Interview with Clint Lowery of Sevendust from 2011

It’s really good, man.  We’re just kind of getting started.  We’ve done two shows with them so far.  We’re big fans of Avenged and Three Days is great.  Everyone’s cool on the tour.  It seems to be a good fit.  We’re playing in front of a bunch of big fans, who wouldn’t ordinarily have come to see our band.  I think it’s a good mixture of band and styles.  It’s been a really good thing.  The guitar player for Avenged is incredible.  As a guitar player, it’s cool to be on tour with someone who has major skills.

Oh man,yeah, absolutely!  We haven’t really hit that market over there as much; not nearly as much as we’ve done in the States.  It’s exciting – to earn our stripes over there.  Over here, we’re already established; comfortable over here and we have our fans, but over there we have to push it a little extra hard cause we’re new still as far as live exposure is concerned.

Yeah, we’re gonna be doing Uproar, but as far as headlining, we might do a couple of things in July.  We’re not really gonna headline until probably, after the Uproar Tour.  We’ll try to put together something unique.  There’s a lot of different concepts we want to do.  We want to end it with a bang, as far as this cycle is concerned.  We’ll see what we can think of as far as the headline tour.

We want to do something special.  We’ve been piggybacking on these other tours for a while.  We’re exposing ourselves to different people, but it’s time to go back and play the long sets, the way we want to play ‘em; for the fans, at a cheaper ticket price.

It’s definitely, watching the other guys go through it over the years, I feel like I’ve learned the dos and don’ts.  I try to see him as much as I can.  It’s tough leaving him and as far as helping him develop.  He’s incredible; it’s inspired me to work harder.  I know what I have to do now.  He’s a big motivator for me.  I didn’t know how it was gonna affect me.  It has made me really learn about sacrifice and time and having more patience.  I’ve been waiting to be father for a long time and I think it’s gonna manifest in my music - pushing to a more aggressive nature for some reason.  I have this nesting thing going on where I wanna fight, not fight, but I wanna push the envelope and I think in the next Sevendust record will be extreme.

It’s actually out right now - you can go to clintlowery.net to order hard copies.  It’s on iTunes as well – just search my name or “Hello Demons Meet Skeletons.”  It’s just a project I like doing.  I do it myself with a few people that help me out on it.  It’s a low maintenance, low stress, different way to express myself and use some of the money for good causes.  I do this between Sevendust records and I’ll continue to do.  I’m not sure if I’ll keep that acoustic, but the last two seemed right, acoustically.

To me, when I first came up with it, it was an expression I would say when I used to joke around.  I’m in recovery and so when I was figuring out how to stay clean and sober. Was an expression I said when I hit bottom, all my demons were coming to the surface; a smart a**/cynical way to say it.  I just used that, I thought it was pretty unique, instead of having a one word name.  I thought I was trying to be clever. People always say it wrong.  To me it’s funny.  A lot of time I say "HDMS."

Yeah, I think if we do a Sevendust acoustic tour, maybe I’ll open up the show, maybe I’ll do like four or five songs.  I think it would be a cool way.  I’m gonna do something for sure.

I think it’s a combination of things.  We talked about it the other day.  I think it’s a combination of just having mutual respect on each other.  We rely on each other.  Our livelihood depends on this collective group of guys.  And our fans have become so much a part of that so much where we’ve been around for so long, that it’s basically, just the fans have grown up with us in a way.  We’re very accessible through many channels.  We’re told this takes away from our mystique, but to us we’re not a band that thrives on mystique, we a band that thrives on our connection to our fans.  We feel like we’re on the same plateau.   We’re not putting ourselves above anybody.  And it’s their night of entertainment.  We’re equally entertained by watching them in what they do and how they sing back and all the stuff that they do. So to us I don’t understand the whole rock star thing.  I know there’s admiration and I surely admire musicians and other bands, but for us, we like to keep it as a group.  If we didn’t have to pay for our family and kids, we wouldn’t charge people to come to our shows, but we have to do what we have to do. People understand that.

Yeah, I think it’s gonna be a lot more guitar driven, not just because I’m a guitar player.  I always try to make vocals more important.  They’re always gonna be the focal point.  I wanna push the envelope guitar wise.  I wanna pay tribute to the actual craft of guitar – have the same grooves that Sevendust has but just complicate the rifts – make it a little more interesting -  some programming, some shredding solos.  I practice a lot more now than I ever have on the guitar and I’d like to bring more heat to the table.  Maybe do a little more metal.  I love metal, always have and I think we’ve been all over the place as far as we can be on the radio, but we have a heavy edge to us.  I wanna do what we’re good at not even try to do radio.  I wanna cater to the metal fans.  We’ve already done the hard rock version of our band. Now I wanna do the metal version, commit to it.

Funny you mentioned this because two days from now I’m gonna get together with the Paul Reed Smith company on a conference call to get my signature put together.  I don’t know exactly when it will be out.  We’re gonna start the concept and design in a few days.  I’m finally gonna get my signature.  I’m really excited.  I’m gonna try to make it where it’s affordable and nothing to it.  There will be some private stocks, but mainly it will be a guitar for all people, all demographics, not just rich.  It’s gonna be a quality guitar.  I’ll gonna try to make the design just mean.

You know, I think Steve Vai is probably the biggest influence as far as how creative he got on the guitar.  He’s just limitless on the style and as to what he can do with a guitar.  That was an inspiration.  There have been a lot of people who have inspired me in different ways.  There’s some Nine Inch Nails with really cool effects and approaches to that crazy, sloppy guitar style.  And then there’s Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eddie Van Halen, Zach Wild– of course, Dimebag is probably second to Steve Vai as inspiration to me.  There’s so many different guitar players that have inspired me in so many, different, Simple Ti Tevor from Kings X was.  The Edge from U2.  Everyone’s gotta a really cool thing going on.

I’ve been buying these old CD’s, like Iron Maiden’s Powerslave the other day.  Weird CD’s I haven’t heard in a long time - Meshuggah. There’s a band called “Karnivool” that’s got some really good stuff - an Australian band.  There’s a guy, Doug Branom, a blues guitar player.  I’ve been on this guitar kick.  I’m really bad about buying music.  I’ll hear something; someone else will have it, on their iPhone, iPad or something like that.  I’ve been buying a few different things.  Bought the Bring Me the Horizon record the other day; played for them in Australia.  I thought they were pretty cool - they’re young kids

I’m a realist these days.  I would love to see us continue to make records and tour, just not at the pace.   I see us doing another record, another two records.  I might transition into producing and co-writing with managing bands one day.  Right now Sevendust will maintain as long as we want to.  I would like to see us come out with two or three more records that are credible and define us as a band.   I’ll see what happens.  I try to take it one album at a time.