Push To Fire got the chance to catch up with technical prog-metallers Between The Buried And Me prior to their show in Birmingham on their first ever headline tour of the UK. Guitarist Dustie Waring chewed the cud with PTF's Hannah Sebestjanowicz, telling us about touring, the pains of the internet and why he likes gangster rap.
Tonight will be your 6th show in the UK on this tour, how’s it been going so far?
Good. London was a highlight, we played two nights in a row and they both sold out; that was pretty awesome.
I heard you played your album Colors in full, was that something you were planning on doing?
Yeah we planned on it before the tour, we went through the songs and stuff but we didn’t have tons of preparation for it so we were kind of just like, whatever, we’ll see how it goes.
And how did it go?
It went fine; we didn’t blow it, which was cool. We’ve only done that in the US, Canada and I think we did it Puerto Rico.
London has always been kind of a highlight; ever since 2010 we did some show in London, it was like a one-off or something. I don’t even remember how we got about playing it but it was pretty ridiculous. It was just completely unexpected and this time was even better so next time we’ll be playing somewhere bigger, it’s just one of our better places I guess.
You’ve recently released a new EP, which is the first in a two-part story; can you give us a bit of info on the concept behind the EP?
Well it basically picks up where 'Swim To The Moon' left off, this guy just gets so depressed and done with everything that he starts to just drift out to sea almost like a suicide or something he’s just so fed up.
He’s kind of in and out of consciousness he becomes aware of some other being somehow connected to himself like in a parallel universe. It gets pretty intense, Paul and Tommy- they got together and worked on the concept, the story and everything. The second part I guess we can kind of assume that the 2 characters will maybe meet. It’s pretty fucking weird, we’re kind of weird you know, it’s definitely some strange stuff but we’re into all that weird stuff.
Have you started writing the full length?
We have; we have a lot of ideas and I’m sure that once we finish this tour we’ll start getting together. Everybody kind of writes on their own and we’ll send ideas to each other on the internet then we’ll get up and come up with stuff together to make stuff that we’ve written on our own kind of fit together, it’s a pretty equal process. It’s pretty easy for us at this point; it’s not like a struggle to have to write anything we are all pretty comfortable with one another.
Do you restrict yourself on song length at all?
We just have so much shit going on that I guess it will get to the point where it will be 12 or 14 minutes long by the time we feel like it’s finished, we’re the kind of band that can get away with doing that. There are some bands that are kind of limited to the mainstream crowd they can’t really get away with anything longer than a 3 or 4 minute song.
The artwork for the EP is pretty cool, is that something that was given a lot of thought?
We had a guy do the layout for us, typically when you do a record somebody will just send in all these ideas of what they got from the record. That guy put together that and we were all like “woah, this is fucking weird”.
I know Tommy has his own solo side project but is there anyone else in the band dabbling in anything on the side?
Well Dan (Briggs, bass) is in a band called Orbs, and he’s got some little jazz trio thing that he’s been working with that’s pretty cool, I think it’s called Trio-Scapes. Paul (Waggoner, lead guitar) doesn’t really have anything going on but he filled in for Lamb of God for a little while.
Me and Blake (Richardson, drums) are in a band called Glass Caskets which we’ve been in since before we were in this band, whenever we have time we’ll do stuff but most of the time we are all just concentrating on this.
So when you’re not touring or writing what do you like to do to relax?
I go fishing, ride motorcycles; I watch as much American Football as I possibly can.
I support the Minnesota Vikings but because we’re from North Carolina we’ve only had a team since ’94 so I do support the Carolina Panthers as well but the Vikings are the team I follow the most. The States aren’t as adamant about being all about one team unlike the UK with their football.
What are you favourite releases of 2011 so far?
Most of the stuff I’ve been listening to I’m not sure when it came out honestly, last year or this year. The new Alison Krauss record is phenomenal, I’ve been listening to that a lot, that shit is great. I heard some of the new Steven Wilson record, which is very, very awesome and some of the new Mastodon which is cool.
I don’t have a personal favourite because I haven’t really listened to enough records from this year to be like ‘Holy shit, that’s my favourite record’. Most of the stuff I’ve been listening to was from last year, I was listening to Mastodon's Crack the Skye for a while, I don’t really have any concept of what’s new. The only time I really listen to music on tour is if I just play something on my i-pod and go to bed.
It’s your job as well, there’s not many times I just want to sit around and put on some music. I know Dan and Tommy (Giles Rogers, lead vocals, keyboards) listen to quite a bit of music, more than myself. It’s more when I get in the car, that’s when I listen to music, I listen to so much weird shit, just so many different things that are nothing like one another.
I kind of like some of the American top 40 stuff, I like some of the hip hop, some of the hard-hitting gangster shit, the super hard beats, those guys are so deep with the shit they are rapping about.
For some reason ever since I was a kid my brain doesn’t just lock into lyrics, I can’t really recite lyrics from any songs its just melody. The melody of the vocals is like the lead guitar in my head so as soon as a song comes on that’s catchy I’ve got that melody. But I don’t know what they’re saying, its weird. Its usually the really gangster hip hop songs, I’m just listening to the melody, what ever pattern they’re doing with their voice rhythmically I like.
Do you have time to be able to go to any shows?
I went and saw Animals [As Leaders] on their US tour before this one and just to go hang out. I went to a Red Chord show; I really want to see Warren Haynes or Gov’t Mule when they come round where I live. Tim Reynolds is one of my favourite guitar players; he plays with Dave Matthews a lot.
He’s actually coming to a venue in the town I live in when we get home so I’m probably going to go check him out because he’s a badass.
The end of 2011 is nigh, what have been the highlights of the year so far and what are the plans for 2012?
Our last show on our headliner, which was May 14th, was a show in Ashville, North Carolina. It was probably the most fun and badass show of my musical career, everything about it was just tight, it was just awesome. Those 2 London shows were cool. I’m pretty simple, if I do something really fun and it’s cool and everyone’s in a good mood because of it, that’s a highlight.
Me and Blake went tubing down the New River in the mountains of North Carolina, that was pretty cool. We live in a real southern country kind of town so we have lots of really fun wilderness activities that you can get into, it’s pretty nice.
Social Networking seems to have taken over everyone’s lives with the likes of Facebook and Twitter becoming huge platforms for thoughts and opinions. For bands it can be a very powerful tool for promotion and connecting with fans, is this something as a band you’ve embraced?
Yeah, you kind of have to. Nowadays no band has websites, when we first started going to shows and paying attention to bands everyone had a website with a forum on but now if you look up a band for the longest time you could only go to a Myspace and see pictures and listen to music.
Now it’s a Facebook account or ReverbNation, it’s just so much different nowadays I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t really pay attention to it, we had a forum on our website for a while and it just turned into all these kids that just talk shit.
It’s like, if you like my band and your coming to a site that’s ours why do you guys have to come here if you don’t want to say nice things? So we went through a bit of that kind of shit and we are just like; we aren’t going to pay attention to it any more.
I have my personal Facebook if I want to talk to my friends and family but as far as the band one goes I don’t think anyone in the band really messes with it, maybe Dan.
I generally don’t look to see what people have to say; I keep trucking, doing what I’m doing. If you don’t want to like what any band is doing I’m sure it would make them happier to just keep doing what they’re doing and pay attention to the people who do like the music.
Nobody should really have to read bad things about a band because regardless of who the band is, bad or good, everyone is out here for the same reason trying hard to make a life; it’s hard enough.
It’s a different world, nowadays bands can only succeed and stay afloat through touring and touring isn’t the easiest thing all the time. It’s definitely tough unless you’re a big country band or a rap artist. It gets to be hard work but it’s also a better job then anything else I can think of doing. I get to play my guitar, travel around and play for people so even when it gets the toughest you think about that.
