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.