Blistering.com: You guys have consistently released albums that are better than your last. Morgan: In all honesty, we all came from bands where we had input, but nothing major, in the songwriting. I think I was listened to a bit more in my past bands than some of the other guys, but that’s just because my personality bulldozed my way through. I have a personality that just won’t allow me to not be heard. When we got Sevendust together we all started writing and it was a new thing for all of us. It was just one of those things where we all just learned how to write and then write together as we were going along until we learned what our formula was going to be. I really hate to use that term, but there is a formula to get started; verse, bridge, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, middle eight, chorus out. We just kind of gradually got better as songwriters.
Blistering.com: It seems like Lajon has really stepped up his vocals on this record, especially with the melodies and harmonies that he laid down. Morgan: We took a lot of the pressures out of his way. I’m really tough on him sometimes, but we’re brothers and he can handle it. He got to work with me and John and that was just like us sitting in a room writing. We had Shawn Grove engineer this record and he was really good at getting into Lajon’s headspace and making sure he was comfortable, which was key. John and I had produced some stuff before and the one thing I learned about producing is you have to be patient and I’m not at all. I got it together a little bit more with this record and Lajon was able to do what he wanted to do and just do his thing. That’s the ultimate prize when you’re able to have your singer knock out what it is that he wants to do.
Blistering.com: So now that you have your own label are you going to be looking into a few bands that you want to sign? Morgan: I have a few that I was looking at earlier, but we have to get everything dialed in with Winedark and make sure we’re on the exact same page. It’s never any easy thing going the independent route, because we were going from TVT to a real independent label where they don’t have any other major recording acts, only us. There still is a lot of work to be done over there before we can feel comfortable signing another band to our label and putting it out. I don’t want to have any band to have to go through what we’ve gone through. It’s just one of those things where when you’re looking at the offers from all these labels, there’s a million different ways to look at it. You can look at it from the major label, where you have this massive machine there to work your record, but you’re not gonna get as much money up front because they don’t need me as bad. You also have to wonder, “Am I gonna get lost in the shuffle?” Then, you can look at the independent route, where you’re gonna get paid, but they don’t have the reputation to be able to push their way through doors to get things done. On the independent level there is a fair amount of bartering to be done. It’s no secret when you take a look at bands on labels and you have the President of the label come in and say, “Come on! Help me out here. I really want them on this tour.” When you look at management and labels, you always had Korn and Limp Bizkit on tour together, or Staind and Korn, Limp Bizkit and Staind or Orgy in Korn. All these bands that are managed by The Firm, were all touring together and on the same label, so they managed to capitalize on it. It’s not hard when you have a big huge band, a medium sized band and a small band; put them all on the same tour and the hope is that the big band will influence kids enough to buy the two bands below them, therefore you get three big bands. That’s exactly what happened with The Firm, because the got Korn, then Limp Bizkit, Staind and they even got Orgy to sell a bunch of records. I don’t think there would have been any way to pull that off on their own, because they weren’t compatible with any of those bands. That was just the way it works and now we’re in the same position where we have management that doesn’t manage anybody else and a label that doesn’t have any other bands. It’s a very tough road for us and we have to use our relationships that we have with other bands a bit more.
Blistering.com: But isn’t that a better position to be in rather than signed to label or management company that is working 20 other bands, instead of working Sevendust? Morgan: Well I’ve only really seen it from the one side and that’s the side that doesn’t get a lot of help. I believe we’re a band that does really well with loyalty and the fact that we have that makes me feel like someone with power can make something out of it. I would think that they would look at us and say, “There’s not much groundwork to do here. All we have to do is push them through the door they’ve been standing in front of for about five or six years.” We’ll wait and see what happens, because there were a lot of things that tore us down and made it hard for us to move; one big would be not spending a lot of time touring overseas. We’ve kind of saturated the market here in the US, which brought us really close to kids here, but it also made us a band that people could just pass on. “Oh, they were just here last month, so we’ll go see them in another month.” I like to say that we became the house band of the United States.
Blistering.com: You guys recently did a lot of work for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, how did that come about? Morgan: We were doing this press tour and once we got going on that, all this horrible stuff was happening all over the place. We thought that maybe we could make a difference, so instead of going to radio stations and doing interviews, we started calling people and asking them to get involved with helping the victims of Katrina. We started doing some stuff with the troops too and it made things a little bit more fun for everyone involved. We got to interact with people a lot more and we got to go bowling and play Texas Hold ‘Em. It turned out to be a lot of fun for an unbelievable cause. We were just flattered that people would pay good money to come out and hang out with us and that we could give it to a good cause. We didn’t make a nickel on any of that stuff and that’s the way we wanted it. We didn’t do it because we wanted people to know that were doing it; that wasn’t the point. We got to see every penny raised get sent to the Red Cross, we did something for MS up in New York and the Homes For Our Troops project. There’s people out there that came out to see our band and hung out with us that are really good people and it felt good to know that those types of people like our band.
Blistering.com: To wrap things up here, if Sevendust were ever inducted into the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame, how would you want people to remember the band and what item would have to be on display? Morgan: Oh god! We’d just like to be remembered as hard working. We started as kids and we sacrificed more than people can imagine to go out and do this. I mean, my daughter is six years old now and I’ve probably only seen her a year out her life. She loves me dearly and I hope and pray to god that she’ll understand that I was doing all this for her and I’ve been trying to get the brass ring so that she can have a better life. We also would like people to remember us as guys that were really respectful and appreciative of everything they got. If we had to put something into the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame it would have to be the steering wheel to our tour bus. [END]
