Wow Lajon, the fourteenth album is ‘Truth Killer’ in the meantime. That is a lot of activity!
Yeah I am so excited about the release of the album and not only that, we also signed with a new label Napalm Records and we see already many things happening, not only doing videos and different things that we haven’t done in years, like talking to you and doing press overseas. I am pretty sure they are going to bring us back over there to tour in Europe.

That would be great! In 2021 you released the former album ‘Blood And Stones’. Of course you could not tour because the pandemic was raging the planet, but was it a big success? Only in the US or also in Europe?
I don’t know how big the success was, because it was a very weird time. We wanted to make sure that we put music out during that time, because we felt like people needed it, you know? We did not want to hold the album and wait until the pandemic was over, but it definitely affected the flow, the natural way that the album would have been accepted if we would be able to tour for the album too. I think it would have been a lot bigger, but I was very happy with the success of some songs. They are great songs, we are still playing them, but I am just so happy to be able to be back out, to go out on the road is some kind of normal setting, being in front of people. That is what we need to be doing. Music is meant as medicine, and I think it is time to give these folks their medicine again.

In that respect, the song ‘Holy Water’ made me wonder: are you a spiritual person, maybe even a religious person?
Yes of course! Very. Not the kind of preaching things, but definitely… something that we do every night before going on stage is that we pray together as a band in a circle. We all come from those backgrounds. Everyone went to church, growing up as kids, you know. Maybe not so much now, but it is definitely something as faith. I don’t care what you believe in, believe in something.

I can understand, because I was brought up as a catholic and these rituals sometimes moved me as a kid. They had a kind of otherworldly magic…
Absolutely. It is funny. ‘Holy Waters’ is definitely something that reminds us all of something we grew up with. I mean, I don’t do it anymore, but I remember me and my brother, we had to pray ‘now lay me down asleep beside the bed, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake’. We grew up doing that type of things as kids. So there is definitely a spiritual element in the album for sure.

You feel that. There is also a kind of contemplative atmosphere in the lyrics, they are deep-draught…
Yes, I think we can only write about things that we have gone through during our lives, and let me say that I don’t feel like that pandemic put a damn on everything, so when we went writing this album, we had all that energy and we wanted to put it in the songs. I see things in our music as a collage on canvas and we are able to play these songs. There are so many different kinds of things and that is what we are able to do, just make this wonderful collage of music that we want to free to let out at this point in our lives and in our career. We have new opportunities these days. I think that is obvious with the first single ‘I Might Let The Devil Win’. We never would have thought that we would release such a melodic song, but to me, it is one of our heaviest songs.

But the last track ‘Fence’ is ultimately heavy musically…
Well, that is old school Sevendust! Me and John (Connolly – guitar – Vera) were in the studio at the last day still working on that song and we had to put it on the album, because it was so familiar to the beginning days of Sevendust and that is something which is important to keep that vibe. Everybody seems to love it and it is great. I am so proud that we were able to do that.

I was always intrigued by the band name Sevendust. It makes me think of Stardust. Do you still remember how you came to that name?
Yeah but I like your version better than what the name really came from, but let me tell you. So we were in the middle of signing a record deal, years ago, and we could not use the name that we had. So we had to come up with a name and my bass player came in and we live in Georgia. This is the South, it is a country town and he bought a can of Stevendust and Stevendust is a pesticide that you put on vegetables. We called it Sevendust and we were thinking: ‘why not name the band Sevendust’? That was that, but anyways, I felt like seven is a heavenly and a good looking number and we are all created from dust. People say I smoked too much weed and it might be manifested through that (laughs).

So you are living now in Georgia, not in Atlanta?
I live in Kansas. I have been in KC for the last thirteen years. I don’t live in Georgia. There’s only two people from the band who live in Georgia right now.

So you are spread…
Yeah we’re an American band…

That reminds me of Grand Funk Railroad…
Yeah (laughs)

Another song we should talk about is ‘Superficial Drug’, because that should deal with social media and I am not a fan of it, I even don’t have a proper iPhone… So I am eager to hear what you think about that…
Oh wow! Let me tell you what. I still call with landline phone, so I am very old school with the social media thing. The only thing I do on social media is Instagram and it is more for the band and for my family. It is definitely a successful way for artists, but also on the political side, people behind their keyboards is a complete failure. I don’t get along with all that kind of stuff, at fifty years old I don’t have time for that, you know… I realized in the last couple of years during the pandemic, there’s a lot of people that I don’t have to talk to again. I don’t know, I think I just learned a lot. I felt like I learned a lot over the last few years with the pandemic. Not only by being a better father, but also being able to be present in my family’s life. That is something good you can’t take away from me anymore, because before I was always on the road and daddy’s missing all the details. Not being there the first day at school or picking them up for this and that. So that is something that I have taken and really goes to my heart and I also feel like going back to the album, that helped us write this album while being home with our kids and doing something different from the normal pandemic sense.