Crossfade Interview

The Gauntlet: Hi Ed, great to talk with you, what is Crossfade up to at this particular moment?

Ed Sloan: Were in Salt Lake City, Utah. It's the first night of the tour and I'm just waking up.

TG: With a big push from radio, you're starting to see a whole lot of new friends at shows, how does it feel for you? It must be exciting to get out in front of these crowds.

ES: Yeah, it really is, man. You know, we spent the past two months touring with ALTERBRIDGE and SHINEDOWN and it's been great. Now, this tour with HELMET and CHEVELLE, we it's gonna be a good one, man. We think it's a lot more of our audience, you know, a lot of places we love and Helmet and Chevelle too, Christ it's gonna be a lot of fun.

TG: So compared to the garage days back in Columbia, South Carolina, this is something that is a little bit different for you guys?

ES: Yeah, It's a lot different, man, coming from Columbia, when we used to play for a couple hundred people when we did play, and now from five hundred to two thousand people a night, its just great, man. It's just exactly what we're looking for.

TG: Tell us what to expect from the Crossfade set at these upcoming Sno-Core tour dates.

ES: A very high energy show, man. I think especially with the fans who know our music, I think we get a really good connection with those fans, you singing the words, when they sing with us, I feel that it's just that we have a really good connection with our fans at our shows.

TG: What songs will you be including in the set? Obviously the singles, any new material?

ES: Well actually we've got a thirty minute time slot, so that's just enough time for us to play our album in its entirety and it really doesn't allow us any time for new stuff. It's pretty much the album.

TG: The band has been on tour forever in support of the record, how much longer do you plan on touring for it? It seems you will be having quite a bit more life from the new single; 'So Far Away' and then it will be on to the next one. How long do you think you guys can stay out there?

ES: I know it man, and we're just getting started. I'm sure that we will be touring at least, well into this year and hopefully by the beginning of next year we will be back into the studio, recording the next album. But, you know that 'Cold' has just had such long legs that may stretch that out to kinda, next summer. At least we'll be touring this entire year.

TG: 'So Far Away' is certainly blowing up on the radio here; you hear the song about every 40 minutes throughout the afternoon and evening on local rock stations. You could end up out for this one longer than you may think if these follow up singles settle in for a while.

ES: Well, that's good to hear, man. I think so, which is good for us because we don't, you know, being out here, out the road with our bus, that's what we call home, man and the longer we can be out here the better.

TG: Which are the dates that you're really looking forward to on the tour?

ES: I'm really looking forward to playing Las Vegas, actually, a couple of days, we had a lot of fun the last time we played out there, and getting back close to our hometown, Myrtle Beach down there in Florida, those are -those are just really great shows for us. In fact I think that the East Coast, with Chevelle, that will be the highlight of the tour for us.

TG: And what are some things that went down on the previous tours with Shinedown and Alterbridge?

ES: You know the tour with Alterbridge was a great tour, but I think that all of the old Creed fans snatched up the tickets before Crossfade fans had a chance to get any, so we wound up, like, a lot of the tour was spent trying to win over an audience which wasn't really that familiar with our music which, I guess that gives it a different kind of a dynamic which is different and it's good. Just a great tour, they're great guys, Shinedown as well and wow, just fantastic guys and being our first time out, it was great to have such good guys that helped us cut our teeth a little bit. Helped our road techs out and helped us out, just learning how to live out on the road. Kinda like, our mentors out on the road, you know? But it's good man, we, you know, we saw those cats last week in L.A. and hung out with them, It's good to have friends in the business now.

TG: From the record's chart topping radio success, it might seem to a lot of folks that you just hit the scene in a flash, but it's been more of a steady assent, tell us about the material that was put out in 2002.

ES: Yeah, I think we released it independently back in October of 2002. So you know, it's been written and recorded since then, so yeah, it's been out for, you know a couple years.

TG: How many copies were pressed when it was initially released?

ES: When we originally released it? How many did we press, we were originally just a baby band back home we pressed like, two thousand copies of it. Got em out, got some little stores to put them on the shelves. And then, it wound up, ten days later, we were signed by Columbia, and so we had to yank them all off the shelves, you know, couldn't sell them for like, two years 'til they put the album out. It was kind of bittersweet, you know because we finally got the album done, have it out on shelves in our hometown, and then had to yank it off the shelves. But it was all right, you know.

TG: Well, they will make for some really cool collector's items someday.

ES: Yeah, we still got a couple hundred of them in a box somewhere, someday; we will give them to some people as gifts.

TG: So how did it come about that you would come to work with Randy Staub, who did some post-production studio re-touching?

ES: He was recommended by Matt Pinfield, the A & R guy at the label. He had recommended Randy Staub and looking at Randy's credits, we were happy to oblige, you know Metallica and all the bands that he's done are some of our greatest influences so we're just honored to have him work on our stuff.

TG: What types of things did Randy do to the album? You had it for the most part recorded, was it a bit of mixing here and there?

ES: Yeah, he totally remixed the whole entire thing, the tracks were finished, but he just put a brilliance on it, ya know? He just made everything stand out the way it should. You know, when we mixed it we're not engineers-so it's just night and day the difference between our mix and his mix obviously, he just cleaned it up. He made it bright and shiny, man.

TG: As the group has evolved through three different incarnations, it seems as though you were originally influenced by some much heavier bands I know that bands like Wrathchild have been mentioned, I find it rare that musicians list the band as an influence, but when I do hear that mentioned, I know I'm dealing with a band that has good taste in heavy music. That strikes me as a pretty knoweledgable influence. Are you still playing as heavy as you ever were with the band today?

ES: Well, I don't know if we're actually ever gonna get much heavier than we are now and the music that we wrote back when we were called " The Nothing", Wrathchild was a big influence of ours. The music wasn't really any heavier than what it is now. It was just a different kind of heavy, you know? It quite wasn't as melodic. I think in the future you could probably expect our music is going to be, really about the same as it is right now. I think there's too much we're gonna be changing.

TG: Has there been a lot of time to rest in between touring for the album?

ES: We had, you know, we were on straight since the release of the album in April until the end of December. We had like, three weeks off before, actually, yesterday when we came out to start this tour, so for those three weeks, some of us spent it home, uh, some of us spent it away visiting friends. And, you know, we all just kind of relaxed and took a breather. Then all of us, we just got back into the bus yesterday, you know, hugged each other. Just so glad to be back together and back on the bus, it's always too much time to have been down, man. A couple of days is all we need.

TG: Let's speak about some of the individual tracks on the record. 'So Far Away', that was one of the tracks that was written more recently?

ES: Yeah that was a song that was new. The original album had ten songs and only eight that are available on the current, Crossfade CD. They had us kick two songs off the album, we wrote two additional songs right before the release of the album. 'So Far Away' and "The Unknown' were those two that we wrote as of late. And you know, 'So Far Away' is just kind of like that song for us. It was the only song on the album we knew we were going places with and we knew things were finally gonna happen for us and I think 'So Far Away' is kinda that testament from us to say that things are finally happening for us and we're finally gonna get out of this place and do some things we wanna do and that kind of thing so 'So Far Away' is definitely one of those songs for us, that kind of hits home:

TG: It is such a very moving and emotional track and it really strikes a chord.

ES: Yeah, thank you, man. With us doing it every night and it's the last song we play every night and it feels so good to sing it man, just that we're still so far away from home and just doing what we love and it just feels good.

TG: Where did you get the inspiration for the really metal intro and the way in which you combined that part with some very hooky material? It sets you apart.

ES: I tell you man that was just a product of living in a studio that we had at my house, you know for like six months, I didn't work, I just recorded this album and it's just sitting down and recording riffs and parts. Some of the songs will come together you know like, they just kind of spilled out songs like 'Starless' are the product of sitting down a few months and writing licks and finding some things that sound good together, then just putting them together and seeing how they sound and then once you get what you want to be recorded, man. So what came out with that was I think, eight or nine different parts that I thought was cool and we just changed the key around so they all fit together and it worked out. Ha-ha, a lot of times you just kinda write a song like that and you know, it goes here and it goes there and it's kind of discombobulated, bot a song like 'Starless', it kind of just all comes together, all the parts come together.

TG: Personally, where do you derive your vocal influences from? Who were the front men who were a major impact upon the style that you sing?

ES: Um, definitely Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, James from Metallica. Those are probably the two biggest influences. Them as vocalist and, and as lyricists. It's just that any song they ever wrote, you know every word they wrote meant something. There wasn't any filler, every thing they had to say, every hole they had to fill with their voice it meant something. It wasn't something they just threw in and I always appreciated the fact that you could sit and listen to an entire album or a song and you would never get any of that fluff, it was all just heart and soul, man. Definitely Hetfield and Cornell.

TG: So were the members really shocked when 'Cold' took off like a bat out of Hell, man? It was just so huge on the airwaves and it still is.

ES: It's just, we were super surprised, man. We just never knew 'Cold' was gonna be so the first song that would be put out or a song, period. We felt that 'Cold' was just a short little song, that some people liked. We just had no idea. And Columbia told us at the showcase, they told us that that was gonna be the song, our flagship song, and we're just so happy that people have responded in this way man. They're taking it upon their hearts and taking it upon their lives, you know, for me as a songwriter, I've been trying to do this for twelve years. It's just completely amazing, man. I'm blown away by it.

TG: So how did it come about that you brought Tony into the band to DJ? It sets you apart from a majority of the bands, but it is bound to draw some comparisons.

ES: Well you know, Tony came around into our band about, seven years ago and he really, his part was mainly for the live performances. He would fill in and sing he ended up one time, he was playing percussion. And then, he got his DJ stuff and we started working that into our set. You can't really hear his presence, you can hear him vocally on the album, but as far as scratching and stuff, you don't see Tony's presence very much on the album very much. You only see Tony's peresnce in our live show. That's where he breaks out the tables and stuff and he sings a lot more than he did on the album. So really when the next album comes, he plays guitar, you know? Tony really does it all, whatever we need for him to do to really bring things out in a live performance and on the record. Whether it's DJ or vocals or percussion or guitar, he just kinda does it all.

TG: And you guys mix it up with the tables on heavier edged tunes like on 'Death Trend Setta', that is material that is much heavier than other bands that feature DJs like Limp Bizkit and Incubus.

ES: Yeah, theres some there like on the bridges, you can hear the scratches on the bridges and like live, he actually does some samples for it and stuff and he sings some of the stuff live.

TG: You're mixing almost pop based harmonies with a heavier edged sound and there's a good amount of flavors in your songs, where the band goes through different moods. Tell us about 'No Giving Up', that as far as content is a very interesting song.

ES: Yeah, that was the last song I think that was before there was hope of actually doing something with this band and having a record deal and I remember I was getting down into that place I used to get down into. That place where things, they just aren't feeling too good, and you wish you were somewhere else. And I knida, I turned a corner in my life where I just threw things off and I said, you know, I'm not gonna get down in this hole, because there's a reason I'm still doing this.and 'No Giving Up' is just a product of that. It's just us, and our band just, you know, not taking no for an answer and not letting anything get us down. And that's a song that truly comes from the heart and it all just kicks us in the ass every day, when we play it. It's about-we're not gonna give up. We're not gonna give up now, we were not gonna give up then, you know.

TG: So for you which songs are the highlights of the set?

ES: My favorite songs? Well definitely, 'Death Trend Setta' it is, you know, it's so high energy. And 'The Deep End'. I really like to sing 'The Deep End'. The people at the shows they connect with that song, you know, they sing it with all their hearts that one and 'Death Trend Setta'. And then, 'Cold', because everybody knows the words, everybody knows the song and they kinda go crazy when you play it. So, those three are definitely my favorites.

TG: Live, is Crossfade a group that really stands by the music and lets it do the talking?

ES: Yeah, it really is, because that is what our band is about, man. We don't have any gimmicks, we don't have any stage props. It's just us and some loud ass guitars and big drums and us just screamin' our hearts out and getting connected with the people. I mean, we have our fun up on stage-it's still high energy and we have a lot of fun, the crowd has a lot of fun. But it's like no flames, no fireworks, it's just us and the music.

TG: So will you be hitting the road as a headliner after the Sno-Core tour?

ES: Yeah, we've actually got two weeks of headlining dates set up, it's like, I think Sno-Core ends March sixteenth and then we've got two days off at home and then we start a two week headlining tour. Which is certainly earlier than we had anticipated-enough people know about us that we can fill up some of these places. We're gonna give it a shot.

TG: On this Tour, Chevelle are also a really hot band on radio right now and Helmet are somewhat legendary.

ES: They're kind of a super group now, and I didn't realize that Helmet was only, the singer and I didn't realize that all of the guys were from different bands like Anthrax and other bands.

TG: Page Hamilton has been considered a great guitarist for such a long time now. Do you feel that Helmet will bring older fans and Chevelle and yourselves, as well as the openers, younger fans?

ES: Yeah, that's kind of a little bit of what we had on the Alterbridge tour, with this Creed thing, now you've got Creed fans that are in their early thirties. But now Helmet, they're crowds are so much heavier 'cause Helmet's like that heavy band, man and I think it's gonna be great though. I think that our music, live, just lends itself to exactly what a Helmet fan would want to hear. And Chevelle, you know I think that everybody that comes to the show is gonna be pleasantly surprised with the show, the entire show. Especially with Strata and Future Leaders Of The World before us. Those are two great bands as well. I think it's gonna be amazing.