Author Archives: Jon Pacella

The countdown has drawn to a close, and the annual M3 Rock Festival, the late Spring celebration of the hair metal glory days of the ’80s, begins this evening with the “Kix-Off Party” at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD.

Leading up to M3, we spoke first with Lita Ford, Sebastian Bach, and Brian Wheat of Tesla. Next, we had a chance to talk to Michael Wilton of Queensryche and Michael Sweet of Stryper.

For our final M3 interview, we to talk to former Ozzy Osbourne and Badlands guitar hero Jake E. Lee. Jake has been laying low for a while, but has returned in a big way with his new band, Red Dragon Cartel. We talked to Jake about Hendrix, sampling, M3, and of course, vinyl.

See you tonight at M3!

What have you been up to lately?

I just finished a leg of the American tour. We hit the east coast, down to Florida, did the Monsters of Rock Cruise, on the road for about five weeks. We get a week off, then start back up with the M3 Festival. Then over to Europe.

Give us your thoughts on playing the M3 Rock Festival.

I really don’t know anything about festivals. We’re doing some over in Europe too, and I’ve had people come up and congratulate me for getting on these festivals. I am completely unaware of what any of this is. I haven’t really followed what bands do. So, playing the festival—I don’t know. I’m not even sure…how many people is it?

It’s an amphitheater, typical summer “shed” venue. I’m not sure of how many it holds.

Hmm…yeah, see, I wouldn’t even know. It looks like it’s the same bands that were on Monsters of Rock, a lot of whom I know, so that will make it fun. I’m assuming it will be to a fairly decent-sized audience. That will be different, especially for the rest of the band. Me, it’s a festival, which is different from playing a club. A club is more intimate, and maybe is more conducive to musical exploration onstage, whereas at a festival it’s more a physical expression, I guess you could say. When you play festivals, it’s more of a bigger-than-life scenario.

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The frost is gone (well, mostly), the warm weather is coming, and with it comes another season of outdoor music festivals and amphitheater shows. As if wagging a defiant middle finger at the Fireflys and Coachellas, the annual M3 Rock Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD has become the late Spring celebration of the hair metal glory days of the ’80s.

Now in its 6th year, the M3 Rock Festival will feature two days of music on two stages, with artists such as Tesla, Kix, Lita Ford, Night Ranger, Extreme, and Stryper among others.

Earlier this week, we spoke with 3 M3 artists and we had a chance to talk to 2 more M3 artists just this week leading up to M3 on Friday—Michael Wilton of Queensryche and Michael Sweet of Stryper. We got their take on M3, vinyl, and quite a bit more.

What have you been up to lately?

Queensryche has been up to a lot of new developments. We’ve been touring for the last year on a very successful release of the self-titled Queensryche CD. It’s garnered very great reviews all over the world, and we’ve toured n that all over the world and the U.S., and right now we are still continuing that through this year, and going into the studio later this year in between touring to begin the next album.

Give us your thoughts on playing M3 Rockfest.

Well, I have lots of mixed thoughts on M3, but it’s always been a great situation for me, personally. I think with this new rebirth of Queensryche, we will prove to the fans that the high energy Queensryche is back, and we are very grateful for the chance to revisit the M3 festival.

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The frost is gone (well, mostly), the warm weather is coming, and with it comes another season of outdoor music festivals and amphitheater shows. As if wagging a defiant middle finger at the Fireflys and Coachellas, the annual M3 Rock Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD has become the late Spring celebration of the hair metal glory days of the ’80s.

Now in its 6th year, the M3 Rock Festival will feature two days of music on two stages, with artists such as Tesla, Kix, Lita Ford, Night Ranger, Extreme, Stryper among others.

We had a chance to talk to 3 M3 artists in the week leading up to M3—Brian Wheat of Tesla, Lita Ford, and Sebastian Bach. We got their take on M3, vinyl, and quite a bit more.

Tell us what you’ve been up to lately.

BRIAN WHEAT, TESLA: Well, we’ve been making a new album—we just finished a new album called Simplicity which comes out June 10th on our own label. It will be out on vinyl as well!

LITA FORD: Well, lately I’ve been writing my book. I’ve taken a little bit of downtime just to focus on the book. We’ll go out and do some shows, then I come back and work on the book. We’re almost ready to turn it in to Harper Collins, and it should be out soon! Pretty gnarly stuff. I let it fly.

SEBASTIAN BACH: I’ve got a new album, called Give ‘Em Hell, that comes out April 22nd. I’ve got a new video called “Temptation,” with John 5 and Duff McKagan in it, and they’re also in my band on the record. Also, Steve Stevens from Billy Idol’s band, and Bobby Jarzombek is the drummer. I have a new TV show called Sing Your Face Off on ABC TV that’s premiering on May 31st at 9pm. I also have a book deal with Harper Collins…I’m working on my book. I’ve got about sixty or seventy concerts this summer to do, so that’s what I’ve been up to.

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“Born, bred, corn-fed, gonna live in the country ‘til the day I’m dead.”

That declaration, from the opening track of the 2010 album The Wages, is like a battle line drawn in the country dirt. Defying any musical standard, any type of Nashville scene, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band wears the statement like a badge of honor. So much so, that singer/guitarist Josh “Reverend” Peyton has the song title tattooed on his arm, framing an outline of their home state of Indiana.

Since 2004, the Big Damn Band has earned a reputation as road warriors, playing well over 200 shows per year while honing their unique mix of Midwest country and Delta blues. The instruments themselves will make you stare in a combination of wonder and awe. Rev switches between an array of guitars, from antique steel bodied and resonators, to fan-made cigar-box guitars, and about anything else he can attach strings and a pickup to. His wife Breezy plays the washboard like a woman possessed, and drummer Ben “Birddog” Bussell favors a 5-gallon plastic bucket over a rack tom. Their albums are incredible enough on their own, but their live show, resembling an amped-up blues tent revival, has to be seen to be believed.

The Big Damn Band made a stop in D.C. at The Hamilton recently, and TVD had a chance to sit with Reverend Peyton and talk about life on the road, the blues, lucky hog testicles, and, of course, vinyl.

Welcome back to DC! How’s things going for the Big Damn Band?

Man, it is going amazing. This tour has been one of my favorite tours we’ve ever done, if not my favorite. It’s just been…all the shows have been awesome. We’re playing better than we’ve ever played, everybody’s just having fun. That’s the way I want it to be, from this point forward. Everybody wants to be here, and that, to me, is going to be A-1, number 1 important. I just love doing this. For some people, touring is not for them. I understand that, I get it.

Yeah, it’s a hard way of life.

I’ve had jobs before that just weren’t for me. I’ve done a lot of different jobs. I worked at Kinko’s for a while, and I sucked at that job. I was terrible at it. It wasn’t for me. Some people will probably do that job and think “How could you think this job sucks?” It wasn’t for me. Sometimes things just aren’t for you…this is for me. I love it, I love being out here and seeing stuff, like here today in Washington, DC. It’s amazing how close all the stuff is, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, the Reflecting Pool, it’s all right there. The White House, right there. It’s kind of amazing.

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Subtle is definitely not a word that can be used when describing southern hard rock band Nashville Pussy. Led in tandem by the husband-wife team of Blaine Cartwright and Ruyter Suys (for those who don’t know, that’s pronounced “Rider Size”), the Pussy has been blazing their own path, with their over-the-top rock anthems extolling the joys of sex, drugs, and booze. Their new album, Up The Dosage, hit stores on January 21st, and promises to be more of the same. 

Ruyter took a few minutes out of their European tour to chat with us about vinyl, bassists, songs about diarrhea, and more. Her easygoing style and infectious laugh were a treat, showing us a rock goddess that just wants to play loud and have fun. Fair warning, we may have broken a TVD record for most uses of the word “fuck” in an interview. We wouldn’t have Ruyter any other way.

It’s been five years since From Hell to Texas. What’s Nashville Pussy has been up to?

We’ve been touring incessantly, as usual. We’ve toured like crazy with Nashville Pussy, and we’ve done, we’ve actually written and recorded four other albums since the last Nashville Pussy release.

Wow!

Plus we put out the re-release of From Hell To Texas, which involved the live album—we had a whole live album in addition to it, so that took a lot of gleaning. We had to listen to seventy hours of us.

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For over 25 years, the Texan trio-de-force known as the Reverend Horton Heat has been unleashing their unique brand of psychobilly music to fans worldwide. Their infectious blend of rockabilly, country, surf, swing, and hard rock has earned them a spot as one of the founders of American psychobilly alongside acts such as the Cramps and later Tiger Army. Their 11th studio album, Rev, is out today, January 21st, and is a full-throttle return to the harder, frenetic sound that Reverend Horton Heat made famous.

We had a chance to talk to The Rev himself, Jim Heath, about the new album, vinyl, Texas, drunken fights, and more.

Your first studio album in four years, “Rev,” comes out on January 21st. What do we need to know about the new Horton Heat album?

Well, uh, I decided to get back to a little bit of the aggressive, edgier sound that Reverend Horton Heat was kind of known for in the mid ‘90s. So, basically just kind of getting back to more of what we do. Our last album leaned really country. That album was actually going to be a straight country album, but instead it just kind of heavily leaned country. You know, we’re a rock and roll band, our crowd is a rock and roll crowd, and so we may do some other stuff like that, where we may kind of veer off a little bit, but that was the intent of the album going into it.

Laughin’ and Cryin’ actually reminded me more of the one kind of obligatory country song you have per album.

Yeah, a little bit. There’s some stuff that’s a little bit not really necessarily a country-type-thing, but there’s a lot of that going on on that album.

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For 22 years, Maryland’s Clutch has been defying every possible rock norm and standard, carving their own unique path and earning a devout (and primarily bearded) following.

In 2013 Clutch released their most critically acclaimed album to date, Earth Rocker on their own label, and have been touring like a machine throughout the year in support of the album. We had a chance to talk with singer Neil Fallon about labels, Kanye, and (of course) vinyl before their December show in Washington, DC.

How’s 2013 wrapping up for Clutch?

It’s been a great year. It’s been a very busy year. Earth Rocker enjoyed a lot more success than I think we had braced ourselves for. I definitely…it’s been gratifying.

Earth Rocker has been out for about 10 months now, you’ve been touring almost solid since then. Looking back at the album, hindsight being 20/20, what are your thoughts on the album?

Well, I look at the things that we did correctly, for once. I think we can thank ourselves for planning in advance quite a bit. It was difficult for us, since we put it out on our own record label, we have to still be a band first and foremost, and plan creatively, but then we also have to plan business-wise, and that’s still a learning curve for us. It’s still a new thing. I’m glad we gave ourselves as much leeway as we did, as far as finishing it, not jamming it through.

Have your feelings towards the music itself on the album changed now that it’s had almost a year to sort of marinate, and now that you’ve been playing a lot of the material live for a year?

Not really. This is the first record that we’ve pretty much played every track off of, right off the bat. Some albums, some songs never saw the light of day outside of the studio. I love playing them live. I think that has to do with doing as much preproduction as we did. I mean, we beat the songs to death before we actually recorded it. That gave me the chance to get all the shoulda-coulda-woulda’s out of the way.

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 6, 2013 | In 1987, following the death of bassist Cliff Burton, metal titans Metallica brought a young fresh face into the band, and Jason Newsted would forever seal his legacy in the metal ranks.

After the well-publicized split from Metallica, Newsted has become the ultimate journeyman of metal, playing with everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to Voivod, with a plethora of projects in between. Now Jason looks to step out of the shadows of his past, break away from short-term projects, and unleash his new band, aptly called Newsted, upon the world.

Personally, getting the chance to talk to Jason was special for me. Metallica was the first concert I ever attended (March 11, 1989, to be exact), and it was a life-changing day that Jason was a part of. With a new album, Heavy Metal Music, released this week, I talked to Jason about life, vinyl, playing bass with a pick, and the past, present, and future of Jason Newsted.

Hi, Jason! How are you feeling after your bout with pneumonia?

I’ve still got it in me some, just kind of fighting through it. I’m better than I was, but there still a chunk of it over here in my lung. That’s what it does, it kind of finds a spot, and sits there for some weeks. I’m just kind of getting through it. I think the worst part is behind me. It took them a while to find the right antibiotics, so there was a little challenge there, but I’m good.

Still hanging in okay while on stage?

Oh yeah, man, no problem. Once I get out there, I mean, you could have both broken legs, man, once it starts, it don’t matter. Feel no pain! (laughs)

So tell us about the Newsted project.

Things are going good! We’ve been together five months now, and this shit is moving very fast. We put the Metal EP out in January, and Mike Mushok [of Staind] joined the band in February, and then we started making a record. Now we’ve played in 17 or 18 countries. We’ve got the EP done, the LP is out next week, and now we’re on Gigantour for another week and a half, and it’s been going very fast and very successful, actually. Very positive reactions from the people around the world so far. It’s been very, very overwhelming for me, so I did something right along the way, I guess.

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