Interview

CLUTCH

Dimanche 3 février 2013

How are you ?

Dan Maines : Good, good.

Your next album, Earth Rocker, will be out next month. What can you tell us about it ?

D.M. : It's out tenth record, our tenth full length record. It's the second studio record to come out on our own record label, Weathermaker Music .
It's eleven songs, produced by Machine from the New York/New Jersey area.
It comes out March 19th.

Are you playing any tracks from this album on this tour ?

D.M. : Yeah, we have about five songs we've been playing. Usually not more than three or four in a set but we're switching around between five different songs.
Tonight is I think our guitar player Tim's setlist. We switch up setlists every night. Each band member writes the set depending on which night it is. And tonight it's Tim's night so I can't tell you what we're going to be playing yet but it's probably gonna be at least three songs of the new one.
(Edit : the setlist from that gig is available here if you want to see it)

How's the tour going ?

D.M. : Really good ! For most part sold out shows. We started in London, we played a show in Amsterdam, Paris, five shows in Germany, here tonight, going to Copenhagen, Oslo and then Stockholm and then we're going back home after that.

© ChamO

You started 2013 with a tour in Europe and are already coming back in June for the summer festivals. What's so attracting here ? How come you tour Europe so much ?

D.M. : Erm... 'Cause it's great ! We always have a great time over here. It's the second biggest market for us outside the U.S. For whatever reason, you can't pick what parts of the world are gonna react to your music. We can play to 1000 people in Oslo but then go to Spain and play to 100 or 200 people. There's not much of a reason to it. As a band, all you can do is just hit the road and go to as many places as you can and just try to slowly build up an audience. We're not the kind of band that can really rely on radio play. So we're just a band that somebody's gonna catch in a night club and when they get home, they're gonna tell some friends about it and then the next time we come to their town, hopefully, we have more people come out to the shows.

Do you ever get tired of so much touring ?

D.M. : It can be pretty weary. We try not to tour more than say five or six weeks at a stretch, go home for a couple of weeks, just kind of deflate and chill out and then go back out.
This is gonna be a very intense touring cycle for us. Pretty much all of this year is more or less accounted for touring and it's probably gonna be more of the same for the first half of 2013... erm 2014 (not used to say 2013 yet). But as a band, that's what you want. You wanna be busy. So we're ready for it.

© ChamO

What's the secret for such a solid line-up ? You've been playing together for ages and are together a lot. How do you cope with that ?

D.M. : I think we have very similar personalities. There's not a lof of egos flying around. We give each other space when needed. It's something that you can figure up pretty quickly when you're travelling in a van, whether you're gonna be able to survive two or three weeks with these people or not. It was not an issue for us in the beginning and it never has been.
I don't really have an answer for it. I just know that it's rare and we're pretty lucky because I've seen a lot of bands kind of fall apart and it's never pretty when it happens.

How has it been working with your label ?

D.M. : Really good. Honestly we're kind of in the learning process. We had been on so many labels. Basically we have never put out more than one record on the same label throughout our career so we had a long list of things we knew we didn't want to happen with our label but the key was just finding people who had experience running a label and we are very fortunate to have someone working with us right now who's the label manager who has had a history of working in a lot of different capacities within the industry. It's very knowledgeable. It helps us with all the areas of running a label. We either just don't have the knowledge or the time to take care of it ourselves. We try to keep this go.

So you don't lose anything by doing things yourselves ?

D.M. : Well you don't have the seemingly endless resource of a major label, money stream, funding, marketing plan... So you just have to be wise. We do what we can with what's available to us. And it's just Clutch

Clutch

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-related for the most part. We haven't entertained the idea of going to night clubs and scouting out bands to sign to our label. It's just focused on Clutch

Clutch

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or side projects that involve members of Clutch

Clutch

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. So we're not spreading ourselves too thin and so far it's working out.

So you're not planning to sign other bands ?

D.M. : It's not on the immediate horizon but I'm not gonna discount it. That's something that may or may not happen in the future but it's just not something we're thinking about right now.

© ChamO

Are there any bands you're into at the moment ?

D.M. : At the moment, let's see... I'm trying to think of the last couple of records I've bought. Most of the time the records I buy are ten or fifteen years old anyway so... I bought the new The Sword

The Sword

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album. I really like that one. Are you familiar with them ?
My advice to bands is just to focus on the music and not all the things that can occupy your time outside of that. Just focus on the music and focus on shows and just play as often as you can because that's what's gonna lead to more opportunities really.

Anything else you'd like to say ?

D.M. : The record comes out in the first two weeks of March and please come out to a show anytime in your area and check us out !