DevilDriver goes outlaw by reimagining country songs
DETAILS
Ask Dez Fafara a question and the loquacious singer of DevilDriver delivers a complete answer.
For example, a query about how veteran bands, like his now-15-year-old metal outfit, seem to settle in and get better and better got this response:
“Anything you do over and over, repetition, you get better. It's called practice. It's not just when we're at practice. It's when we're on stage we're practicing. And we're on stage constantly, nightly, so of course, things are going to get better.
“And you have the other things within a band as well, that really do help sometimes or hinder, like lineup changes,” Fafara continues in a phone interview. “After 12, 13, 14 years, I finally had a lineup change of a few dudes. What that did was help the camaraderie so much, it feels like we all just got out of school and we're rushing to go to rehearsal again, like you are when you're a kid. That adds so much to the longevity of it.
“The vibe within a band has got to really be on point. When guys are fighting, you can tell. You can tell on the record and you can for sure tell on tour. There's no better telltale space when a band is fighting is when they go on stage.
“And I'm going to tell you right now, I'm kind of a speak-itstraight kind of guy. At least 70 percent of the bands you know hate each other. But they still continue to tour because they all need to pay their bills. So they're doing it for commerce. You can see on stage, you can hear it on the records, you can see it backstage. It's disheartening. I'll never, personally, do that.”
Fafara says he left his previous band, Coal Chamber, for just those reasons. That band has now regrouped, so now Fafara has two rock groups, a surf business and a new management agency he's formed with wife to find and develop new bands.
For the fall, however, Fafara's emphasis is on DevilDriver, the band he founded in 2002, and on his latest project, “Outlaws Til The End,” an outlaw country album that features a bunch of notable heavy rockers doing covers of outlaw country songs their way.
There were 15 to 20 collaborators on the record. They include Lee Ving of Fear on Johnny Cash's “The Man
Comes Around” and David
Allan Coe's “The Ride”; Lamb of God's Randy Blythe and Mark Morton on “Whiskey River” (a song made famous by Willie Nelson); Hank Williams III on his original tune, “Country Heroes”; Brock Lindow of 36 Crazyfists on Steve Earle's “Copperhead Road”; and Burton C. Bell of Fear Factory (on a cover of Richard Thompson's “Dad's Gonna Kill Me,” a song that actually was originally not at all country).
Fafara gave an example of how the mix of songs and musicians worked.
“Picture ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky' done by DevilDriver heavy, done at the John Cash cabin with John Carter Cash, his wife, Randy (Blythe) from Lamb of God and myself,” he says. “That's just one song. Now take 10, 12, 13 songs and [most] every one has a guest and every one of them is just killing it. And we're only doing outlaw stuff. And we're doing it right. We're not trying to get on the radio. We're doing it how the outlaws would do. They'd come in and do it heavy. They'd do it outlaw style their way and we're doing outlaw style DevilDriver. We're doing it heavy as balls.”
As for the DevilDriver tour, it's going to be heavy, too — with a set list that should include something new for even the most dedicated fan.
“We're bringing songs from ‘Trust No One,” (2016 album),” he says. “But also for the people who have seen us two or three times, we're bringing a lot of tunes we haven't played in awhile. We're bringing the obvious, like ‘Clouds Over California' and stuff people want to hear and are very familiar with. But we're also doing four or five tunes that we've never played before or that most people have never seen live before. We're stepping it up on that front.”
“DevilDriver exists because we're a blue-collar work band,” Fafara says. “We go out and we work. We'll play a show with 400 people and we'll play a show with 40,000 people. We love to work. That's why we've hung on while a lot of the bands around us have gone to the wayside.”
While Fafara acknowledges that rap and dance music are getting the sales and attracting the kids that once went to rock, metal isn't going anywhere — and may even be on the verge of a comeback.
“I can tell you this. The enthusiasm for not only for DevilDriver, but heavy metal in general has not died out one bit,” Fafara says. “I just got into a conversation with an older manager guy about this subject. He said ‘Look, it's cyclical and it's come back around. When was heavy metal the biggest? When the Republicans were in office.' He brought all of these things into play that I didn't think of and said ‘heavy metal is on the rise.'”
That said, Fafara's new management firm, The Oracle, is on the lookout for a “real deal” punk band — members under 25, with spiked hair and spiked jacket playing the kind of music that came out in the late '70s and early '80s.
That's where the cycle stands now, Fafara says. Then comes New Wave, then comes metal.
Farfara, obviously, doesn't listen to a single style of music. As a kid, he listened to his parents' record collection — The Doors, Three Dog Night and '60s psychedelia. He played in psychobilly and punk bands and even now catches some heavy EDM.
Asked about his influences, he replied (short version): “I'm a Goth kid at heart that's got Bauhaus and Love and Rockets in his heart and sees Motorhead
DevilDriver
out his eyes. I'm just a different kind of cat.”
One thing he isn't is a purist. “As soon as you negate an art form you're missing out,” he says. “I always say the metal purist, who says ‘the only thing I listen to is metal' is a, either lying or B, he's missing out on a world of tunes. It means he's never had a rainy day and heard big band '40s music, he's never heard psychobilly or old school punk. He's never sat with his chick with a glass of wine and listened to Billie Holiday and stared at the moon. He's never rolled a joint and listened to Parliament Funkadelic. I didn't raise my kids like that. They listen to all kinds of music.
“I love all music ... I had a real rough childhood, an insane amount of inner turmoil at my house,” Fafara says. “Music got me through all of that stuff. When people hit me up on Instagram or Twitter and say ‘your music got me through' that never goes over my head. I always respond to people who make that comment.”
That said, Fafara admits he's got a favorite sound. “I've still got that dark little heart kid in me, I love anything that's new aggressive, dark, fresh, creepy, scary.”
L. Kent Wolgamott is a freelance writer. jodi.duckett@mcall.com Twitter @goguidelv 610-820-6704