has done.  There are all these graphs and charts that everybody from the label uses to say sales in music have dropped 45 percent over the course of the last few years, so going up is definitely a huge deal.   For me, as long as the music is getting out there.  Our last record, Pray for Villains, actually leaked about a month before hand and I think I was the only one happy about it – I was actually excited to get it out there. What do you think about kids downloading your music? Oh, whatever.  As long as the music gets out there.  Downloading is here – it’s happening.  The only thing I’m worried about is that I think it will kill underground art.   I think it will kill blues, jazz, punk rock, [and] metal .  Any of the stuff that’s truly underground, if it can’t be [viable] to tour and to do to it to support ones’ livelihood, all you’re going to get shoved down your throat are the mass-market, money hungry bands.  Which is actually beginning to happen now, I believe. A lot of labels today are using access to the artists as a marketing ploy to attract a wider audience.  Do you think things such as Twitter, video blogs, or Facebook accounts diminish what the idea of a true “rock-star” is, ideally speaking? I’m an “isolatoric hermit” of a human being, if you will. [Laughs] I do my job, shake hands when I can.  As far as Twitter and things making it more personal, look, there’s a Facebook page for me out there and it’s not even mine.  There’s a MySpace account that isn’t even mine.  I’ll occasionally send out blogs and it may seem old school, but I can only get so personal.  The music and the lyrics should speak for themselves rather than all the rhetoric that’s going on.  You really want me to blog 30 times a week so you can know what restaurant I ate it?  I mean, maybe some people want to know that, but I seriously don’t think that’s the case. Where would you draw the line? Access to my family is off limits – it’s why they’re never on tour with me.  Personal questions about my family are off limits completely.  Other than that, I’m a pretty open book – ask me anything! Obviously being on the road and living from show to show is an experience many people will never go through.  But taking a step back, in a lot of ways you’re just a normal American guy: you pay your taxes, love your family, etc.  What sort of issues, as an American, are you most concerned with tackling? Well, I’m concerned just like everyone else is concerned.  Half of my family is out of work right now, the country is in disrepair, completely.  We need to do something about the health care system.  Education too.  I live in California and the first thing Arnold fucking Schwarzenegger did was cut our education budget, which he should have doubled.  So I’m concerned with everything everyone else is concerned with, I just happen to only catch a shower every five or six days, never get a good meal, and rarely catch a full night of sleep.  [Laughs] But that’s like every other working man out there supporting his family.  He’s doing the same thing – working two jobs and thinking about the direction this country is heading.  I’m real concerned with that. We used to be a shining light before President Bush.  I don’t know if the pieces will be picked up [under President Obama].  We’re going to have to see.  I mean, the first thing Obama did when he became president during the economic downturn was throw a $20 million party.  Why not say, “Hey, everybody put on jeans. Let’s have some people on the front lawn and kick back - show the American public we’re not going to be wasteful.”  Instead, it’s been a rock star fanfare and personally, it bugs me the man is always smiling at everything and is constantly in such a jovial mood.  I’m looking for a hard ass to put things in perspective.  We’ll have to see – I voted for the guy, so I hope things happen in this country. Switching gears, you mentioned in a previous interview how you and the producer of the last record, Logan Mader [Gojira, Cavalera Conspiracy], meshed well personally and that the two of you shared similar personalities.  What do you think he was able to get out of you that other producers couldn’t? He’s extremely focused and very zen-like in the studio. I’ve repeated this many times . In that focus there’s an intensity in him that makes you perform at your best.  I didn’t drink any alcohol behind the mic and he wanted every word, even though we’re pretty heavy, to be understood. He’d rarely crack a smile unless it was needed to cut through the ice because things were getting heavy and the tension was high.  What he brought was an extreme focus.  That’s what this album has – it’s very focused on everyone’s part.  When it was time for Logan to work with our drummer, he put him to work.  When it was with me, he put me to work. He isolated every person and got the best out of each of them. You two have a bit of a history – was it strange collaborating with a close friend? No.  We toured the world together.  When I was in Coal Chamber and he was in Machine Head, he wrote Machine Head’s opus of records.  We both, when traveling, each got to know each other because we hung out by ourselves.  We ended up traveling a lot together and became kindred spirits.  The guy is like a brother to me.  I’m so pleased to be his friend and he’s an amazing artist.  The fact that he left a very popular band at a very popular time to go explore production and other aspects of his art is another reason I took to him.  Plus he’s a family man, and I look up to that. Out of curiosity, where did the title Pray for Villains come from? My love for the anti-hero.  I came up with that at 3 in the morning.  Woke up, wrote it down, went back to bed.  The notion of when your hero lets you down, the anti-hero comes in and takes care of the situation.  I always love that.  I love old [Akira] Kurosawa samurai films and the old spaghetti westerns.  In those films, you always find the anti-hero taking care of business.  And at the end, they turn out to be a good guy.  Look at Darth Vader.  In the end, he was a good guy. On the subject of Coal Chamber, I believe it was written somewhere you left over musical differences.  How do you keep everyone on the same page for DevilDriver? In the beginning what I said about Coal Chamber is that I left because the musical direction wasn’t happening.  It was a misleading statement in the sense that I wasn’t at the time going to put out there what really did happen.  Now what really did happen was that the music AND friendship both went bad because they found methamphetamines.   They found speed to be way more important than making music and being friends.  So just at about the top of our game, I split.   Keeping DevilDriver together, we’re a group of likeminded guys that all love to tour and all know exactly what our jobs are.  There are five things that will mess up a band, so we stay away from those things on a hardcore basis.  Specifically, those things are: drugs, alcohol, money, ego, or women like Yoko Ono. What do you think you’d be doing if you hadn’t formed DevilDriver? I did a lot of things before this.  I come from a construction family so I’ve been on the jobsite since I was a young kid.  I’d be doing things like, framing houses to laying brick.  After that, I hurt my back and I got into hairdressing.  That was killer money and working with women is great. [Laughs]  I do many things.  Like now, I manage artists with a small startup label. Oh, so you’re starting a label?  Any new talent we should check out? At this point right now we have two up and comers we’re working with.  We’re just going to see how that goes, I’ll put more out there when the time comes.  I also manage an artist named Wil Ridge – he’s an outlaw country artist.  Absolutely the real deal.  Another band [I manage] is actually from Atlanta called Red River Revival who just signed to Housecore Records - Phil Anselmo’s [of Pantera] label.  There are a lot of things going on in my life. Moving along, what’s this I heard about a Native American flute album you recorded? Yeah, it’s called High Desert Moon.  I did it with a guy named Greg Weiss.  His father [Larry] was responsible for writing songs like “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Bend Me, Shape Me” by The Animals. Something like thirty top hits.  I found out about the Native American flute because I broke my finger playing with my dobeirman.  Doctors said it was never going to fully recover, but playing the flute for three years my hand and spirit was healed.  So we ended up making a record. Now that you’re on the prowl for musical talent, have there been any specific bands you’ve grown a liking to since hitting the road to headline the Thrash & Burn 2009 Tour? What I’ve noticed is a lot of talent on this tour.  It’s a totally diverse bill that’s never been put together.  You’re not supposed to but hardcore bands with metal bands – it just doesn’t work.  It’s an oil and water scene, completely.   I was in it from the very start because it was about heavy music.  We’ve made friends with all of the guys, like Despised Icon and Emmure.  Thy Will Be Down is my new favorite band – they’re like my kids, only they’re in their twenties.  I’ve had a great time on this tour and I think it’s turning kids on to a different range of music.  Hardcore fans are getting some metal.  Everybody is getting a bit of something.  I call it the Oil and Water Tour.  The people actually divide themselves, and I have no idea why.   Both groups should know the music comes from two sources: punk rock and blues.  Period.  That’s it.  We’re all the same except one group has short hair and wears their hats sideways while the other group keeps the hair long.   It has been working.  You can check the numbers. For more information on DevilDriver, visit www.myspace.com/devildriver or www.roadrunnerrecords.com. To see pictures of DevilDriver performing live, click HERE.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 19 August 2009 00:22 )

 

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