NEVERMORE Interview with Jim
via phone September 30, 2000
Amazing events take place at my house. The amount of coincidence on these things should be studied by some paranormal scientists or something. The first Nevermore interview I ever scheduled, earlier this year, with Warrel was messed up. He got some wrong interview times. I sat there excited, awaiting this call from THE Warrel Dane, and all day, no call. So about six hours later I decided to get online and email Century Media to find out what happened and try to reschedule. What happens about 15 minutes into my Internet session? Warrel calls and gets my voice mail. However, I still have the message he left saved on my voice mail. And I eventually did interview him, and even better, it was in person.
Round Two, September. New album, new interview. Scheduled this time with Jim Shepard. I get my questions all ready, set up the recorder, and for once, I am all set to go. The interview was scheduled for 4:00pm. Right at 3:59 the guitarist for one of the bands I manage decides to call. Conversation went something like:
Kevin: "Hi..."
Me (cutting him off): "Hi, NevermoreisgonnacallIgottagobye."
Kevin: "Oh okay, bye then."
Total conversation time: Approximately under one minute.
Again, I sit and wait, play some solitaire, ponder what could have happened this time around. I think, nah, no way in hell. So 45 minutes later I decide to check the voice mail. Sure enough, as slim chances may have it, Jim called and left a message.
Want to see the coincidence factor rise some more? I have call waiting. If he had called two seconds after Kevin, it would have beeped, indicating another call and I would have talked to him. This means he called at the same exact time Kevin did and since the voice mail picks up when the line is busy, he got that instead.
Maybe Nevermore just has some weird voodoo on me.
ID: So how's the finger doing?
Jim: Grown back. I recorded almost all the record with it, so it healed just in time.
ID: So much for what the doctor said, huh?
Jim: Yeah. He was a moron.
ID: You switched producers this time, going with Andy Sneap instead of your usual Neal Kernon. Why the change?
Jim: We just felt that it was time for a change. We discussed it with our long-time friend and producer, Neal Kernon, and he agreed that we can't keep using the same producer, and he supported our choice, actually, of Andy Sneap. The main reason we picked Andy is because he's known for his tight and massive guitar sound, and we wanted to have a really big guitar sound on this one. I think after all is said and done with, we made a good choice and we're happy that we worked with him.
ID: Yeah, it's definitely a guitar-driven album. Early on in the studio diary that Warrel was writing, he compared the sound on this album to a combination of Carcass and Dreaming Neon Black. Would you agree with that description now that the album is finished?
Jim: Yeah, I think that's pretty close. I would say a cross between...Yeah, I think that's pretty good. I think it's pretty amazing that he said that.
ID: In the interview I did back in January [at the I-Rock Nightclub in Detroit] with Warrel, he said you've gotten heavier with each album. With Politics... it was musically, with DNB it was lyrically. How would you say you've gotten heavier with Dead Heart In A Dead World?
Jim: [Laughs] That's a good question. It's kind of a rock and roll cliché; every band says they'll be heavier. We definitely do strive to do that though, and I think that it was actually just a combination of all...We didn't spend a lot of time in preproduction and writing, trying to fix stuff that wasn't broken. We basically wanted to come off the road and go right into the studio and just, whatever was pent up inside us, just let it out. It was pretty much just a straight-forward metal album. I think that the fact that we just pretty much let the songs out in raw form. The songs are designed to work with production to make them a little heavier. It's amazing that somehow we can magically keep doing that. Each album they get a little closer, so if we can just top it a little bit I think we can do pretty good. Personally, it's my favorite so far. It's a little cliché; I think every band says that.
ID: Yeah, personally, I like this album and I think it is really heavy, but it's a complete opposite to Dreaming Neon Black. What is the lyrical concept this time behind the album? Or is there one?
Jim: With this record there's really no conceptual thread to it. I know that with Politics of Ecstasy even had kind of a connection between the songs about the crime in America at that time as far as the laws on drugs. On this one, the songs are individual. I think some of them do relate to the past. Like the song, "Inside Four Walls" is kind of a story that happened to us last year on tour where a good friend of ours was caught with possession of narcotics. It was his first offense and he's going to do more time than a lot of violent criminals, which is obviously wrong. We felt we kind of just needed to display that in Politics of Ecstasy. I don't know if it's karma or what, but after Politics Of Ecstacy, two years later the story comes true. Then there's the song, "Dead Heart in a Dead World," the title track that a lot of people ask about which Warrel attributes to just kind of summing up the emotions he went through with writing a record as personal as Dreaming Neon Black. That's just that no matter how desperate things seem there's a little light at the end of the tunnel. If you look hard enough there is a positive message in that song. It's mainly just a record we decided to lighten up and have some fun. Sounds like it might be a bit positive for us, but it turned out pretty cool. Songs like "We Disintegrate" are kind of a tribute back to the era of music we grew up listening to, like Priest and stuff. Nothing too serious, though it might sound like it.
ID: Actually, I was going to ask what "The Heart Collector" is about...
Jim: That, I think, is just some fantasy-philosophy that Warrel has. When he writes the lyrics he goes into a deep, dark hole. He usually does his writing late after midnight and after he's been drinking for days on end. He writes a lot of his inspiration from getting depression. "The Heart Collector" is a song that is more poetry than anything and would probably be better left to each listener to decide for his own interpretation of the song. I know that's where he gets a lot of his lyrical inspiration is from his depression.
ID: Has the departure of Tim changed Nevermore's writing process or sound at all?
Jim: No, not really. It started with the first record where it was just the four of us anyway, and Jeff usually writes all his music geared towards two guitar players. Tim did kind of shape Dreaming Neon Black a little bit by writing a couple of the songs. As far as this record, I think that actually it was a little more focused. And if we get a fifth member involved we kind of lose focus of the nucleus of Nevermore. When we came back to the four of us, we were kind of like, hey, this is how Nevermore started out as and this is what it's going to be. In the studio we worked a lot faster than we ever have. I think the album flows a little better and I think that's due to just the four of us working on it. Not to say anything negative at all about either of the guitar players, Tim or Pat O'Brien, we still regard highly on a list of friendship. I think from now on we'll probably remain a four-piece with the writing and in the studio, but we'll definitely have to have a hired guitar player for the tour.
ID: So is that where Curran Murphy comes into play?
Jim: Yep. He filled in for Pat O'Brien when he left during the Politics tour. And it's just kind of a coincidence that he's available again and wants to do some touring with us. He's in a band called Aggression Core locally in Seattle. They released a CD locally about a year ago and they're kind of quiet right now and he's shown a lot of interest in touring as long as possible with us.
ID: That's cool. It sounds to me that you're supporting your local scene.
Jim: Yeah, what's left of it. When grunge happened nobody was interested in booking metal bands at all, so it kind of disappeared. But it's slowly coming back. There's a couple of unions formed for metal bands around here, one of them is called the Head Trauma Coalition. They all work together to do shows at a low price and support each other. We're not a part of that, but we definitely support it.
ID: It's cool that you mention that because me and my brother, who's in Somber, are trying to start something like that here in Michigan because the metal scene is pretty much non-existent.
Jim: It definitely helps here because the bands work together, it keeps the advertising costs down, they share ads, they try to keep the ticket prices pretty low. It is kind of fading and it is sad. Some parts of the US it's really strong, other parts it's really weak. I'm not sure why that is. All you can do is not give up.
ID: There's a lot of people who can't wait to see you guys play again, like me. But I see you don't have a Detroit date listed this time...
Jim: We don't have any tour dates at all anymore.
ID: Yeah, I was going to ask, since Fates Warning cancelled are you still touring?
Jim: We're definitely gonna tour. For the last record we did four US tours. Two of them were just small tours. We definitely plan on touring non-stop in the US again as much as possible. Just because Fates Warning cancelled the tour doesn't mean we're gonna just give up. We're gonna keep looking for something to do. Eventually, we want to do a headline tour of the US in the markets that we feel we can definitely pull some people in to have some support from a European band like Sentenced or Dark Tranquillity.
ID: That would be awesome.
Jim: Right now we're looking for anything just to support. If a tour looks like it's going to happen in the US, we're definitely bidding to do a support right now. We have plans to tour in Europe in January/February, and then, of course, do the festivals. Last year, we toured Australia, we definitely want to do that again. And do South America. We're just kind of waiting right now. I think it's important to get something nailed down in the US before we make plans abroad.
ID: Is there anyplace you want to go that you didn't get to go last time?
Jim: Yeah, Scandinavia...Russia would be one. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, we haven't been there yet. Thanks to Century Media now, we have fans in Israel. One of our goals is to try to perform to all our fans wherever they are. It might be a tough task, but it's been done before.
ID: I read in a recent interview where Warrel said that you're already writing for the next album...
Jim: Yeah, we've started working on it a little bit. I think it's important to keep writing. I've noticed that depending on the writing period, the songs tend to change a little bit; have a different vibe. We write some songs now and then write some songs in the spring, we'll notice that there's a difference. We gotta write as many as we can before we get happy. [Laughs]
ID: Yeah! [Laughs] How many songs do you usually write then dismiss when you go to record?
Jim: Unlike pop bands, who probably write about sixty and then throw away twenty, we write about fourteen, tops, then we keep about eleven or so. We spend so much time on writing songs and making sure they're something we're happy with and we're not pressured to write pop songs. The record, I think, is seventeen. We wrote seventeen songs for one recording once. None of them got recorded, but...
ID: Do you have any sort of feeling of how you want the next album to be? Or are you just not trying to think that far ahead yet?
Jim: Yeah, we don't tend to think too far ahead. We usually just try not to go to recording with any preconceived ideas, we like to just let whatever's inside of us out. It's a pretty natural process.
ID: The cover tune this time was something I wouldn't expect from a metal band, "The Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel. Were you considering any other songs before deciding on that one? Actually, I heard that the whole album was supposed to be a cover album.
Jim: Well, we wanted to do an EP of all covers. An album would have been a little excessive. We were having a little trouble convincing our record company to do it, and by the time we were getting around to it everybody had one out. What we wanted to do was do something between this record and Dreaming Neon Black called Beyond the Black. It would just kind of feature bands that were important to us when we first started playing metal music. But the cover, "Sounds of Silence"...We hadn't planned on doing a cover for this album at all. Warrel always wanted to cover that song. I'm sure you can see some similarities between his lyrics and Paul Simon's lyrics, he was inspired by Paul Simon when he was a young musician. The opportunity came about when Jeff presented a song to Warrel that magically those lyrics and vocal melodies fit to. So it wasn't intentional to be a cover. In the past, we've always liked to take covers that we can change a little bit and bastardize, and I think this one definitely kind of stepped over the boundaries.
ID: What kind of press are you guys getting so far? I know you said you've been doing interviews since the beginning of this month at least. So far I've only heard good things, but usually with more success comes more interviews as well as more criticism and controversy.
Jim: I think that once you start getting a lot of negative input, it means enough people are caring to where you're attracting people that really don't like the band anyway. So far with the press, especially in Europe, it's been overwhelming. We've gotten album of the month in like seven major magazines over there, which is pretty much unheard of. Critical acclaim-wise, it's done really well over in Europe. I tend to be a little grounded in reality and not let that dictate what we're gonna plan in the future in any way. That doesn't mean you're going to sell a lot of records. We just wanna sell enough records to be happy and secure a little bit of a future, keep touring and playing music. With Century Media, the publicity department is amazing. I mean, I've never done this many interviews ever. But so far it's been all positive. With Dreaming Neon Black, every review or interview was either good or positive, with the exception of one in our hometown of Seattle here.
ID: Whaaaa?
Jim: Yep. I think the problem is that the press have bigger egos than the musicians do. When grunge died, it means this stopped getting a lot of attention. Instead of focusing on what's happening now, they tend to like to beat the dead horse with Nirvana. In the magazine that we got the bad review, they were like "Where's Nirvana?" It's pretty sad.
ID: Last time I spoke with Warrel he said that he keeps massive journals and wants to one day write a book based on what Dreaming Neon Black was about. Does he still have plans to do that someday?
Jim: Yeah, I keep trying to convince him that he would be a great author and that he should do some writing because his lyrics are so good. I think if he sat down for a short period and tried hard...I think it's something that you gotta allow yourself a lot of time to do, especially when getting over the hump of getting a first book out. I know it's definitely something that he's going to stick with and when he gets the time, he's probably going to sit down and start doing it. He's so busy with Nevermore it's impossible to find time sometimes.
ID: Well, that's all I have...Was there anything you wanted to add that I didn't cover?
Jim: Yeah, support that local metal scene there, and tell the guys that are opening for Crowbar tonight [one of the bands I manage, Mind Pollution --Jamie] that I wish them good luck with the show tonight.
