The Cult

0:22Choice of weapon. New record. I thought you said the last record was going to be the last record. Well, you know what, the thing is you don't have the gift of clivoyance. So you say what you mean when you say it. Then that's, I think that's, you'll find the most artists worth their salt. A contradictory. Because you're always reevaluating things. You made a fair point with it. Like the record is on its way out. Possibly. I'd actually like to get your thoughts on that. What do you think about that? Here's how it came down. It's like, I think that after we did Born Into This, it wasn't a great experience for us. With the label and just a whole lack of an industry and also the genre of rock music where that was heading. And the fact that the rock community wasn't evolving as quickly as other like say the hip hop community, for example.

1:13Hip hop community embraced the new media. It embraced the new technologies and ran with it. And the rock community just kind of came to a grinding halt, you know, stuck in that 20th century modality. And a band like the cult, an individual like myself, were constantly adapting, you know, innovative ideas and formatting or whatever. And so for us, we wanted to get working, but it just wasn't there. And, you know, certainly with the label we were working with, they just didn't have that kind of infrastructure. So we thought, you know what, let's go and do it ourselves. So we did, we tried it, we did these things called capsules. We decided to release our music and every three months we'd release what we would call a capsule. And the name came from fashion collections where a designer would do a very small collection

2:00and it's kind of usually in between seasons. Yeah, like Mark Drake. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so you got that. So it'd be like a very small collection and you'd give it out in between seasons. So the idea was that we'd release new music every three months. Two brand new songs, two live songs, plus a visual element, film element. And then release it on all formats, final, mp3, mp4s, flack, whatever, you know, all formats, make it available on all formats, a hard copy and digital copy. And then move on to another one, and so on and so forth. By the time we got to the second one, we realized that the amount of energy and industry and money and everything that goes into it is outweighed the return in some ways. But I still think it's not Florida, I think it's still a good strong argument for that formatting. I think we'll revisit it.

2:47But as we were going through this process, we found that we were working with Chris Gass, more songs were coming up. And then the demand was becoming more from like core audience, like we want an album. And then people are just so tied into that format, certainly cult fans anyway. And then also with, you know, we had labels approaching us as well. And we thought that, you know, it was just kind of, it just made sense. It made sense, there was a body of work there. And it was also kind of a, there was a collection of songs that were related to each other that almost had to come out at the same time. So the best of intentions were the format and the capsules. But I think that would really suit a young artist right now. Like a young artist who's, you know, maybe just up and coming, I think the capsule format would be the way to go.

3:33You know, so maybe if you've only got two songs, do you want to push out, then push out those two songs, but make sure there's a visual element with it. How come the visual element? Visual element was visual first culture. Look, here we are being filmed. What does the record sound like? The new one? What can we expect? This record is, the gloves are off in the sense that it's very raw. The recording is raw. It's coming off the floor. It's recorded based on guitars, vocals, off the floor, in a studio, raw rock and roll band. The subject material is a group of guys who've been around for a while, who've lived a life and are still here to tell the tale. It's not all puppy dogs' tales and butterflies. There's a lot of dark elements in it. There's observations on the culture, on society, based upon actual experience.

4:18There's romantic ideals in there. There's cinematic vistas. There's punchy straight in the throat, rock and roll. There's a lot of philosophy in there, but it all comes from a place of experience and breaking on through to the other side and the panels of wisdom, etc. I like how you threw a Doris thing in there for me, so I can ask about that, because I did interview Krieger. Right when Brett took over for you. Yes. He didn't take over. Well, no. He joined the band. If I was passing on the band, I was like, I can't do this anymore. What was it like trying to fill Jim's role? That must have been crazy, because you were a Doris fan as a kid. Yeah. Job one was not to try and fill out, to step into Jim Morrison's shoes,

5:03or take over a role in that sense, try not to mimic or do a pastiche of Morrison. The idea was he was a rich body of work in the same way that Shakespeare is a body of work. It was my interpretation of it, coming through my filter. Ray and Robbie were very good in guiding me into what work did my persona, what worked in my instrument for the way they wanted it. So I was very pliable with them. I allowed them to kind of help guide me into the instrument that they wanted me to be. Now, there are certain things with archetypal inflections of Morrison, like lyrical inflections, vocal inflections, space that you have to get.

5:50They're just such an integral part of the song. The same kind of beats that you would get in Shakespeare. You have to get those beats right. When I think of the Doris, I think of Shakespeare. Well, he wanted to be a poet. So you had that literary prowess, and you had that literary space, and he really knew what he was doing with timing and words. Certain words have to be delivered with a certain sentiment behind them. So you had to understand subtext. So it wasn't just as simple as, oh, yeah, I'm going to sing these songs, and then fall. I had to go in there and really get some of the backstories and the songs. Ray and Robbie were really beautiful with that. They took me through a lot of the environments and situations and maybe some of the mindsets that Morrison might be in. So it really gave me an insight into this person, and I got to see it from the inside.

6:37And I can understand, I have a perspective now, on why perhaps the pressures pushed him in a position where he lost his life at a very early age, because there was so much voltage being put through that human being. Ray and Robbie, they were, man, they're taskmasters. What they lay down, the crush most singers. You have to be really strong in that space. It was a killing flaw. Singing in front of those was a killing flaw. I'm not talking about the audience. I'm not the actual being right there with those guys. That was a killing flaw. So I think I held my own pretty good. We did 150 shows, and then it was just time to naturally, gracefully bow,

7:22because I would have stayed. I would have been overstayed in the room. I would have been like the house guest that wouldn't have gone away. I knew it was time to move on. So we do something called Five Questions. Five Good Questions, One Word Answers, Rotor Studio. Studio. Lennon or McCartney. Lennon. When you hear a song, what hits you most, lyrics, melody, or rhythm? A song you've written you're most proud of. Recently, life is greater than death. Cool. And in one word, the cult. Nice. Thank you very much. Much appreciated. Thank you, brother.