The road to success has never been an easy one for Atlanta’s Sevendust. While many of the band’s friends and contemporaries went on to multi-platinum success in the late ‘90s and early 2000’s, Sevendust was forced to travel their own road, gaining each fan through years of road work. Sevendust has consistently put out great records and opted for a lengthy career, instead of the being flash in the pan or “one hit wonder”.
With the release of Next, Sevendust’s fifth studio album, the band was once again greeted by adversity. Shortly before the writing sessions were to begin, guitarist Clint Lowery abruptly left the group in favor of his side-project Dark New Day. In addition to Lowrey’s unexpected departure, the band was faced with the ungodly task of parting ways with longtime home TVT Records, a label that Sevendust had helped turn into an independent powerhouse. Facing adversity head on, the group rebounded and recruited former Snot/Amen guitarist Sonny Mayo as their new guitarist, founded their own 7Bros. Records and signed a partnership with Winedark Records. With all of this chaos surrounding them, Sevendust still managed to sit down and write one of 2005’s best hard rock records.
Sevendust drummer and mastermind, Morgan Rose, stepped out from behind his kit to give Blistering.com an exclusive interview where he discussed the departure of longtime guitarist Clint Lowery, Dark New Day, the creation of the band’s explosive new album Next and why his six year old daughter is a driving force behind Sevendust.
Blistering.com: The last couple years have been pretty heavy emotionally for Sevendust as a band. What was it like to come out of that period and release Next? Morgan: When we finished our touring cycle for Seasons, and our number one priority was to figure out a way to get out of the record deal that we had been stuck in for quite a while. Once we finally got out, our next priority was not to be stuck in the same position as far as creative control and to be able to make a lot of the musical decisions on our own. Being free like that, we just jumped into it. We started writing and recording on our own with no producer and no record label to tell us what direction to go in. It was really liberating in terms of getting us back to our roots a little bit.
Blistering.com: This record definitely sounds like a return to the roots of Sevendust. Mogan: We definitely wanted to do this on our own terms. After we got out of our deal, we didn’t go around asking labels if they wanted to sign us, we went in and recorded the record then about half way through we had some record labels that would fly in to hear a couple tracks and make us an offer. It was gratifying to have labels come in and offer us record deals on the spot. I remember walking in and having record labels say, “Do you want to do the deal today?” They were ready to get down to business and knock out the brass tacks in one day. It’s a little different because we’re not a new band, so they didn’t have to do any research because they knew our resume. We basically got offers from just about every label out there, which was nice after we were led to believe that we weren’t relevant to the music community anymore.
Blistering.com: It must have been a much better position to be in this time around, having the upper hand as opposed to the label. Morgan: Definitely. We were able to pick and choose what we wanted to do, which was still nerve wracking, because you’re always thinking, “Did I make the right choice? Am I happy?”
Blistering.com: What was your reaction to longtime guitarist Clint Lowery leaving the band in favor of Dark New Day? Morgan: We pretty much understood that it was going to go down. He was always the rumor topic and we’d always hear rumors that he was doing something with somebody else or that he was getting something started with his brother. He is and will always be a brother to this band, but it was one of those things where none of us would have been able to do that the way it was done. He decided to make his move when he hadn’t fulfilled his obligation, with six days left to go in a tour right before Christmas. That’s just the way it goes, but me, I wouldn’t have been able to do that to the guys. At the time, he was going to another thing and he was gonna be able to get paid and move one, when we were in a position where we didn’t know what we were going to do; we were really left out to dry. We were ok with him going, but in all honesty, his family pulled him off the road with six days left to go because they said, “he wasn’t stable enough out here with us.” We never fired him and he never quit, we just got another guitar player and he got another band.
Blistering.com: Have you had a chance to hear the Dark New Day record? Morgan: I am a fan of his writing, so… it sounds a lot like Sevendust to me with a different singer and a drummer that does a lot of the same screams as I do. Honestly, I had a few of those songs in my iPod and I would listen to those more than anything else. There were a few tracks that I really liked, one in particular that we used to jam. We used to play the music to ‘Brother’ at soundcheck.
Blistering.com: What does Sonny bring to the table and to the songwriting for Sevendust? Morgan: When he came in, most of the record had already been written, but there was still a lot of vocal work that was open and he just jumped right in and started taking care of business. He’s a very deep individual and a little more intelligent than your average person, so he helped bring the cheese factor out of the mix. We’ve always tried to make sure we’re not too cliché about anything and not have it be open for interpretation. We wanted to be a little bit more challenging lyrically than, “Rock on with the ladies and smoke weed!” That stuff has been done so many times that we wanted to try and get a little deeper.
Blistering.com: Sonny has done some amazing things over the course of his career as well. He’s played in Snot and in Amen with Shannon Larkin. Morgan: When he jumped in and said, “I want this,” that was just the icing on the cake for us. To have someone like him say they want to come out and jam with you is just a good thing.
Blistering.com: I know you were close to Snot and Lynn Strait before he died, does it feel like things have come full circle for the band now that Sonny is in the band? Morgan: Totally; I used to jam on stage with Sonny and did a full show with Snot. I know what it was like to jam with him and I had watched him on stage every night and taken my notes, so it was pretty much a no-brainer. It was just a matter of if he was available and if he wanted to be in the band.
Blistering.com: There are two sides to this record, the heavy old school Sevendust and then, the very melodic side. Morgan: Well there, were so many songs written for this record that I always tell people, “If we wanted to do a record with 12 songs that sounded like pieces, we could have done it. If we wanted to 12 tracks that sounded like “Shadows in Red” we could have done that.” John was really determined with what had been going on that he just wrote, wrote, and wrote. Then Vinny came in with a handful of riffs and we just went with it. Instead of going in one direction we just tried to pick the twelve best songs. We might have missed five or six songs that could have been better, but we went with what we felt was the smart thing to do. That gave us the diversity that we were looking for and allowed us to have the traditional Sevendust vibe for songs like ‘Ugly’, and then going into ‘Shadows In Red’ and ‘This Life’, which are more melodic.
Sevendust Feature Interview Page 1 << you are here
The road to success has never been an easy one for Atlanta’s Sevendust. While many of the band’s friends and contemporaries went on to multi-platinum success in the late ‘90s and early 2000’s, Sevendust was forced to travel their own road, gaining each fan through years of road work. Sevendust has consistently put out great records and opted for a lengthy career, instead of the being flash in the pan or “one hit wonder”.
