INTERVIEW: Dez Fafara – DevilDriver
DEVILDRIVER have returned. It seems forever since we’ve heard anything from the Californian groove metallers, but in reality it’s only been two years since their seventh studio album, Trust No One. Now, they’ve unleashed Outlaws ‘Til the End: Vol.1 on the world, a collection of country songs done in the only way DEVILDRIVER know, with sheer heaviness and brute force. Currently, the band grace the cover of our brand new issue (which you should totally buy) and now, we present an unfiltered and extensive chat with talismanic frontman Dez Fafara who tells us all about the new record, discussing the ideas behind it, the guests involved and why you shouldn’t bring a copy of THE BEATLES’ The White Album into his home…
Dez, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today.
Dez: No problem at all man! You know, the UK’s one of my favourite countries in the world; I’ve always said that if you can make it in New York, if you can make it in London, if you can make it in LA then you’ve got a career around the world and the UK has been a stronghold for me since the beginning and has embraced me since the beginning. It’s always been one of those places that I love, man; I even wrote a song about it [Another Night in London from 2009’s Pray for Villains], you know what I mean? [laughs]
And a belter of a song it is too! So, let’s start with something perhaps a little basic but very important to this whole story: what’s the difference between ‘outlaw’ country music and what many would consider ‘mainstream’ country music?
Dez: I guess it’s the same thing in metal; you have your bands who say they’re metal but really they’re just bullshit active rock bands posing as metal bands who have people writing their songs and we know what the difference is; I know who you are, right? And I think this is the same thing in country; WILLIE NELSON, WAYLON JENNINGS, JOHNNY CASH, those guys are the Lemmy of country music. They’re the outlaws, they’re the underground, they’re not conforming or skirting their music towards any kind of playlist; they’re writing about what they are and from their heart, the music’s making it to the public and if it gets big on its own then it gets big on its own.
That’s a really interesting take, one would imagine there are a lot of people out there who have never thought about it in that way before.
Dez: Oh yeah, these guys are the underground leaders. Like, I cannot stand pop country, I can’t even fucking listen to it, the stuff that’s on the radio is absolutely terrible! But these early country artists, the way they tell a story, the way they deliver lyrics, the way they live their life and broke open into touring, that’s way more interesting. Additionally, you go back into history, you find that country music meets swing, meets blues, eventually meets rhythm ‘n’ blues and bingo, rock ‘n’ roll music right there!
Interesting! Now, you’ve released a three-part documentary on YouTube in the run up to this album; in those videos, you said that country music was a part of your parent’s music collection growing up. Do you think in a different life you’ve have gone down that route musically?
Dez: You know, I really don’t know. I loved music from the time I was a kid and used to fall asleep listening to the radio every night. I came home from school and got into their record collection, not cartoons on the TV. I would often tell my mom from a young age that I didn’t want people over or go outside and play with friends because I wanted to listen to their records and in addition, I knew what I liked and didn’t at a very young age. They had a lot of records that I loved, but my parents had a big BEATLES collection and I found myself drawing on the cover of The White Album one day; my step-father beat me for two days as a punishment, but I told them “I hate this band!” I never liked THE BEATLES and indeed never have!
As well as this, the idea of having a record collection is hard to come by nowadays. I have three sons and they if they want to borrow my music they have to go to my Spotify and listen to my playlists or they have to borrow my iPod which is almost the equivalent of a fucking record player now. But yeah, that’s how I got into music. Would I have gone down the country road? Man, I really don’t know. I was very interested in what was volatile, violent and visceral when I was young, now that I look back at it: the first time I listened to punk rock, to MOTORHEAD, to heavy metal and bands like KISS, that was what I liked, and that was when it all came together. Whether it chose me or I chose it, who knows? [laughs]
Why now? Why is now the time to do something like this with DEVILDRIVER?
Dez: It’s just perfect timing; nobody’s doing anything that shaking up the trees or shaking up dust in metal, I can’t even name a band, can you? If you can, let me know! For me, it’s about doing something different. Early on when I had decided to do this I had someone call me and say “this is not a good idea to do for the brand, I don’t know if this is going to be good for DEVILDRIVER, maybe this should be a Dez Fafara solo album?” and as he finished the call he said “don’t hang yourself doing this with DEVILDRIVER.” Now you look at the artwork for the album and you see five nooses on the front cover. Why? Because I said “if it’s going to hang me, then hang me. I’m going to do what I want.” I’ve done what I want from the beginning, when I started COAL CHAMBER there was really nothing like us at all, we came before a lot of the other bands that seemed to at the same time as us. Even when I started DEVILDRIVER, there was no-one really doing what we were to the point that the fans had to start calling us ‘groove metal’ and Spotify last year added a genre called ‘groove metal’ and made DEVILDRIVER the number one band on it. So when you ask that question “why now?” always do things that are unexpected, always take your art in an unexpected place. Don’t be afraid to do things that other people think you shouldn’t, think are unnecessary or think aren’t good, because that where true art comes from.
Another thing out of this was I had people calling me and saying “hey, if you do this right [in their version] and you skew your art and you do songs that could make it to radio, then maybe you’re going to cross over into country radio and active rock radio. This could be very good for the brand” and to that person I just about hung up on them because I was like “you fucking don’t understand what I’m doing, dude!” My whole life, when I heard Whiskey River or Ghost Rider I didn’t hear them as soulful melody, I heard them as harsh, guttural screams. So, why now? Let’s do something man, let’s shake the tree and that’s what DEVILDRIVER is doing with this.
Fair! In the documentary as well, [guitarist] Neal Tiemann said he’d been thinking about doing something on a similar line for nearly a decade; with that in mind it can’t have been too hard to get the rest of the band on board with something like this?
Dez: No, it was not hard at all. You gotta understand: Neal’s one of the most amazing guitar player’s I’ve ever met. I put him up there against Zakk Wylde or anybody else all day long. That guy’s had a guitar in his hand probably since he was about two years old and he only listened to country music until he was 14 and he’s from Texas, you know what I mean? So it was a no brainer with those cats to get them on board.
We were also coming up to three years between records and I have issues with that, artists who wait three to four years between records is down to either laziness or because they can’t come up with anything good enough. But we’re working on something extremely special, so it is going to take time and I knew that we were going to have time in the interim so let’s give somebody something special. When I brought up doing a covers record, it never came up once to do a punk cover record as it’s already been done numerous times, to do an 80s cover record for the same reason or even a heavy metal covers record. What I’ve found myself explaining a lot more to people in the UK and Europe is that you’re at a heavy metal concert, on a heavy metal bus or even at a heavy metal barbecue or tailgating event backstage, you’re going to hear SLAYER into Willie Nelson into Johnny Cash into PANTERA into METALLICA, you’re going to hear that. The guy over here with the METALLICA and SLAYER patches on his vest also has a Johnny Cash patch. Why? Because those outlaws broke open what it’s like to stick your middle finger up to any genre and just do what you do, whether it’s artistically or otherwise. Anything that comes out should come out naturally, that’s what those guys did and that’s what I’ve been trying to do my whole life.
Makes complete sense. I also understand that this record was, to put it mildly, a bit of a pain to put together?
Dez: Well, this thing was only meant to be “let’s do a covers record, it’ll be nice and fun, let’s give the listener something cool before the next studio album”. What it ended up being was two-and-a-half years in the making, I almost dug my ditch several times, the money ran out halfway through, the logistics were a nightmare. I mean, how do you even put Randy Blythe in the same room with John Carter Cash, Ana Cristina Cash and me or even onto the same song? How do you even get that shit done? But it’s done, and now I’m breathing. Six months ago I told my wife [band manager Anahstasia] this record was never going to be finished, it’s not. She just looked and me and said “don’t worry. Just keep doing what you’re all doing, it’ll happen.”
I think what came out of this for me most though was a sense of collaboration and comradery that hasn’t been felt since the 70s. In the 80s, 90s and even the 2000s it’s all been me, me, me and focused on your band and your band alone. No-one wants to jam with each other, occasionally a guest may come in for a record but seriously, what the fuck happened to music? What happened to the comradery of it all? That was what I wanted to bring back to it. I also wanted to bring attention to the fact there’s four different singers and four different genres on here. You’ve got metal, you’ve got outlaw country, you’ve got punk rock with (FEAR frontman) Lee Ving, who for me is the godfather of punk rock, when I ran away from home at 15 I had a FEAR shirt on, so it’s four different genres of cats. I don’t want to say struggling, but coming together to make this thing happen. Somebody said to me in an interview the other day that it was like two school buses colliding head on, but then the fire is beautiful and that’s a great analogy for what we’ve got here. It couldn’t have worked if it wasn’t done right as well, but the lyrics and stories are so poignant inside outlaw country that you put that stuff with heavy, grinding guitars and make it heavy. Lee Ving said it best, he said “I think Dez may have started a new genre”, so let’s really see what happens.
We’ve also come across some real secret weapons doing this record and I think that’s what it’s all about as a band is growing through your art to get to the next piece and what you’re going to bring to the table for it and we found out that paddle steel (guitar) is incredible on metal, who’d have fucking thought? So we’re definitely gonna do that. Neil is an incredible vocalist and when he sings with me we have a crazy tone together on songs like Outlaw Man and A Thousand Miles From Nowhere. I’ve never had anyone in DEVILDRIVER who could scream or sing with me, nobody. Not one guy. Neal also replaced someone in the band who had been there fifteen years and never wrote a whole song or contributed one bit, so now I bring in Neal who knows how to write, know how to structure tunes and he’s got vocals? Yeah, we definitely have some secret weapons.
That’s really cool, and it’s also nice that you’ve managed to find a different edge within DEVILDRIVER almost by accident in a way?
Dez: Oh yeah. There’s this clip of me, I wouldn’t say it was a famous clip but still, I’m on a tour bus and I’m on the way to record (2007 record) The Last Kind Words. The label are on the phone to me saying “we have to think about commerce, you know. Make sure you dial it down a little with the vocals, give us something clean that we can work with for the radio,” and if you listen to that record, it’s the most balls-out fuck yourself record that we did [laughs] And I responded by saying “never clean vocals in DEVILDRIVER!” Well, never say never. I just mean don’t do it stupid or in the same way that everyone else does it when you’re heavy and then there’s nice, beautiful fucking clean chorus; that’s ridiculous. But the way that WE did it, now we have something there that may lend to the band and actually work to the point that I’ll allow it, for want of a better word, within the art. So we’ll see, man, you know?
My wife actually said it to me best though this morning, there has never been a time in my career when the Dez of COAL CHAMBER and the Dez of DEVILDRIVER have met and she said “when does that happen? And I said “well, it happens now.” COAL CHAMBER is done, we’ll never come back, I’ll never do another show and there will never be another record, but that being said, what do I do with that other guy? Does he go in a closet or upstairs and sleep all day? No, that’s not going to happen, so these two colliding personalities are coming together and will come together on the next record. The result is this whole palette of colours we’ve never used. If I personally was going to use clean vocals before now it would have been in COAL CHAMBER where it was best suited but now, with that not happening, the wildfires are open and I’m gonna burn it down with every fucking angle and every single thing that we now have in the arsenal.
In your opinion, who was the one guest you got on the record this time around who couldn’t have made you any happier?
Dez: Personally, I can’t believe I did a song with John Carter Cash and his wife Ana. I got to record at the Cash Cabin as well; I pulled up there in Nashville and John Is waiting for me outside. He takes my wife and I in, feeds us with food that he made the night before, spends the next hour telling me about his love for heavy metal, shows me pictures of him and his father Johnny going to an Ozzy Osbourne concert when he was 11 and here’s Johnny Cash dressed in all black with black boots that go past his knees with zippers on. I was like “fuck, man!” and then I got to record in that cabin and he took me over to the mantle by the fireplace that Johnny put in, big wooden mantle and every artist has signed it; I signed it next to Willie Nelson and Chris Cornell, so there’s some bucket list items happening here! Now, John Carter and I are very good friends and we talk all the time, it looks like the Cash family and Fafara family are actually going to be doing more music together because of this collaboration that we’ve done. It means a great deal to me, man, I’ve got a lot of respect for that family. John Carter said it himself that “you can call me a rebel, you can call me an outlaw but what I am is free”. He doesn’t have any boundaries, he does whatever he wants to do and that’s outlaw for me, that’s outlaw style.
We could go into this forever, but to the fans that are reading this, don’t be duped by the rock and roll band that has a 10,000 person draw and you think are a metal band but they have four songwriters behind them, no-one in the band is writing, they’ve got a deal with their record label to make them big. What’s happening now, and I’m watching it, is back in the days metal bands that were big, i.e. PANTERA, SABBATH etc, they didn’t write for the radio, they didn’t skew their art for commerce, they didn’t screw the fans by writing to monetise their art and that’s what’s happening right now. The bands who are the biggest rock and roll bands right now, people are thinking they’re fucking metal, dude and they follow them like they’re metal bands! I’m like “dude, they’re hiring writers!” It’s ridiculous. So I’m fucking stoked when a band like CODE ORANGE comes out, I’m like fuck yes and they’ve got sleeper songs too. I heard one song and they’re a hardcore band, next time I hear them and it sounds like the fucking SMASHING PUMPKINS. They’re a smart motherfucking band with a raw record and prove there’s stuff coming out that’s now skewing itself towards fucking commerce and I’m not going out to be a part of that.
Yeah, that’s completely fair! Is there anyone that you wanted for the record that you couldn’t get?
Dez: Oh man, the first guy I called was Glenn Danzig because he’s such a close friend of mine and I opened for him on my first ever tour 25 years ago and Glenn said he wanted to do it but he got caught up recording this Elvis (Presley) stuff that he’s been doing and also THE MISFITS shows which sold out everywhere in a minute and a half, so he was one and along the way Chuck Billy from TESTAMENT said he was going to do it but it never happened with him. Thing is, I can’t keep coming to people or forcing people or asking people to do something that’s extremely special; I ask you once “dude, we’re going to the best party in the world, you wanna go?” And if you don’t wanna go then I’m not going to ask you again.
Following on from that, were there any covers that you thought about doing that didn’t make the final cut?
Dez: Oh God, there’s like 25 covers that we didn’t do that could have made the final cut! [laughs] A lot of people have asked how we chose the songs, firstly we wrote down the artists we knew we had to cover, so Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Once we got those down, then it was a case of thinking about what other songs we wanted to do. Neal brought in A Thousand Miles From Nowhere,his favourite guy is Dwight Yoakam, and I brought in Outlaw Man by THE EAGLES. Are they outlaw country? No, but let’s take a look at them: every time you see a picture them they’re wearing fucking cowboy boots and in front of an old saloon with bullet belts across their chest. They’re always trying to look like cowboys because the main influence in THE EAGLES is THE FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS and they were solely influenced by country, so that’s why the track made the record, plus Outlaw Man is one of my favourite tracks I’ve ever listened to and I’d be damned if I was going to let anyone else share that track with me! [laughs]
[laughs] fair! There’s the reason why you’ve got a Vol.2 coming as well, if there were so many others you could have done anyway!
Dez: Well that was slapped on at the last minute because I was getting so many phonecalls from people who wanted to be involved and were annoyed they weren’t asked the first time around! [laughs]
Will you be incorporating any of the songs into your live sets or even touring the record?
Dez: Hmm, not sure, there’s not a lot of touring happening right now, we usually do 250-280 shows a year, however I’ve been touring for 25 years and after looking at the catalogues of some of the guys I look up to, everything from a Willie Nelson to Elvis Presley, look at their catalogues! By the time they leave they’ve recorded 75-80 records. I’m 25 years deep, I’ve got twelve records to my name, this is bullshit! So let’s kick it up, let’s release a record every 16-17 months and let’s do it right and that’s just where I am right now as an artist. I’m home, not a lot of touring right now, we’ve got about five or six shows in July and some fantastic shows coming in August, we’ve got Bloodstock, I’m so fucking excited for that show. Get ready, because what we’re bringing production-wise and what we’re bringing is fucking hell. Hell is coming with me; I’m coming to Bloodstock and hell is coming with me.
I think that’s got to be one of the best closing lines to an interview ever. Dez, it’s been an absolute honour and privilege to chat to you, thank you.
Dez: Thank you man, everyone that’s ever been behind me I want to reach out to and say thank you. I’m at a time in my life where I’m very appreciative and extremely humbled and the UK has held onto me since the time I was 26 years old, right? So yeah, it’s a stronghold to me and I can’t wait to come and play shows. We’ll see you soon!
Outlaws ‘Til The End: Vol 1 is out now via Napalm Records. DEVILDRIVER grace the cover of our latest issue. Grab a copy here.
Like DEVILDRIVER on Facebook.