By Martin Popoff
Both Josh and Keith enthusiastically credit producer John Travis with dragging the best out of the band. "I think the biggest difference from the outset was working with John," notes Keith. "We had gone through the process of making demos, sending them out, interviewing and sitting down with guys like Toby Wright, even Kevin Shirley, people who have made records that we really dig. But the reason we ultimately went with John is that he's a fan of the band and he likes the music we love which is ultimately a little bit older, and he understood how important this record was for us, our need to make a record for the year 2001, and not to recreate someone else's record. He was the only guy who was going to do that. So working with him, his input from the pre-production phase of writing the songs and the arrangements, the way he pushed us, that had a lot to do with the way this record ended up. I think a lot of producers are almost afraid of letting the band explore their ideas, because they are the producer; the need to be sven gali-like and mastermind it. But John was really cool about letting us do other things. If we heard a lyric or a riff or whatever, he'd say 'let's get it down first, and then we'll talk about it,' instead of shutting the creative process down, and doing it his way."
"John was a really musical guy and he had the same philosophy as us," adds Josh. "He was like, 'we're not going into the studio unless we have a 12 song record that is undeniable.' And we were like 'yeah, that's exactly the way we feel.' So we spent a lot of time outside of the studio. And vocally, I really wanted to spend more time. He was really talking about a lot of areas of my voice that he really wanted to bring out more than I did on the first record. And when he said that to me, it was like 'God, he really pays attention.' And it wasn't just that. Just in talking about the rhythm section, just the bass and drums and how they're working together. I was like, 'man, this guy...', and this was just our first conversation after he had just listened to the demos."
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