Screem Writers Guild with Mr. Lordi of LORDI

In this episode of The Rock Metal Podcast, we're chatting with Mr. Lordi of the band Lordi about their new album ‘Screem Writers Guild’ via Atomic Fire Records.

During our chat we touch on a lot of great tips for musicians, such as having patience to see your goals and dreams through.  Mr. Lordi talks about losing band members over the years, while sticking through to his vision.

'Screem Writers Guild' was Produced by Mr. Lordi with Mr. Mana and Janne Halmkrona; Mixed by Ilkka Herkman / Ilusound Oy; Mastered by Pauli Saastamoinen / Finnvox Studios

The band Mr. Lordi is for fans of: Battle Beast, Powerwolf, Sabaton, U.D.O.

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Guest Resource

Lordi.fi - Connect with Lordi!

Guest Music Video

3 Heavy Hitters

1. Have confidence in yourself, because you’re the best person to be you.

2. Be able to do what you love to do - never stop working towards your goals and dreams.

3. Have patience with your goals on the road to success.

Sponsors

Asher Media Relations: Doing PR for everything loud! For your band needs to be seen and heard in print, online and radio!  Let Asher know Jon from The Rock Metal Podcast sent you.

Tue Madsen: Tue Madsen is responsible for producing, mixing, and mastering some of the best metal for over the last 20 years.  Let Tue know Jon from The Rock Metal Podcast sent you.

Syndicol Music: A full service agency for musicians, offering record label services, marketing, branding, production and management.  Let Charlie know Jon from The Rock Metal Podcast sent you.

Wormholedeath Records: WHD is a modern record label, publishing and film production company fit with global distribution, publishing and marketing using a roster of global partnerships. Let Carlo know The Rock Metal Podcast sent you.

Show Notes // Transcript

Jon Harris: Mr. Lordi, thank you so much for coming on to The Rock Metal Podcast today. Go ahead and say Hi to all of our beautiful listeners. 

Mr. Lordi: Hello. Hahaha. Hi, how you doing? 

Jon Harris: Well, we're fabulous now that you're here. Now this new record Screem Writers Guild play on words, of course. What was the greatest moment for you producing this record? 

Mr. Lordi: I don't know. The first five months. No, over twelve. We did it in five months. I mean, I love the process of creating, from writing the new song, from recording and to even painting the album cover and everything. I love every single moment of making a new album and creating something. So to pick just one, like the best or proudest moment, I really can. 

Jon Harris: It's like, yeah, you love all of your beautiful children from writing the new songs 

Mr. Lordi: Yeah, of course. 

Jon Harris: To recording, coming up with the album artwork. I guess that then you said you did the whole thing in five months. Is that pretty typical for you or is that a little bit longer? 

Mr. Lordi: Yeah, it's pretty typical. This happened in the time this was recorded, actually a year ago. I got a call in January 2022 from our manager that to start writing a new album. Sure. And so by the I'm trying to think, by the mid June 2022, the album already went to Greece, mastering and no, it was already mastered. So, yeah, we did it in five months, including writing and everything. So it is pretty typical for us. I mean we can do it pretty fast but most of the times why it takes longer is because you are gigging you're doing shows at the same time so you cannot do the whole album back to back in row like days like that because you have to travel with shows, festivals or whatever quite fast. This album was so easy to make it felt like that we're only making a mini EP or something because when I got that call that hey, start writing a new album. Sure, it was only two months after when we just released seven albums at the same time so now doing one album, just one it was like okay, it feels like doing a single or something. 

Jon Harris: Hahaha, I was going to say getting a phone call and then a few months later having an album to print. Do you have a catalog of stuff at the ready that you're just sitting on? 

Mr. Lordi: No, I'm usually writing everything. I'm very productive and I'm very creative. So when I sit down and usually if I start writing a song as a side project, as a side effect, I will have side product, I will have two other songs. If I start writing one song, in the end, I will have three. That's usually what happens. And some people ask, how is that possible? Well, I'll tell you I have a chorus melody I'm writing that I'm playing guitar or keyboards, I'm working with that. So then I'm just listening to my inner radio that is playing in my head. So how would the song go from there nothing special. I think many people are writing like that. I think that what would be the best way that how would they hear song go to the next part of the song. Okay. So then I come up with them. Usually I don't have any writers luck or anything. I come with the next part, I put it down. Okay, there it is. And then I listen to it. I thought, oh, it's a great part, but it actually isn't really exactly what I'm looking for. So I put that aside, that part, and by the end of the day, when that one song is ready, I have material for like two other songs already from the put aside parts. So that's how it happens. That's how come that's why it happens. I already forgot your question, by the way. 

Jon Harris: It's okay. My next question, though, is what was the biggest challenge for you on this record? 

Mr. Lordi: I don't remember actually having any challenges with this one because this was insanely easy and naturally flowing process. The whole writing of the whole recording, everything. I don't remember having actually any kind of challenge. Even logistically, it went smooth as fuck. Everything went so well. I'm sorry there were no challenges. Really easy. It was that easy. 

Jon Harris: Yeah. No, that's fine. I mean, why is that, do you think? Is it just because you've written so many songs and albums up to this point? You know what you're doing?

Mr. Lordi: Yeah. And of course, it's also because I'm getting more confident every time when I'm writing and we're doing stuff. After I started producing our own albums, it really boosted up my level where it's a little bit too much even, I guess. 

Jon Harris: HAHA!

Mr. Lordi: But at the same time, I know what I can do and I know what our band can do, and I know we can do exactly what we're aiming for. So that makes it easy and that makes it somehow it is very enjoyable to be able to create something the way you want it. And you are very satisfied with the end product. This is exactly what you here's the many people you know. Usually like critics when they listen to any Penny Artist album, but in this case, Lordi, it sounds shitty. And why does it have that many critics? Usually they forget that, at least in our songs, how they sound like. And the self confidence is something that and you know, you can do what you're trying.

Jon Harris: Okay, now, something that strikes me as interesting is I would imagine that to do what you do takes a degree of confidence, I guess. What was it that or when did the confidence start to ingrain in what it is that you're doing? 

Mr. Lordi: I think I've always had that because I know that I'm the best me that anybody could be.  Many times I've said this. I'm a huge fan of KISS. I'm a KISS fan addict. I'm one of those KISS fanboys collectors and KISS crazies. And I wanted to be Gene Simmons when I was young, but now I understand that even Gene Simmons, who I look up to in every possible ways, who's my iron and probably the main reason why I wanted to be Gene Simmons. But when understanding that even Gene Simmons couldn't be better Lordi than I am Gene Simmons as Gene Simmons or anybody. That something that is really understanding that after you already are having fans and you have your fan base. And your followers who are really into your band and understanding that whatever you're doing when I write stuff, when I create stuff, I have only one person target audience, and that is myself. I'm doing everything to please myself. And if anybody else, any anybody else likes it, it's a plus. If they don't, fuck them, what do they know anyway? I think that certain amount of self confidence is a good thing to actually, you know, I'm the worst teacher. I could not teach or tell anybody else how to do their shit. But if it comes to my shit, what I'm doing, I am the God and the dictator and the goddamn almighty. I know how to do my shit. And I get really angry and I get really offended if somebody tries to tell me how I should do things. Because I'm like, what the hell do you know? I'm not telling you how to know. You know, masturbate, you know? 

Jon Harris: Yeah, that's right. Strokes and strokes and strokes. Okay. 

Mr. Lordi: Yeah. Whoo. 

Jon Harris: Now, the EPK that I got from Atomic Fire says that the record itself is not a real concept album, but plays with the overall cinematic theme. So take us through that Screem Writers Guild. What is this record about? 

Mr. Lordi: Well, it's another Lordi record, really. Atomic Fire guys, they need say something in the press release, don't they? What it is about is I always write music first, and then the lyrics come after that, depending on how you count it. But it's actually our 19th studio album, already 19. And most of the songs on every single Lordi album are about horror. Horror genre, our horror stories. There's something, and I just wanted to find sometimes it gets really difficult to find out find a new angle in the in the horror genre, you know? What can I you know, what could this album be about? And then I just thought, that okay, why not? Trying to focus on the classic vintage horror movies like those Universal Monsters and shit like that, that was the starting point for this whole thing. So when I was trying to come up with some sort of a new angle to write songs and what would be the main concept of this album. So then I thought that while this is our music, that I wanted to do, is do an album that would be like reset, like returning or resetting the factory default settings of Lordi, like going back to the first three or four albums, trying to do very different kind of standard, classic Lordi album, usually. So then I thought that also lyrically and thematically, it should be something very classic Lordi and I thought that, okay, well, funnily enough, we really haven't touched the subject of old vintage horror movies yet, or horror characters. So that's where the idea came. Okay, let's go to the root of cinematic horror and try to get some influences and try to get some ideas from there. Well, all of the songs are not influenced by those, but clearly there's like, the Bride song, it's about Frankenstein, and there's like, in the Castle of Dracula, of course, and it's plain words again, but vacuum. There's like a tropical island, which is wolf, naval werewolves and shit like that. So it's like, more or less, all the songs have something to do with some classic horror movie or some classic horror movie character. Is, while that being said of Cocktail, there's a lot of Lotus songs that have a lot of reference to other horror movies. Like, especially Evil Dead. And Evil Dead, too, because, I mean, I'm a huge Evil Dead fan this time. I told my co-writer, Tracy Lee, by told this time, let us try not to have an Evil Dead reference on this album. Because usually we do. At this time we don't. 

Jon Harris: How hard was it to not have an Evil Dead reference? 

Mr. Lordi: Very hard. Very hard. And baby and pulsing.

Jon Harris: Yeah, fantastic.

Mr. Lordi: Because, I mean, the Evil Dead references, they come so naturally and they come like they sneak in whether you want it or not. So it was really difficult, but we did it. 

Jon Harris: Very cool. Very cool. Is there a classic? Like Dracula, werewolves? Frankenstein? Is there a classic that you love the most or identify with the most? 

Mr. Lordi: I think Frankenstein. Frankenstein. I'm a huge Marvel Movie fan, too, and my all time Marvel favourite characters, incredible heart. And as any geeks or coming would know, that Stan Lee's version of Frankenstein monster is actually the heart. So clearly, Frankenstein monster is my favourite classic monster. Know. Yeah, like a stylist. 

Jon Harris: Okay. Very cool. Very cool. 19 studio freaking albums. How would you define success at this stage of your career? 

Mr. Lordi: Being able to still do what you love to do? Enough to go to nine to five work. Because I have never worked nine to five in my life and I would suck at it. I would suck ass and balls if I would fight to do a normal job. So I am a lucky fucking bastard to be able to do that isn't success. I don't know what is. I mean, I'm doing what I would do anyway. I'm doing what I always wanted to do, and I'm doing everything. I know I'm stressing myself out and I don't have enough rest and everything, but I do. Everything you see and hearing Lordi is the outcome of things that I think I know how to do and the things that I want to do, whether it's writing the music, whether it's making the masks, the costumes, the painting, the album covers, creating the graphics, doing the merch, everything, deciding everything. So that's I just love doing this artsy fartsy stuff about monsters and horror, and that is my personal success. 

Jon Harris: Beautiful. What advice would you give to Mr. Lordi? 19 studio albums ago? 

Mr. Lordi: Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it. Because I was very impatient. I remember I couldn't believe because I was so full of myself as a kid, and I couldn't believe that when I was sending the demos to record labels and sending the demos to some critics in music magazines, and they didn't like it, and they didn't see the geniuses that I am, I was offended. I was like, what the fuck do these people know that they should actually change their they don't see a good thing that they should. So I would say patience. Young Ada one, because it's like and it took ten years, and most of my bandmates at the time, it was like, revolving door. Like, people joined my band and then they quit because life gets in the way. They got children and work and stuff, and people just lost their faith in this thing because after you're in a band for a few years and then nothing goes, and I'm just, like, blindly believing that someday we'll get a record deal. But it took ten years. It took full decades to actually have it. So I would say, patience. It'll happen. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, very cool. What was the breakthrough point, do you think? 

Mr. Lordi: Meeting our first manager. Because then I realized that all those times sending the demos, labels and shit, it doesn't really or I don't know how it is today, but then, like, 30 years ago, 25 years ago you can send all your fucking demos as much as you want, but unless you have a contact who will actually go and put your demo tape in front of the line, you're fucked. You're going to be buried there with the other demos. So I would say meeting our first manager, who actually was in the music business, Finland, and a big shop there and who had some credibility not some credibility, a lot of credibility. And people were trusting him. And when he came the labels and showed us, look at this band, listen to the demos, that's when the door started opening. Because, I mean, I, you know, that that's the most important person that things started happening. This was like and even for him, it took like, like two or three years to get us through. Because the problem with this bag was, and still is to some people, is that the concept that the music versus the image is so for some people, it is really a tough lot to swallow because we look the way we look and we sound the way we sound. And for a lot of people, those two things, what you hear and what you see, they don't match. Through the whole 90s I got the response from most labels. I got it. Like, okay, the look is cool, but you should change your musical style to black metal or death metal or something like that because your music sounds and it's too melodic and it's too dated and it's too 80s and it's too poppy or whatever. Because you look like you should be playing black metal or something. And then the other response was like, okay, we love the music, but you should change singer because singer shouldn't be singing this kind of stuff. You should have somebody who sings high and clear, of course, without them realizing that it is me, the main guy. And then also that you must lose the image because the image looks like that it's some black death metal band and it shouldn't sound like this. I mean, this sounded bad.  So that was very difficult thing. 

Jon Harris: Yeah. Okay, what's the number one thing you want people listening in right now to the podcast to do? 

Mr. Lordi: Put your hand in your pants and enjoy the soothing voices you hear.

Jon Harris: Wow. Okay. All right, so put your in your pants and enjoy the soothing voices. 

Mr. Lordi: Yeah, well that's one way to do it. 

Jon Harris: Yeah. Okay. Is there a particular maybe website you want them to go to in particular? What's your favourite way for them to consume the record? Do you want them to go buy the vinyl? Do you want them to listen? Does it matter? 

Mr. Lordi: Well, I'm an old school guy. I'm an old school guy and I tell you something, I've never been on social media one second in my life. So I'm such an old school gig teaser. I would rather of course people buy the actual physical album but I know it's not 1989 anymore. Whatever the way it's most convenient for you, go check it out. Google Lordi and find us out wherever. But of course I still think that the way that we're doing albums that I think is their albums are like entireties they are meant to be consumed as a whole, not like one song. There one song here. Every single audio album should hold you as a full experience, not just one song. It's the same thing that you don't watch a movie that just go to the scene number twelve and then maybe all girl like to see number six. I mean you kind of like miss the whole point if you don't watch the whole movie. And of course also visually, of course, the actual physical vinyl of the city gives you so much more than just listening. But well then again just want to enjoy the music. That's fine too. 

Jon Harris: Okay, we'll go ahead and head over to TheRockMetalPodcast.ca. There you can stay in touch with everything Lordi and go ahead and go to the show notes for today, the transcript for this beautiful interview, as well as some music videos. Mr. Lordi, thank you so much for coming on to The Rock Metal Podcast today. 

Mr. Lordi: Thank you. Absolutely. My pleasure. This was –.

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Introvert / Extrovert with Adam Gontier of SAINT ASONIA

In this episode of The Rock Metal Podcast, we're chatting with Adam Gontier of the band Saint Asonia about their new album ‘Introvert / Extrovert’.

During our chat we touch on a lot of great tips for musicians, such as what working with other professional songwriters and musicians in your hometown, as well as in other cities.

'Introvert / Extrovert' was Produced, Mixed, Mastered by Anton DeLost.

The band Saint Asonia is for fans of: Art of Dying, Adelitas Way, 10 Years, Through Fire, The Veer Union

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Guest Resource

SaintAsonia.com - Connect with Saint Asonia!

Guest Music Video

3 Heavy Hitters

1. Take time to collabourate with other musicians, albeit in Nashville or Toronto

2. Keep it simple with equipment, what do you need and leave everything else out.

3. Don’t do drugs, and make sure to keep relationships healthy

Sponsors

Asher Media Relations: Doing PR for everything loud! For your band needs to be seen and heard in print, online and radio!  Let Asher know Jon from The Rock Metal Podcast sent you.

Tue Madsen: Tue Madsen is responsible for producing, mixing, and mastering some of the best metal for over the last 20 years.  Let Tue know Jon from The Rock Metal Podcast sent you.

Syndicol Music: A full service agency for musicians, offering record label services, marketing, branding, production and management.  Let Charlie know Jon from The Rock Metal Podcast sent you.

Wormholedeath Records: WHD is a modern record label, publishing and film production company fit with global distribution, publishing and marketing using a roster of global partnerships. Let Carlo know The Rock Metal Podcast sent you.

Show Notes // Transcript

Jon Harris: Adam, thank you so much for coming on to The Rock Metal Podcast today. Go ahead and say hi to all of our beautiful listeners. 

Adam Gontier: Thanks for having me, man. How you doing, everybody? 

Jon Harris: Great to have you on and talk about this amazing records. We've got Introvert EP, we have Extrovert EP, and then Spinefarm released the two of them together as Introvert / Extrovert. We also have some tour information to chat about, both in the US. And in Canada. So this is going to be an action packed interview. I like to talk about the records first so we can get into the tour, if that's cool. 

Adam Gontier: Yeah. 

Jon Harris: And you can treat this as either one or the other EP or together as a unit, but what was the greatest moment for you producing this record? And it could just either be one of the EPs or maybe the album as a whole.

Adam Gontier: Yeah. I think just being able to get back in the studio and working on music was a big thing because the couple of years that we weren't able to leave our houses or whatever to do anything, that was. That sucked. So I think the whole thing was really making both EPs was pretty special just because it felt great to get out and great to get back to doing what we love to do. Yeah, there were a lot of good, really cool moments in making the album. We had a guest on a song called Chew Me Up on Introvert. Johnny Stevens from Highly Suspect was a guest, and that was a highlight for sure of making the two EPs. But yeah, I think just in general, being able to create music and we actually recorded it in person in a studio in Toronto and stuff, and that was important to do that. So, yeah, just being able to get out and actually do music again was pretty awesome. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, being benched for a couple of years obviously sucks. But getting back together now as a result of that, this material you mentioned, going into a studio and crafting it, did you guys have a lot of material ready to go or did you guys just kind of save it until you were all together? 

Adam Gontier: Yeah, for the first EP Introvert, we did have a lot of material just because being at home for those two years, there was a lot to write about, there was a lot going on. There was no shortage of stuff to write about. So, yeah, there was a lot of material written for the first EP Introvert. And then shortly after we recorded that, I actually moved from Toronto down to Nashville. So for the second EP Extrovert, I did a lot of co-writing with people down here and got together and collabed with just a bunch of different people in Nashville. So that was really cool. And that was kind of the reason we called it Extrovert.

Jon Harris: Very cool. And I mean, we could spend probably the rest of the interview just asking this basic question, which is working with people in Nashville, take us through that. How different is that from working with people, say, in Toronto?

Adam Gontier: Ah. Well, I mean, it's quite a bit different. Getting together to write with somebody in a room with a goal of writing a good song is always a little bit weird. And I've always felt that it's strange to be like, I don't know, to sit in a room with a stranger, maybe somebody that you haven't met or whatever, and sit down and try to be vulnerable and come up with to come up with songs. It's really a different process. But at the same time, most of the people that I got together with down here, I have known from the past and stuff, so it was pretty easy to do that. But, yeah, it's always a little bit weird just meeting somebody for the first time and saying, okay, let's write something super heavy and deep together when we haven't even known each other for, like, 15 minutes, you know?

Jon Harris: Right? We're not super deep and heavy, but let's do something super deep and heavy. Okay? 

Adam Gontier: Yeah, exactly. 

Jon Harris: Beautiful. What was the biggest challenge for you guys on this record? And it sounds like the two records have quite a bit going on, but there might be multiple challenges. But what was the biggest challenge for you?

Adam Gontier: Um well, I mean, it all happened pretty pretty seamlessly. It was all it was a great process and there weren't many challenges. I think that maybe the biggest challenge was having Mike Mushok record his parts remotely. And we've done that a few times now, but it was especially necessary just because the pandemic wrapping up and all the stuff and him traveling was a little bit difficult. So I think that was probably the biggest challenge for us recording, was actually getting his parts and stuff to match what we were doing in the studio. And he was doing it from home, from his home computer, so that was a bit of a challenge. But our producer, Anton, that we worked with is super amazing at stuff like that and he made it sound incredible.

Jon Harris: Yeah, so that was the one missing body in those T-Dot days?

Adam Gontier: Yeah, exactly. And we recorded both EPs in Toronto. I'm originally from just outside of Toronto and Kyle and Cody live outside of Toronto right now, so it just makes sense to everyone. Anton was up there as well. Yeah, it's a nice city, so it's fun to hang in Toronto for a little bit. 

Jon Harris: Now, something that you were mentioning was getting deep and getting heavy and being vulnerable. So let's talk about some of the themes on this record. And we've got some themes from Introvert and we have some themes from Extrovert. Do they line up? What are some of the themes that are happening here? 

Adam Gontier: Yeah, for Introvert, a lot of the writing was done during the pandemic, so there's a lot of sort of just trying to figure out what we were going through, what was happening. So I think Introvert, it was all written from the perspective of sitting in my little studio room there in Peterborough, not being able to leave.  Yeah, there's a lot of that on Introvert and Extrovert. I'd say it's a little bit more hopeful. It has a bit of a hopeful vibe to it, sort of when we were able to get out and start working with people again and I did this co-writing and met with people, and it was a different experience than the first one. But I think the themes on Introvert, there's a lot of loneliness, and on Extrovert there's a lot of coming out come and out of the shell a little bit.

Jon Harris: As it would be the case. 

Adam Gontier: Yeah.

Jon Harris: You mentioned doing a little bit of remote stuff, but doing working in the studio. Any kind of unique equipment that you guys ended up using this time around? Anything to maybe surprise you or like some go to pieces of equipment?

Adam Gontier: When we were recording, I've always tried to just keep it simple. Even my live show is very I mean, I just have an amp and a foot switch and I don't have a pedal board. And also I just try to keep it very simple, try to do the same thing. I mean, on the record, Flawed Design, we did a lot of experimenting with different sounds and different things, but this time around, for these two, we just wanted to be a little bit more straightforward. So, yeah, we didn't really mess around too much. It's always nice to have your producer open up different plugins and try different sounds on different things in different parts of song. So there was a lot of that when we had sort of recorded the bones of the songs, but no, other than that, it was pretty straightforward. We wanted to keep it fairly simple, just get some good tones and keep it straightforward and simple. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, well, something you mentioned was experimenting a bit more on Flawed Design and I guess kind of like a follow up question would be this time around, what was the desire to be more straightforward? 

Adam Gontier: Just well, I think because for me, every record, I always want it to be better than the last. Of course, that's the goal anyway. And I think on Flawed Design, I definitely wanted to experiment a bit with different sounds and textures and some key parts and piano and stuff, and we did a lot of that. And this time around just felt natural to go back to just simple riffs and simple tones and try to keep it very simple. But it's always different. I mean, every album is different. Who knows where when we do the next one, where that'll go? It could be just no guitars, it just keys.

Jon Harris: Yeah, well, something you mentioned there was simple riffs and simple tones. Does that come easy or was there a large amount of work in I don't want to call it dumbing it down, but how did you go about making things more simple? Or was that the more natural? You did say natural, but how did that happen? 

Adam Gontier: Yeah, it was more so and this is when your producer really comes in handy. And Anton did a lot of like, if it were up to me and I was I would just I would just go for a distorted sound, and then I'd probably be like, okay, that sounds great. Let's just go. But there's a lot of time. He takes a lot of time. And like most producers do, with trying to make that sort of raw, you know, that raw, simple tone and sit with it for hours and make sure it's right. And I think it comes down to sonically the rest of the band and the rest of the parts and the tracks and stuff. So there's all that kind of stuff that goes into it, which I don't really focus too much on. I just try to keep it sort of low key for what I'm doing. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, we'll chat about Anton, I think, a little bit more later because I think there's a lot of cool things that we can say about him. Let's go ahead and jump into the tour. As far as I understand, you've just gotten off of a US tour supporting Theory of a Dead Man and Skillet, yeah?

Adam Gontier: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It was a six week tour across the US. Yeah. Supporting two killer bands Theory of a Dead Man. We've known those guys since the early 2000s when Three Days Grace first started. Theory was one of the first bands that ever took us out on tour. So great friends of ours and great people and yeah, Skillet, they're amazing. Put on a great live show, and they're just very cool people. So, yeah, it was an amazing tour. We were very fortunate to be on it. And hopefully it goes out again soon. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, very cool. And then speaking of Theory of a Dead Man, there are some tour information happening here in Canada headlining, and I believe playing as well with Theory of a Dead Man?

Adam Gontier: Yeah. Right now, I think we are just doing the April 28 show in Peterborough at the Memorial Centre. Yeah. The other shows that they are doing, some headlining shows in Canada, I think, but I'm not 100% sure if we're going to be on the rest of them or not. I think we're still trying to work that out. 

Jon Harris: Okay. I just tried to abbreviate Theory of a Dead Man, and it says TOAD.

Adam Gontier: That's right. Yeah. 

Jon Harris: Totem toad. 

Adam Gontier: Totem. Yeah. 

Jon Harris: Totem totem pole. 

Adam Gontier: Yeah. 

Beautiful. Okay, this is actually a cool question. I've gotten all kinds of answers from it. Spiritual answers. Not so spiritual answers either way because you've been through a lot. You mentioned Three Days Grace from the early 2000s. Obviously, you've been on the scene for a long time, getting to know other bands like Theory of a Dead Man and establishing relationships like in Nashville, like you're doing now. How would you define success, though, at this stage of your career? 

Adam Gontier: Yeah, that's a good question, for sure. I think after being in the industry for 20 years, I think the success probably comes with being comfortable with yourself and comes with making music that you are making, not for other people and for yourself. I think it's pretty important to to not try to create music that you think that others think might be good. And that's sort of what everybody falls into, especially after you sign a record deal and you have to sell a certain amount of records and get a certain amount of singles. I think now, and it takes a long time it took me a long time to realize it, but yeah, I think success is being able to create what you want to create for yourself and for nobody else. And it's a lot easier said than done, for sure, especially in this business. It's pretty tough. I mean, I still absolutely all the time when I'm writing a song or recording a song, I'm always wondering if it's, you know, if it's radio friendly enough or what are, what are people going to think about this lyric? Or will this lyric resonate as much with people? And that sort of thing. And it's easy to get carried away in that. So if you can get to a point where you're making music just for yourself and not others, at least you do create music for your fans and people that love the band and the music and stuff. But there's a line to be drawn there, I think. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, when something you mentioned, it was challenging to create something, basically without worrying about other people, and I think. Is it is it just at a certain point where you just know, like, millions of people are going to hear this song and there might be some sense of responsibility maybe with that? 

Adam Gontier: Yeah, for sure. There's definitely a lot of pressure. For sure. You put out at this point, putting out songs that, you know, a certain amount of people are going to hear it. You always want people to like it. So yeah, I guess it's just finding that balance. 

Jon Harris: Very cool. Speaking of finding balances, turn around. Back to working with Anton. Just wide 

open question. Talk to me about working with Anton. 

Adam Gontier: Well, yeah, I mean, he's a great producer, he's a great guy. He just added a lot to what we've been doing, and he's got some really cool bands, cool work under his belt, and he's starting to work a bit more and do different projects. So, yeah, we're just fortunate to be able to connect with him and we all get along great. And the camaraderie is there to be all the same. Common goal of making a great record. And yeah, he's just really good at his job. There's a lot of producers out there and a lot of guys that or people that do tons of great work. And it's just nice to find somebody that knows what page you're on and shares the common goal. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, that's a big one on the same page and sharing a common goal. I'm just searching the web really quick. Anton DeLost?

Adam Gontier: Anton DeLost Yeah. Okay. 

Jon Harris: He looks super serious, especially in this picture. 

Adam Gontier: Oh, yeah, he's serious. Serious guy. No, we all look serious in our press shots. Right? 

Jon Harris: Of course. You mentioned being on the same page. How was that? I don't know. Decided upon. Is that something that was picked up maybe in the pre production, like the demo stage? Was that something that was a constant conversation? 

Adam Gontier: No, it wasn't a constant conversation. I think more so maybe in the demo stage. Yeah. When we get together and we play all the music we have, and I think it's just from that point, it's pretty clear where the direction is going to go. You talk about it throughout the recording process, the individual directions for each song, but I think in general, it's just sort of laid out there. And when you're playing demos for everybody.

Jon Harris: What's the number one thing that you would like people listening to the podcast to do right now? And that could be like hit up your socials, listen to the record, buy a ticket. I don't know. Go meditate and think about happier days, anything that you've taken. Taken with you. 

Adam Gontier: If there's anything I'd want to tell people to do in terms of the band and that sort of thing, I just say check out the music. That's the most important thing for me. That's why we do this and why we make music. It's something most important thing. So I just want people to listen to the listen to the music and enjoy the songs and hopefully it sticks with them. That's it. And we are going to be spending the rest of this year of 2023 and then into 2024 on the road doing a lot of shows and a lot of touring. So definitely keep your eye on our socials and our website and stuff and our tour dates and everything are up there. Yeah, be a lot of touring. 

Jon Harris: Which reminds me, the Canadian tour, I'm in Edmonton. I feel forgotten. 

Adam Gontier: Yeah, it's not much of a Canadian tour, it's more of an Ontario tour. Being Canadian, obviously. I know that. But yeah, your team is American. It's more to your team and management and label and everybody agents, whatever they consider it a Canadian thing. But yeah, the reality is it's an Ontario-Quebec tour. Yeah, for now. Just for now. We'll be out west 100% for sure. 

Jon Harris: Time for one more, if that's okay. 

Adam Gontier: Yeah, of course, man. Of course. 

Jon Harris: What would the Adam today tell the Adam from 20 years ago, sitting there in front of the microphone about ready to record that song that was going to hit the radio for the first time? What advice would you have for that Adam? It? 

Adam Gontier: Well, for one, get off drugs. That would be my first, honestly. But no, probably just to take everything, slow down a little bit because it was such a whirlwind, right? We had been a band for years and we were friends for years and before we got a record deal, anything, and then in early 2001, we got the record deal and then almost overnight it just blew up. So we got thrown into this situation that we'd always wanted and we'd always ask for, but we weren't really ready for it. For me, I guess I was in a pretty crazy place. I was using and drinking and partying, so it was a bad timing. Sign a record deal in the middle of that was a little bit rough. But yeah, I think that the biggest thing is I would probably say just slow down and just take it all in and take a breath because it was pretty intense. But things are great now. That time back then with them and when I left that band, I was in a completely different state of mind and life was different, things were younger and had a lot had a giant chip in my shoulder. There was a lot going on. So, yeah, for me at the time, I needed to leave just to be able to try to get my shit together. So, yeah, things are different now. I stay in touch with the guys a lot, we talk a lot. I think we've all grown up, we've all had kids and the family life and that sort of thing. So we're in contact pretty often and there's no hard feelings there yet. We're all pretty close, that sort of thing. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, that number one thing that you had mentioned a little bit back there, Adam, was to listen to the record, check out the socials, check out the band on a tour. So go ahead and head over to TheRockMetalPodcast.ca. There you can go ahead and get all of the extras from today's interview, the transcript, music videos and as well those links so that you can stay in touch with everything Saint Asonia. So, Adam, thank you so much for coming on to the Rock Metal podcast today. 

Adam Gontier: Of course, man. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

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Cut Throat Culture with Roni MacRuairi of WORDS THAT BURN

In this episode of The Rock Metal Podcast, we're chatting with Roni MacRuairi of the band Words That Burn about their new album ‘Cut Throat Culture’.

During our chat we touch on a lot of great tips for musicians, such as what Roni learned working with their producer, Josh Shroeder.

'Cut Throat Culture' was Produced, Mixed, Mastered by Josh Shroeder (Lorna Shore, Butcher Babies, King 810).

The band Words That Burn is for fans of: Parkway Drive, Bring Me The Horizon, Architects, Korn, Spiritbox

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3 Heavy Hitters

1. Go into a record thinking about how to make the best record possible, rather than how to make money off of the record

2. Reach out to producers you want to work with, since you never know if they’ll have time for you

3. Write heavy songs stripped back down to just an acoustic guitar or piano to test if it’s a great song

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Show Notes // Transcript

Jon Harris: Roni, thank you so much for coming on. Go and say hi to all of our beautiful listeners. 

Roni MacRuairi: Hi, everybody. 

Jon Harris: All right. Great to have you on. Hopefully we can throw out some words that burn today. 

Roni MacRuairi: Awesome. 

Jon Harris: And this cutthroat culture, baby. All right, let's talk about this record. Cutthroat Culture. What was the greatest moment for you producing this record? 

Roni MacRuairi: I think having it finished was probably one of the pinnacle moments. Took a long it took a long while to get it done. We recorded it primarily throughout COVID, so we were kind of recording our parts remotely and then kind of putting it all together kind of in our guitarist studio. But the biggest thing was securing Josh Shroeder as producer. That was absolutely amazing because he's done some of our favourite bands. He's going to shore being like, the biggest one. King 810, our buddies from Detroit Ov Virtue, so having him on board was absolutely just the icing on the cake. Really was very cool. 

Jon Harris: Let's talk about that. Follow up question is actually another follow up question. We'll probably touch base with having Josh Schroeder as a producer because that's obviously a big one for you. And I can tell it means a lot for you and for the band. 

Roni MacRuairi: Yeah. 

Jon Harris: But working primarily during COVID getting things done remotely, then putting it together in the guitarist studio, how did that all work? Was it challenging? Was it rewarding? Is it something that you'll do again in the future? How did it all work?

Roni MacRuairi: Luckily enough, we all have our own little kind of like shadows in our houses, just primarily for just demoing ideas and so on. But when the isolation and all that kind of came in, we knew we wanted to do this album anyway, but it was just bad timing. So Shane, our guitar player, who has our main studio in his house, he just worked on a lot of kind of ideas musically and would send them over to myself. And then I kind of work on the vocals, or at least the vocal ideas, like, you know, the patterns and so on. And then we kind of bounce back and forth like until we talk. The song was at least structurally solid and then we'd help JR and bass and Jason do his drum thing as well. So it was actually quite interesting to do that because sometimes when you're on your own, you can kind of just like there's no noise, so you can kind of really kind of get stuck into your ideas and all that kind of stuff. Whereas if there's four people in the room and they're all kind of sharing ideas, sometimes something's going to get kind of muddled. So from that point of view, it worked out it well because I think it's probably our most solid album today. So there's definitely something to be said for it and we took a lot of time doing it as well. I think with the last album, we kind of had it done kind of. You know, six months from inception to finished, you know, whereas this was a year longer. So it's like we've started throwing ideas around for the next EP or next album, and we're kind of doing it this way as well, so it obviously works. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, we might even touch base on that one again. But working independently has its advantages, and remotely to that sense and throwing out some ideas for the next EP or album, potentially even working the same way, even though you don't have to. But that's one of the cool things. The blessing in disguise, I guess you could say, of the situation. 

Roni MacRuairi: I think so, yeah, I think so. And I'm not just talking about from my own point of view, I'm talking about from Shane's point of view, from Jerry's point of view. When he's putting his bass parts to a song, it's kind of like you can just really get stuck into it and try out multiple different ideas for different sections or whatever, rather than someone sitting beside him going, this is the rich. So he'll just get into it. Maybe try to harmonize language, change guitar instead of just playing the same. So it's really, really good to kind of, like, spend hours and hours on your own, just kind of getting into a mindset or a headspace that's your own. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, absolutely. What was the biggest challenge for you on this record? 

Roni MacRuairi: I suppose the polar opposite of that was we couldn't get into a room together. So it's really good to kind of have an idea and then go into the bathroom and jam it out just in the practice room and just jam it. And sometimes there might be just one little nugget of gold there that you could potentially become a song, whereas when you're isolated away from each other, you don't have that little kind of magic spot. You can't be around each other. So that was probably the most difficult thing from a recording point of view is that we didn't get to kind of just trash out the bits. Now in saying that the back and forth between, say, myself and Shane in terms instruction to songs for each song, that could have taken months. So we didn't just kind of settle. So we tried loads of different ideas in terms of bears lengths, chorus lengths, kind of middle parts, intros, just to kind of see what worked. You know what? Then let it breathe for maybe a month, and then come back, see if it still kind of sounded like it. 

Jon Harris: Yeah. Something you mentioned it was letting things breathe for a month or so. Would you say that was another sort of benefit to having that much time to work on the record, was that you could come back to certain things and go, oh, you know what? Maybe that wasn't the best idea, but it could have been released already if it had been, say, a normal situation?

Roni MacRuairi: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it was a lesson that we can definitely take away from that process is that just to let the songs breathe. Because when you hear something new, you get excited about it, and then, as you said, like six months down the road, it could be released. Whereas with this, we probably went through two or three, four or five different variations of the same song over the course of a year just to kind of make sure we had it right, to make sure when we came back to it after not listening for a month or so, that it was still exciting. And I think that's. So that's exciting to us. We were still kind of really kind of buzzed about the song and how it felt and how it sounded, and that's even before we sent it over to Josh, we wanted to make sure that the songs were as. Good as they could be from the best of our capabilities before we sent them off to Josh, because we knew that he was going to get into it as well. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned something very important there. Everything is exciting when it's new. Everything is exciting when it's loud. But take a few days, a few weeks even. It sounds like a longer time. Come back to it, listen to it at a normal, regular volume. Does it still excite the crap out of you because you're the one who's got to play it and then sending it off to the producer and it sounds like Josh was incredibly supportive. Wasn't one of those producers where you're like, you send it off, you're super excited, and he's like, yeah?  Is that–? 

Roni MacRuairi: I probably would have cried if that hasn't happened. He did have notes for each song. He gave us a lot of guidance going forward as well, so it was such a good experience to work with someone who is at the top of their game, really. And for four boys from a small town in the east of Ireland, it's a very big deal for us to have somebody. He's that well renowned, who's just like such a good songwriter as well. I know that he writes songs with bands like King 810, and I think he might have don't quote in this kind of got stuck into the songwriting with Lorna Shore as well. But just to have his wisdom was just absolutely amazing, because normally we'd be kind of like, this is the song, that thing. And then when you have somebody kind of saying, well, maybe this or maybe that in the music, you might have taken some of the, let's say, since up, or brought some down or taken them out bakery or added something new and stuff that we wouldn't have imagined doing, because sometimes you're just too close to the song. What he brought fundamentally to the table was he gave the song each song its own identity, this new feel that, as I said, we just probably couldn't see because we were just so close to the demo, let's say. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, well, that's a funny way too close to the song. Something else that comes to mind is now that he has the experience of watching Lorna Shore explode, Butcher Babies explode, King 810 explode, Talah explode. He's watched these bands explode. And he knows the formula, he knows the recipe. It's just like going into the kitchen. You're not going to, oh, how do I make a cake today? No, you're going to follow the rules so that you get a cake out of the freaking oven. So therefore, he's got, as you said, that wisdom to look at something and say, actually, structurally, it make more sense and sell more records if you did it this way, or whatever the case might be, or it might hit harder if you do it this way. I know making money is not important to you at all, right?

Roni MacRuairi: Yeah. Yeah, sure. What's the rock and roll answer to that question? No, we're we're not no, like, I mean, it's great. It's great to see your album sell, you know. You know, it's it's it's great to see people kind of listen to you on on social media. It's great to see people giving you kudos for your two years of hard work, but you don't go into it with that attitude, you know? I think that would kind of just get into it. I think then you're writing for the wrong reason. 

Jon Harris: Sure. Okay, let's chat about themes on this record. I didn't get anything from Bloodblast or Believe as far as what kind of themes lyrically went into the record, and I believe I'm chatting with the right guy. What's going into this record? Is this a pandemic record, or is it something different than that? 

Roni MacRuairi: I think it's probably the most I'm feeling you're going to ask this actually, it's probably the most observational album, lyrically, that we've done. There's only probably one song that's personal, and the rest is just kind of watching the world go by kind of thing. When I say watching the world go by, I mean during the pandemic, I think a lot of people spent more time on their phones. I know I did. And you kind of just see how things change and people interact with each other and kind of like information you're given, information receive, information you're absorbing and how you kind of react and respond to that or how different people react and respond to that. And it's not really choosing any sides. It's just kind of like how I felt on any particular day. So if I was writing Dennis lines, for example, the lyrics for that, if I felt really kind of pissed off about certain things, that's what that song is going to be about. I didn't go in particularly to write the song with any topic in mind. It was just like if Shane sent me over music or is listening back to the music and I was just totally I can swear. I'm not going to swear. 

Jon Harris: Sure, go ahead. 

Roni MacRuairi: Okay, if I was totally fucked up about something that I read, which normally wouldn't get to me, that would be kind of like the catalyst, you know? And so yeah, it's not all bad either. It's just that it's more, as I said, more observational for that one song.

Jon Harris: Okay, that one song though...

Roni MacRuairi: It's called Michael. So my uncle died during COVID so I had the lyrics to what would become Michael already written and was completely different. It was more in line with rest of the album kind of thing and I didn't have them completely finished. But then when he passed away, I was lying on the soul for listening to the music and something just sparked me that the course came to me and I said, right, we're going to have to. Rewrite, complete rewrite, because this just came out of me in about 20 minutes, I had the song written, so the rest of them kind of goes a little bit more editorial in the rest of the song. But with this one, I just like, whatever lyrics were coming to me, they were the most honest, so I wanted to keep them that way. 

Jon Harris: Right. Yeah. Honest onyx lyrics. Honest lyrics, baby. Now, something you did mention was not going into a song with an idea in mind. Does the outcome, then, of the music surprise you when you're done working on your lyrics? 

Roni MacRuairi: Sometimes, yeah, sometimes it does. I'm not a big reader. I'm, you know, I like I don't really kind of have, like, a vision for a song when I hear the music straight away. Sometimes I just start start writing, and then an idea will kind of formulate, and then I'll kind of work on that a little bit more. So I don't go in saying that music is definitely a song about this. It kind of comes more when just like humming the melodies or doing my kind of demo vocals and it's normally gibberish and you might hear something that sounds like a word and then you're like, oh, that's kind of cool. I'm just going to write a sentence around this word and then that might set the kind of tone or the subject matter for the rest of it. But on the flip side of the coin, if I'm really again fucked up by something and I can squeeze that into the context of a song, I probably will. 

Jon Harris: How would you define success at this stage of your career? 

Roni MacRuairi: Well, I think when you when we kind of put something out, when you put some art out into the world, like, I mean, it's. If people kind of connect with it probably more than anything else. I was reading a piece about James Hetfield the other day and somebody asked him, what does that song mean? And then his response was, well, what does it mean to you? And I think I was like, yeah, that's actually probably more eloquent than what my answer would be. But that's, to me, probably the most important thing. If somebody comes up to me and say, that song is f-ing and brilliant, I love that. That course. That, to me, is probably what makes me feel good about it. It's not looking for kudos, but if somebody kind of connects with it, if somebody kind of reads the words and then it connects with them you said spiritually. If it connects with them, kind of like gives them goosebumps or makes them want to kind of throw down or whatever, but not throw down again, just like 1s then I think job done for me. 

Jon Harris: Yeah. Very cool. I'll start getting into some questions that I have some time for. One of them is, let's go back to Josh Schroeder. It sounds like you guys have a lot of things or you, anyway, have a lot of things to say about working with him. Goes into the working remotely part of it. You mentioned snagging him as a producer was great. Just take us through something that was, I guess, remarkable for you that you want other musicians to hear. Personally, I'm like, you snagged him. What does that even mean? Or it could be something that he worked with you on your vocals or something that you changed 

your life. 

Roni MacRuairi: Well, firstly, friends of ours and they're a band from Detroit called Ov Virtue worked with Josh on their last record, the one before that. And the production of it completely blew us away. So we kind of whenever we kind of got right, whenever we got into this new album, we kind of said, we have to ask Josh if he'll work with us. And we kind of expected a no, because who the hell are these guys?  We're not on the same level as any of any of the other bands that he works with, but he came back and said yes. So firstly, that was life changing for me, I guess. How we kind of brought the songs to life, how we gave them, as I said before, their identity, how he just kind of made us sound the best that we could. That was absolutely incredible. And we were chatting with him kind of back and forth through the process, which was amazing as well. But he just gave us a lot of advice going forward. Like, you mean kind of talk about stripping songs down to maybe just an acoustic guitar and writing a song that way and then building the adding the building blocks onto that. I can mean that the heavier guitars and the heavier vocals and.  Like, stints and all that kind of stuff. We never approached the song that way before, but I did a piano song and I sent it up to Shane and he brought it back with the guitars and stuff, and it sounds amazing. So that was a new avenue for us to explore, which I thought was really cool. 

Jon Harris: Yeah. It reminds me of an interview with and I've just lost his name, mike something from Social Distortion, which I guess shows my age. But nevertheless, they get together and they write campfire songs on acoustic guitars and they make sure that they stand on their own two legs as a campfire song, and then they bring in, as he puts it, the Les Paul's and the Marshalls.

Roni MacRuairi: Makes sense. Yeah, it definitely makes sense. Because I think what matters a lot to me is sorry, you got hiccups. Sure. Sorry is that as long as a good song is a good song, regardless if it's on the cusp guitar or on full band, and if you can strip a heavy song back to a guitar or piano and it still has the same effect or vice versa, then you know it's a good song. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. A song is a good song whether it's on a piano or a guitar or whatever you've got going with it. 

Roni MacRuairi: You know what I mean? 

Jon Harris: That's fantastic. Yeah. I mean, if there's one thing we could take away from working with Josh Schroeder, aside from the how do I want to phrase it? We could say production quality. But that's part of being a good producer, is saying, you know what? I'm going to put one microphone in this room, and if it doesn't work with one microphone, it ain't going to work with 100 microphones. 

Roni MacRuairi: Yeah. I guess if I was to read into what his voice would be, I guess you can interpret it that way, for sure. As I said, I think a good song is something that can be kind of transposed on many platforms with many different orchestrations. 

Jon Harris: Yeah. Wow. Very cool. Okay, I think we've asked all of our questions. One other question I kind of have potentially in mind, if you have time, is because you were able to work on your own remotely if there was any gear that you may have used that kind of surprised you or was crucial to completing the record. 

Roni MacRuairi: The vocals that I did at home here, that was just all demo vocals. We went into another studio, a friend of ours, Paula Finn, we went into his studio and redid all the vocals again properly. But I did get a bit of kick when Lockdown came in first. I got a Røde, something or other I'm really bad with gear, the Røde mic. And I got some sort of interface, what's called it's a red one.

Jon Harris: Focusrite.

Roni MacRuairi: Correctomundo!  Scarlet, something other. Yeah. And that just basically allowed me to use Reaper, which Josh Shroeder uses. So if there's any ideas that we wanted to send to him directly, it was great. Transcribed directly across, but yeah, it was just having a decent microphone and a decent way of capturing my ideas. That was just the most important thing because I knew well, firstly, we didn't know how long last Lockdown was going to last. We thought it was going to be like a month, maybe two months, six months, whatever it was. But it turned out to be COVID, was nearly tears. So I'm glad that I invested in the gear because it's something that I use for them all the time. 

Jon Harris: What is the number one thing that you would like people listening right now to do? And that could be, I don't know, 100 jumping jacks. It could be, obviously, hitting up a particular social. This is a good place to plug listen to the record. This is obviously the I don't know, whatever you want it to be, actually. What's the number one thing you want people listening right now to do? 

Roni MacRuairi: Give the music a chance. We're a small band. Things like this are kind of platforms like your podcast kind of get our art or our music out to people that we probably wouldn't get it out to in normal life. So if anyone likes kind of like aggressive alternative metal core or whatever way you wanted to find it, then just give it a shot. Hopefully you connect with it. 

Jon Harris: Okay, so I think what you said was share the shit out of this podcast. 

Roni MacRuairi: Basically. 

Jon Harris: Yeah. I've yet to have somebody say that that would be so alarmingly refreshing. Share the shit out of this interview. That's why I'm doing it. Yeah.  Okay. Very cool. Give the music a chance. Platforms, I guess. Is that what you guys call yourselves? Metal core or whatever?

Roni MacRuairi: Probably. It doesn't really sound that metal, Corey, but a lot of the bands that we kind of listen to as references would be metal core bands. So I'd like to say we're not metal core. I'd like to say we're probably some sort of alternative of it, but, yeah, we're probably metal core. Okay. 

Jon Harris: Which, of course, is taking on all different shapes and sizes these days. 

Roni MacRuairi: Well, that's the thing. It's such a vast kind of genre now, so yeah, okay, let's say we're metaphor. Yeah, that's it. Sure. Why not? Sure. Core. Sure core. 

Jon Harris: Well, thank you so much for coming on to the Rock Metal Podcast today. 

Roni MacRuairi: Thank you very much for having me Jon thank you. 

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Writing Catchy Hooks and Melodies with Liz Mauritz of GOLD STEPS

In this episode of The Rock Metal Podcast, we're chatting with Liz Mauritz of the band Gold Steps about their new EP ‘That Ain't It’ out now via Revival Recordings.

During our chat we touch on a lot of great tips for musicians, such as how works on her songwriting skills, especially when it comes to writing catchy hooks and melodies.

'That Ain't It' was Produced and Recorded by Nick Thompson & Rick King.

The band Gold Steps is for fans of: Thief Club, Avril Lavigne, Chief State, Youth Fountain, Calling All Captains, Driveways.

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Guest Resource

Gold Steps : Revival Recordings - Connect with Gold Steps!

Guest Music Video

3 Heavy Hitters

1. Balance work and play, making sure your relationships aren’t at risk because of the success of a venture.

2. Become a student of songwriting, always looking to improve your skills.

3. What are you trying to say when you’re writing a song? Keep asking, and then drilling down until the story sounds like a lyric.

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Asher Media Relations: Doing PR for everything loud! For your band needs to be seen and heard in print, online and radio!  Let Asher know Jon from The Rock Metal Podcast sent you.

Tue Madsen: Tue Madsen is responsible for producing, mixing, and mastering some of the best metal for over the last 20 years.  Let Tue know Jon from The Rock Metal Podcast sent you.

Syndicol Music: A full service agency for musicians, offering record label services, marketing, branding, production and management.  Let Charlie know Jon from The Rock Metal Podcast sent you.

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Show Notes // Transcript

Jon Harris: All right, Liz, thank you so much for coming on. Go and say Hi to all of our beautiful listeners. 

Liz Mauritz: Hello, friends. I'm Liz from Gold Steps. 

Jon Harris: Liz, great to have you on - Gold Steps, absolutely freaking fantastic! I get serious Avril Lavigne vibes, and that was a compliment for you. So, so glad to hear that. 

Liz Mauritz: I'm glad to hear it, too. I'm glad that's an influence you heard. 

Jon Harris: Well, something that you'd mentioned actually, was Avril Lavigne was a serious influence. But first, let's dive into this record, That Ain't it, which was released via Revival Records - Revival Recordings, rather sorry, in 2022, late 2022. What was the greatest moment for you producing this record? 

Liz Mauritz: Probably finally checking a couple of boxes of things that I wanted to develop as an artist. Songwriting has been something I've done for many, many years. We had previously written our entire EPs. Like, our first two EPs were completely written by Zach and I and then our band members. I did all the lyrics and vocal melodies. And then we started working with producer Rick King and Nick Thompson, and our songs got better because we had Nick's influence. So all of That Ain't It is co written by Nick Thompson, and so you can hear a lot of his influence on those songs. We started writing parts of that record in 2018, and then as the pandemic hit, and then we were trying to finish this EP up, I was taking more time to sit with myself and come up with hooks and melodies on my own. I've always come up with lots of lyrics, melodies, and creating a catchy hook is where I struggled and where Nick helped kind of guide me spiritually in a lot of ways. And while of my favourite things about That Ain't It is that one box that was checked was I brought a song to them. And for probably the first time, they had only a few tweaks. But the majority of the verse and chorus melody is mine. Straight from the voice memo I recorded it that day. It was one of those moments where you're just in this fit of passion as you're writing, you're feeling something really strong and it just happened to come out really well. And then the second box we checked off was adding synthesizers and writing more of a sad pop song. So that was Gatsby on the record. And that was one I struggled with a lot at first because we knew what we were doing with it. That song probably took the longest to start and finish. But that song was cool because Nick, basically I sent him just like, a huge Google document like a huge Google file drive file of a million different snippets of lyrics and stuff. I had written journal entries just outpourings of whatever crap I was thinking in my head that day. And he took this weird letter thing that I had kind of written almost like an apology to my husband during a really downtime in our band history just not feeling things were going well. And he took that and crafted this beautiful melody for it. So he wrote the melody, sent it to me like the first verse and chorus. I wrote the second verse, I wrote the bridge. And then we finished it out. And in total Nick fashion, he's like, you can go higher on this. So let's just throw in a whole step key change at the end, when I was like, no, I'm already be at the top of my range. I think we're good, Nick. And he was like, now you can do it. We did it. Nick always pushes me in the best way. He takes everything to the next level because he's not afraid to push boundaries with himself. He's been doing this for a long time, so he's very big inspiration for me. 

Jon Harris: Very cool. So working with Nick Thompson, which we'll chat about a little bit later, or maybe even entirely throughout this, because I know when an artist works with a great producer, that tends to be, you know, a lot of what went into crafting the record, checking off those boxes, coming in with those voice memos and those Google docs just pouring your heart out. Gatsby took the longest to write and finish, adding synthesizers, making a sad pop song, putting in a key change, working on writing catchy hooks, being guided spiritually to write catchy hooks, so many very cool things that we have going on here. You said that writing catchy hooks was difficult for you and I know that's a bit of a lead in and it doesn't have to be this. We can always touch base back on that question. But what was the biggest challenge for you on this record? 

Liz Mauritz: Honestly, coming up with so we parted ways with Rick King during the middle of this record. So we had worked with him on a few of the songs that were singles that came out earlier in 2019. And then during the production of this record, he had to step away for personal reasons. And Rick was interesting to work with in a way because he was very much like, actually, the title of the record is a reference to stuff. He used to say that all the time. He'd be like, that ain't it. We would show him something, we'd be like, no, that ain't it. So it kind of got to be like a running joke where we would just kind of wait for that. We'd be like, oh, man, we're so stoked on this. Rick's going to fucking hate it. So that was kind of like a nod to that, turning that ain't it into something from being like, oh, man, we dread hearing it to being like, that ain't it is kind of more of like a mantra in life. Like, we're trying to put a positive spin on it. But the hardest thing was honestly bringing something that after taking a break for so long between those songs, you feel like you backslide a little bit. So we moved from Austin to Milwaukee as a random aside to throw in here. And so we rebuilt our band with different members. And so trying to find our groove again was really, really hard. And that's where I think a lot of this, like we were finding our sound together in this new foursome and then also trying to bring in the old way of writing. And you have to adapt when you bring new people into a project. And this was the first time that I think we sat and had our drummer and our basis there during the writing sessions. Before that, it had been me, Zach, Brick and Nick. So it was cool to have other people in the room. But getting to that point when we were actually finishing the songs was so difficult because you - you feel like you're hitting a wall and you're like, I have to finish this record. We've been sitting on these songs forever, but nothing I feel like is up to par. So that, I think, was the biggest struggle. It was a huge sigh of relief when the record was finally put out. And I felt like, okay, that chapter is done. And I felt like we left it on the right note that people expect that we're moving in a slightly different direction. So it was a little bit of a tease. There was some old gold step stuff that was reminiscent of our earlier days, and I felt like it left on that gap speed note of, okay, I feel like they're about to take a turn. And we are okay. 

Jon Harris: Lots of stuff going on here. That ain't it. We'll call it a Rickism. 

Liz Mauritz: A Rickism! 

Jon Harris: Yeah. That ain't it. Moving from Austin to Milwaukee, rebuilding the band, having a drummer and a bass player in the room. I've got a few follow up questions. 

Liz Mauritz: Sure. 

Jon Harris: First follow up question is, how did that change things for you, having additional people in the room to work with and I guess more specifically, what we would call the rhythm section. What was that like, having them in the room?

Liz Mauritz: Ah. For all intents and purposes, I think it was a net positive. Like, so bring one of the fears when you bring in too many cooks they like to call it, is that you're worried that because people are pulling everything in different directions, you just get nowhere with it. Luckily, we have band members who understand that the end result is to make the best song that we can with the material we have. It's not about, oh, well, the bass part isn't interesting enough, so I'm bored, so I hate this song. And that's sometimes where people get I mean, I have vocal lines where I'm, like, feel like, this is kind of too easy, and maybe that's not good. People will think I'm phoning it in when I'm not. It's just that's what's best for the song. And so once you take your ego out of a lot of that stuff, it's great. And having them there to see, like, this is the process. This is what we started with. We always start with some sort of hook idea or melody and build around that as the song transforms. Maybe we find room to do a sick little drum fill here, or maybe we find room to put in a cool solo or something. But we don't set out with that idea in mind of, like, okay, everybody's going to have to get their hell, yeah moment, because that's just not what music is about. Music is about a greater message contained within a three minute. Flop of mishmash instruments and singing, like, you're trying to get something greater across. And I completely empathize with the guys where they want to have stuff that's fun to play, too. And I think that's where a lot of bands get stuck is everybody wants to be the lead in a song and that's sometimes just not what works for the song. So having them there to listen and be like, oh, I totally see how if we were just jamming this out in the basement, I would put like, fills everywhere and then not even understand that I'm completely covering up this really intense, vulnerable lyric line. And so having them there to build the process was really great and it helped us so much more moving forward as we're writing on our own. We did have some moments where we were all sitting around the table trying to write lyrics for Petty and we were incredibly hungover. And there was like a point where we're all just sitting there throwing out words that rhyme with something else in one of the lyrics that we were literally writing word by word. These like, two lines, I think, in the second verse. And I want to say it was probably the most miserable hour of my life. Just being like, I can't think of anything right now, I just want to die. But it was great having them there because people were just pulling up dictionaries, like the sources on their phone and just throwing things out there and we kind of like, cobbled it together and then went back and refined it. But don't drink heavily before you have to write the next day. 

Jon Harris: No, no. Not unless, I guess, that's your jive. But no, definitely not. So that was very cool, what was, like, having the rhythm section of the room and you could potentially get nowhere with it, having too many cooks in the kitchen, but they were able to input things. And you mentioned something super important, that a fill is just a fill. It's not meant to be the song, it's a fill. And it's like some things I've learned over the years where you're just like, oh, right, like, a fill is to fill in a gap of space. And it's like musicians don't know that. They don't get that sometimes. 

Liz Mauritz: Yeah.

Jon Harris: So that's kind of a funny one, but nevertheless and then helping ideas for lyrics and bringing out dictionaries and just being an ultimate source of inspiration. And you mentioned lyrics, and I wanted to touch on that because the EPK that I got from Revival Recordings says this is a real life autobiographical record. And I've also got some quotes from you here. But I don't need to read your quotes, I've got you here. So what went into the themes on this record? It sounds like maybe it's been boiling for a while or talk to us about the themes on the record.

Liz Mauritz: So as I've gotten older, I've struggled with severe anxiety my whole life, which would lead to depression and stuff. And you can hear a lot of that on our older stuff. This almost like, why do I feel like this all the time? But there's also been themes of anger and stuff like that on this record. There was a lot of things like Stay The Same, for example, was written about friends of ours. We're in our late 20s talking about stuff. You kind of find yourself running into the same wall, and everybody's advice is, well, hey, don't do that again, right? So we had friends coming to us to vent about stuff, and we'd be like, wow, that sucks. I feel like you did that, like two months ago. Maybe don't do that again. Or maybe try this or that. And they'd be like, yeah, that's a great idea. You're right. You're absolutely right. Then they'd go up the next weekend and do the same thing, usually over a relationship kind of thing or drinking too much, whatever. But then I also realized a lot of the advice I was giving is also applicable to myself. Like, you run into your habits, and sometimes we're creatures of habit, we do the same things over and over again, and sometimes we're like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. And then, like, two weeks later, you're like, oh, didn't we just learn this? Hello, brain. What are we doing? And so Stay the Same is as much a reflection of how I feel about myself as it was about these other people. But the other people were initially the inspiration, and then all of a sudden you take a look retrospective and you're like, oh, man, I'm kind of an asshole sometimes too. I should work on changing that. Or maybe I'll do it again and write another song. Front Row was like, kind of a hot dis track to somebody who kind of was like the, hey, I love you and I support you, but I just can't be part of this anymore. I am out. And I'm like, oh, cool, I guess we don't need you anyway. And it was one of those, like, I'm always going to love and support you, and I'm always going to be right there front row for you. And it's like, actually, don't bother. Actually, I hope you're front row someday and you realize what you missed out on. Um, that's in there. Gatsby was about ironically putting our band before our relationship. Zach and I, our guitarists were married. We started Gold Steps together. And so we went through a point where all of a sudden we realized that our relationship and our marriage had taken a complete backseat to everything the band was doing. And I didn't realize how much I had pushed him away with my focus on my brain, just hyper focuses. And I had spent probably months straight of only going to work and doing band stuff and just completely neglected. We'd go out to eat, we'd go on dates, and it would just be all band talk all the time. It's not a good thing. We need to be able to separate things sometimes. But in another way, it's like my other half and we're so connected with this. But yeah, every song on the album is about a specific person or specific incident that sparked this idea for a song. One of my favourite songs that isn't getting a lot of plays on Spotify is a little pretty acoustic track that I wrote for my dad and. Because we are very close. I can't even listen to the song because it kind of makes me cry. But I wrote it for him because when I got married, I couldn't find a father daughter song that really spoke to me. We ended up dancing to a Frank Sinatra song and then Green Day's Good Riddance. Ironically. There you go. He took me to see Green Day when I was a kid. And then so I wrote this song and I was like, maybe this will speak to another girl my age who is close to her dad, who also introduced her to The Breakfast Club and taught her to find the right person in her life. And that it's okay to lose a relationship because what's important is what you learn from it and that sort of thing. 

Jon Harris: Yeah. So many sound bites here. And one of the things I kind of want to touch base on because we mentioned early on Avril Lavigne being an influence, I just wanted to touch base on that because the song Front Row, I hope you're there in the front row so you can see what you miss that screams Avril to me. That kind of like, screw you, f-you, look at me, watch me be successful kind of kind of attitude. And I wanted to follow up with saying writing tracks about other people like this. Did you approach that? Did you maybe talk to them and say, hey, I want to write a song about you, and they kind of got their okay. Did you just write it in kind of a vague ish kind of way? Like, how did you approach writing songs about other people? 

Liz Mauritz: I don't tell them. I don't think they need to know. If they think it's about them, maybe it'll make them reflect on themselves or if they have no clue, then that's probably good, too. I'm a huge fan of Taylor Swift, and I think that that's where I took a lot of that, like, hey, it's okay to write songs as therapy and get that frustration out. Better than having a screaming match with somebody or fighting with them. And a lot of the same things, they're applicable to multiple people. I think I've told three different people that stay the same wasn't about them. It was about somebody else, but in reality, it was kind of about all of them. Um, sorry I guess I kind of lied to you all because it's inspired by, like. You know, just a general, like, wow, I feel like this is really present in my life. People are constantly coming to me, crying on my shoulder, asking for advice. They want me to be a friend. And then somehow, two weeks later, we're standing around my kitchen counter crying into our beers again. Like, why? But I think told my dad I wrote a song about him, but I was like, it's a good song. It's not a mean, bad song. Hate you, dad. Nothing like that. But I don't think I've told anybody explicitly a song is about them. There is a song we play live that we haven't recorded yet, but we've been playing it for, like, two years, which is very specifically about an ex-boyfriend of mine. Um, and I hope he hears it someday.

Jon Harris: Very cool. Very cool. How would you define success at this stage of your career? 

Liz Mauritz: Like, what would I what what are our successes? Or what would constitute success to me? 

Jon Harris: Yeah. What would constitute success for you? I know you mentioned something spiritual earlier. I've gotten spiritual responses to this. I've gotten material responses to this. But at this stage of your career and with regard to this release, how would you define success? 

Liz Mauritz: I'd like to hit a million plays on one song. We've never been able to accomplish that. I think we're close to 200,000 on Stay the Same, which would be our most played song ever. We recently hit a million plays overall on Spotify, but I think success would be hitting a million on one song. I feel like that's attainable and could happen in the next couple of years. I would love to see our followers go up to, like, 10,000 on Instagram. I guess. I guess that's on a numerical sense, I think as far as success on a personal level and what it means intrinsically to me, I think writing more often where the producer says, that's great. Now let me build everything else around it, but they kind of leave the lyrics and vocal melodies to me because that means that I've grown enough as a songwriter that I don't need all these crazy edits that they're like, that's a banger. And we actually have a song like that that we just recorded out in Massachusetts with Alan Day from Four Years Strong. So this song I've been carrying around in my phone and showing to a very select few people, but I'm so excited about it, I'm not even going to front. I play this song all the time, all day, and I never get sick of it. And that's probably one of the I listen our own music, of course, after it's done, but I don't sit in my car and play that in it on repeat, even though every once in a while I'll be like, oh, we haven't played live in a while. I kind of miss this song. I haven't sang it in a while, and I'll listen to it. But this song is so everything I've wanted to make in a musical way for a while. And it's completely different from I mean, it's not like a country song or anything, but it's just very different in lyrical style, very different in vibe. It's very pop up, very sensual, kind of so it's a little bit different for us. And I think that's why I love it. It's a new baby. A new kind of baby for Gold Steps. 

Jon Harris: All right. A new kind of baby for Gold Steps. Something you mentioned was working with a producer where he says, that's great, let's build around that. But the core of it stays the same. Working with Nick Thompson. Kind of talk to us about that a bit more. What was that like? Or what were your favourite moments with working with him? 

Liz Mauritz: Nick is really great at pulling things out of you that you didn't know were there. Like, the first time I met him, I was a little nervous because he's the singer of one of my favourite bands of all time. I thought he was super cool. He's just a dork like the rest of us. A very cool dork, but a dork nonetheless. And we were sitting there and we had brought this song in that basically Under Attack turned into a totally different song. But he was sitting there and he was like, okay, so here's the lyrics. Here's kind of this melody you've shown me. What are you trying to say with this song? What's inside right now? What's fuelling this? And so we basically had a conversation. He was like, cool. How would you write that in a lyric? And then we would sit there and go line by line. And then as we were working together, I was getting a bigger feel for the song because of how he was kind of directing the conversation about it. So all of our songs when we've been working with Nick, when we went to a writing session, it basically was like starting from scratch and just kind of pulling these ideas and getting them out on paper. When we wrote Empty Space, it was the same thing. I was like, my grandfather passed away recently. It was really hard on my grandmother. Their relationship was inspiring to me, the kind of relationship I wanted to find in my life. And it hit me really hard because I had just gotten engaged when he passed away. So we sat there and wrote this song from the perspective of what it feels like to lose that other half of your life. And we just sat through and worked it out together. So writing with Nick, I almost prefer to write with him from scratch for that reason because he has a really great way a really great way of just making it a conversation, and then all of a sudden you realize you've written half a song together. So that's what I love about working with Nick. He's also really great at taking a melody that's kind of basic and adding these little pops of flavour to it, like, oh, let's shift this note. Jump up a little bit, or, let's kind of pull this back down. And he was really good at that. I think he's for some reason, we just connected really well. I felt like he knew me, and maybe he writes like that with everybody because he's just a really good songwriter. But that was my favourite part about working with him, is I felt like I could be completely open and vulnerable with him, and he never was, like, that's stupid. I mean, not that most producers would, but I can imagine some people out there that are like, you suck at this. Let me just take the reins on this. 

Jon Harris: Yeah, you call yourself a musician? Okay. Anyway, don't worry. We know what to do with you. Yeah, very cool. What's the number one thing you want people listening to do right now? Is that hit up your socials to increase those Instagram numbers, listen to the record. Where should they go? What should they do? What's the number one thing do you want listeners to do? 

Liz Mauritz: Number one thing, please go listen to the record and follow us on Spotify. If you're listening to a band regularly, just go ahead and follow them. It'll let you know when they've got new music coming out, when they update stuff, it looks really good. When it's not just streams, but it's actually people following because that means they care enough. They want to hear what's coming next. I guess that would be my number one thing a lot of people follow on Instagram, and I don't know if they even listen to our music. Maybe they just think we're silly. I don't know. 

Jon Harris: Well, that brings up really good point, and I'm glad that you mentioned it. There are so many tools for bands to connect with fans where you are intersecting, where they're listening to your music. So connecting with people on Spotify is super crucial. My own humble opinion, I'd rather spend time on Spotify connecting with fans who are listening to music than, I don't know, thinking we're doing silly stuff on Instagram. It's all silly to me anyway. But nevertheless, check out that record from Gold Steps. That Ain't it. Via Revival recordings. Go ahead and go to TheRockMetalPodcast.ca. There you can go ahead and get the show notes for today music videos transcript, all the extra love and goodies. Thank you so much for coming on to The Rock Metal Podcast today, Liz. 

Liz Mauritz: Thanks for having me. 

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