Transcript of an interview I recorded with BRETT CAMPBELL of PALLBEARER - 20201014. Full article here. MAL-
All right talking to Brett from PALLBEARER. Brett, Tanks for taking my call. BRETT- Oh, thanks for having me pleasure to be here. MAL- Yeah, it's good to have you on. You've got a new album coming out very soon. We'll get to that in a moment. Just briefly touch on your last album, how'd that one go for you? BRETT- Oh man, it was quite quite the undertaking to make. We really worked for a quite a few months on that one. And the recording process was pretty intense and everything because we did it all ourselves in general and it was very ambitious, let's put it that way and our recording techniques and stuff. So we kind of worked ourselves to the bone on that one, but I think it turned out pretty awesome fun to play the songs live. MAL- Yeah, excellent, right. You've got the new one coming out very soon, which is called 'Forgotten Days'. Now. I understand with this one. You went out to Texas to record that, tell us about that, how different was that for you? BRETT- Well, it was very different than anything we've done before with 'Heartless' our last album. We recorded it here in Little Rock. So we recorded in this pretty small studio that, I mean like a 10-minute walk from my house at the time where I lived and but it was pretty small. So, you know, we could record during the day and then go home and sleep in our own beds and stuff. So going out to the middle of like I mean basically almost on the Mexican border. It was like the very southern end of Texas. So it was on like Sonic Ranch is out on this big like pecan orchard. So it's like hundreds of Acres of pecan trees and then like these Studios scattered throughout this giant area. So that's like really the only thing in this tiny tiny town that we're in so there was not this definitely no going back to our own beds from there, but it was really cool. The studio is extremely well decked out there was like a sweet like old Neve desk that we've recorded on like the actual desk that we use was this nice old like Neve desk. So it gave everything is really warm. You know analog desk sound, it was great. MAL- There's nothing wrong with that old school sound, beautiful and warm. Do you think recording in the way such as you did almost like 'out of your comfort zone', did that sort of bring out anything musically that you think was hidden or maybe thought lost? BRETT- I think if anything there was more brought out of us, but I think it was less because it was out of our comfort zone and almost because we were more comfortable in a way because like having Randall producing took a lot of the pressure off of us because in the past we've kind of handled some of the minutiae of like the how we produced everything ourselves and we're not trained, you know, none of us are like trained producers or engineers. So it was all just kind of like reaching for these ideas that we had but we had to experiment quite a bit to get them but with having Randall on board a you know, an expert and the kind of music that we were trying to make that we the kind of sounds we were trying to get it took a lot of that pressure off. So if we if we wanted a certain sound Randall would know an incredible way to get to it and we didn't have to fumble our way around and try to find it ourselves. And so let us focus a lot more on the performance aspect, which is honestly like way more ideal for recording, you know, instead of having to juggle a bunch of different roles, we just had to focus on our individual performances, which is nice. MAL- Yeah, tell us about this album. There's eight tracks on there. A lot of these songs seem very personal even in some cases brutally so (yeah) are there any stories about any of these songs that you feel comfortable sharing? BRETT- Oh sure. Yeah, well as always like the lyric duties are kind of split between Joe and me and we typically, sometimes we collaborate on lyrics but we didn't do that on this album, but we all kind of contribute to everybody's songs for the most part. But you know, whoever was the main songwriter on each song kind of like writes the lyrics for that song. So, you know, most of Joe's songs if not all are about his looking back at how his mother's death around the time that we started, her illness and death when we around when we started PALLBEARER and how he had essentially spent the intervening time kind of just running from that and I think he was kind of finally ready to sit down and like look at himself and see how that affected him. So obviously that's extremely personal, and I think some of his lyrics on this album are just like incredibly touching or like sad, you know. I think we always try to find a sort of personal or human perspective for all of our songs. We're not really focused on fantasy type stuff. Even if we kind of take a sort of fantastical approach to some of the lyrics it's typically they're typically rooted in something that's real. MAL- Thanks for sharing. I don't like to use the word 'journey' but 'Silver Wings', 12 minutes. That's a journey. Tell us about that one. BRETT- Oh man. That's probably the song that I work on the longest cos in general on this album, I tried to stick as closely to my initial creative spark when it came to a song so whenever that initial idea came for each song I tried to like basically finish it in as short a period of time as possible, to kind of keep that rawness there. But Silver Wings, actually I spent quite a bit of time on and rewrote the second half of the song probably three or four times, but I had an epiphany moment where I under I was like, yes, I've got it. This is it and I rewrote the end of the song and like an hour. It was exactly what I needed to be but yeah, and I really like that one. It's you know, the kind of has a lot of the same themes that kind of appear throughout the the album, you know, about like, you know transfiguration and inevitability of change, the passage of time stuff like that. It's kind of a bridge, it's the longest song on the album but sits in the middle, which you know, I think it makes it interesting bridge between different parts of the album. MAL- To be fair, it's the longest song on most albums. Tell us about 'Forgotten Days'. I notice there's a new music video for that. Tell us about that song. BRETT- That song is well, obviously, it's pretty pretty relentlessly heavy, which I think in general on this album. We were trying to make it really heavy because 'Heartless' had some really I mean 'Heartless' is heavy in a faster sort of way, but we kind of wanted to incorporate some more just sledgehammer sections on this album, and you know, I say that song is pretty sledgehammer through most of the way through but lyrically that was kind of my grandmother has been going through Alzheimer's for the last five or six years and it's kind of watching her identity and her memories kind of, watching her lose those it's been kind of it's been something it was remarkable. You know, it's really sad, honestly like terrifying to think that.. MAL- It's hard to watch isn't it. BRETT- It's really hard to watch and you know, if you're not a collection of memories and experiences than what are you? So if you start losing those then you know, you're losing yourself. It's like a slow just like erosion of your life, but you you've experienced it but you're still alive as your life slips away. It's really horrifying you know. MAL- It is yeah. All right, what happens now? You've got this album just about to come out. You probably can't go on tour yet. What's the story? BRETT- Well, I mean nobody knows.. MAL- Have you got other work? This is what one thing I'm asking bands lately. Have you got other work? Because covid is affecting everybody, the bands especially, because they can't get out on tour, but have you got other work? BRETT- I do not I went all-in. I went it to two or three years of University years ago, but then basically we all went all in on on this, and you know, that's partly why we tour so much is just because that's how we make our money, and we got to a point where we could make enough money to live off of although meagerly basically, but it's cheap to live where I live. So I've managed to be able to do it. So yeah, it's pretty scary. I've no prior training and I haven't held another job in like a decade. So it's inevitable right now. I've managed to get by temporarily but I doubt that I will be able to do so through the period of time that it looks like it's going to be before we actually get to tour again. So I'm going to have to figure something out. MAL- Let's hope it clears up soon. All right, so the album is coming out. We've got that slated for release the 23rd. How pumped are you? BRETT- Extremely and we started I mean I'd be more pumped if we could actually go on the road afterwards, but I am really excited to like get it out there and I'm pretty confident that the people are going to like it. So I'm not too nervous or anything. But I mean we recorded it like the almost almost a year ago. We went into the studio early November of last year. So I've been ready for people to hear this thing, so I'm really stoked that it's going to get out there. Finally. MAL- Yeah, that must be a weird feeling having an album recorded in the bag basically for that long. Yeah, and 'I can't wait for you guys to hear it', and that drags out to a year. Brett., anything else you wanted to run through? BRETT- I just hope everybody, you know, checks it out. And you know, it's it's something to do. No one can lie and say that they have a whole lot going on right now. So you don't have any excuse not to check it out. MAL- Brett from PALLBEARER. Thanks so much for taking my call. best of luck with your new album out on October 23, And I hope the world opens up for you very soon. BRETT- Thanks Mal. It's good talking to you and all the best. Take care. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |