 Everything's great man, just came from the dentist and my teeth are they can be wider, but they're I don't have any cavities That's important thing and you know no mouth cancer yet. So good good news Good news. Good hygiene is good news, especially when you're on the road, you know You have a dentist, you know, you have tooth pains on the road. That's the worst thing in the world Oh god that happened to brawn like when brawn I played this man today is the day years and years and years ago We both were dirt broke poor, maybe showered once a week if we were lucky and we were in Arizona somewhere and he had a He's always had really bad teeth problems and he had a You know America, there's no insurance on anything definitely not dental insurance But he had an abscess tooth and we stopped in Arizona because it hurt him so much He's like I just can't go on anymore. I can't play my head is throbbing and he literally got into the Operating room or in the chair and they're about to do this extraction of a tooth And they The dentist came in and said, what are you doing? You can't no you can't take these guys to that. It's all infected but you could kill it he had to like We had I don't know what they did, but they they couldn't have pulled the tooth out there They were they almost antibiotics antibiotics Antibiotics were like a week and then by the time we go home from that tour Then you had to go in and see a real dentist and probably pay out the nose for it. So Anyway, yeah, keep your floss every day kids There you go. Um, all right big tour coming up in april with a gorgera, right? Going right through uh, north america two legs from what I remember Um, what's you've toured with these guys in the past. So what's what's the difference? Or what between the two bands that you've noticed like musically or even, you know on stage Um, well, yeah, we've been friends with gojiro the the gojiro's for a long long time Uh, joe jira. He's a good friend You know, I just think there's some camaraderie with those guys. They're just like They're pretty soft spoken french dudes who play really heavy fucking music and I I commend them and applaud them on on all that they have achieved over their career, you know, they're uh when I first met joe and well Honestly, when I first met joe and mario He they didn't really speak english very much and I remember talking to joe and was like listen, man You ever need to know anything in english? Please just ask me because i'm not I'm not like the french who oh, you're not seeing it right Like I will teach you whatever you want, man And we that's how we kind of bonded on the first tour and we've just always Had a really good time with those guys and now they they're like speak better english than I do Which is which is incredible But anyway, uh, no those guys the difference between, you know, they're a very mechanical band. They are very almost, dare I say industrial To a to a certain point, you know what I mean? um Meaning like compared to master now, I feel like we're a little more organic Three spirited type of band, you know, we definitely have our mechanical moments, but uh, I think we've both influenced each other's writing and playing and And just kind of like the things we do As as a band on tour and You know video wise and the actual Essence of the show and visual wise just looking at like what's going on. I mean um Yeah, I just you know, sometimes when I'm writing I'm like, oh, that kind of sounds like a gojiro riff That's fucking sick like the last riff in pain with an anchor. I was like, this is very gojiro. It's very It's very robotic. It's very machine-like Very percussive and it's I was like, this is cool. I like this and and I know that gojiro would approve um But you know a lot of times I look at their what you know, I've seen them play a million times even when we're not on tour And I've just been like wow these guys like they they pour everything into their stage show And I remember talking to joe like early on and I'm like, how do you afford To be married with two kids own a recording studio and live in new york city and you know Be an immigrant And play in your band because I know how much our band makes and I wouldn't be able to afford all those things like How do you fucking do it? And he's like I I don't and I know that you pour all your money into the stage show and the flashbox The fire and you know the coordination of Of everything that's happening. So I know basically that they they pour their heart and soul into all that stuff Yeah, so it's a great package, right? It's a great package between you two guys on this tour Yeah, I feel like we're family. You know what I mean? I just feel like we're very we're brethren We're just like we're we're almost cut from the same cloth You know we're all I'm from a small town in upstate new york and it's just like they're from a small town in france and Now we're you know now we're out there touring the world together or touring, you know North america, hopefully the world. Hopefully we'll do smart touring with this package is great. I love it I do it all day long Your latest album. I can't even believe it's 2021 hushed and grim. Can you believe that 2021? It's 2023 now. Yeah 2023 now. All right. So okay, you have your double album. Whoops the other way around um How much of that? Is there pink floyd and like rush injected into it From from a from a musical riff guy You know, it's all peppered in there honestly You know the pink floyd I've always liked i've always loved, you know, uh classic rock. I mean i'm 52 this year. So I grew up on zeppelin the beetles Pink floyd king crimson, especially rush rush was definitely one of the early One of the bands that I could actually play some of their riffs when I first got a guitar at 15 years old So, you know 1986 I was like, uh, cool. What's this band rush all about and Alex lifeson was kind of like my first guitar hero. So this guy's really cool. I like his I couldn't play his solos But I'd like the songwriting, you know just the fact that they They didn't do stuff the same every single time if you listen to any of their songs It's like oh the here comes that here comes the chorus again. Are they gonna change instead of three? They do five or they do four and a half for something weird. Why'd they do that? Oh, I don't know just to be proggy. I guess I guess that's what it was. So Once in a while we like to uh throw something like that in the mix and just get a little I mean we're not masters of it like like rush are but All that like psychedelics, uh, you know We like we definitely did our share of lsd and hot and whatnot and in our days. So like We know what people going to a concert are trying to experience, you know, they're uh It might be on some drugs. They might be uh, just wanting to have a good time and hear some crazy weird keyboards and delays and uh guitar solos and Have some cool lights and video and we're always trying to make our show better as well You know, like I said, we kind of learned from gojira those guys You know that you expect to see something really wild when you go to one of our shows now it's like you know, this is uh Yeah, step it up. So have you met have you met the guys in rush? I've never met them. No, I never even got to see rush. That's the really wow. I'm very bummed about that Yeah, I never got to see them like every time they'd come through Atlanta We were on tour remember they came through here before obviously before neil died So god rush is coming. I'm like fuck. We're gonna be on tour then One of the last tours so Yeah As a canadian, you know rush is sort of if you haven't seen rush in concert then, you know, it's it's just You lost something wrong with you from As a canadian in canada. That is in canada. Maybe yeah It's part of your heritage Yeah, you know Danny carries but he did a couple guest appearances with those guys and you know Speaking of rush, I you know a couple years ago. I did a I kind of orchestrated With the guys in the two minutes to late or two minutes to two minutes to late night. Yeah We did the rush cover And we did the like the the covid videos Things you know and that was really really fun and When they were saying, you know when I said let's do a rush cover and they're like, okay. Yeah, let's um Let's do that. Uh, and I was like, well, wait a minute. Who's gonna play the drums first of all And who's gonna play the bass because it's got to be like Really really good players and then I just automatically thought like Well, danny carry would be the bad Former I could imagine to play that I'm like, and I know danny I could call danny and then I was like, you know what less glaple would be my First pick at a bass player and I know less too. I don't know if he'll do it, but I'll just tell him danny's doing it until danny less is doing it and then we're gonna do it That's kind of how it worked out And man was that came out really really cool way better than I thought, you know I'm not really a solo guitar player, but I I pulled off a decent solo in that song. It felt like it was fun Cool. Cool. What have you learned the right way? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, they're a type of band if you don't do it the right way knives out, right? Um, yeah What have you learned? Okay, it's been 2019 since your last album Is this do you guys write on the road you think of stuff on the road for the next? I mean, it's been two years now. So I kind of would think things are percolating in the brain, right? And always Yeah, there's no There's no like shut off valve for writing and riff writing and stuff like that. It just is always happening and You know, I'm always writing. I'm always I'm always, uh, you know 75 of my day. I'm usually playing guitar And I'm always writing stuff That's got lots of ideas Uh, we actually think we're trying to be ambitious enough to write a song before we leave for this next Gojira tour and have it come out at some point, you know during the tour before the tour in between the two legs who knows So All right Yeah Do you I mean I would think that now's the time you're going to start thinking about okay after the tour We're going to write a new album. I I is that sort of in In the works Absolutely. Yeah I mean, I I'm always assembling riffs I've got a few skeleton ideas, but it's You know, it's it's been tough. We've just been Even even though we've had this time this downtime. I've still been busy doing other things, you know, life doesn't revolve around Mastodon for me. It's like Got two kids and a wife that I you know need to be there for and my two dogs There's a lot of stuff going on but You know I'm definitely eager and really ready to get started writing the next record and uh You know, I don't I don't there's no shortage of riffage or ideas or anything, you know, we're uh We still get a lot of creativity left in our band and as you know as for different individual guys and we're all 100 committed to our band so You know as soon as we get home from this touring cycle, which you know We'll uh probably write a few ideas on the road and you know I'm well I'm ready to show the guys some of the stuff I got and get a jump start So when we get home from the tour, it's like all right, we got We got some ideas and uh You know, I own a recording studio and that's where we did our last record. So It was it's real easy just to book some time there and and just go down and When we feel beat like being creative we can And uh, you know, it's it's just different now that we have our own Or our hands on our own studio, you know, instead of having to book time and then you're on a schedule and it's like You're always looking at the clock I feel like now we just we can be more creative and take our time Like we did with the last record When you toured with ghosts, which was a big, you know, it's a big deal, you know ghosts They're really big this right now, especially in the metal world Did you find maybe they're rubbing off on you in terms of more simplistic straightforward songs or Because bands influence influence each other like you said before like gorgias, you know, there's there's there's you know Every if you're hanging around with someone long enough, you're bound to be influenced in some way or another Do you think they may have rubbed off for the next album I don't know maybe Maybe You know, I mean watching them You know, it's it's they they're they're doing their thing and they do it really well And to me listening to when I listen to the music, I'm like wow, this is almost like pop metal it's like A lot of the stuff sounds like Things I've already heard in the past but done In done now And you know, it's a lot of it I mean, I'm not saying this as a disc but it does a little bit of it sounds like rehashed like other stuff, but Done done in their own way. It's it's very cool And it's uh Again, you know, I did I would watch them and see try to take notes of like, how can we become a bigger band? How can we What are they doing that we're not how can we be more engaged with the crowd, you know? They do different things backstage. They have different merchandise options they have a different pedigree for touring and You know, they want to be the biggest band in the world and they They're not afraid to tour Not eight months out of the year or whatever it is, you know, I I try to take all that stuff into consideration. I mean I'm only one of Four guys in in our business in our band, you know, so it's not like I make all the decisions, but I definitely Make notes of all these things and bring it up like hey, well, you know ghost does this and go jurid You know, I know what's one thing that you learned from ghosts that you said, you know what we should adopt that business wise or music wise or whatever the case is Stage maker, of course We got to start wearing some you know, we got to get a shtick here We maybe get like, you know some big stars and some cat whiskers and stuff like that I don't know. You know that what they do is is When when they first came out, I was like, this is either gonna go over really really well or it's gonna Fucking flop and they're not gonna be a band in a year and and they just they did really really well And they still are so they're doing something right, you know what I mean? and I feel like we've always been doing stuff, right, but uh We've been a band for 23 years now and it's like Well, what could what could we do better? What can we you know? What's the next level? There's always Stepping stones to get to the next level, you know, I I never want to Just be adamant with where we are and be like, yeah, this is it. This is this is as big as you can get It's like no, let's just keep on striving for the next tier and What would you like to go musically that you haven't gone in the past? Um, I covered a lot of ground you've covered a lot of ground. I mean I don't know. I mean, we've talked about doing like a punk rock album where it's like much quicker faster straight to the you know Just straight to the punch kind of really fast Faster music and and I don't know we've talked about doing that. We've talked about rock operas. We've talked about soundscapes There's still a lot of stuff that we have to explore and there's a lot of places in the planet We haven't been to yet either, you know, and there's a lot a lot, you know We're not thrown into towel by any means we got a lot of stuff on the horizon and things that we need to check off the list So All right. Here's the last question What did the metallica tour the death magnetic tour mean for mastodon back in the day? I think it was like 2009 Oh man That's kind of when I thought like wow, we've really made it We've we've we're touring with metallica who are like, you know we're my idols as a 16 17 year Old kid learning to play guitar buying it a white explorer And changing my whole sound, you know, just to be like wow, I want to be like this band These guys are great. They look like normal dudes. They got ripped jeans on leather jackets They sing about cool shit So, you know going on that tour I was like, wow, man This is like doesn't get any bigger than touring with this band because these guys are like the biggest fucking band in the world They went to south america We went to a bunch of shows in europe with them It was just a lot of fun and it was uh You know, it was I just kind of realized like man, we need to step it up because When we got out there, we were still a pretty small band and we didn't have a huge budget to be out there and and they kind of threw us on Right as doors were opening Every night in these massive arenas, which sometimes we're playing in front of just people You know most most nights are just playing for trickling in people who are just like, oh, what's going on? Not really much of a sound check Uh, I don't think we had a proper monitor person on that tour or we had fired somebody or somebody felt through and I think we were just trying out in-ear monitors and we're we're in the round The big circular stage which we had no idea what to do. What the fuck do we do at this? It's the big round stage. We're used to facing one way And every night before the uh, every night we'd get out there on the stage We weren't we didn't know which where people were going to sit So we did we set up facing one direction And just hope that everybody sat in front of us to watch us So it was uh, there's a lot of learning curves thrown at us for that tour You know, I mean, we're much more equipped nowadays to go back out on tour with metallica. So that would be cool Yeah, you know, you don't really think of these things on a being on a round sort of Stage, right? Like where are you gonna look? Where are you gonna look at? I mean, and how do you run around? Well, you know people are going they're going to their assigned seats So they could there's people behind us there's people to the sides of us So we had to start, you know, we had a a group huddle We're like, okay, bill you run that way during this song Brent You run that way during that song Troy's like I can't run anywhere. I have to sing right here I there's only one, you know So I'm running around in circles like an idiot and Brent's running the other way And we probably ran into each other once or twice on the other side, but We just uh, we just did the best we could and just tried to have a good time Which which was great I was it I was in heaven because I'm like, hey, or we're all over south america with My favorite band of the world Metallica. So this is just killing. I'm not complaining at all. Whatever we got We play half an hour and we're done Yeah, yeah, here's the last question actually. How do you guys keep it together? Like there's so many bands. There's so much drama there's What's the secret to keeping the band together all these years, you know intact And and from the outside it looks like you guys get along musically and personally Uh What's the secret sauce a lot of bands, you know, I interview bands all the time and I got to tell you the drama You know this guy's suing that guy and Rick, you know Well, we've been really fortunate. I mean when we first started this band it was my idea because We started the band and then we had to get like lawyers and You know create an LLC create a business and my owner the lawyer asking me like What shared goes to everybody like how do you how are you gonna split up all your profits in this business? Because now it's become a business because the band was big enough where you have to have an entity have to have a name You have to have an ID number all this crap and I said I said, you know divide everything equally because if even if Brent was writing all the songs even if I were writing all the songs or brawn was writing all the songs or Troy was writing all the songs. It's different almost every album. There's different people are doing different things and it to me it was like In the early days, Troy didn't write a lot of the Songs but he did other things, you know what I mean like he everybody always takes it down to like Well, this this guy writes all the music So like like for instance like weezer or something like that's usually Probably 99 rivers Cuomo like it's his smashing pumpkins bashing pumpkins. Like I didn't want to be a band like that because once Once he starts saying well if I write more songs I get more money Then the band starts turning this evil direction that I don't I didn't want to see that coming I didn't want to fight about that kind of stuff. I was like Look man, maybe this record like so and so didn't write that much But he fucking drove the van like every fucking night Or he stands in the middle and define what writing is is a drum beat Writing a song and that could yeah turn the song into something else Right is writing the lyrics or versus writing the music and like I didn't I just didn't want to fight over that shit So usually if you look at All the credits on all our records it always says written but written to produce my mastodon it doesn't say like oh bill wrote this one and Troy wrote that one. It's just we don't it's not an ego thing you have to keep the egos out of it because You know once you get to that point where you you know, well, you're gonna get paid more if you write and you sing Okay, well, I'm gonna write more and sing and then then it's you're just writing and singing for the sake of the money And it's not about the money, you know, I'm not in a band to make money. I mean the money When I started the band I was like, this is just fun. We weren't we didn't make any money for the first Six seven years, you know, I was like I just enjoy jumping in a van and playing loud guitar In all these little clubs and bars all over the country. This is really fun. I get to travel and do all the neat stuff and You know the thing is money always complicates everything So when the band starts getting bigger and there's bonuses, you know, like signing bonus or whatever and everything's You know split evenly between everyone and I think that's a big part of it Uh, we've kept the same four guys and you know, we're not without our drama and our problems but we try to keep that stuff like to ourselves, you know, it's more personal and uh It's not really for public consumption like that. I don't want to be Looked at like that, you know, I mean I we're we're just four normal guys that uh You know write music together and tour and hopefully we can just Keep that image, you know, we we do get along and we haven't we're all we all have the eye on the prize Which is doing what we love for a living and being able to maintain that All right on that note well said um The last their latest album hushed and grim you could still pick it up. It's out there Waiting for the next album and of course the tour starts in portland in april 18th in the us And rolling into canada as well on a second leg. I believe Yeah, all the way to september. Jeez. That's a that's that's extensive Well, congratulations. Yeah, it's really only three and a half weeks each to each leg. So it's not that much but I would prefer While it's going april may and then yes, you're right Then there's a break and then it starts into august again to september Yeah, but it's gonna be awesome. I'm really looking forward to it And I wish we had more days in canada, but uh, we'll take what we can and it's great talking to you Thanks for the interview