The soaring and steady relevance of straight up hard rock and heavy metal isn't going anywhere. As a matter of fact, you ask any hard rock or metal fan and you'll get an earful about it's longevity and importance.
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| John Connolly photo by Angela Villand |
This is no news to some of you, but John Connolly, one of the 2 Sevendust guitarists, was a long-time friend and fan of Dimebag Darrell (Pantera, Damage Plan). He looked up to him with both ears wide open, he thought he was crazy, yet admired the hell out of him in every way. Here, John speaks openly about Dime, shares some of his most humorous and favorite memories of the times they spent together. He also talks about the "old school" Sevendust "shit they pulled," (trampolines on stage), shares some gear insight, and talks about how he and the music he makes has changed and evolved through over a decade of jammin' with his band mates.
With COLD DAY MEMORY celebrating it's one year anniversary (last week, April 20 marked the 1 year milestone), you might think it's time for them to pack up and head home, head back to the studio.
No sir, and no ma'am. That's not how they do things, nor have they ever. They're on the road now, still...Oh yeah they take breaks, but then they hit the road again and keep on playing for the fans. For you.
You’ve been playing Dean Guitars for as long as I can remember, many years now, long before they endorsed you. I've also seen you with Gibson Explorers and your Epiphone guitars...Is it your personal decision to stick with Deans on stage or a professional one?
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| John with one of his favorite Dean guitars |
I have a deal with Dean but it’s not a complete 100% exclusive deal. I mean, they’re not asking me to play nothing but Deans, but they keep sending me good guitars, so I just choose to not play anything else when I’m out on the road! They’re good! They’re solid, reliable, they sound great, and I have no reason to bring any of my “prized possessions” out on the road. I’ve only got a few guitars that are really dear to me, but honestly these sound just as good, so why run the risk of losing something that’s super-super sentimental. Although, I do have a couple of Deans that I’m sentimental about too. Yeah it’s just a core relationship that we’ve got going.
ANGELA:
Last year you had an opportunity to work closely with Dean Guitars and develop something special; a Custom Z body guitar with your favorite frets?
JOHN:
I think they did the informal introduction at Namm in January. I was supposed to be there for it, but we did the Music as a Weapon tour. We actually took a bunch of different elements from a bunch of different guitars and we came up with what was gonna end up being my signature Z. It’s basically a Z Body, but it has a long scale neck on it (25-1/2" scale). I didn’t realize how much of a big deal it was for me until I actually threw it on there as an experiment, tried it; it’s just a little bit longer, it’s fender scale. There are not too many Explorers out there that have that Fender-Scale neck on the guitar. Usually most of them are Gibson scale necks so it’s kinda “one of those things,” the sacrifice of the Fret board. Gibson’s cool for certain things, but I always feel like I’m bunched up on there and I don’t have super-big fingers or anything. I’ve always liked a little bit more space on the deck. Putting that Fender-scale neck on a Gibson-style body was kind of a first. I think Dave Mustaine had done one with a 25-1/2" scale also, but I believe he’s calling his a V. It’s kind of a like the Z but it’s a lot sharper, looks more like a weapon. Mine’s basically just traditional shape, rounded out with all the coils and the edges.
ANGELA:
Do you use a compressor for channels or effects (i.e. sustain)? Do you still use the Saffron Squeeze (compressor)? When is that handy?
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| Cold Day Memory released April 20, 2010 available at Itunes |
Oh yeah, Saffron Squeeze is good; I throw it on obviously at the end of the show. I’ll pop it on because I’ll hold the note forever. You know there are just certain times where certain channels need a little bit of help: If we’re playing in a really humid club, sometimes it’s good to just throw it on and leave it on. It doesn’t really give you gain, but it gives you “more” and it’s kinda hard to explain. You can physically hear it if you turn the dial up at a certain spot on the actual pedal itself, once you turn the drive up a little bit. It’s an audible difference for sure but we’ve got it set to where you really can’t tell when it’s on or when it’s off other than when you’re getting those long sustaining notes. That pedal is probably gonna stay on my pedal board forever, that’s for sure.
ANGELA:
I’ve seen you fly a wireless rig on stage but I’ve seen you go back to cables at a show on the same tour? Do you have a preference?
JOHN:
(laughs) It’s funny you should ask that. We bought a very expensive wireless unit from a manufacturer that I will not name because we’re trying to actually work it out. We spent a lot of money on a system and put it in the rig, and it seemed to work for a certain amount of time. Then out of the blue one day, all the sudden, I started getting some horrific noise out of the rig. We had just recently switched over to EVH amps, and a couple of the guys in the crew were trying to figure it out, trying to help basically, throwing stuff out there. Everyone kinda starts pointing the finger at the amps, like “It’s probably those amps; they’re super High Gain amps!” I’m saying “It’s not that, it’s something different.” It’s a noise. I understand the difference in a lot of gain noise and getting stuff that’s not supposed to be there in the first place. So we did the test: throw the wireless in there, play. THEN…Grab a cable, play. And all the noise was gone and the rig sounded 10x better. (Laughing) So we’re having issues with our wireless at the moment.
Technically, I’m supposed to be wireless and I’ve been wireless for years. But the one we just spent a whole bunch of money on has just decided it does not want to cooperate with my rig for some reason or another. I’ve been on a cable for about 3 months and I've got to be honest with you...It’s never sounded better! (Laughs) I never realized how good a cable sounds until I spent a lot of time on one, I mean I did the whole Music as a Weapon tour on a cable and it kind of sucks you know, because it’s JUST long enough to get to the other side (over at the other mic position) but that’s about it. A couple of times I unplugged myself on the run with a big 25 foot cable dragging around behind me.(Laughs) It’s kind of one of those weird questions because it pertains to what we’re dealing with right now. At the moment I’m on a cable and I’m not wireless at all.
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| Brad Kochmit Photo by Kelly Lloyd |
On the Music as a Weapon tour in early 2011, you had guest guitarist filling in for around 10 shows, Brad Kochmit (Eye Empire, formerly of Switched). Clint Lowery (fellow Sevendust guitarist) took off for quality time at home with his wife for their son’s birth and first few weeks of life and asked Brad to help out. What was that like to have Brad on board with Sevendust for those ten shows? How did it feel playing in front of thousands of your fans with Brad on stage with Sevendust?
JOHN:
It was really, really cool. He’s such a good dude, and he’s a great player and a super super huge fan of the band and we didn’t realize how big a fan he really was. We’ve known Brad for years, ever since Switched, when we toured with them. It was cool, and it was different, you know what I mean? It was definitely noticeably different in a lot of ways and also it was exciting because it was like ...you get someone that gets their first crack at it, their first shot. So you’re kind of watching it with that in mind. You’re thinkin, “Alright this is the first time that they’ve ever jammed with the band, and they’re doing it in front of about 12,000 people so what’s this like?” (laughs)
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| Brad Kochmit Photo by Jeremy Adamo |
It was cool, it was definitely fuel for a lot of the shows just to watch Brad's excitement with it, so it was awesome. The reasons for it obviously were great! Clint having a healthy baby boy, being able to take those first couple of weeks, cause you never know with a baby. I mean, thank god I was home, cause Jordan was an hour and a half on off on off for about 3 or four months, cause she didn’t sleep more than 2-3 hrs. So it was something that was important for Clint to do, and it was important for us to do the tour at the same time. It kind of sucked because originally we were going to have the time off and it would have been a no-brainer. When we got the offer to do the tour, we said "This is too cool a tour to not do." It was trippy going out there, because Clint played the first show and then Brad played the next 10! And then Clint came back! (Laughs) It was definitely a lot of fun, Brad slammed it, and he did a great job. He was hard on himself for missing stuff, but we said “Oh you only had to learn a Sevendust show!” you know? (laughing)
ANGELA:
Let’s talk about Dimebag Darrell (Pantera). It’s pretty clear to anyone that’s known you for any amount of time that Dime’s influence on you is solid; not to mention the impact your friendship with him has had on both your life and your musicianship. It is unmistakable, undeniable.
JOHN:
Without him, I don’t know what I would sound like. For me it all started with Metallica and James Hetfield but I was more of a drummer during that stretch. I really hadn’t focused on the guitar part of it, even though James is, by far, one of the baddest rhythm players on the planet. Pantera was the band that just hit me in the side of the face and I went “What…the…fuck…was…that!?” I’d never heard anything like it. You know, people talk about like when Nirvana came along and reinvented music. Well, Metallica invented the style and Pantera came along and gave it some “swagger.” It was different; it was the same but a totally different approach with everything that he did. He claimed he hit bad notes all the time but you’d never know it because of a lot of the rules that he’d go by, like “If you fuck up once, fuck up four times in a row so that everyone thinks that you meant to do it.” I’d say “Alright cool Sooo when I hit that bad note, I’m supposed to remember the bad note?” And he’d say “Yeah just keep murdering the bad note.” (Laughs)
ANGELA:
Have you or the band thought about, talked about writing a tribute to Dimebag?
JOHN:
The funny thing is that “Hero” was that song; it was on the record right after that happened. We called it Hero. It wasn’t specifically about Dimebag it was more of a working title, because when we did the music that’s what inspired us. As far as a lyrical thing, I am sure at some point & time it will come to that. I guess part of us is still in that denial factor that we really don’t ever want to let it go in the first place. It’s been years, it’s been a long time since it happened. I don’t know. When a guy that big goes like that….(pause)....
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| Photo by Angela Villand |
ANGELA:
DIMEBAG STORY TIME!
JOHN:
I think I’ve got more than my share. (Laughs) There are so many good stories. Probably the most memorable was the time he had me both throwing up and pissing at the bar in the Ice Palace in the Amphitheater in Dallas. That was pretty cool. (Laughs) Me and Dave Williams from Drowning Pool had been drinking ALL DAY. We finally hooked up with him at the bar and it was on. Let’s just say …we don’t remember much. Dave woke up in a pile of puke in the front grass. He was in the yard! He never made it in the house. It was one of THOSE nights.
Probably the coolest though, for us as a band and for me personally, was actually getting to jam “Walk” with em in Dallas. That was probably THE coolest. I’ve got a couple of pictures from that in my studio in the house. Somebody (some fans) had taken pics of that out at the show; they came down to the bus and gave me the pictures and I’ve got em up on the wall at the house. It’s cool; them and me and everyone up there jamming, it was cool. That was probably one of the coolest times hanging with Dime. They had this band that they were kind of “backing” called Gasoline. They did, I guess, four or five TX dates with us, and Pantera was off (the road) cause they were off forever before they got the Damage Plan thing going. They’d just hop on the bus and ride around and follow the tour for three or four days and we’d ended in Dallas. The whole time we were talking…and we were doing “Walk” every night up on stage and Dime said “I gotta get up there and do it with ya’ll!” But he wanted to do it right, you know, on one of his guitars; that made sense to him so he could actually do the solo and do everything. So we said “Alright, we’ll do it in Dallas." So Dime and Rex came up there, Vinnie (Paul) was back there on the drums. It was cool, just getting to hang with those guys and actually getting to jam one of our favorite songs from them.
ANGELA:
It sounds as though being able to jam with Dime was one of the biggest highlights of your personal music career.
JOHN:
Oh yeah, without a question and without a doubt! Woodstock, hanging out at the clubhouse with Dime; I mean, nothin but jamming, but ...jamming was something special.
Probably the other most memorable thing was ….It was his birthday right after Dave Williams had passed. We were in Dallas for the funeral and Dime's birthday party was at (his brother) Vinnie’s the next day. Vinnie said “You guys gotta stay.” So we changed our tickets over, stayed a few extra days, got to watch him and hang out with him at his birthday party. It was cool because they had a ZZ Top cover band called Tres Hombres set up literally in Vinnie Paul’s living room. After about four or five songs of them jammin, Dime went over there and grabbed the guitar and didn’t put the guitar down for about three hours. We just get kept feedin’ him shots. You know, getting to watch him play ZZ Top for about three hours was just…mind-blowing. He knows ZZ Top as good as Billy Gibbons does, I promise you.
ANGELA:
Did the ZZ TOP trademark, signature jam “dance” in synchronicity come out?
JOHN:
Oh yeah! Oh he had the moves down, TRUST ME! He had the moves goin ON! He had the whole thing, it was THE show! We all just stood around and watched him. You know, at first we were thinking “Oh he’s got someone to jam at his party...he doesn’t need to get up there and jam.” Then we said “It’s just a matter of time before he gets up there and grabs that guitar,” and sure enough about two songs after we were discussing it, he was up there jammin. We kept feeding shots to him and it just kept getting better and better and better, it was AWESOME. (Laughing)
ANGELA:
For the younger guitar players out here, particularly for the ones that may think (very early-on) they’re where they want to be with their technique & perhaps believe they don’t need to practice so much anymore, etc…let’s talk about practicing. How important to YOU is daily practice, and what part does that play in mastering and sharpening your skills?
JOHN:
The practicing part is simple. The more times you do something, the better you’re gonna get at it, whether you like it or not, I mean, you may not even be trying to “master a skill.” Everybody’s got their own particular way they do it and the more you do it, the more proficient you become at it. You’re brain just kind of “takes over.” It’s the same thing with practicing. It does seem repetitive, and it does seem like certain things you do just “suck to do” but the point is to get them “programmed in” to where you’re doing em with out thinking. You spend six months learning a riff, mastering this really, really tough riff, and the idea is that once you’ve GOT it, you just don’t think about it, you just do it. So, doing sixteen individual little movements with the lick of the solo or whatever it happens to be, you’re doing it all as one continuous thing. It’s hard to get that mindset when you’re starting from the basic first building block of something; and sometimes it seems like it’s redundant. But you do something and after a certain amount of time (all the sudden) it just becomes reflex, it’s just something you’re doing really without thinking. That’s where the best music really comes from is the people that can do the things, do the technical stuff without it sounding like they’re thinking about the technical stuff.
I’m still kind of stuck in that gray area in the middle. I still, sometimes, go back and listen and say “It sounds like I’m thinking, it doesn’t sound like I’m playin.” You know, I’m hittin all the right notes and they’re all technically in the right space but there’s just…something different about it. That’s the hardest thing, I think, for any musician to achieve is that TOTAL relaxed state when you’re playin, doin it without sounding like your head’s in the way. The only way you can get there is through practice, it takes hours and hours of repetition of certain things. If you want something to get stuck in there, just practice it. You don’t have to practice it for fifty hours a week but you could do five to ten minutes a day on something really simple or really basic that you’re just not really that proficient at. If you spend that five/ten minutes a day, after about a year, I promise you won’t even be thinking about that thing. You’ll just do it, and you’ll go “Wow, I didn’t think about any of the individual steps. I just did THAT” (whatever it happens to be.) It’s something that’s important. It can get in the way for young guitar players.
I’m kind of fortunate the way when Sevendust first got together, I was a drummer, so I was
basically “Mr. Borrowed-Chord bangin around the neck” just getting by. Thank god for bands
like Nirvana, and Soundgarden, etc, Grunge was kinda kickin at that point so solo’s were kind
of looked down on. So we didn’t have too many guitar solos and it was alright because I was
like “Cool, I can not have to worry about that for a minute.” But it was interesting because all
you really focused on was (well besides cool riffs and stuff like that) was the song. It wasn't like
you were sittin there and you were killing yourself for a week trying to come up with the perfect
guitar solo for somethin. You were actually workin on music, real songs and stuff, like that. I
think that's the most important thing. I mean, practicing is great but, practicing actually writing
a song. Let's be real; the Beatles wrote all the songs and there's not a shredder in the band.
Shredding is cool, it's something cool to do but it's not a replacement for the fact that there needs
to be some...if you're gonna focus on songwriting then you should be good at it, or you should
always achieve to kinda be better at it. I guess the guitar playing kind of gets in the way of that,
if that makes any sense. Sometimes the last thing you need to be doing when you're writing a
song is playing the guitar. You need to be one finger...up and down the neck...findin the notes...
and there's your base melody and then you build off that.
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| Photo by Angela Villand |
The guitar solo is a very small portion of something that really has a much greater weight to it. I think young guitar players can kinda get stuck in that mentality of "Oh I gotta play faster than anybody." If that's what you want to do and that's your goal, then that's great. But it's very tough to make a living, you have to be THE best at what you do if you're gonna be one of those kinds of guys. You have to pick up the guitar and write songs. Either way it takes practice, you can't just pick it up and DO IT, if you're gonna do that, it's not the easy out. And it's not as easy as just saying "Ok well don't play 64th note quintuplet solo pieces, just work on these three chords." Sometimes those three chords are much harder to work on than all that super-fast haulin-ass stuff. It's definitely not an easy out. Musicianship and practicing go hand in hand. I think the more you do it, the better you get at stuff. It just becomes a part of you. When I'm working on something that I've never tried before, or something that I'm really not particularly good at, or things that I'm about 35-40% of the way...I've got the main jist of it..like on Monday I can do it great, on Tuesday I just fall all over it and I just look at myself and I go "Why?" (Laughs) You gotta keep trudging through, there's good days and bad days. But there's things that kind of keep it "fresh," and I think that they all apply to everything else that you do. A learned technique on a guitar is just time spent holding an instrument and you being more comfortable with it.
Guitar players are lucky because I think they season with age. The older they get the better they get. It usually doesn't work the other way around. A couple of those shredder guys might not be able to haul as much ass when they're 70. (Laughs) Unless it’s a guy like Les Paul; he was rippin’ from A to Z, and he was doin it all on a clean channel.
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| photo by Jeremy Adamo |
ANGELA:
Sevendust doesn’t sound like anyone, anything else and the way you play your guitar is really, very unique…it’s at the chore of what the Sevendust sound is and always will be…you don't follow the same "rules" as other musicians either.
JOHN:
First of all, we’re tuned down to drop-tuning, which means all bets are off on the bottom string. Second of all, we’re tuned down to B, so if someone says play a D chord, I know where the D chord is if you want the note. It’s not gonna look like a D (when you see me play it) because that’s not where the “shape” is (on the scale). I kind of live in a different place on the guitar. I work more in patterns and rough shapes. I know a major scale and I probably know a minor scale. Other than that, I’m a little lost I gotta hunt and peck some things. I guess that’s the difference. I come from a drummer’s point of view and that part of the music. It’s not that I don’t want to learn it but it’s just been something that I kind of get the grasp of it, and then I don’t want to know too many of the rules. I’ve always been like that though, even back when I was in college. Rules in music suck; there’s some of the coolest things that I think don’t make any sense. If I find something that sounds cool, sometimes I play something and it’s not even in the same key as the rest of the song but it’s killer. I don’t like getting hemmed in by the rules, because if I don’t know that they don’t “make sense” and they sound good, then I’m gonna use it. (Laughing) You know what I mean though? I don’t want to know all of the boundaries and what I’m not supposed to do.
ANGELA:
ANGELA:
AUSTRALIA earlier this year, how was THAT?
JOHN:
It was awesome. We’d been over there a couple of times before and it's great. Doing it on a festival like this was just cool. You couldn’t get more bang for your buck, you’re playing in front of SO many people, and there are so many bands on the bill and everyone’s traveling together. Australian festivals…they just GET it; they just understand how to do it better.
They’ve got the organizational part of it DOWN, lots more organized! To be able to get people in and out…you’ve got to understand, there are THIRTY bands on the bill and they’ve all got to get on airplanes and they all have to get to the next city…and so does the gear…so…how you gonna do that? (Laughing) These cities are about 1200-1400 miles away, they’re not close. I guess the fact that they have to deal with a lot more when they do these things. It’s more “together,” there’s less questions, it’s done better, caterings better, set ups are usually better. And they’re never the same because you show up in a different city and they have a different stage for you to go into. It was so cool to watch them do that and show up everyday and be on the same time, same stage, everyday with Killer crowds. It was a great experience for us. I definitely want to get back (to Australia) for sure.
ANGELA:
Over recent years, you've gained a huge following of new fans, and it occurs to me that some of them have never heard of some of the shit you guys used to pull. Some of them don't know anything about your onstage stunts back on the Values tour or afterwards. And then some of the people that discovered Sevendust back in the late 90's are still asking about them....those damned trampolines.
JOHN:
Fortunately that was right before those compact digital cameras so there’s not much video footage either. If you go and try to youtube it, there’s just not a ton of it out there. It was cool, it was crazy, and we were like “Yeah, let’s go get some trampolines.” We were drunk, and we were stupid.
Note: we found a few trampoline videos... Check out the 2:50 marker on this one on stage left, Johns side)
Note: we found a few trampoline videos... Check out the 2:50 marker on this one on stage left, Johns side)
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| Photo by Angela Villand |
ANGELA:
From the pit, it looks like you hiked a jog tramp from a soccer-mom, but were they serious stunt trampolines?
JOHN:
That’s what everyone assumed, that they were like those little “jog tramps” but this was different, these were circus (Stunt) style. They were about 3 foot by 3 foot. The landing pad in the middle was only about a foot wide, the springs were about 18 to 20” wide so when you hit that thing, it wasn’t like when you’re bouncing on a little jog tramp, it wasn’t like that at ALL. The first time I hit it I was 8 feet up in the air and almost landed on my face. It really freaked me out because you can get serious air on those things. I don’t remember where we got those. But if you looked at those things you’d be like “Holy shit! You’ve got to AIM!” You don’t just jump up there, because if you MISSED, your foot goes straight through the springs (and that definitely happened a few times. More than a few times).
ANGELA:
Were the “stage tramps” (haha funny name) something that you “practiced?” If anyone’s seen it live (way back then) or seen the videos, it looks incredibly dangerous and it just happens so fast. (look it up on youtube.com! you know you want to!)
JOHN:
We all used them a little differently, and the thing that sucked was that we didn’t get to do rehearsals. We showed up at the Pepsi center at the Family Values tour that day (the only show we played on that tour because Filter had to go make a video) and we said “Fuck it, let’s do this!” We almost killed ourselves in front of 15,000 people (Laughing). So the “rehearsal” WAS the Family Values show that we played. We’re STILL tryin to figure out how to use those things and we haven’t done them in probably 8 years. It seemed like a good idea at the time and then we had to buy some gear and we were like “alright, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.” (laughing)
ANGELA:
Sevendust is known for their unrepentant and relentless touring that doubles that of most bands….You went on a 22month tour stretch for one of your albums and it continues. How has your performance changed over the years with the arrival of new and advanced technology? How have things evolved for YOU over time with how you psyche yourself up, and how you feel before and after performing?
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| photo by Angela Villand |
Sure, with more confidence the better you get as a player, the more you do something (like I said earlier, with that practice)…I may not think about it when I go out on a tour, but once I’ve played “Splinter” 150 times, it’s better than it was before I played it 150 times, I can tell you that for sure. So “Black,” songs like that off the first records, they’re definitely practiced, they’re on autopilot, we’ve played them so many times, we could do them in our sleep.
I know (for me, personally), I’m a lot more relaxed going out on stage because of how much we simplified things, as far as technology. I mean, technology has come a really long way as far as a lot of things, and it seems like I did the exact opposite; I just started throwing shit out of my rig. Slowly but surely I got it down to where it was the most BASIC set-up ever. Literally, it was Guitar, Head, Cabinet, with 3 or 4 effects and that’s IT. Those effects we have in a little racket there, I have a controller so I can stomp on each one, I can turn them on and off at will and I’m even on a cable. So basically, I’m as CLOSE to what we actually do in the studio (because I use the same head and the same cabinet in the studio) and that’s kind of cool.
When you go for a studio sound and you actually get acclimated to an amp and take it out on the road, you’re literally “doing it.” We did the whole Music as a Weapon Tour with half-stack, literally. One cabinet, one head (as opposed to their usual 2/2), that was it, that’s all we needed. Put a microphone on it, throw it through the P.A., shit sounds good! Don’t lose sleep over plugging in 9 different things to try to get “a sound.” I’ve definitely stripped down a LOT. I mean, I do still have things in my rack like the wireless that irritate the shit out of me, but it’s just simplified and gettin back to the basics. I found an amp that I really, really love to play and found a guitar that makes me want to play the amp. It’s the new EVH, the new 5153’s; I’ve been using them for about 2 records and it only made sense to take them on the road and use them live.
ANGELA:
I know (for me, personally), I’m a lot more relaxed going out on stage because of how much we simplified things, as far as technology. I mean, technology has come a really long way as far as a lot of things, and it seems like I did the exact opposite; I just started throwing shit out of my rig. Slowly but surely I got it down to where it was the most BASIC set-up ever. Literally, it was Guitar, Head, Cabinet, with 3 or 4 effects and that’s IT. Those effects we have in a little racket there, I have a controller so I can stomp on each one, I can turn them on and off at will and I’m even on a cable. So basically, I’m as CLOSE to what we actually do in the studio (because I use the same head and the same cabinet in the studio) and that’s kind of cool.
When you go for a studio sound and you actually get acclimated to an amp and take it out on the road, you’re literally “doing it.” We did the whole Music as a Weapon Tour with half-stack, literally. One cabinet, one head (as opposed to their usual 2/2), that was it, that’s all we needed. Put a microphone on it, throw it through the P.A., shit sounds good! Don’t lose sleep over plugging in 9 different things to try to get “a sound.” I’ve definitely stripped down a LOT. I mean, I do still have things in my rack like the wireless that irritate the shit out of me, but it’s just simplified and gettin back to the basics. I found an amp that I really, really love to play and found a guitar that makes me want to play the amp. It’s the new EVH, the new 5153’s; I’ve been using them for about 2 records and it only made sense to take them on the road and use them live.
ANGELA:
Did you throw your audio switcher out of the rig? (GCX)
JOHN:
I’ve got the GCX, I’m not gonna say I’m not sold on it, because I am, I know it does work. But anytime that we have “noise” issues, I would look at it and think Hrmmm. (Laughing) I mean there’s a lot of cables comin in and outa that thing! It definitely simplifies things, because if I don’t want any of those effects on, all those buttons are off, there’s no red lights, there’s nothing in the chain. It’s the shortest distance from point A to point B. It’s a very complicated way of eliminating a very real problem most guitar players have. I’m pretty much sold on it. (Laughing)
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| photo by Angela Villand |
TATTOOS! What's the most important piece of work you have, that you’re sentimental about? When was your last tat or when was the last time you had some work done and what was it?
JOHN:
Last time I got one…shit, I really haven’t gotten ONE…the last time I got “worked” was about a year, or a year and a half ago. We’ve been working on a sleeve, so that time he went from the wrist all the way to the shoulder blade. We’re just packing in color, doing a lot of detail and stuff like that. It’s been an ongoing process with this arm for at least ten years; I’m ready to get finished. I’m probably about 5-10 hours from being done.
Probably the most sentimental is the one on my neck, which is my daughter’s birth date and some Angel heart wings. (see photo, right) I got that one when we were on the A & E show Inked. I think I just want to finish everything I’ve got going right now before I worry about other things. I want to do a rib cage eventually and I want to do an arm pit eventually, but they’re not make or break, do or die things. I kind of go in and out of modes. Now I’m just in the mode of “let’s finish this” and unfortunately I get to see him once a year at best so I’ve slowed down on how much work I’m getting. My goal was just to get the arms wrapped up get everything I’d started wrapped up and I don’t really have anything left that hasn’t at least been addressed or isn’t pretty much close to being done. I figure one or two more sittings with Stomp and I’ll be finished and then I will have kept my deal with myself, which was “I’m not gonna get any new tattoos till I get all the old one’s DONE.” (laughing) I was sick and tired of walkin around with half-ass work and sayin “Oh yeah, well I’m gonna get that finished” (goofy voice). Fortunately, it’s painfully slow, and it’s hard; I’ll hear the needle and I’m thinking “Oh it’d be so easy to just go in there and DO it.” But I’ve got other stuff I’m focused on right now and tattoos are kind of on the back burner. I know once I get the itch again, it’s gonna be horrific, I’ll probably do a whole leg or something. (laughs)
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| photo by Angela Villand John's Angel Heart Wings w/his daughter Jordan's birth date |
ANGELA:
What is it like for you to see that people have “Sevendust” or “7D” tattoos whether they’re inspired by your Album art, song titles or lyrics? Does it Freak you out?
JOHN:
If they look really shitty… (laughing) No, I mean, it’s cool, even the shitty ones…At the end of the day, if they spent the money and took the time to go and sit there and go through the pain of having it put on, it means a lot, it really does. We’ve seen a LOT, we’ve seen a lot of Alpha (CD) covers, a lot of the Next "7D" tats.
This buddy of ours (Tyler) actually got the “Cold Day Memory” heart. (see photo, right) He basically just took the Sevendust logo off of that (art) and had that put literally on his chest. This thing must have taken probably 15, maybe 18 hours to do, it’s not small. It looks amazing, and the work is something that’s just…out of this world.
It’s really cool when we see people that got inspired by the band or by the artwork, something like that. There’s not a town we go to where there’s not someone with the band name on them. I don’t think anybody in the band has a “band name” (tattoo) yet but we see a lot of Sevendust tattoos and it really is amazing.
((Hard-Rock-Reviews.com would like to say thank you to Tyler & Lisa for sharing their Cold Day Memory tattoo photos with us. You guys rock!)) |
| Tyler Devaney's CDM tattoo Ink work done @ Allstar Tattoo by artist Rob Johnson |
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| Lisa Pader's CDM tattoo Ink work done @ Dmented Ink by artist Erica Floyd |
It’s really cool when we see people that got inspired by the band or by the artwork, something like that. There’s not a town we go to where there’s not someone with the band name on them. I don’t think anybody in the band has a “band name” (tattoo) yet but we see a lot of Sevendust tattoos and it really is amazing.
- Official Sevendust website: www.Sevendust.com
- Official Sevendust Facebook: CLICK HERE
- Official Sevendust MERCH: Click to Shop!
- Cold Day Memory on Itunes: HERE
Written by Angela Villand
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