Push to Fire Interview: Seether Lucy Pryor was lucky enough to interview half of the band before the show, here's what bassist Dale and drummer John had to say about tours, their 10th anniversary and being starstruck!
Hi Seether, welcome back to the UK! How has the tour been going so far? Dale: It's been pretty good! We're good friends with the Staind guys and that always helps when you're hanging out with your friends, and it also allows us to play bigger venues, it's been, you know, a short leg for us, but a successful one so it's been good Well that was going to be my next question actually! You've toured with Staind previously - do you enjoy touring with them? Is it like old friends hanging out together? Dale: Yeah, I mean, I've been a fan of them for a long time, when they first came out we were just getting started and they're a band we enjoy listening too.. we even covered one of their songs! So it's definitely fun for us to share a stage with them, even just as fans.
So were you star struck when you met them then? I'm always totally star struck when I get to meet my favourite bands! Dale: You do, you know! You slowly get used to it when you've been on tour for months with a band, you get to know the guys and slowly become friends. It's exciting though, it's one of the cool things of the job. We played with Metallica for a show back in South Africa and I was really star struck then, I was like, I couldn't speak! Do you have any crazy rider demands while you're out on tour? Dale: John does (laughs) Do you?! John: (laughs) No, we're a pretty down to earth band we just like a few cold beers and some bottled water, maybe a few towels to dry off with, we're pretty easy going. No picking out the brown M&Ms or anything like that! (laughs) Are there any bands you'd really love to tour with that you haven't already? John: I'd love to have us tour with Foo Fighters, they're a great band. We've done, well I guess it was just the one show with Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters, and he was so nice, we visited with him after the show, this was in Portugal, it was quite a long time ago, but would love to have a chance to tour with them, definitely.
It's your 10th anniversary as a band this year, congratulations! - have you achieved what you'd hoped to back when you first formed? Dale: Erm, I guess, you know I don't think we had anything in particular in mind, we just played because it was fun and because we like to play and basically just thought, you know, let's see how far we can take this thing. I don't think we ever dreamed it would go this far that in 10 years we would still be doing it! We gave it our best I guess, and it's just the business has been really good to us. From South African days, got signed in the states, moved over there and each album we released over there has done that little bit better than the one before it. Europe we do better every time we come back so yeah it's been great. We've been really lucky we've had a really good career, there's not a lot of bands that have been around for 10 years. Especially at the moment they're all one hit wonder bands in England, I'm not sure what it's like in America? Dale: yeah it's all the industry seems to be these days. Hopefully we can keep releasing albums and touring and doing what we do, and hopefully doing a little better each time and well, keep going! Some people have followed you from the start, but for all the new kids, how would you describe your current sound? John: I dunno I think we're just a straight up rock band, you know, bass, drums, couple guitars, easy instrumentation. You know we aren't using backing tracks or multi layered vocals or anything like that. We're just straight up sweaty garage rock band that's playing on the bigger stages, and we're very fortunate to do so. Dale: Yeah we're the world biggest garage band (laughs) You have many comparisons with Nirvana in the media, would you say they are still an influence on your music? Dale: Yeah I think that amongst many other things. I think when you're young you tend to listen to fewer bands but you really focus on them intensely. I know Shaun says Nirvana is the band that made him wanna play music. For me it was Guns and Roses and Metallica, then Pantera after that, but then as you get older you realise there's more bands out there. I think now we're influenced by different bands, other bands. I'd say now it's just an eclectic mix of anything from like The Beatles to erm everything in between!
Does it get on your nerves that people still make that comparison? John: No not as much, I think maybe in the earlier stuff, like Dale was saying when you're making your first album; those influences are pretty obvious I guess. What we all tend to do, and a lot of us still do, although I guess some of us get craftier at hiding what it is we lift from other people, we're not really inventing the wheel here, it's rock and it's music. Maybe at first it tends to be, oh I can definitely hear that influence, but then as you know, after 4 albums now I think you definitely come into your own, and that sound hopefully grows and becomes your own sound, and I think Shaun definitely puts his stamp on that which makes it Seether. You've covered a range of artists in your live shows over the years - which have been your favourites to perform and why? Dale: I really enjoyed on the last run 'Creep' by Stone Temple Pilots, that was a lot of fun and was cool for me because I got to play acoustic guitar on it, and Emma from The Sick Puppies played bass on it, so that was fun. Then when we were with Staind, Aaron came out and played guitar on it. John: Yeah he played guitar and sang the second verse on it Dale: I think Creep, there's been a lot of fun covers though. I think Deftones 'House of Flies' too. Is there any artist/song you would love to cover that you haven't already done? John: Yeah I'm sure, I'd love to do a Black Sabbath Song, I'm a big Black Sabbath fan. Or you know if there's a cool way to do Zeppelin, you've gotta be careful because a lot of people have done Zeppelin, or The Beatles, you've definitely gotta put your own twist to it. Dale: We've loosely chatted about it but I think if we are going to do covers we would like to take something that would seem unlikely for us to do, people would expect us to do Alice in Chains or Soundgarden. You mean like a Girls Aloud cover? Dale: (laughs) Yeah something like that, we've just done a cover of Careless Whisper, and people are like "why did you do that?!" But when they hear it they are like wow it sounds like Seether; it's all good fun. You've also had your music used on a number of movies etc. - what do you think makes your music so effective for film and TV? John: We have a very resourceful label! (laughs) Do you find it flattering though? John: Definitely! As you sit there watching the movie credits go by and see song by, music by and your name's there, it's kinda cool! Your last major release was 'Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces' back in 2007 - what are your plans for any up-coming recordings? John: There are a lot of ideas in the works. I thinks there's tons of demos, B-side songs we recorded, that we think would make like a prolific box set, a couple CDs, maybe talking about a DVD, but as far as new stuff we're winding things down by the end of summer, hopefully doing a couple of festivals, but I'd say hopefully by fall we will have some rehearsal space. Can you give any clues about festivals or are you not allowed to say? Are you going to do Download? John: Aw we'd love too! Dale: We'd love too. We dunno, it's a case of seeing what we can get onto and all of that, but it's certainly something we'd like to do. Download's such an amazing festival too! Dale: Yeah we played it last year for the first time and the response was great. We didn't know what to expect. We'd heard horror stories from friends about the crowd throwing bottles! Yeah My Chemical Romance got bottled off a few years ago! Dale: Yeah and we didn't know what was going to happen with it, and we went on and no one threw anything (laughs), and people were really enjoying it, so I think if we went back this year the response would be so much better cause last year was great. What do you think the future will hold for the band - can we expect another 10 years of Seether to come? Dale: Hopefully, yeah! We haven't shown any signs of slowing down, we're all still really dedicated, we all love what we do and we all love playing music. We're in a place now where all the work we put in, its all really paying off, just enjoying being able to play guitar to people, getting on nice tours. Yeah I think we will keep doing this so long as people keep coming to the shows and buy our cds and stuff like that!
Photos and interview by Lucy Pryor. This interview was carried out at the O2 Academy, Birmingham on 25/01/2009. Thanks to Rachel P for sorting out the interview for us and John and Dale for being interviewed. Check out seether.com. for more info and forthcoming US tour dates. Also online at pushtofire.com now - photos and a review from their Birmingham show!