SEETHER

J.H. – Well, we are playing San Diego on Sunday and headed that way actually.  Spokane, Seattle, Portland, and then San Diego.  Then I think we make our way to Phoenix.  Not a whole lot in the southern California area, but we are hoping that will change with the new year.  We are getting a lot of radio support for a change out there and it would make sense that we start doing some shows soon.

J.H. – That first tour with Breaking Benjamin and Three Days Grace started in August.  It was put to us as we had been away from touring for over a year, so it was a great way to get back out into things, introduce "Fake It" as it started building as our first release and single on radio.  That tour was booked three months prior to the release of Finding Beauty in Negative Places.  It was hard to book anything without the new product being out, so they graciously allowed us to come out and do a forty minute opening set and gave us a chance to knock the rust off a little and get back to our fans.  I feel our audience very much shares the same with Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin.  It was a great warm up tour so to speak. 

Now we are head lining on this little run we are doing which will last until December fifteenth, break for the holidays and resume again in January with Three Days Grace in Canada which is their home country and a big chance for us to play in front of some home crowds because they do so well back there. 

J.H. – Oh, I know, these shows we’re out here doing I think it would be on problem doing hour and a half, two hours.  We have more then enough material and we love playing a lot of the new stuff as well as some of the old that the fans like to hear as well.

J.H. – Technically, this is my fourth album with Shaun.  I was on Broken with Amy Lee, and three or four of the bonus tracks off Disclaimer 2.  So I sort of count that and then as well, One Cold Night, Karma and Effect and this new one.   

On this album we had a lot of time to work on material.  I’m sure you know as well, as many people that last year Shaun entered rehab and I had major back surgery in December.  I had a completely crushed lower back disc that had to be removed.  I had a lumbar fusion is what they call it.  They take the disc out, put the bone in and bracket me back together with a little bit of metal.  Exactly the same surgery that Phil Anselmo from Pantera had.

J.H. – The happy ending to this story is that I finally had the surgery done, because I had been putting it off for so long, and when that tour ended, I just crashed.  I had four months of rehabilitation I was in a walker just to hold my body up.  I can not believe how far I have come in a year.  But I feel great, and I am playing great.   We resumed in May with the start of what became, Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces, Shaun, because of the time in rehab and me in recovery, it gave him a lot of time to go through a lot of material.  He wrote close to sixty songs, that was hand picked by the band, management, and label, which is always the process, a little bit of a political thing; if that is what you want to call it.

J.H. – Thank you, we are really proud of it.  Howard Benson was the producer on this and I think it was time for a change of pace from Bob Marlett and I think he brought a new twist on things, and allowed us to expand a bit and maybe take some chances we had not taken before.  I think a real melodic side of Shaun came out personally, not to toot our own horn hear but I think Shaun sounds amazing on this new cd. 

J.H. – Thank you.

J.H. - They just had us come try it out.  We were in New York doing press for the new cd the week that it came out.  M.T.V. had us come out and demo it.  We are all Guitar Hero fans and it is very similar to that only it has a drum kit and a mic.  They have really been pushing the heck out of it and it is a lot of fun.  The people that designed the game were asking us questions about what we thought about it, and how it felt, was it true to life, things like that.  

J.H. – No, but with X-box live, people can get online and add songs to their game.   They can change all day long.  I would love to see a Seether song in the future on the list.

J. H. – I would love to.  I am excited that I am featured in January’s issue of Modern Drummer.  I am afraid that this tour in going to interfere with that.  I have not been there in a couple of years and would really like to make it down. 

J.H. – I think there was a tongue and cheek joke there.  Maybe it was very obvious?  There were a few songs put to us, a Nelly Frutodo song.   We thought at first being approached by Pepsi Smash and Yahoo that we would get to pick our very own cover.   I forget who the third artist was.  So the other choice being Amy Whinehouse and going into that world she is just about the coolest there is.  Then with the title of the song, kind of being an inside joke already with the band, it was the song to do.   We honestly ran through it three or four times so what you hear and what you see is what you get.   The spirit of Nirvana and a little bit of Kurt Cobain and how Nirvana would do this.  Seetherize it a bit and I think it really came out good.  We have had requests to do it live and we have played it at a few shows.  It is pretty cool.

J. H. – Yes, Dean is a bud of ours and we love his work.  Tends to be a little dark and Seether has done that a lot and we wanted to again with the change of producer, not that we would ever not work with Dean again, we love his work.  We wanted to try and take a change.  Maybe show a little humor.  Show that it is not we take ourselves real serious and dark and ominous.  That there is a little fun in this to and Fake It, that’s what it is all about, the artificial and how shallow it all can be, Los Angeles,  the business, this avenue and I think the video turned out great.

J.H. – Yes, the artwork is David Ho and the illustrations are taken from story and we would like to be able to publish that story so that it goes along with the illustrations that we use only for the artwork.  When you see us live we have incorporated it into the stage and backdrop.  As well as with the merchandise and everything, that theme just runs through.  How she is that doll like character. 

J.H. – Yes exactly.