Category Archives: Interviews

Dubstep DJ Leah Culver imagines big things in her future

Formerly known as MK Ultra, Leah Culver established herself in the Atlanta EDM scene before venturing out to Los Angeles to take her career to the next level. Known for dynamic performances that range from catchy pop hooks to aggressive breakbeats and low end, she now splits her time between the two cities. Following a massive performance at Imagine Festival last month, Culver returns to Atlanta for Iris Presents‘ Halloween party with Laidback Luke at Believe Music Hall. Wrestling with Pop Culture had a chance to talk to her about this show and other upcoming developments following her Imagine Festival set.

Leah Culver at this year’s Imagine Festival. Photo by DV Photo Video.

We last encountered each other at the 3Teeth show at The Masquerade last August. I take it you’re a fan.

I am absolutely a fan. Chase [Brawner, guitarist] worked at the production school I went to in L.A., so I met them out there. They’re just so insane to watch. I wouldn’t miss their show ever. It’s so raw and it makes you feel how you really feel.

You’ve played every Imagine Festival so far and you always bring a big production. In addition to having a full band and other performers on stage with you this year, you also had fellow Atlanta DJ SyLo helping you out. How did all that come together?

SyLo is so special and important in general to me because he started DJing a little bit before me, but I started in 2011 and he was a homie from the very beginning. I remember the day I met him, he just shook my hand and welcomed me in like one of the boys. Back then there weren’t a lot of girls, so it was nice to have a good friend like that. Over the years, we’ve played a million shows together. Then we did our Sex Sells duo for a while where we were performing together.

When I started singing on songs and decided I should be singing on my sets, at first I was running back and forth DJing and singing. It looked ridiculous because it was ridiculous. Then I was like, “I’m going to be smarter about this and section the songs. Who should I have do this with me? Of course, I want SyLo. He’s been so amazing!” Without him, that production this year wouldn’t have gone off the way it did.

Leah Culver at this year’s Imagine Festival. Photo by DV Photo Video.o

Jon Wilkes was my first roommate in L.A. and he used to be the drummer for Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. His energy level never changes. He is continuously nailing it and drumming with a lot of energy. We had violins, guitars, drums, an electronic percussionist, a choir that I pulled out of my butt the other day. We called that set Leah Culver & Friends and it really was. It’s a 69-person production and it just keeps getting bigger. It takes so many people to get this done. We rehearsed choreography for weeks and [our choreographer] was Eric from Jamaica Craft’s crew.

This year was just so next level from last year because of the amount of hands on and the amount of care we put into this one. Just doing choreography was kind of scary because I’d never done that, but it worked out. I knew it was going to go one of two ways: I either totally black out [from the adrenaline] and maybe it works or I totally black out and it definitely works.

For people who have only seen you at Imagine Festival and may not have been to one of your other shows, you don’t typically have such a large production in club settings, right?

It won’t be just at Imagine Festival for much longer. But, yeah. For club settings I can’t do as much a lot of times. A lot of things are changing right now in a really good way. There will be more bigger stages to fill with very talented musicians that I’m lucky to get to play with. I’m working with Mama Jan, who is home-based Atlanta – she’s a powerhouse, she’s incredible, she’s very inspiring. She’s a vocal coach, a vocal engineer and now she has formed a label with Brian Miller, who is my manager. They’re so much more connected than I’ve ever been and hopefully what it takes is being connected with the right people and having something to offer. I think we showed the right people last night [at Imagine Festival] what we can do. With that comes the good things that are going to happen with those people in the crowd that we impressed, hopefully.

What can you tell me about any new music you have coming out or other happenings in your world?

I made a song “It Ain’t Easy” that’s kind of like we flipped the Eagles’ song and made it a little harder. We’re going to release that soon. We’re going to be releasing a lot of new music. I say “we” all the time because I really do feel like it’s such a big team effort. I don’t feel alone in it.

Will that all be released digitally or will you be putting out vinyl or physical releases?

We did go to Kindercore Vinyl in Athens, Ga. and met them. We do plan on doing vinyl and CDs, if people want that. I’ve definitely always wanted to do real distribution through bigger outlets. Again, it’s not something that I did. That’s going to be with the help of these wonderful people that I’m grateful to have aligned with me.

What can you tell me about your Halloween performance Believe Music Hall?

That one’s going to be really important to me. Not to go too dark, but I lost somebody and he died right before his birthday, which is also Halloween. So, that time period is going to be kind of tough. But I’m going to be able to rely on the crowd to let me sing to them, so that’s nice.

When and why did you decide to start singing?

As long as I can remember, I’ve been singing. There’s a girl named Jenny Helms who was my first friend in kindergarten. She’s an amazing singer, one of those little kids that are made to be a Disney Channel-type kid. I think because she was my best friend and she was always singing, my memories of that time period are we’d be playing, but we were always singing. One of us could be talking, and the other one would just be singing. But it was fine because it was respectful. I think that influence at such a young age really did this ultimately. I grew up in a very musical family. Everyone plays drums, DJs, produces. My mom played bagpipes and a big bass drum. She’s like five feet tall, so that was funny.

Are you back in Atlanta now or still based in L.A.?

I pay rent in L.A., but I stay [in Atlanta] with family. I might come back soon because there might be work to be done. My team, at one point, was like, “Let’s move you back for six months. We have work we need to do here.” Now, every two months or so I’m like, “Am I moving back to Atlanta?” Right now they’re saying they’re going to put me on the road.

Krampus Parade provides a Christmas soundtrack for black metal fans

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If you thought the Krampus craze had reached it’s climax last Christmas, you clearly couldn’t have predicted what this cloven-hooved foil to Santa Claus had in store for all the bad kids this year. With his most notable appearance being in the big screen holiday horror film Krampus, this demonic Christmas creature has also been immortalized in music thanks to the black metal project known as Krampus Parade. Conceived by extreme metal musician Thomas vom Krampus, the album Alpine Nightmares and Holiday Horrors is influenced more by Cradle of Filth than the cradle of Christ. Joined by his wife Francesca vom Krampus, Thomas has created a screeching sinister and cynical take on the holidays backed by ornate orchestrations of guitars, cellos, Irish whistles and drum machines.

“I started working on these songs in August of 2014,” he says. “I had no idea anybody was going to even know what a Krampus was, aside from people maybe thinking it was some sort of bowel disease. It was good timing because, aside from people saying, ‘Are you doing a band about that movie?,’ it has brought a little more exposure to the myth and legend of Krampus in general. It’s cool that it just exploded in pop culture in the U.S. all of a sudden. It was completely unexpected.”

When vom Krampus first happened upon footage of a European Krampus parade a few years ago, he was immediately swallowed up by this monster’s mystique. As a fan of both Christmas and Halloween, he saw it as the ultimate marriage of two of his favorite holidays.

“I thought, ‘Wow. Where has this been all of my life?’,” he recalls. “I’ve always liked anything that was dark and spooky. I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of this before and kind of became obsessed with the fun of it all and the idea that there could be such a thing as a monster that follows Santa Claus around and punishes the bad kids. I thought this dark side of Christmas was totally enchanting.”

Having been a musician since he was 12, and always gravitating to darker and more extreme genres of heavy metal, vom Krampus obviously identifies with his namesake Christmas demon on a musical level, as well.

“Krampus is about as metal as it gets,” he says. “The first song on the album ‘Season’s Beatings’ is very heavily inspired by some of my influences like Morbid Angel, Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir. I just wanted to blend some of my favorite styles of music together and put my own spin on it all, then throw in ridiculous Krampus Christmas-y lyrics. It came about out of ridiculousness. I’m a ridiculous person, so it’s a reflection of my sense of humor and the craziness that goes on in my head.”

Having released some of that craziness this holiday season, vom Krampus is currently working on a EP that will further expand his musical and mythological methodologies.

“It’s a little bit more technical, a little bit more melodic,” he says of Krampus Parade’s next release. “The music’s more challenging and the lyrical concept is more along the lines of dark fairy tales, some Halloween influence and, of course, there’s going to be some more Krampus stuff.”

MC Lars attacks once again with “The Zombie Dinosaur LP”

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If 2011’s Lars Attacks! was a departure from MC Lars‘ usual rhyming pop cultural references, The Zombie Dinosaur LP is a return to rapping form for the well-studied Stanford University graduate known for rocking a The Legend of Zelda video game cartridge on a gold chain. With a reputation for witty references to literature, film, video games and the like (he even quotes the late “Rowdy” Roddy Piper from They Live on the Lars Attacks! title track), Lars is back to spreading knowledge about Game of Thrones (“Dragon Blood”), Star Wars (“If I Were a Jedi (That Would be Hella Awesome)”), The Legend of Zelda (“Triforce”) and his own upcoming kids’ show project Yes Yes Y’all (“Where Ya Been Lars?”) on his latest album.

“The Zombie Dinosaur LP is kind of like the metaphor of the indie artist who just keeps going because he can’t help it,” says Lars. “My last record was kind of a spiritual, introspective, more authentic hip-hop album. This one is a return to pop culture stuff. I’m really proud of it. I got to work with Kool Keith, who I’ve always loved, Watsky, who’s an incredible young rapper, Roger [Lima] from Less Than Jake, and Brian [Mazzaferri] from I Fight Dragons. It’s more of a return to the vibe of my second record, This Gigantic Robot Kills.”

Photo by Lacy Bursick/Rage Kitty.

Nerd culture loves a good sequel, and The Zombie Dinosaur LP provides plenty of clever references to previous Lars jams. The most obvious one is “Hipster Mom,” which revisits an all-grown-up “Hipster Girl” from This Gigantic Robot Kills. But it’s not just pretentious parents that are the brunt of Lars’ jokes. From his hip-hop heroes Run-DMC to his own professional shortcomings, nothing is off limits here.

“Humor is fun because I rap about how Lars Attacks! didn’t get the best reaction, but my dad thought it was good,” he says. “It’s fun to take light of painful career things. Instead of talking about all the internal stuff I’m going through, I’m talking about pop culture stuff I can relate to and use as a means of expressing how I feel about something. That’s why I love doing the literature songs because you can take an Edgar Allan Poe song or a Shakespeare poem or a Herman Melville story and express how you feel through that character. That Game of Thrones song is identifying with this character who’s trying to hold it together despite all odds. That’s kind of how I felt making this record. I always try to put a piece of myself in every pop culture record and have an emotional reason for it, not just try to name everything about a show.”

Photo by Lacy Bursick/Rage Kitty.

The literary track on The Zombie Dinosaur LP is “Forgot About Jack,” an ode to Beat writer Jack Kerouac done to the tune of Eminem‘s “Forgot About Dre”. Though much of his Warped Tour fanbase may not recognize references to Kerouac, Run-DMC, Hans Moleman and some of his other influences, Lars hopes his raps will inspire listeners to seek out the artists that inspired him.

“I loved The Simpsons, Mad magazine and Weird Al because as a kid it was funny, but it made me want to go learn about what they were referencing in a digestible way,” says Lars. “I was really inspired by Kerouac because he lived in a lot of the same places I lived. Taking the concept of microblogging and the whole social media tip, he was always writing about everything. He was kind of a prototypical Twitter guy. I have a lot of love for Kerouac. He had a lot of darkness and was a really interesting figure.”

Though wrestling isn’t often the topic of his rhymes, Lars does acknowledge its importance in today’s pop cultural landscape. He says CM Punk is his favorite wrestler because “straight edge means he better than me. He’s very handsome.”

“I thought it was dope when ICP was wrestling as part of the Oddities in the late ’90s,” he recalls. “I want to give a shout out to wrestling. It’s the modern gladiators of our era. Shout out to the whole culture and everyone keeping it alive in an economy that is fading. Shout out to Andy Kaufman for holding it down in the ring.”

www.mclars.com

From the DJ booth to the wrestling ring, Quasi Mandisco always talks smack

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With a record collection filled with old school funk, classic soul grooves, vintage R&B and a generous helping of classic rock, it’s not surprising that DJ Quasi Mandisco has been getting Atlanta dance floors moving for 15 years. He earned the Mandisco moniker while DJing at the Star Community Bar several years ago when Jim Stacy (then a co-owner of the bar) said, “You hit on all the white girls sort of like ‘Mandingo’. You’re Quasi Mandisco.’

When Platinum Championship Wrestling returns to Tudor Square (where PCW’s former Academy Theatre home used to be, coincidentally just a block away from Stacy’s Pallookaville Fine Foods) for Sacred Ground: Chapter Six on Sept. 26, Mandisco, in his tight white pants and hoop earrings, won’t be the one hitting on a particular white girl known as Miss Rachael. Instead, he’s employing the menacing Lei’d Tapa to give Rachael a beating in one of this year’s most anticipated matches at Sacred Ground.

“Sacred Ground is all about Quasi Mandisco,” he says. “I started with this company four years ago and worked my way to the top. Now when you think of PCW you think of The Priority Male himself Quasi Mandisco. Somebody’s been trying to take that away from me, some little girl who’s playing a big man’s game. Rachael Freeman suddenly thinks she’s important now because she’s had a match or two. Soon she’s going to have face the fact that she’s not as good as she thinks she is, she’s not as pretty as she thinks she is. She’s about to feel a whole lot of pain like she’s never felt in her life because I’m bringing one of the strongest, most athletic and baddest women in professional wrestling to kick in that pretty little face of Rachael’s. My recommendation to Rachael is to just stay at home and save herself an ass whoopin’. If she shows up on Sept. 26, she’s going to get hurt and there’ll be nobody there to blame but herself.”

When he’s not talking trash at PCW, Mandisco still DJs every Saturday at the infamous Clermont Lounge, Atlanta’s oldest strip club best known for the beer-can-crushing antics of longtime dancer Blondie Strange. When the Atlanta Ballet began searching for a new resident DJ for its 2014-2015 season, Mandisco was happy to start performing for an entirely different cast of dancers. While they’re preparing to take the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre stage, Mandisco is spinning in the lobby for patrons purchasing drinks and finding their seats.

“They’re both fun in their own ways,” he says of the contrasting atmospheres of the Clermont and the Ballet. “I play a lot of the same stuff at both places. I’m not going to play Prince’s ‘Pussy Control’ at the Ballet, but I still play Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Prince, Michael Jackson, the Temptations – a lot of the same stuff. It’s fun because people are often surprised to be at the ballet and hearing Prince. To see people dancing through the lobby on the way to their seats, I think it adds another element to a fun night. I don’t talk all the trash there that I do at the Clermont and PCW, though.”

With his deep, smooth voice and sharp tongue, Mandisco’s Barry White-meets-Ric Flair persona has become part of the attraction when he performs at bars and clubs. As a lifelong wrestling fan, his transition into the antagonistic manager at PCW was a natural one.

“Once I started getting confident with DJing, when people would make bad requests and get on my nerves, I realized I could start cutting wrestling promos on people,” he says. “They thought it was funny and part of the show, so I kept doing it. Then I found out about the PCW school, trained for three months, and came in as a Bobby ‘The Brain’ Hennan-style manager.”

In addition to spinning at the Clermont every Saturday and inciting Porterdale audiences at PCW the first and third Saturday of each month, you can now catch Mandisco DJing on Friday nights at a new restaurant and music venue called Venkman’s. From more sophisticated ballet audiences to riled-up wrestling fans to some of the most unique strippers around, Mandisco’s polarizing persona and old school musical tastes never fail to get some sort of reaction from his audiences. Be it positive or negative, he really doesn’t care as long as they’re feeling it.

Ryan Cadaver ventures into the Unknown

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I have been an Unknown Hinson fan for about seven years. It all started when I got a copy of The Future Is Unknown and I listened to it nonstop for several months. I couldn’t stop listening to it and it seemed to get better and even more hysterical the more I played it. I would even say it’s still my favorite album, but Unknown Hinson would disagree. It’s not an album, it’s a CD.

Ryan Cadaver (left) talks shit (middle) with Unknown Hinson (right). Photo by Kevin Mayfield.

When I got the opportunity to interview Unknown Hinson for Wrestling with Pop Culture I was over the moon. I have admired this man for years. He is a master musician, songwriter, lyricist and a hell of a character. I was pumped all day to finally meet him and when the green room doors opened and Unknown invited me in, it was surreal. Meeting your heroes is always intense, but I was meeting my hero and interviewing him, so this experience was totally new to me. When we got situated I put on my serious face and started getting to business. I was relieved to find out he was eager to talk and had a hilarious response to every question I had. It would have been nice to have a longer chat with Unknown, but it was obvious that showtime was approaching rapidly. Being in a band myself, I absolutely did not want to be that guy who overstayed his welcome backstage. We did manage to have some hilarious conversations about party liquor, calcium, rock ‘n’ roll, prison and then we ended with some insight on his self production of his music and advice for up and coming musicians. I was kinda kicking myself for not saving time for more info on upcoming releases and Squidbilles, so the future remains a bit unknown. Until then, watch my interview with the King of Country Western Troubadours. Then catch him on tour this month and next.

www.unknownhinson.com

New Medicine prescribes a celebratory dose of rock ‘n’ roll with “Breaking the Model”

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Photo by Wade Spencer.

On it’s recently-released second album Breaking the Model, New Medicine offers a dose of rock ‘n’ roll attitude and swagger that is otherwise largely missing from today’s music scene. Celebratory songs like “One Too Many,” “World Class Fuck Up” and “Fire Up the Night” are unapologetic and debauched anthems that remind the listener just how fun rock music can be. After recent dates on the Uproar Festival, a performance at the Aftershock festival and opening for Pop Evil, the band hits the road once again with Halestorm Nov. 11-Dec. 9 before a hometown holiday show in Minneapolis on Dec. 20. First, front man Jake Scherer talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the new album, Brock Lesnar and more.

You’ve toured with Halestorm previously, including the inaugural Uproar Festival in 2010.

Yeah. We toured with them on Uproar and we did their headlining tour before Uproar. Their first headlining tour ever, we did with them, which was cool. Then we did Uproar with them and we’ve also done Carnival of Madness with them [in 2012]. So we’ve done a ton of shows with them. They actually live in Nashville near us, so we hang all the time. They were in the studio while we were working on our record and we were down there while they were writing. They’re recording their record, like, a mile from our house. We’re just good friends and we’ve toured so much together and grown up in the scene together, so it’s really cool to be back on the road with them.

Have you guys ever done any writing or recording with Halestorm?

They all came to the studio and sang all the backup gang vocals on Breaking the Model, then we played them the record and they were all stoked. Me and Lzzy [Hale] have always talked about writing some stuff together. We actually are going to do some writing together on the bus on this tour and just see what comes out. We’re fans of each other, we respect each other musically and I think vocally she’s incredible. We’ve always talked about it, but it hasn’t officially happened yet. I have a couple of songs in my head that I think she would sound great on. So we’ll see what happens on this tour.

The name of your new album, as well as the attitude that is prevalent from one song to the next, seems to be a sarcastic approach to the current state of rock music. Was that the intention of this record?

Absolutely. You’re totally right. Breaking the Model is a mission statement about us and how we feel like we fit in the scene. We don’t feel like we fit into any scene. We’ve always done our own thing and on this record we really did our own thing. We literally made our record with no outside influence aside from ourselves, our fans and our producer. It’s very honest and brave. We were just making this straight-up rock record, not making it to format to any radio station or anything. It’s just for us and the fans. At this point in the music industry there are just formulas that are like beating a dead horse. We’re done with the formulaic songs and, “You should write it for this format or this or that.” We’re not interested in that. We wanted to just break all the chains of creative constriction and just make a record that we’re proud of, has attitude and is brave creatively and sonically. I think we came out with a great record.

It’s a lot of fun to listen to. I especially like the electronic elements. Was your producer responsible for all that or is that something you guys planned on adding?

I’ve always been a huge Nine Inch Nails fan, and you hear a lot of electronic stuff in a Rob Zombie record. I like electronic music in general. When we first started recording, I had some ideas and would be like, “It would be cool if we threw a drum machine or a synth part in here.” As we started working with that, it all started growing together with those elements and it also made it feel like it had way more depth to the sound. These days everybody’s got their headphones in. You have this opportunity with all these new sounds you can put on records and the way people listen to music, it’s so high quality and we can add in some sonic things that make it an interesting record without using technology as a crutch. The meat and potatoes are there. It’s a rock band, but we’re using it as a tool to expand the sound.

Right. It’s definitely still a rock record and has an old school rock attitude, especially in the lyrics. It sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun, which is kind of a rare thing in rock music these days.

We don’t want to be one dimensional. This record’s got a lot of depth, it’s got a lot of dimensions to it. There’s something for everybody on this record. Like you said, we tried to have fun with it. We want you to enjoy listening to it. That’s what rock’s about. You don’t want to be formulaic and predictable.

I understand you’re also a wrestling fan.

You know what? I grew up watching wrestling and I wrestled in school. When I was a kid, the University of Minnesota had one of the best wrestling programs in the country. When I was 8, 9 years old, lo and behold, guess who was wrestling for the Gophers but Brock Lesnar. I got to go to this clinic when I was a kid and I met Brock Lesnar before he was a pro wrestler. But he was still huge, he was a heavyweight. I have this picture of him where he’s holding me and my brother up in the palms of his hands with no problem. I always loved seeing The Rock and stuff like that, but meeting Brock Lesnar and then seeing where his career has gone was so cool. I always try to follow all of it as much as possible.

Of course now he’s the WWE World Heavyweight Champion.

Photo by Wade Spencer.

Yeah. It’s funny because he trains a lot in Hamel, which is this small podunk town in Minnesota and he goes to this cafe a lot. There’s a picture of him signed on the wall there. So this little dive breakfast place that I’d go to is where he goes to eat. It’s cool to see. He’s done UFC and he’s done wrestling and he’s won at everything he’s done. When I’m on the road I don’t get to watch it as much, but I try to keep up with it as much as possible.

WWE tends to favor bands similar to yours when it comes to entrance music, pay-per-view theme songs and things like that. Has your music ever been used by WWE for any reason?

No. But we have a song on our new record, “Desire Into Gold,” and that was the inspiration for me when writing it. When I used to wrestle, I would think about that. You’re just pumping yourself up for that one moment and I wrote that song all about that. We’ve been talking to them about letting them license that song because it’s a perfect match for them and it’s an audience we think would enjoy our music.

www.newmedicinerock.com

Shaman’s Harvest front man Nathan Hunt talks rock and wrasslin’

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Photo by Travis Duncan.

Many wrestling fans (myself included) were introduced to the Southern rock stylings of Shaman’s Harvest when Drew McIntyre began using their song “Broken Dreams” as his entrance music in 2010. Considering the success McIntyre had in WWE as Intercontinental and Tag Team Champion (not to mention his continued success as the current Evolve Champion as Drew Galloway), and the subsequent exposure “Broken Dreams” got on Raw, SmackDown and other WWE events, the largely unknown Shaman’s Harvest suddenly started gaining a lot of new listeners. The band has continued its relationship with WWE, recording another entrance theme for Wade Barrett/The Corre (though I didn’t realize it was even the same band given that song’s more industrial pop sound) and appearing on the soundtracks for some of WWE’s movies. More recently, however, the band released Smokin’ Hearts & Broken Guns, it’s fifth album and first for Mascot Records. The album continues the band’s foot-stomping swamp rock sound, at times bordering on country and bluegrass territory. Hitting the road on Nov. 10 for a few headlining dates before joining up with Fozzy and Texas Hippie Coalition Nov. 20-Dec. 13, Shaman’s Harvest front man Nathan Hunt talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about working with Jim Johnston, how recording entrance themes has changed the band’s songwriting process and his love of The Bushwhackers.

My introduction to Shaman’s Harvest was when Drew McIntyre used your song “Broken Dreams” as his entrance music in WWE. How did he end up using your song as his entrance music? Was he a fan of yours or was WWE responsible for choosing his music?

Photo by Travis Duncan.

Jim Johnston is the genius behind all the music for WWE. We sent him our song “Dragonfly” and he wasn’t really into it for an entrance song or any of their pay-per-views or anything. But he liked the sound, so he wrote “Broken Dreams” and sent it to us and asked if we wanted to do it. We were like, “Sure. Hell, why not?” It was a good thing because they have something like 40 million viewers every Monday night. So it definitely helped us. Subsequently, he sent us a couple of other tracks after that and I’ve been working with him ever since.

Right. I didn’t realize you also did entrance music for Wade Barrett and The Corre. Was that a similar process where Johnston wrote the song, then sent it to you guys to record?

Yeah. Then he used “Dragonfly” in the Legendary movie, because he writes all the scores and soundtracks for the movies that WWE produces. I flew up to their compound up there to do that Wade Barrett track, “End of Days”. I’ve done a couple of others since then. We did another song called “Anger,” which he didn’t wind up using for an entrance theme, but he used it in another movie they made called No One Lives.

Since you submitted your music to Johnston in hopes of it being used by WWE, I assume you’re a wrestling fan.

Oh. Fuck, man. I think all of us grew up watching wrestling, or as we call it here, “wrasslin’.” Yeah. I mean, growing up, for me it was the Bushwhackers. That was it for me. I could relate. Obviously, the Undertaker is absolutely legendary. When he came out, man, I hated his guts because he was such an asshole.

Yeah. He was evil, but people eventually started to like him.

Yeah. Well, I think he just had the longevity. And the badassness he had, people started looking up to him. Which is easy to do because he’s, like, 7-foot-something, isn’t he?

Why did you hate him so much? Was it because of who his targeted opponents were?

Photo by Travis Duncan.

Yeah. Back in the day it was Hulkamania. There were the good guys and the bad guys and there was such a separation between the two in the ’80s. And he couldn’t lose. He was just going through and destroying people. As a kid, I wanted the good guys to win. That entrance music is probably the most iconic entrance music ever. There’s actually a thing, I think, where nobody else can use those tolling bells. I think that’s a copyright for the Undertaker just because when you hear that first bell, you know who’s coming out.

What was it about the Bushwhackers you liked so much?

I just thought the were badasses and they were just slightly unhinged. They weren’t quite all there and they were just cool, man. They were probably the first tag team I ever really got into.

I was a big fan of the Bushwhackers, but I don’t often here anyone say the Bushwhackers were their favorite wrestlers.

Yeah, man. They were definitely my favorite tag team.

You just released a new album, Smokin’ Hearts & Broken Guns? Has WWE used anything off of that album yet?

Not yet. We’ve been in talks with them about it, but we’ll just see what comes up. Usually how they work is as they develop characters or as characters develop themselves, that’s when the brains get together and decide on what’s going to work for who. So it just stays in their pool of tracks and hopefully they’ll decide to use it for a pay-per-view or something. We’ll see.

Aside from the songs you recorded specifically for WWE, would you say that wrestling or any of its personas have ever influenced your music or songwriting process?

Probably, man. “Dangerous” off the new record kind of has that feel of being straightforward and being a badass. After working on some of those songs with Jim, you kind of start thinking of songs as entrance themes. When you’re doing an entrance song, you’ve got to visualize a guy walking down, most likely real slow at first, then it picks up, then you’ve got to think about the pyro and all that stuff. Which is completely different than when you’re thinking about just writing a song for radio. I think quite a few of our tracks, after working with Jim, build as the song progresses throughout the track. So, yeah. It’s probably influenced us in our style of writing, a little bit.

Shaman’s Harvest is headlining these first few tour dates, then you’re being joined by Chris Jericho‘s band Fozzy. Have you ever performed with Fozzy before?

Photo by Travis Duncan.

We played with them in Peoria about a month ago and all those guys are really nice. Chris might be one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met in the music industry. Most of us tend to be a little on the lazy side and imbibe a little bit with the alcohol and all that stuff. But he works hard. And it’s not like he’s a wrestler or an actor trying to be a musician. He really is a musician and they’re a badass band. Way more badass than I expected before I heard them. They work hard and the dude is running podcasts out of the bus, then doing shows and sound checks and meet-and-greets. We opened up for them and he sat there and watched our whole show from the balcony. Not a lot of headliners come out and do that. He’s a genuine dude.

There’s a common thread that runs between the three bands on this tour, yet each band has its own distinct sound.

I think a great show is to have three bands that, like you said, have a common thread, but they’re not the same thing regurgitated over and over again. You’re going to get different aspects of rock ‘n’ roll throughout the entire fucking show. It’ll be a little bit of everything. It keeps it more interesting and people don’t get bored.

The personalities involved in those two bands will also keep things interesting.

They’re definitely out front. I don’t think anybody’s too reclusive out of that bunch, and neither are we. So there’s going to be some shenanigans. Plus, you’re at the end of the tour in Atlanta and usually some crazy shit goes down there at the end.

www.shamansharvest.com