Finger Eleven

0:00Hey rich and rich. How are you good man? How are you good? Thanks? Where where are you? I'm in Regina today. Nice the old the cross-can of winter tour. You guys are crazy Yeah, we always seem to do these January February tours, but they're good You know people people appreciate it. It's always actually good time the tour as far as people coming out Yeah, I guess there are less options People are more in depth to come in at what is speaking you're on you're on the road You're here Saturday at the event center. What is a setlist like for you guys mostly new mostly old combination? Yeah combination we actually pulled out a few old ones Drag you down which we haven't done in years And then a lot of the songs on the new record are like Two and a half three minutes long so we do almost a whole new record and then a whole bunch of old stuff as well

0:46So it's good. It's a you know good hour and 20 minutes set you mentioned drag you down Relatively big hit why why haven't you played it in a while? It's one of those songs, you know as I guess as we've gotten older It's just you know, maybe just not a personal favorite of the band. It was just written You know a different time in our lives where it's just uh, you know, just the I don't know how to do it I think it's Scott our thing or you know, it's not not one of his favorite songs, you know lyrically And it's also a challenging song vocally It's a screamer So kind of those two reasons, you know, it's just uh, it was written you know He's a lot younger when he wrote it and uh, it just you know has uh But just a maybe less meaning than some of the other music. So um, yeah, it's funny that way, you know

1:31Everyone in the band has different favorites. It's always a interesting conversation trying to figure out You know because you want to play songs that people like but you also want play songs that are important to you too And and uh songs do you think are over the caliber as the newer songs that you've written? So it's kind of always a debate, you know, what's the right option? What's the right choice? You know what's the right song, you know, that brings me to two questions One of which what's the most challenging one for you? What do you feel I get not the most nervous to play every night? But you know, I give you the hardest We have a song good times. It's pretty pretty rolling on the drums. It's almost a you know, like a drum solo of the whole song It's like a tribal palm thing. It's uh, it's not really challenging That's just maybe the funnest to play but a lot of the kind of tricky ones We're actually aren't in this set list. We have a song called sense of a spark

2:20It's a really tricky one quicksand is a an odd time signature So I mean, I've been playing them for so long. Nothing is really that tricky, you know I just they're just kind of part of me the songs, you know, I play them. How long have you guys been together? It's got to be like at least a dozen years now. Oh man. It's yeah, it's like not me included I think almost 20 years Wow and and uh with me it's like I think like 15 years I think 14 years What what made you join the band? So they were already together and then you drum was just the rainbow bump monkeys or was it finger alone at that point? It was right after they changed their name. Okay and they Recorded and released the album tip the first finger 11 record then they got dropped like a couple weeks after it came out So uh, their drummer just kind of packed it in and I think you want to go back to school and uh at that point

3:10They just started auditioning drummers. I kind of heard about it through the grapevine and uh I was actually Almost gonna like I was about two weeks away from moving to Los Angeles, you know, like I was gonna be one of those Kids moved to LA and try to do a beer session guy. Not if they're not just gonna try find a band down there, you know I had a few friends Um from Kitchener and Cambridge area in Ontario that had moved and we're living there and you know I just thought I'd go down there and Actually that band system of it down like long before they were signed. I was gonna actually go down and try out for them No way. Yeah, have you guys played shows with system you guys would fit on a bill together Uh, we maybe some festivals in the yeah, you know what I think I would remember that because I'm a fan of the band I don't think we have were you a fan of finger 11 before you joined or was it just I'm looking for a band

3:57These guys need somebody actually I was aware of the rainbow bump monkeys and I'd actually had learned That whole record. I didn't even know that they had changed the name and had a record out So it was like two days before the audition. Oh my god, man. I gotta learn all these news songs So when I heard it, it was actually exactly what I was looking for It was the kind of music that you know, I would have gone down to Los Angeles to try to find so Oh worked out very well for you. Yeah You guys are all still living here in Canada. Yeah, we're all sort of around southern Ontario between Toronto and Burlington and Hamilton that area. What uh, what's next for you guys? What are you guys working on? We just got a lot of touring this album is still relatively new Um, we go back down to the States. I think with see there coming up. Oh, yeah, that'll be good Yeah, so uh, we actually just got nominated for a june. Oh yesterday. Yeah, congratulations

4:47Yeah, that was some good news, but just a lot of touring this year will be out the whole year Um, like I said the album's still pretty new kind of off to a slow start now things are picking up Uh, so yeah, just to warn our butts off But that's kind of what we're known for you know, we're sort of road dogs. That's what we do So that'll be funny because we do something like that in the five questions that we're gonna do in a little bit But uh, I was wondering if I can get a couple of sound clips like a little storytellers bit or memories You have a few of the songs that we play on the station Mm-hmm. Uh, well, let's start with one thing because you're playing like what timpones in the video or something like that What are those things? I am actually that was a that they are companies that was the last minute thing We were at the day before we were gonna do the video Um because there's very little drumming in that song Um, they were trying to think you know, just a certain arty Salvador dally inspired video and I was just thinking man instead of having drums like be cool to have something hardy

5:37And it was my suggestion to have timpones and oh we rented them the day of the video shoot We didn't really know it would be cool or not and uh It's turned out to be you know, like a subject of conversation that comes up all the time the timpani thing So would you ever bring would you ever want to buy timpones and play them on a song or did you play them on the song? No, there's no timpones on the track when we record I saw you know, just given the vibe of the video I thought it would just kind of suit the the look of the video, you know, sort of a neat looking something different But uh man, I'd be willing to do anything. Yeah, whatever sounds good, especially in the studio We always have uh lots of instruments that we play in the studio and man. I'd be down with any of that anytime I love that kind of stuff uh parallelizer Parallelizer was actually written um, it's a funny story

6:23We were uh like writing one day a writing session and it was just one of those days that nothing was happening Nothing good was coming out Then we were like, well, let's just pack it up and get out of here for the day And we remembered right as we were leaving a friend of ours This guy Chris Bowman was gonna I think he was a student at time in a photography Class he was taking and he had asked to come and take some pictures of the band when we were just you know sitting around writing songs So we were all kind of mad and not a very good writing day and uh Right as we're leaving that he shows up and we're like, oh man, we're just about to go So okay. We'll just sort of jam something out for a minute, you know take him quick You have like 10 minutes to shoot as much as you can We'll just sort of be behind our instruments and we I just kind of started this little dancey groove and uh we started playing Uh the chorus music for a parallelizer and it was like

7:11I mean without any thought or anything that's that just kind of came to and right away We're like man, this is really rocking. What is this? Uh we recorded it right there and then and uh sent it over to scott Within a couple days he came back with this this chorus for parallelizer. We're like, man The hell where where'd back come from? It was one of those, you know songs that just came absolutely out of nowhere on a day where Absolutely nothing was happening and had that friend of ours not showed up Um to take some photos. I probably would never had existed. That's great. You guys expected to get I guess one thing Maybe got bigger, but I feel like parallelizer was bigger than than the band almost Parallelizer really took on a life of its own. It was a it was a monster that thing All around the world, you know, just it just got used in and so many formats like tv wrestling, real video games

8:01Everything so it was a really great song it opened so many doors for us Especially internationally um before that, you know, we'd been working away in Canada and america But we hadn't had much luck in in europe Apparently it was like number one in sweden. Oh wow a few other places So yeah, it really opened up a lot of doors and allowed us to go over to some of those places and tour for the first time So that's fantastic. Yeah, uh and the new one living in a dream living in a dream was a song We actually wrote again in the studio Sort of we we thought we had the record finished and uh, we you never really know when it's Done until you sort of listen through track by track and you sort of sit down and imagine it as a record and as we listen to it We just thought oh man, you know, this isn't what we thought it was it seems on the mellow side

8:47Like it's kind of missing an upbeat kind of song and uh, yeah We just sort of started fiddling around and uh again like with that drum groove Kind of like how paralyzed started, you know, just so like an upbeat and the the beat I play in that It's called the four on the four where the bass drum is going all the time the bass drum is going over the snare drum as well Which usually it's you know opposite kick of them snare kicking snare Um, so it was just four on the four kind of a dance beat and again That song just sort of came to in the studio pretty quickly right at the end of the session when we thought we were done Um writing all the songs and then it became the first song We actually recorded and we also used that song as a test to see if we could produce the record ourselves At the time we were gonna meet a bunch of producers and stuff and before we did that we thought well, you know what we've always

9:34Pretty much co-produced our records anyway, let's get you know Let's give this a shot and just kind of trust our own instincts and just at least try to do one song on our own And that was living in a dream and it came out so well. We just continued on Uh, so yeah, it was the first sort of finished uh recorded song for the record but the last song written what was the it was the hardest thing of producing yourselves? I think um Just trusting your decision and and leaving it Um a lot of times it's nice to rely on someone else to to make a decision if you have two guys Going one direction to guys calling the other You know, sometimes you just need someone to go okay. This is the right way guys And um a lot of times you just really need that just to put things to bed and to and to move on mentally without You know, just constantly could go back to that thought and thinking

10:21Man, you know, is that the right way to go about that? And so really just trusting your own instincts and uh, you know committing to to a certain direction that you take with a song And uh, that was really the big change for us was really being in charge Being in charge of those decisions and uh, you know and finalizing those decisions on our own without anybody else being in there To help us with the final call Would you think you want to do it again? Um, yeah, I mean we don't rule anything out. I think There's so many amazing producers that we'd love to work with Um for us. It's always about, you know, just trying new things. We don't really ever Um, you know, who knows that this record was this record and uh We always like every record to have its own sort of identity in life. So who knows in the next record?

11:07Uh, I imagine we'd probably try to you know, our dream has always been to work with Rick Rubin, but Hard and expensive guy to come by so I you know, who knows? I think it's nice to know that we can do it ourselves now And it's just uh, it's a rewarding confidence Confident feeling and within the band but uh, it just doesn't necessarily mean before I let you go We gotta do five questions five quick questions one more answers sure rotor studio Road lennener mccartney lennon most important thing in a song lyrics melody or rhythm lyrics Really coming from a drummer. That's interesting. Yeah, I gotta accept the truth Uh, so you've written your most proud of uh, I guess paralyzer cool and in one word finger 11

11:54rock