Former HEAD (ex-Korn) Chronicles His Experience in New Article!

There is always a picture of extravagant living and endless riches that comes to mind when someone thinks of a rock star. An image that elicits fame, fortune, and a free ride in life for anyone with the right stuff to make it to the top. But for so many talented musicians that do have the stuff that it takes to be a true star they end up in a pool I like to think of as the bottom of the top. People that get hired to play for the main act musicians or bands that are out there digging in the trenches to make a name for themselves and eventually maybe a few bucks at the same time. Even at this level it's never that glitz and glamour that the public perceives. I'd like to give you a small glimpse of the realities of a touring musician. I can speak with some authority on the subject as for the past two years I have been the lead guitarist and backing vocalist for Brian Head Welch, formerly of the multi-platinum rock band KoRn. After many years having struggled to break into the vast and complex music business my big break came in the way of a phone call from Head's manager asking me to come to Phoenix for an audition. Within a few hours of my arrival I was given the gig as lead guitarist for his new solo project (a gig that had previously been offered to the current touring bassist of Marilyn Manson). Having been a huge fan of KoRn it was surreal to be playing lead guitar for this guitar legend from one of my favorite bands and all signs pointed to success for this new endeavor.

From the start we were made to understand that there was very little money available and that we'd have to rehearse for free for a while and if we could be patient while things grow we'll all reap the benefits of our time and effort. So with that being said, we dove right in headfirst. The band started out as a six piece with Brian on vocals and playing a little guitar, another guitarist, a bassist, keyboardist, drummer, and myself. We all went out and spent all we could afford on the best gear, had a stadium sized backdrop, a tour bus, a crew and all the trimmings. After about six weeks of intense daily rehearsal it was time for the first show. Adding to my own image that this was destined to be a huge success was the fact that one of Head's friends offered to fly us to the first show in a helicopter (well whoever of the six could fit so we drew straws). In the end the bassist, drummer and I lost the contest so we all three hid around the corner at the gig and when the chopper landed we rushed over and made it look like we all got out together. The crowd went nuts, the show was off the hook, my family surprised me and flew in for it, and it was all just the start of my dream unfolding before me.

A few weeks later we were ready to roll out on our first mini tour, which was a small run of about a dozen or more shows spread out over two weeks. We piled into a real nice and cozy Prevost touring coach and headed for Colorado. For most of us this was the first "real" tour we had been on since we'd all previously been in local and regional acts that usually meant all of us driving separate to a gig and hauling all our stuff ourselves, so a bus with a driver was like being on a rolling 5 star resort. Over the next 2-3 weeks we played shows in Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas and we really didn't know what to expect from show to show. Things had been booked last minute, the album had been out over 6 months already yet many people had no idea that Head was back in the scene until they heard on the radio we were coming to town. The other thing that was uncertain from the get go was how we well his KoRn fans and new Christian fans would blend together as well as how well we would be received in more conservative venues like churches and youth centers. We quickly learned that the club and bar shows were very poorly promoted and the crowds usually consisted of anywhere from 40-200 drunk Korn fans screaming "Freak On A Leash" (which was a tough way to return to the scene for a guy who left that life behind and took on a life of sobriety). On the flipside the church gigs had great turnouts but the audiences where less active and we usually had a few encounters with people who were less than supportive of the idea of tattooed freaky looking dudes coming into their community to reach out to young people via heavy metal music (as we had somewhat expected)! I can remember one woman in particular in Tomball Texas (a suburb of Houston) who asked me if I'm a believer and when I answered yes she was confused how that can work because I have long hair and tattoos. I just said well the good Lord gave me this house to live in while I'm here so I figured I can paint it however I like. That was sufficient enough to end the discussion. We finished the tour at the Midnight Rodeo in Abilene Texas, a venue chocked full of surprises around every corner (like pinball machines hanging from the ceiling, mannequins everywhere, a mechanical bull, and even a slide to get you from the upper level back down to the main room! The crowd was very small that night and the vibe just didn't sit well with the boss and as soon as we hit the last note he was out the door. From here on out everything shifted in directions we never saw coming. This is when the rock 'n roll roller coaster shot us straight out of the gate on the fast track into the unknown. That night after the show we saw a side of Head that none of us had experienced till then. We could see he started unraveling bit by bit and his penned up anger and aggression was coming through more often. Luckily the mini tour was over.

We had a few weeks off and so I decided in the down time to get a tattoo to commemorate this new experience of living out my dreams. It was a pretty elaborate chest piece that is called a Tughra which is a type of Arabic calligraphy formed in a shape representative of it's meaning. Mine is a heart with wings that reads "May God Sanctify His Secret" in the Arabic script and was presented to the patron saint of my spiritual path of Sufism, so it's a strong symbol of my faith and respectful tribute to those who have passed it's knowledge down to me (this one will make great conversation if I ever see that woman in Tomball again). Now I'm a pretty tough dude with quite a few tatts but I had no idea the discomfort I was in for with this one. In the end I'd say the meaning fit the pain cause it felt like he damn near chiseled God's secret right into my breastplate, but it was worth it. After a few days of rest and achy chest we we're set to start up the machine again and I was flying to Illinois to headline the Cornerstone festival (one of the same festivals that I had attended as a kid). Even though the ink wasn't dry yet on my Tughra our manager had been in touch with a tattoo artist in Springfield that was a fan of the band and wanted to hook us up so drummer Dan and I decided to take him up on it . So the first day we got their we met Jason Lee of New Age Tattoo in Springfield, Illinois. The first thing that struck me is that he drove an hour to pick us up and then drove us back to his shop, gave us two of the most kick ass tatts we've gotten, and turned out to be one of the most genuine and cool dudes one could meet. He added an awesome lizard skeleton to my growing reptile sleeve and some shading that left me wanting him to fill in the rest of my arm with (which he did eventually). After an awesome day with Jason his partner Andy took us out for some spicy hot wings and beers and we just had the time of our lives that day. Cornerstone was the next day and the biggest crowd most of us (aside from Head) had ever played in front of. We we're pumped and ready for a great show, but again something in the boss man switched and at the end of the show he was just mad and questioning what he's even doing which left us all feeling down and depressed for the flight home. At this point we'd only played a handful of shows and it was all hit or miss so we we're still just really getting our feet wet.

Again we had a short break before starting another short run up the west coast and when we all reconvened we were completely oblivious to what the mood would be like with everyone. We started off with a great show in LA at The Whisky and worked our way up to Head's hometown of Bakersfield where we did an amazing show to a sold out crowd that really gave us the boost we needed to get back in the mindset to rise up and shred. Then the next night we played a little club in Fresno and for starters it was the smallest stage we had ever seen in our lives. We had to put the amps behind the stage in the green room and the keyboardist had to stand on a coffee table because there was no room on stage for him to stand, it was nuts. Then the crowd was again about 40 drunken Korn fans who wanted little to do with his new solo material so the morale kind of went back into the pits. The following night was a monumental evening I for one will never forget, and I'm told by residents of Medesto, CA that this show has now become local legend. In a nutshell the promoter mentioned early in the day that they hadn't sold many presale tickets, which of course just kind of added fuel to the fire still left smoldering from Fresno. Then at sound check there were some major issues with the monitors cutting in and out and we knew it was gonna be a long night. By the time we hit the stage the place was packed and the crowd was amped to see us so the band was excited and ready to tear it up. Head however was not sharing the same feelings of excitement. Quite the contrary he had spent the whole day convincing himself the show was doomed so no matter how well we performed for him it didn't make a difference. After completing almost the whole set watching him crumble with each song we had finally reached the second to last tune when it all went to Hell. In the middle of a solo break he crawled like a panther over to my pedal board and started punching it and yelling at me asking if it was on, then he threw the microphone hard enough that it soared through the air and landed in the kitchen of the club, After a few minutes of our manager scrambling to find it somehow it ended up back in Head's hands but not for long. By the beginning of the songs outro he tossed it again narrowly missing Dan's head and then he was out the back door and in a cab headed for his hotel. The crowd stood in awe wondering if it was part of the show but when I told them goodnight and explained the situation best as I could I just got booed and cussed at. We sat in the bus till 3am waiting to hear from Head and heard nothing. Management finally decided to cancel the rest of the tour and we we're heading home. Late the next day we finally heard from Head and learned he was on his way to meet with Fieldy (Korn's bassist) to discuss possibilities of touring with them and he'd be in touch with us.

Faced with having cancelled almost 2 weeks of touring that was to end with our first arena show in Las Vegas we were all in limbo. P.O.D. front man Sonny Sandoval was co-organizing the Exit event with Ryan Ries and we all really felt that there was no way Head was going to burn those guys and cancel on them. Luckily we were right and he definitely wanted to do Exit and even wanted to do the gig the night before in Tucson. So we reconvened once again not knowing what the mood would be like. Head just kind of brushed it off like nothing happened and we all walked around him on eggshells. The club was an old grocery store converted into a sports bar with a total dive bar feel to it and some really cheap equipment that we didn't think could handle what we do but we we're determined to make it work. When show time came we heard what sounded like a rowdy crowd hidden by a curtain that blocked them from seeing us on stage. As the intro started and the curtain opened we saw about 30 people drunk as all Hell and almost oblivious to what we were doing but yet they rocked out anyhow. After the show the promoter split without paying us and when we talked to the bar owner he just said we should've taken care of that earlier and told us to get out of his bar and then had his bouncer in a shoving match with our manager and in the end we never got paid. Somehow this didn't put a damper on things which gave most of us renewed hope as we we're on our way to Vegas to play our biggest crowd to date. Exit Lost Vegas was a huge free concert in which 18,000 people filled the Thomas & Mack Arena to see the likes of Blindside, Flyleaf, Head, and many others perform. We rolled into the arena for sound check and it was just an amazing feeling to be standing on the same stage Metallica, AC/DC, and so many other legendary bands have played on. By show time the place was filled and I remember looking out and scanning the crowd from the front row to the back of the arena thinking, "man this is everything I dreamed it would be". We had a great performance and the mood of the band was again on a high note. But that high note soon went flat. Out of the blue Head decided we weren't getting booked enough so he fired our booking agent, which led us to a long unexpected break with no shows.

During those several months we all struggled so badly because we weren't getting paid and finding work was nearly impossible with perspective employers knowing at some point we were heading back out on the road. We begged for answers as to when we would be back to work and it seemed as though nothing was in the works. But behind the scenes Head was dealing with another big shift. He had started his own label Driven Music Group and was managed by his label partners. After all the struggles he decided it was time to step away from the label and his managers and start over again. He signed with a major management firm and one of the largest booking agents in the world and promised us that things were going to change for the better. Well, change they did but not altogether for the better. Now well into 2010 we'd not played a single show in nearly 7 months and we were heading to Dallas to play a festival and finally make a few bucks as well. We got in the night before the gig and met our new manager for the first time and he wanted to have a band meeting that evening to tell us their game plan but one of the guys had wandered off to meet a friend so we held off till the next morning. We awoke the next morning, which was ironically the first day of spring, to news that the show was snowed out! Who would guess that a show in Texas on the first day of spring would get snowed out, but it did and this prompted our meeting with management. All of us were on edge and none of us really felt at ease around him like our former management. He basically explained to us how the old management had just buried the touring company in debt and they were going to have to rework the budgets and then told us we would be taking a pay cut. After seven months of sitting on our asses waiting for the good news this guy was supposed to deliver we found out how they expected us to work much harder for much less and it didn't sit well with any of us but Head who now was looking at us like we were ungrateful for the opportunity to be in his band. So we left Texas very depressed with no money from the show and knowing that we were going to be making allot less. We all sat in the back row of the plane except for Head who sat near the front and the flight attendant was asking what band we were in and stuff and eventually offered us free drinks in exchange for autographs for her boyfriend. Ready to blow off some steam from the tension of the meeting a few of us obliged. Well by the time she wheeled her cart to Head and offered him a drink he realized we had beers and whatnot and flipped out on us making a huge scene on the plane. We were shocked because it was always stated we could have a drink or two but to please not be drunk around him, which we respectfully did, well most of us. So again the band morale was in the dumps and maybe even at an all time low.

Shortly after this we were booked to headline the Lifelight Tour, which took us all over the Midwest and into some places where Head's story really related to some young people, and we really made a difference going to those little towns. That was probably the best tour we ever did the whole time I was in the band. The pay wasn't the best and neither were the crowds, but the organizations that put it on took such great care of us and we really bonded as a band, which we needed. So with all the ups and downs we made this tour work and came off of it feeling pretty good.

A month later we did a free show in LA with P.O.D. and it was the day of this show that we would hear from management that we were going to Europe for about a month and that it was going to be allot of work! We tried to ask what that really meant but got no real answers till we got there. We were covering something like 16 countries in 3 weeks and we went there with no crew or anything and we were responsible for all our luggage, gear, and merchandise. This meant some days we would lug all this to an airport at 5 am for a 2 hr flight, then pack it all in a van and squish ourselves in to take a 3hr drive to a hotel, then unload luggage, then go to the club and unload gear, do a sound check, set up the merchandise, run back to the hotel and get ready, rush back to the venue for the show, do a meet and greet, tear down the gear and merch, go sleep for a few hours, and then do it all again the next day in another country. It was very grueling and physically draining but we had some great shows and some not so great ones. The highlights were Metaltown in Sweden where we jammed to nearly 20,000 metalheads and a trip to the Faroe Islands off the coast of Denmark. The trip had so many ups and downs that we were so ready to leave when the last show (oddly enough on Head's 40th birthday) in Poland had arrived but our troubles hadn't even started yet. We had been scheduled to play in the Ukraine the following night however the promoter was involved in a horrible car crash so he cancelled the show. He also cancelled our flights to the Ukraine, which is where we needed to fly home from the next day. Well we tried several options and in the end hiring someone to drive us across the border in to the airport was our only hope of catching the flight home. The van was arranged quickly and we were all out in front of our hotel when two elderly gentlemen (that we aptly dubbed "Team Gramps") in an airport style short bus pulled up. They spoke zero English (or any other language our Dutch tour manager knew) so we could not communicate at all with them; they just knew where we needed to go. Once on the road these guys were like retired Nascar drivers and all over the road, pushing cars out of lanes and everything, it was frightening how they drove and we had a 13-hour ride ahead of us. The ride was so uncomfortable and we were all just exhausted. We rolled up to the border around 1am and it seemed to take forever for the driver to come back from speaking to the guards. Eventually he came back with an officer in toe to check us all out and verify our identities. That part went smoothly however we had to bribe the border patrol not to search our gear so we could make our flights. After what seemed like a good two hours there we were on the road again but not for long. Gramps #1 got pulled over and spent a good half an hour in the police car before we had to bribe the officer to let us go. Once back on the road maybe another hour Gramps #2 gets us pulled over and sits in the car for damn near an hour before we bribe that officer to let us go. Finally back on the road now for a few more hours we start to see twilight on the horizon and as we all start to kinda realize it's morning the van stops again. We looked out the window to see more police, but this time they were all huddled over a dead body in the middle of the road. Eventually we did make it to the airport but unfortunately arrived there 3 hours late for our flight. It took us two extra days to sort the mess out but we finally made it back home to the good 'ole US of A!

As summer began so did the festival season, which kept us busy along with another little mini-tour that took us through my hometown and some other smaller Midwest towns in between the bigger shows. It was during this period of time that the financial strain on the band was mounting to a breaking point and Head made the decision to let our keyboardist go and revert to using backing tracks. The tighter knit group did seem to start building a bond and we really felt like things were getting better in spite of all the ups and downs thus far. We finished out the summer with another EXIT concert this time in LA that was solely dedicated to raising money & awareness for Deftones bassist Chi Cheng who has been in a coma for a few years after being in a traumatic car accident. This show also marked one of the last performances with original guitarist (and co-Producer of Head's album Save Me From Myself) Ralph Patlin. He had been faced with the challenge of trying to keep a fully operational recording studio going strong while working on the road for very little pay and decided that it was time to focus on the future of his business. Now a four piece we all took on whatever we could to save money while touring and took on additional roles (mine were to be guitar tech, handle merch sales, and turn in timesheets). With all of these cutbacks we had also anticipated a small raise, which was indeed promised to us following the upcoming tour already scheduled with RED. Still trying to save money, management decided that the bands should share buses and we ended up riding with Disciple while Head rode with Red in their bus. From the very first show this tour was plagued with issues and having the band separated from its singer really didn't help matters much at all. We went out there every night and killed it and not one show went by that at least one person came up and said we should have headlined. Whenever we told Head what people were saying he'd just get upset with us and say he doesn't ever want to headline again. This left us feeling like he just wants to stay at the bottom of the top and although the tour ended on a positive note the future of the band still seemed a little uncertain.

As the New Year approached the only thing on the books was a spring tour but Head had a speaking engagement at the Parachute festival in New Zealand so it appeared again we were looking at nearly 6 months off. Indeed a few months passed and only one booking came in before the spring tour but then in January at the last minute Parachute invited the whole band to come to New Zealand and perform. We scrambled and got all our visas in order and were off! We got into Hamilton the night before the show and enjoyed the sights of the town and then retired to bed before what was to be a long day. Once we arrived we set up for sound check and then got to meet a brave young man named Aaron Baynard who was brought to us by the Make a Wish folks. Aaron was really sick and wanted to meet Head and we gave hit the VIP treatment for the show. Head had nearly lost his voice by show time due to an onset of bronchitis but we played an amazing show to a huge audience that treated us like rock royalty! The next day we did some press, I did a guitar clinic with Head, and we even participated in a cooking contest. The vibe here was amazing and the show was really the best festival we'd been to yet. The next day we went to Aukland to enjoy the city for a few days then we came back to the US really fired up and feeling like the year couldn't have started off better. Within the next few weeks dates started to slowly filter in for the spring Over My Head tour and we were all hopeful that things were going to start stacking up. Almost one month from the day we played Parachute we got an email that Aaron had passed away and it again made all of us stop and think about how precious life is and how each moment we have to cherish the time we have with each other. As the next few weeks passed it seemed like progress had stalled on the tour and it was pushed back 3 weeks and still had big holes in the middle of the routing. Nervous as to when we'd start seeing a paycheck again I started to inquire a bit and within a few days management wanted to call a meeting to discuss some new initiatives they want to implement for these tours. I for one wanted to discuss my position with management and I put in a call to them two weeks prior to the start of the Over My Head tour explaining that I'm not in a position to take a pay cut again. My concerns were valid as it was clear that the intention of the meeting was to tell us that the touring budget is still out of control and that they needed to restructure it so that Head starts netting some profits. Now this cutback was way more substantial than the first and basically put us all below minimum wage (and still making zero when we are not playing shows). I pleaded with management, spoke to the band, and no one wanted to budge. The other guys even said they didn't care if I make more because they know I have a family and that still did nothing to stop the cuts from happening. I counter offered over the weekend and was awaiting a call from management when I got an email from Head telling me that this is where he is at financially and if I don't like it it's time to part ways. After all the time and extra effort I put into all of this for two years, that's where it stood. We are cutting your pay, take it or leave it. Faced with the dilemma of leaving my band or staying and losing my home and hurting my family, I had only one choice to make. I had to leave. Oddly enough it was two years exactly that I'd been in the band and they were two of the most exciting yet difficult years of my life.

So you see, not all that glitters is gold and not every musician is living the high life, but my time-sharing the stage with the guitarist from one of my favorite bands is something that I will always cherish. I was determined without a doubt that I would succeed at breaking into the music business and I did, and no matter how much of a roller coaster ride it has been I'm far from hopping off for good. I'm living proof that no matter what you want in life if you reach for it and never let go, you'll achieve it. Just always be aware of when you're getting in over your head!