For 22 years, Maryland’s Clutch has been defying every possible rock norm and standard, carving their own unique path and earning a devout (and primarily bearded) following.
In 2013 Clutch released their most critically acclaimed album to date, Earth Rocker on their own label, and have been touring like a machine throughout the year in support of the album. We had a chance to talk with singer Neil Fallon about labels, Kanye, and (of course) vinyl before their December show in Washington, DC.
How’s 2013 wrapping up for Clutch?
It’s been a great year. It’s been a very busy year. Earth Rocker enjoyed a lot more success than I think we had braced ourselves for. I definitely…it’s been gratifying.
Earth Rocker has been out for about 10 months now, you’ve been touring almost solid since then. Looking back at the album, hindsight being 20/20, what are your thoughts on the album?
Well, I look at the things that we did correctly, for once. I think we can thank ourselves for planning in advance quite a bit. It was difficult for us, since we put it out on our own record label, we have to still be a band first and foremost, and plan creatively, but then we also have to plan business-wise, and that’s still a learning curve for us. It’s still a new thing. I’m glad we gave ourselves as much leeway as we did, as far as finishing it, not jamming it through.
Have your feelings towards the music itself on the album changed now that it’s had almost a year to sort of marinate, and now that you’ve been playing a lot of the material live for a year?
Not really. This is the first record that we’ve pretty much played every track off of, right off the bat. Some albums, some songs never saw the light of day outside of the studio. I love playing them live. I think that has to do with doing as much preproduction as we did. I mean, we beat the songs to death before we actually recorded it. That gave me the chance to get all the shoulda-coulda-woulda’s out of the way.
I remember seeing some of them live under working titles.
Yeah! You know, that’s always the best way to do it. I’m a terrible procrastinator. Terrible, and it always comes back to bite me in the ass. This was the least amount of procrastination of any record we’ve done.
You mentioned Weathermaker Music. You’ve had your own label, for some time now. Creatively, how freeing has that been for you?
It’s very freeing. It’s a bit more stressful for the same reasons.
Suddenly you’re on the business end of things now?
Yeah, and if anything goes wrong, we can’t be the band who says “Our label sucks.” [laughs] You know, we have to take care of it ourselves. But, the big thing for us, I think maybe psychologically, is we can plan in advance. I more or less know now what the next two years is going to be like. We’re gonna tour in the spring, do some touring in the summer, record another record in October, have it come out in spring of 2015, then probably tour for that one for a year. Because of that, it gets a big weight off of our shoulders. Every time we were with another label, it was always like we didn’t know what was happening, except for the next tour.
Being able to set your own schedules and deadlines must be a nice change.
Yeah, and it’s easier to wrap your head around things. I can dedicate time to stuff, instead of just kind of throwing shots in the dark where things may or may not happen. So, it’s pretty big.
You’ve been adding bands to the label as time goes on, with the most recent being Lionize, who you all are close with. How did that came about, and are you looking to increasingly grow the label, or is more of a pick and choose as you all feel situation?
Well, when it first started out, we would swear up and down that we would never do what we just did. We don’t want to be the bad dudes on the other side of the desk. Everything’s always very exciting when you get into a contract, but shit happens. It can be tricky, especially when you are dealing with people who you consider friends. At first it was just side projects, and that made sense.
Things like The Company Band?
Yeah, there’s that one connection. With Lionize, a big bonus…I don’t know if that’s the right word, but we know they tour like dogs, and they’ll work. That’s something that we kind of have to see.
I’m sure you can relate to that.
Yeah, and that’s what it really should be about, and not about, “Oh, we want to get signed to a label, and get cut a huge check.” It’s not gonna happen in 2014.
True.
I think if we were to do it again, it would be very conservatively, we’re not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes and say, you know, “We’re going to give you the best deal.” It’s not about that, it’s more about taking advantage of the structure that we’ve set up, and no one’s selling millions of records. Music like this, you can only expect so much. It’s about the shows.
Although Earth Rocker surprised and charted…
Yeah, it did. That was pretty shocking. I have a screenshot of that. [laughs] Number one on iTunes. It’s pretty cool.
Earth Rocker, while still being “Clutch,” had a somewhat different sound. You’ve mentioned that part of that was being influenced by the bands you toured with last year such as Thin Lizzy and Motorhead—bands with that straight ahead hard rock sound. What have your tourmates been like this year, and do you feel like there will be any of the same influence for next record?
It’s hard to say. With Thin Lizzy and Motorhead, I think the big thing that we all took away from that is that we were all listening to music performed by the people who wrote it, at a time when they were still defining the parameters of heavy music. Those guys were listening to stuff like Chuck Berry, and Little Richard, and what have you. Those artists didn’t seem so far away, they seemed immediate and still relevant. Maybe that has to do with age. the older that one gets, the more one appreciates the kind of bigger picture of things.
That was what we took away from those two bands. We’ve toured with some great bands since then, but we haven’t toured with any bands that are of that kind of pedigree. We’re kind of going in reverse as far as trying to “keep up with the Joneses.”
I don’t think Clutch has ever been a “Joneses” band.
We don’t listen to a lot of our contemporaries. We may hear them and say “that’s cool, but that’s not what we’re gonna do in our free time.” There’s so much undiscovered stuff from decades and decades and decades ago. That to me seems more interesting, musically.
You mentioned going back into the studio. Have you started writing any material for the next album, or is it just notes and bits at this point?
A little bit. Yeah, we come up with jams, and then…I’m the slowest one, when I try to write lyrics. It’s like pulling hair or teeth out sometimes. We’re going to stop touring as much as we have. In 2014 we’re going to dial that back considerably and focus on writing the next record.
If you look throughout your whole catalog, some of Clutch’s lyrical content is more straightforward, while some of it seems like wonderfully abstract musical poetry. What guides you when you are coming up with lyrics?
It’s always the same, and it’s always different. In an ideal world, lyrics would reflect the mood of the music. That’s always my favorite songs, when the lyrics sound like the music, and that’s a very difficult thing to achieve. I only think I’ve probably done it a couple of times.
I’ve often listen to your music and thought “Where did he come up with this?” [laughs]
Usually desperation. I treat every song as a fiction, and you know, I’m not writing from experience other than having read things and kind of taking it and running with it. I see it as a license to lie. Then no one can say you’re wrong. I lead a very lucky and blessed life that I don’t have stories to draw from, you know, from my time in prison, or when I was on my death-bed, or whatever.
That’s the joy of music though. Johnny Cash hadn’t been to prison when he wrote the most famous prison song ever.
Yeah, and everyone would swear he was. I don’t know, sometimes…it’s usually feast or famine. When I really try to write, I sit down, and usually what happens is I end up drinking too many beers, and then waking up the next day and having nothing to show for it. Inspiration usually comes when I’m sitting at a red light in my car, or at the grocery store, or taking a shower, and all of a sudden something just pops out of the sky, and I’ve just got to write it down before I forget it. That’s usually how a song starts.
If you listen to Transnational Speedway [League, Clutch’s debut album], then listen to Earth Rocker, then hit everything in between, Clutch’s sound has always remained “Clutch,” but has changed and morphed over the years. How do you see the progression of your sound? Has it been a very natural thing for you all, or has to been a “how you’re feeling at the time” kind of thing?
It’s never been something that we’ve talked about, and I think that’s for our benefit, because we’ve always relied on kind of a collective gut instinct. If we talked about it too much, then it would be over thinking it, and I don’t think music should be over thought, it should be from the heart.
An organic versus a forced feeling?
Yeah, and sometimes that takes you down some places you shouldn’t have gone, but you have to go there to get from point “A” to point “B,” you’ve got to take some detours sometimes. I think over the years we’ve tried to educate ourselves, become better musicians. I’ve tried to become a better singer. There was a time, shortly before Transnational, I thought melody was too commercial. You shouldn’t have melodies in songs. That’s 19-year-old hardcore Neil Fallon. I remember that guy, but he also had a very narrow world view. [laughs] I still listen to that music, and will always be a part of it, but I, like anyone else in the band have learned a lot since then. I think we, just by default, incorporate that into our music.
You just talked about “places you shouldn’t have gone.” Are there times you’d like to forget? If you could get out the eraser, maybe it’s a song or a lyric…one little thing you’d take the eraser to.
Well, you know, on one hand, I’d rather own it. [laughs] Everything, even if you grimace when you hear it…I think there’s a lot of…let’s talk about “Binge & Purge” for a second. That’s a song that people hear, and they get an idea of what the band’s about, because of the second half of the song, which is just a torrent of “motherfuckers.” I dig that people dig it, but at the same time, I don’t really feel compelled to go through the hoops and fake it, because I honestly don’t have that anger in my heart. It’s the only way I can say it. I can express it in different ways, more productively. Sometime people hear that, and they’re like “Well, that’s a sell-out.” Actually, I think it’s the opposite. I think a sell-out is somebody that’s just going through the motions to either make money, or satisfy people.
You were being true to yourself, just in that moment in time.
I mean, I would never erase that it’s there, but I think if we had continued to do stuff like that, I see bands that have painted themselves into corners with the whole, either the lyrical content, or just the whole idea of what the band is or cannot be. The next record [after Transnational], you had “Spacegrass.” [laughs] That was a much different thing, and that was sort of a reaction against that, I guess.
Anyone that has met or spent any time with any of the members of Clutch can attest that you are pretty down-to-earth, sort of anti-rock stars. In an industry famed for its excess, what keeps you grounded?
I guess…it’s a hard question because I don’t really think about it. Being a rock star seems like a lot of work. You know? It’s much easier to just be cool, and be honest. I’ve met some of the most famous people you can imagine, and they are the most down-to-earth people. Some of the people with the biggest egos, the megalomaniacal rock stars, have no business being megalomaniacal rock stars. Usually, that’s the case. The bigger they are, or the more successful or important they are, the more they realize that…there’s exceptions to the rule…
Kanye?
Yeah! It’s almost a front, to a degree. We’re a band, where sure, we have huge shows like this. There are some places overseas, like London or Athens that are just enormous shows for us, But we also still play dive bars, where there’s a couple hundred people showing up on a good night, and it’s good to have that reference all the time. You should always look at the glass as half full. The whole thing could go to shit overnight, I mean, god forbid one of us gets hurt, or, you know, I think we’ve always treated every show like the most important one.
Earth Rocker was released on vinyl, and was just re-released with a live picture disc. You have also re-released Blast Tyrant on vinyl. What are your thoughts on where the format fits into today’s music world?
I think it’s for people who are at a level of music aficionados, that maybe has kind of become its own thing because of mp3s, they’re so disposable and transient. You can download 18 hours of music in an instant, and only listen to 45 minutes of it. I know, I’m guilty of it too.
When you have a vinyl record, you’re actually physically dedicating a part of your day listening to something, because you have to move your body, and that means you’re stopping. You’re staying in a place, you’re not listening to this on a treadmill, or while I’m taking a shit or driving in a car, you’re stopping, and it’s almost a bit of a…
It’s a commitment.
Yeah, it’s a commitment, or you could call it an artistic sacrament to a degree. Then again, I also remind myself that the people who I hang out with are people who are really into music, and vinyl is probably a very select phenomena for us who live and breathe this stuff. I don’t see your average Kanye fan just waiting for the 180 gram release. You know?
Are you yourself still pretty into vinyl?
I am. On Sunday mornings it’s kind of a nice thing to do when you know you’re not gonna go out, you listen to some records. It’s relaxing. If you’re listening to a metal record, it can be relaxing. Sure, I listen to streaming internet radio, or my iTunes collection most of the time, but it’s more out of circumstance. Vinyl is a bit more of an elevated experience.
What are some memories of some records when you were young?
Mostly it would be of my father’s collection. He had a lot of 45s. A lot of goofy comedy songs, you know, like “Purple People Eater” and stuff like that. He gave me those, cause he wasn’t into that stuff anymore because he became an adult. [laughs] That, and my dad’s Beatles records.
I do think probably the one most important musical thing that I heard, and it’s pretty obscure…my dad was mostly into folk music, and the Everly brothers, but he had this one band called the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. They were this strange, acid rock psychedelic band from the ‘60s.
It’s an ok record, but they do this cover of a Zappa song called “Help, I’m a Rock,” and I remember listening to this on headphones, and it was the early days of stereo where everything got panned, obscenely left and right. Reverbs, and fuzzboxes and pitched-down vocals, and I remember being terrified of this song when I was 6, 7 years old. But I would listen to it over and over and over again, because I think it just showed me that music can also be outside of your verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus arrangement, which was pretty important I think.
What a cool memory. Do you have any plans on releasing the rest of Clutch’s back catalog on vinyl?
We’re talking about it. It’s difficult because a lot of that stuff is on Columbia and Atlantic.
The albums that haven’t moved over to Weathermaker?
Those albums will never get moved over to Weathermaker. At least, not while I’m on this earth. [laughs] Maybe my grandchildren will see that, but…we actually are talking to them about very slowly and very carefully getting those out on vinyl, cause it’s…for them, pressing up 3,000 Elephant Riders on vinyl is like a catering budget of an album release of theirs. For us, it’s something…would we make money off of it? No, but our fans would really dig it. So, we’re trying to do that, it’s just…dealing with so many lawyers, believe me, it’s a very delicate dance.
As you are touring, you don’t keep the same rehearsed setlist every night. Do you think that lends a little more to the live experience, people not being able to go on the internet, see what you played last night, and know what to expect tonight?
We had been doing that, like for our own benefit first. It just gets boring, playing the same setlists every night. I also find that’s where the mistakes happen, because if you play one song, and you know that you hate the next song, then you realize that you’re daydreaming, cause you’re just going through the motions. So, it’s better to flip it around a little bit and yeah, there’s that one song you’re terrified of, because you haven’t played it in three months, but thats good, because that gives you adrenaline, you’re thinking about it, and you’re more on point.
It’s just more of a live experience for the band, and it follows if the fans can pick up on that. We started posting our setlist on Instagram, and people started…to be honest, this past year the set lists haven’t been as varied as they have been in the past, and that’s because we’re supporting Earth Rocker, but I would imagine, moving forward after tonight we’ll start playing some older ones.
Is it exciting to pull out that song you haven’t played in 8, 10 years?
It is. Sometimes it’s a train wreck. We were gonna do “Basket of Eggs” tonight, but I honestly said “Guys, I don’t have time to relearn it.” [laughs], cause I had just got back home from visiting family in Colorado for a week, but we’ll do that tomorrow. But it is, I mean sometimes, you can rediscover a song you thought you didn’t like, and all of a sudden you do like it. They’re a lot like children. Some are well-behaved, some are not.
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PHOTO: DIRK BEHLAU
