Sevendust Story Page 3
The album was recorded at the idyllic Long View Farms Studios outside of Boston. Morgan's wife Rayna and her band Coal Chamber had recently put together Chamber Music there and reports came back positive. Fostering a collaborative attitude this time around was producer Toby Wright. Morgan explains: "Actually on this record we were given the opportunity to have a big say-so. Everybody probably had equal say, but me and Clint really took a lot of pride in busting our tails on this album. We were given the opportunity by the producer to call some shots. On the first one is it was more like 'you're young and green and you don't know what the hell you are doing. Just sit back and we'll tell you what to do." Further on the group hug front, the band also secured guest slots from Skunk Anansie's Skin and Chino from band fave The Deftones.
But to emphasize, this is a band that has hit the big time the old-fashioned way, tons of touring, backing up all the bands from full-on metal types to the latest bounce bands. Now headlining, Sevendust can look back and laugh. But they've always done that. "I'll tell you one thing," offers Morgan. "We've never been a band who ever bitched about room or anything. When we opened up for bands, we were just happy to be opening up for them. It was like, we wanted to be on the tour, so deal with it. So I won't mention any names of who we had trouble with, but I would say that, a word to bands who are playing with other bands: when you're opening up, shut up. We did. We played with Limp Bizkit who are very good friends of ours. I mean, these guys are good friends of ours. We set up in front of them. I was handing out drumsticks to kids without getting off my seat. Lajon couldn't even stand in front of me; not even close on many nights. We never bitched about it. We laughed about it. We would say, 'man, we're so close.' And it would be disappointing but at the same time we were playing in front of 2000 or 3000 people at night. And we would say, 'you know what? This is not our tour. Anybody would want to be on this tour, so I'm going to shut up.' I don't like bands who go, 'we need this, and we need that.' I mean, there's nothing wrong with asking about it, but ask once, see what happens. Our crew and the way that we work, we try to make everybody happy, but we're not going to sacrifice our show for somebody else when we're spending the money and paid our dues on that level. That's just my cue on the bad people. On good people, Snot was our favorite tour."
Clint picks up the thread, agreeing whole-heartedly. "Yes, definitely, we were basically just feeding off of each other, you know? We had a healthy competition going with Snot because when we first started touring, we went out with a bunch of light bands, really wrong packages. Then when we got with Snot, they were the first bands that just turned it on; they'd like "go off" on stage, the same five piece that we have, a lot of the same sorts of backgrounds too. There was just such a good energy coming from both bands. We just wanted to do as well to destroy them as they did to us. And we became best friends with them."