Rock My Monkey: Hello, you are listening to the Rock My Monkey netcast on RockMyMonkey.com. Today we are speaking with Devon of the band Dead Soul Tribe. How are you doing today, Devon?
Devon Graves: I am doing just super. How are you?
Rock My Monkey: I’m doing pretty good. Why was it so important to make this album an obvious change from the past Dead Soul Tribe releases?
Devon Graves: Well, it was kind of a challenge in a way. It was like a strategy, I guess you could say. I was trying to develop a style of music over the last three albums until now. And I kind of thought that that would be a good way to, I don’t know, it seemed to be the formula that a lot of bands that have come and that have left a big mark are bands that brought a particular style into music. Something a little bit new, you know? So I was developing what I was calling ‘tribal metal’ and to try and bring my voice into rock music, you know, my style. Although a lot of bands seem to do really well by trying it that way, for me it just didn’t seem to work out, you know? It seemed to have kind of just, I don’t know. I was enjoying the music. I was enjoying making it. But how I was evolving it may have been too subtle. A lot of the fans that are really into the band see that my last three albums as very different from each other. But the people who see my music, hear it from afar, that aren’t listening to the albums ten, fifteen, twenty times, or whatever, they only listen to it once or twice, kind of like might hear not so much the differences, but hear the similarities, you know? And a lot of people are asking me, ‘What are you going to do? You’re playing all the instruments yourself, and you’re writing all the songs, and you’re making an album every year and a half, or whatever. Don’t you think that you’re-‘ Kind of like running a race car in the red, you know? And I was thinking, well, no, I made an effort to make those albums kind of the same, cut from the same cloth, so to speak. But it just seems to be appropriate to rise to the challenge. And then it was very exciting for me to think, okay, now I get to go out and find something new. It was really a fun process deciding which way that’s going to go. I think that that’s a neat way to come at a record, and I think that I would like to do that again and again. You know, with each record I make, try to redefine it, try to redefine myself completely. But at the same time make the record to where it has a definite flow of it’s own, not just a chaotic variety.
Rock My Monkey: A lot of people would like to, a lot of artists if they use an instrument that’s already well known by another artist would like kind of try and downplay that. But the cover artwork on this album actually seems to be a hidden tribute to Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. Was that on purpose? How bold are you with that influence?
Devon Graves: Ian Anderson himself will tell you that that pose is very old. It’s, he certainly was something that made it popular, and it could very well be why I see the flute being played that way. It could very well be. But you know, the god Krishna, and the Hindu face, is always depicted playing the flute and he was always standing on one foot. And it’s an old image. You’ve even seen those garden, I don’t know, kind of like there was this trend going on where you had to have kind of a Native American looking, kind of like a Pan god playing a horn and people would have them in their garden, and this thing is also standing up. You know, when I play flute, it only comes from loving Jethro Tull. That’s the reason I play flute was because when I was sixteen, seventeen years old I had an Aqua Lung album, among others from him, from them. And yeah, the flute was a real effective instrument for me for hard rock. So yeah, I just wanted to use it to kind of show, not so much a tribute to Tull, really, but just to kind of underscore the fact that it’s an instrument that I’m playing. And it’s something that, although I don’t play it that often. In a concert I play it maybe once or twice. But it’s always a really high point of every concert, back from when I was in Psychotic Waltz, when I just played flute, I remember, to now when I play any little passage that might be in a song. That always turns people on. It’s something that, I don’t know, it’s a cool instrument that everybody seems to agree on. And I’m kind of the only one out there now in the next generation kind of, the only one out there using it. And so like I kind of thought I might as well somehow bring that a little more into the picture of the images. I don’t know. Maybe subconsciously something like that. All I can tell you is that I had this image. I saw the album cover in my mind really early on, and it would be like the devil standing on one leg playing the flute. And I had to make Travis send me copy after copy, trial after trial. I tried to explain to him how I saw this. Finally he sends this one, and it really pleased me. A lot of people say it’s an obvious Jethro Tull thing. Although I have no problem with that, it’s really not.
Rock My Monkey: Okay. Now, the initial pressings of the album also included a multi-media section with acoustic live material. How can fans, when they go to purchase the album, how can fans tell the difference between the one with that multi-media section, and the ones without?
Devon Graves: I guess you have to look at the back of the album. You know, look at the back cover, and see the song list. Below the song list it will say ‘plus multi-media’, and the title of those songs, I suppose. I don’t remember if they put the song titles on the cover or not. Because I think I wanted to keep that a mystery. I don’t remember. But you can look at back of the album and you can see.
Rock My Monkey: So it’s not like an extra disc, or anything like that?
Devon Graves: Well, I mean, I don’t know how large the initial pressing is going to be. So that’s printing the album now, you know? When I sell my first million, they’ll probably have to print them again. I don’t know. (laughs) By then maybe they’ll have enough spare change to keep it going. I don’t know about how that stuff works. Anytime I’ve made a bonus song, a bonus song, it’s just a song on the album called ‘a bonus song’ you know? (laughs) You know what I mean? It’s almost something you have to do. It’s kind of a way of dealing with material that you don’t really like, but you don’t want to throw it away. So you go, ‘We’ll put it on and call it a bonus song. If they don’t like it, what do they want for free? Their money back?’ (laughs) And that’s kind of how I was looking at the video stuff, because I’m, personally very interested, very enthused about getting into the digital, video filmmaking, plus sending that into my music making. That, what we shot for this cd, was just kind of a test. I’m studying all kinds of aspects. Lighting, syncing up the audio to the video, and things like that. This was like an experiment. I had my friend come over and just shoot. We set up the nice microphone that I record the albums with. I recorded the guitar playing and the singing as if I would have recorded making an album, but this is performance is being filmed. So I’m singing and playing at the same time. It was a live performance, but the video is going onto the video camera, and the audio is going into the computer, so now I got to line these things up, make them in sync. I learned a lot about lighting, how to light a set. So I was doing some experiments with the lighting. Yeah, so I thought, okay, as an experiment I’ll make this project, and this project will just be something I give for free on the cd. That’s why you have it.
Rock My Monkey: So the acoustic live material is not necessarily a live public show, but something that you filmed?
Devon Graves: No, I just did it in my studio. I shot it in my studio. But it was played honestly in real time. There’s not any punch ins or overdubs. Each song is just one performance straight through. It’s just recorded well for a live performance. I’m standing by quite a nice microphone so it sounds a little bit studio-ish, but it’s quite clearly what you would call a live performance. It was a concert with no audience, let’s put it that way.
Rock My Monkey: Why choose an album title like A Lullaby For The Devil? What was the inspiration behind that?
Devon Graves: I don’t know. I don’t know. A lot of my album titles, they came to me as if in a dream. No. They just come to me as thoughts that are intriguing. Sometimes I will have a certain reason why I choose a title. But sometimes the title just comes first. That was the case with The Deadwood and The January Tree. The titles came first to me, and I don’t know why I liked that. I didn’t know why I wanted an album with a tree on the cover. I just knew that’s what I envisioned. Then the meaning comes. The meaning, as I start to write the lyrics at the end of the project, it all starts to make sense, and I start to understand what’s being said here. And we’re kind of at that stage now that this album, I’m still not that sure. I’m still not that sure. I just like the sound of it, and I like the image. And the image that I dreamed the devil playing the flute, the image somewhat represents, to me what that represents is the demonization of music. A good example is Ozzy Osbourne, or Elvis, or The Beatles. They have always demonized people that seem to gather too much attention to themselves, and too many people start to listen to them. Usually these people tend to make a lot of friends. They’re usually quite sensitive, intelligent people. Frank Zappa comes to mind. He’s completely demonized. Especially if the guy would have gone into running for president like he wanted to. Could you imagine the campaigns against him in the Republican sector? You know what I’m talking about?
Rock My Monkey: We have an interesting situation in America with our current administration. Lots of images of the devil, I think.
Devon Graves: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we realize now that evil isn’t caused by Iron Maiden or Eddie, and it’s not caused by an album title, and it’s not by Marilyn Manson. It’s caused by people with very kind faces and people who we’re supposed to trust and respect. But anyway, maybe if I talk too much about that, then I’ll be killed.
Rock My Monkey: There’s been a lot of bands I’ve interviewed that have said much, much worse about our current administration.
Devon Graves: I could be really critical. I could be really critical. But it’s so obvious. I would hope it’s so obvious, because what I never could understand, I could never understand why all we had to choose from was originally Al Gore and George W. Bush. When it came down to that in the very beginning of all this, I thought, my god, what have we done to deserve this? I thought if Al Gore becomes president, I really feel sorry for America. And I believe that because his wife, Tipper Gore, is really-well, go talk to Jello Biafra about Tipper Gore and he’ll keep you entertained for hours. But I thought if George W. Bush gets into office, I feel sorry for the rest of the world. And it almost had to error on some kind of a swindle when the first election came through. But what I couldn’t believe is that he got re-elected.
Rock My Monkey: Yeah. Yeah. I think that surprised a lot of people.
Devon Graves: I was shocked. I was shocked. I’m so embarrassed. I live here in Europe. I live in Vienna. I was growing up taught that America is the finest country in the world and how lucky we are and how free we are, and how in other countries in the world you’ll be shot on the spot for saying what you felt if it was against the current administration. But you know, as I get out and I see the rest of the world and I start to see that this freedom that they’re talking about, that they keep promising us ‘After this war, after this war, after this war.’ They’ve been saying it for, I don’t know, more than two hundred years now. This is the one we’re fighting for peace. This is going to be the solution to the problem. It’s all going to go away after this. What it really comes down to it, all the last wars that we’ve been involved with wouldn’t have happened if we wouldn’t have been the aggressor.
Rock My Monkey: Right.
Devon Graves: You know, like I’m talking about Vietnam. Now I’m talking about Iraq. We’re in somebody else’s country. We’re in somebody else’s country dropping bombs. That should not be a legal possibility. You know what I mean? It should not be allowed on the view of the world. There should be no reason whatsoever any country should be allowed to have a military and then send it into another country. That shouldn’t be allowed. The world should have an administration, which I guess they’re trying to form, which America doesn’t want to be a part of. You could illegalize acts of war. You could just illegalize it. And if any country did some act of aggression, then the whole rest of the world has the right to just surgically take that leader and just prosecute him for war crimes, or whatever. It shouldn’t be allowed. We’re taught our whole lives, we’re taught in school how violence is not the answer, how not to take the law into your own hands, how turn the other cheek. We’re taught constantly we’re not allowed to fight. If you go and you beat somebody up in anger, or for any reason you personally have, if you go and beat somebody up you’ll be thrown in jail. Rightly so, you’ll be thrown in prison. But the very establishment that is teaching us these values is going every twenty years across the sea and just committing such atrocities, you know? Every twenty years. This isn’t George W. Bush. This is something much, much, much, much deeper than that. Something that has been going on a lot longer than any of us has been alive. Otherwise these patterns wouldn’t just be repeating. Something’s not, I don’t know. I think presidents are a good scapegoat, but the president’s have advisors, and the advisors have interests. It’s just fueled by this economy, and it’s fueled by greed, and it’s fueled by the rich wanting to stay rich and wanting to keep everyone else poor. And shaking hands and signing contracts and patting backs and getting big money. I guess it’s very profitable to be friends with people who own weapons manufacturers or something. I don’t know. They do it every twenty years or so.
Rock My Monkey: Back on the album. (both laugh) What song on A Lullaby For The Devil do you think has the chance of being your Aqua Lung? The song that fans demand for decades to come. Could you ever imagine a Jethro Tull show where they didn’t play Aqua Lung? Is there a song off this album you think has the chance to grab a hold of the band’s fans and not let them go for a few decades?
Devon Graves: I’m really not in a position to say because I feel that way about everything I do. Why what I have been doing all this time hasn’t caught on bigger than it has to me has really been a mystery. But I’ve always just accepted it, and said, okay that is what it is. This is what it is. And so I don’t anymore think in terms of ‘Will I have some song that’s going to be this legend?’ If I have that song, I wrote it when I was eighteen, and it’s a song called I Remember. It’s actually on that bonus disc, and I first put it on A Psychotic Waltz album, but I’ve been playing it ever since. And that’s the one that even though I’m not a famous guy that’s a song that’s been remembered for fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years, something like that. That’s actually some sort of miracle when you consider it hasn’t been some commercial success. Underground music that’s stood the test of time even that long is a little bit unusual. Will a song like this? What song would be? I have no way of knowing.
Rock My Monkey: Is there any plans for a video single for this release?
Devon Graves: Well, I wanted to do one for Here Comes The Pigs actually.
Rock My Monkey: So is that going to happen? Is that just something you’re trying to do?
Devon Graves: I’ve got an awesome camera. I’m not kidding about this movie thing. I’m really getting into doing it. Like videos would be my first way of just learning how to shoot with this camera, and learning how to light, and learning how to edit, and using my imagination to produce something awesome within the limitations I am working with. That’s always what it’s about, whether you’re recording music or, it’s kind of the same thing. It’s the same thing. Just an act of creating something you want to form. So since I want to make movies, then videos and involvement with my band somehow in this medium is inevitable.
Rock My Monkey: Cool, because the honest thing is with technology today, there’s absolutely no reason why you couldn’t make and edit and produce and everything the video all by yourself. And even if the video channels don’t want to air it, I find if you open up a MySpace page and upload that video to your MySpace account, the quality is just as good as if I’d get it on the tv, and I don’t have to sit there and surf, watch a whole bunch of really crappy videos just to get to the one Dead Soul Tribe video.
Devon Graves: I think that kind of YouTube stuff is pretty awesome. It’s a little bit addicting, you know? I don’t think the quality is necessarily so great. It’s pretty compressed. I mean, on the computer screen it does often look okay, but when it comes to making film, there’s also like recording the artist or producer or whatever has their eye on the quality line of things. All these shortcomings and stuff is always a drag. So you spend a lot of money on a camera, and you spend a lot of money on the gear, to really capture the image or the sound you want. But when it’s getting degraded down you’re a little bummed out. Hopefully I’ll just print up some DVDs and sell it along the tours along with the rest of the merchandise. Someone wants to buy an album, or they can say, ‘Look, there’s a movie. This guy made a movie. We ought to check it out?’ Yeah, check it out. I’ll make it cheap enough to where they can’t say no.
Rock My Monkey: Cool. That’s the way to do it. And also I want to tell you that I end up watching videos online a lot just because it saves me time, and MySpace, the videos on MySpace are compressed way less than videos on YouTube. So if you want it to be a bit better, do it on the MySpace.
Devon Graves: I don’t know how to get onto my MySpace thing. My band made a MySpace account, but they won’t give me the password.
Rock My Monkey: (laughs) Horrible!
Devon Graves: (laughs) Every time I ask for the password, they always change the subject, or make it really weird. Or ‘Oh, yeah, I have to change it every couple of days.’ They won’t let me on there. I don’t know why. (laughs)
Rock My Monkey: Well, give them the video and let them upload it.
Devon Graves: Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. That’s what I’ll do.
Rock My Monkey: What are the chances of the band doing a full coast to coast tour of the U.S. anytime soon?
Devon Graves: Oh, yeah, that’s going to happen as soon as we sell our first couple of hundred thousand units out there. (laughs)
Rock My Monkey: So basically people just need to make sure and not just buy the cd, but to get several friends to do it as well then.
Devon Graves: Several friends? They would need to get really everyone they know and everyone they work with. Because all six of these guys out there in The States that listen to me, I don’t know, they’d better get on it. (laughs) Get on something. Maybe they can strap a bullhorn to their car and play it and drive down the street slowly. I don’t know.
Rock My Monkey: I do have one final question. Every year we choose one final question that we ask every single band from classic rock legends to the most extreme death metal bands at the end of every interview. Partially to stump people, but also to see out of the people that we talk to, who wimps out and won’t answer this? This year I’m asking people to look into their crystal ball and predict what political figure, world leader, musician, celebrity, anybody world wide famous, who do you think might die before the end of the year? And it’s not a wish, it’s more a predict. It’s more of a just a guess.
Devon Graves: A weird game to play, I got to be honest with you.
Rock My Monkey: Yeah, it’s actually known as a-people call this, it’s called a ‘dead pool’ actually. It’s actually quite a common internet game, and we just figured we’d do our version of it.
Devon Graves: Andy Dick.
Rock My Monkey: Andy Dick. That’s actually a pretty safe guess if he doesn’t clean up his ways.
Devon Graves: (laughs) Unfortunately. I’m a fan of the guy. I’m a fan. I really like him. But ever since Jon Lovitz had his little situation, I kind of looked on the internet about that, and didn’t like hearing how all this stuff came about. And so many people were so angry at Andy Dick, and there was so much rage and violence that had been focused toward him. People saying really awful things. Like ‘Oh, god, somebody else should beat that faggot up.’ And I thought oh my god, I would bet you anything that Jon Lovitz does not feel that way. Actually probably regrets doing it. I think that there’s a lot of people that are happy about it, but I think it’s-I don’t wish the poor guy any harm, but it’s because of that that I gave the answer I gave.
Rock My Monkey: I thank you very much for doing the interview, and anybody that’s listening to the audio version of this can go to RockMyMonkey.com for the full featured version with clickable links, readable text, and many more wonderful features. I’m asking people to click on the album cover above and below this interview to purchase A Lullaby For The Devil by Dead Soul Tribe. And I do hope that somehow the planets align where you can come up on tour in the Northwest sometime. And I thank you very much for your time.
Devon Graves: Can I say one more thing to the fans, the six guys out there?
Rock My Monkey: Absolutely.
Devon Graves: If you guys buy, actually buy enough albums, really purchase, then I probably won’t have to get a day job anytime soon.
Rock My Monkey: (laughs) The dream of every musician nowadays. Alright. Cool. Thank you very much for your time.
