Witherfall – Interview met Jake Dreyer & Joseph Michael
Jake Dreyer: “Song-writing is like taking a big bunch of clay and then start shaping it and what comes out, is almost a revelation to you as a sculpture. It is always nice to hear something for the first time and it suits.”
Wie herinnert zich niet de fantastische albums die Amerikaanse bands als Nevermore, Sanctuary, Iced Earth of Metal Church ons geboden hebben? Het was glorieuze, stoere, maar ook emotionele heavy metal met een donker randje. Witherfall – eveneens afkomstig uit het Amerikaanse LA – neemt al enkele jaren de fakkel over met terecht bewierookte albums als ‘Nocturnes And Requiems’, ‘A Prelude To Sorrow’ en ‘Curse Of Autumn’ als luidruchtige getuigen van hun talent. Ook de in 2019 uitgebrachte EP ‘Vintage’ was niet te versmaden. Op de laatste dag van deze kletsnatte meimaand is er troost te vinden in ‘Sounds Of The Forgotten’, hun vierde langspeler. Een aimabel gesprek met de twee bezielers van deze band – zanger Joseph Michael en gitarist Jake Dreyer – was dan ook een aangename must die we rond de releasedatum publiceren.
Vera Matthijssens Ι 6 juni 2024
‘Sounds Of The Forgotten’ happens to be the fourth Witherfall album, but I have been following you since the beginning. I noticed that you had a lot of bad luck during the pandemic, because when you finally would come over to Europe, everything was cancelled. And it is in this solitaire time that you have written the new album, isn’t it?
Jake: ‘Yes we started working on ‘Sounds Of The Forgotten’ around the beginning of 2021. The corona virus destroyed all our tour plans, everything got cancelled. A tour with Evergrey was planned, but that was cancelled. That whole period was very dark for us, which I think you can hear on the record. For a lot of issues, but the worldwide pandemic stopping the touring prospects was certainly a big one.
Former albums mostly had a concept. Do the songs connect to each other this time?
Jake: ‘There is never really a concept, except for the record about Adam ‘A Prelude To Sorrow’. Mostly each record is a collection of stories, kind of like Stephen King’s collections of short stories, except these are in song form. This record deals with the frustrations that we were feeling and like asking the question: ‘how are we going to overcome all these obstacles, not only for the band but also in my personal life?’ There are any shared sympathies we all might have. Joseph wrote all the lyrics, sometimes I came up with a title and musically we work together. We haven’t really changed the recipe since the beginning when we were first talking in New York in 2017. My song-write process has always stayed the same. Nothing really has changed there. There is definitely a thread of uneasiness and disappointment in this record, but I think for someone else it was the light of a spark. The first songs sound very angry, but it also sounds like you are very joyful. That is very much true. It is like once that you have had all that you can take and then you just start smashing things off the table, throwing the TV out of the window… that is kind of how some of the songs are.’
We have a bit changes in the line-up again. We know drummer Marco Minnemann from the previous album, he did the new album in the studio, but he will not tour…
Jake: ‘With ‘Curse Of Autumn’ we had a deal with Marco that he would do the next record, because he just performed so great on ‘Curse Of Autumn’ and he is so easy working with in the studio. But he is a very busy guy. We can have him as studio drummer, but rehearsing and touring is a different thing. I sometimes think we are the Steely Dan of metal haha: two guys having different guys on the songs. Chris Tsaganeas plays percussion on this record and he is also our live guy. He is a fantastic member of the band too. There are no rules for having permanent members. I can easily write a part on an instrument, but that doesn’t mean that I am going to play it in the studio.’
A really new guy is Gerry Hirschfeld of Willie Nelson fame. It was Chris’ idea to bring him in as multi-instrumentalist…
Joseph: ‘We had some auditions and we chose Chris and then we were having some troubles with our old keyboard player Alex Nasla and I had happened to fell in for their band Wax Owls. I played keyboards for them at a show and I noticed that Gerry and my voice sounded really good together, doing harmonies at that show. So he came to me and said: ‘I hear that you are having trouble with your keyboard player. I’d like to take a chance and join the band’. I felt a little bit weird, because it was almost like you are married and you have kids, but you don’t like your wife and then there is this hot chick coming up to you, saying ‘hey, come to my hotel’. Gerry is super musical and he just knows how to serve a song with his parts. He is a real musician, we are a band full of musicians, lots of ideas and it was really cool in the studio. In the studio we were using all the analogue gear, like the Hammond organs and stuff. Gerry is really experienced with working on those and he came up with some wild ideas too. He is also a character (laughs). The whole band I think gets along now better than we have ever had. Yeah totally. We’d had some favourite personalities in the past, but they were lacking in other areas. All around this is a really good situation and as far as trying to bring Witherfall to live audiences we feel pretty confident.’
Did you already play live after the pandemic?
Jake: ‘Yes we played a couple of festivals. ProgPower…
Joseph: ‘Gerry wasn’t at ProgPower though.’
Jake: ‘Right. Gerry has done a few festivals in the US with us and then a few one off shows opening up for Cynic and Atheist. That was really cool. This guy comes from the folk/Indie background, so it is really funny if he sees a bunch of crazy metal heads.’
The album starts pretty heavy and one of the most brutal songs appears to be the fourth one called ‘Insidious’, but I am not really into your remark that it includes any Pink Floyd influences…
Jake: ‘The middle section when it gets a little weird there. Pink Floyd’s younger years with Syd Barrett. We are sounding very experimental in that section and then going back to the keyboard stuff there’s a lot of crazy effects going on. That is as far as the Pink Floyd influence goes but it is very briefly. I cannot imagine David Gilmour playing the main riff (laughs). It is funny, because there are actually no effects in there. It is just all analogue instrumentation, there are no effects on it in that section. It is crazy. We were listening to a lot of crazy sounds, like ‘Pink Floyd Live In Pompeii’. It sounds like it is a delay effect, that is actually because everything was miked up in that huge church in stereo, so we could actually bring up the volume of the different microphones and create that. So everything was done quite natural, there were no digital effects in there.’
Joseph: ‘We like to have fun in the studio itself, because it is impossible to overdo that. The studio has a bunch of cool vintage gear. It is very seventies, the way we make a record. It is very much like that. We wanted to get a studio vibe, with an organic sound. If you watch the video for ‘Where Do I Begin?’ you see a lot of the footage from the recording session.’
Jake: ‘Gerry looks like he is the singer from Bachman Turner Overdrive.’ (laughs)
The album was recorded in three months in the ‘Big Blue North Studios’ and I think you did not know that place before…
Joseph: ‘No. The funny thing is that I grew up in the city that it is in – Utica in New York – and I had been in that church before when someone had like a little tiny project studio. There was nothing like what it is today. So when we were looking for a place to go and make this record, I don’t want to say anything about the places I’ve checked out, but we were almost giving up and just record the record in fuckin’ LA. But I just did one last dig google and came out in New York. I was sceptical, but I had to go out there anyway for some family stuff and I walked in there and I could not believe what they had. It was insane! There’s probably more money and gear and wood working and acoustic treatment in that studio than how much all the buildings on that fuckin’ street that it is on costs.
Jake: ‘It is funny too, because even I was in Joseph’s hometown, which is the sneering studio, but in 2018 we were recording in a studio in my hometown which is still weird, because we are both from New York and Kansas City and now they have some ridiculous good studios that rival with the best in LA.’
That studio is also kind of connected to the one where Jimi Hendrix recorded ‘Electric Ladyland’ so it seems?
Joseph: ‘Yes, John Storyk is the engineer that did the acoustic build out, the treatment and the sound design from the then called Electric Lady Studios and he did the record ‘Electric Ladyland’ as well among other places. They brought in some serious heavy hitters. I don’t know why – because it is Utica – it is really remarkable though, the job they did. And they had even Rupert Neve bringing in like a custom Neve client.’
Inspiration for music is rather dark – sometimes infused with horror – but you turned it into something positive with the music…
Jake: ‘We are not as dark as black metal, but we are keeping our options open (laughs). The horror stuff is a kind of metaphor in it. It is just that there is not much of a way to express all the things we have in the lyrics without someone hurting himself in the video, drinking himself to death, dying of cancer, so we go with the horror thing, because it is supernatural and it is easier to digest.’
You say that you want to take the listener on a journey and I think you are getting better and better in it…
Jake: ‘When we first started, that’s what we wanted to do. Especially our favourite records, when you put them on it is like an experience and there are many heaps and valleys and surprise turns, but – for this one too – we wanted it to flow properly, so we went through a bunch of ways to get the actual track listing, so that it flows correctly. Hopefully it is done in the right way.’
Joseph: ‘The reason why there are twists and turns and you might be surprised sometimes, is that we are surprised too because we don’t know what we are going to do in advance. We don’t plan that this one has to be heavy or joyful or ‘we are going to write a ballad’… We don’t write like that. It is like taking a big bunch of clay and then start shaping it and what comes out, is almost a revelation to you as a sculpture. It is always nice to hear something for the first time and it suits. When you are working on something for so long, you don’t really get that fresh approach to it as the listener would. The surprises are always encouraged though, then you think ‘wow I can’t believe that it actually worked!’ I prefer – and I think Jake too – not to have all the stuff on the demo that is in our heads. We are both professional musicians and can do what’s going to be there without having the demo. I can imagine having to work like that, but when you perform something that you actually never heard in real life, it makes you act emotionally. It is different from trying to recreate a song that’s already been recorded, you know what I mean? For example, you pick a Metallica song and you know exactly what goes where and now you are just trying to recreate that magic of that recording. It is not the same as having the music on a sheet of paper or in your head and then being inspired while you are playing it and hearing it with the rest of the parts. It is different. It does something to the performance aspect. My vocals I never finish 100% until I have made the final take. I want to be surprised.’
Can you shine a light on the more mellow songs like ‘Where Do I Begin?’ and ‘When It All Falls Away’?
Jake: ‘We are always going to have ballads on our records or softer songs. That is nothing new for us, but we enjoy writing songs like that. Yet I think a song like ‘When It All Falls Away’, is rather new for Witherfall. We don’t have a song like that. It can be on a seventies prog r&b record which is just another challenge. Our influences from what we listen to are all over the place. It keeps us free, which is the main thing. We have to do different things, otherwise it is predictable. We have so many songs that we can go on tour with multiple different genres with different songs from the catalogue which I think is pretty cool. I actually don’t know what genre that song is honestly. It has so many different things. On the other hand ‘What Have You Done?’ is a crazy thrashy six A, an anthemic intro into a piano ballad and then it does multiple things after that. I don’t know any other bands who sound like us. I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing. That is the most disappointing thing: it is not if someone hates what they are hearing in the comments, it is when they are like ‘oh Blind Guardian did this first’ or ‘Symphony X did this before’. I listened to those bands, Witherfall is completely different.’
By the way ‘What Have You Done?’ is a marvellous diverse track, but throughout the whole song you hear the Hammond organ so clear and that is very nice…
Jake: ‘That was one of the hardest songs that we wrote for this record. It was just like we needed time to sit on it and find out where it is going to. It is probably one of those that we started on an earlier writing session and then it was the last one to be completed, which was like maybe a couple of weeks before we actually started recording and building the drums up for Marco, but it needed that time to figure out where it exactly was going to go. It is cool, because we always have the longer, bombastic epic tracks at the very end, but this one is completely different from any other of the lengthy songs we have done.’
Joseph: ‘The vocals, the lyrics and the final vocal melodies weren’t even done till just about the day I recorded it in Massachusetts. It actually made me change the choir verse and I did like three different melodies. I have taken the original one, it was one of the rare times when I had a melody but no lyrics in mind. Like Jake said: ‘sit on it’. That song is about Jon Schaffer, so I was like ‘can I do this? Shall I do this?’ but I have to… I mean, I cannot imagine that song any other way. It is about what it is about.’
You have seven videos, which is also something we need to mention! I think they are all done in the studio…
Joseph: ‘There is more than seven. I don’t know why it is keeping going around in the press. There is a video for every single song. We went back to Big Blue North in August. We have been recording and filming almost the entire year. We just filmed the narrative parts from ‘When It All Falls Away’ a week before it came out. Well we went back to Big Blue North and we just kind of set up different scenes. We used the space to create different atmospheres. All the videos are the band, but it was all recorded there. I think we did three videos in LA at that photo studio.’
Jake: ‘I think it was two. That was in October. Usually you have three songs that are pushed as quite important singles, but many people don’t really dive into the rest of the record. So these songs get abandoned. We have put all we can in all of the songs, so we really wanted to have all the songs their ‘moment in time’ so to speak. That is one reason why we wanted to do all the videos, so that each one has its moment of glory.’
Joseph: ‘Jake I just checked ‘Vintage’ on the CM YouTube page. It is tragic.’
Jake: ‘I know. The thing is: some of our best songs I think, like ‘Vintage’, got never to the people, only to fans who bought the album and listened to all the songs. The average listener maybe hears ‘Ode To Despair’ or ‘As I Lie Awake’ or something like that, but the rest of the songs not and that is kind of tragic, just like Joseph said. Maybe it is cool for people to mention a totally unknown song as favourite, but I am not happy with it as an artist.’
Joseph: ‘Especially our favourites and that is why we started our own labels.’
Jake: ‘We wanted to take back control over those things.’
You have your own label now DeathWave Records, instead of Century Media support…
Jake: ‘Originally, when we released ‘Nocturnes And Requiems’, it was on our own label. We just had formulized it, but I think it is important just to keep everything in the house for now. We are involved completely, even when we were on Century Media/Sony and things have been going much better on this album than on the last two, I can tell you.’
Are you planning to welcome other bands on your label?
Joseph: ‘There are no plans right now for that.’
It will be busy enough with Witherfall the upcoming time I guess…
Joseph: ‘I have always been interested in production and maybe Jake and I can delve into something like that, but that’s for the future if that happens.’
What are the plans for playing gigs or going on tour?
Joseph: ‘We are doing a festival in Mexico and we are doing two headline shows in September in Spain in Madrid and Pontevedra and from there we are going to the Storm Crusher festival in Germany which is near Munich. So that is on the agenda right now. There’s always talking about stuff happening, so we cannot say anything else, but those are definitely confirmed. It has been complicated since the pandemic. The prizes are going up, but not the fees for the bands.
We will welcome you in Europe at any time!
Thank you so much Vera for the support!
