INTERVIEW: Lee McKinney

To most of the metal faithful Lee McKinney is best known for his guitar wizardry as part of the incomparable BORN OF OSIRIS but this time round he has gone rogue and is due to release his solo effort entitled Infinite Mind which is due for release today via Sumerian Records. We caught up with McKinney to get the low down on what the project means to him and what we can expect in the future.

Hi Lee, thank you for taking time out of your schedule to talk to me. First of all I’m so sorry to hear about the burglary that occurred recently. Have you had any luck tracking down any of your stolen equipment/instruments?

Lee: At the moment we haven’t gotten everything back but we have some leads. This far into the process we’re not sure if they still have the belongings still as I’m guessing they’d want to move them on pretty quickly. We’re just hoping to find the person who did as they brought a knife into my house and my wife could’ve been home.

Of course, it’s a very scary situation to be in. I’m just glad no one was harmed.

Lee: I appreciate that man, it kind of puts things into perspective, like the things you’ve lost vs the ways it could’ve went. We’ve got a lot of people supporting us like Sumerian Records supporting me and helping me get back on my feet with equipment that I needed to write music again and Kiesel Guitars have said whatever guitar I don’t get back they could look at making me another one and I’m not going to necessarily take advantage of that but it’s just nice to see the people we work with are so giving and so supportive in a situation like this and especially the fan base who have been reaching out and leaving comments. In a humbling way it’s nice to see how many people have your back. It’s a beautiful thing.

Awesome, at the end of the day instruments can be replaced, you can’t!

Lee: Absolutely!

So, on a more positive note Infinite Mind is due for release at the end of the week, what can we expect from this project?

Lee: I’m so excited. I think the most fun thing you can expect is just no rules. I feel like BORN OF OSIRIS came up with more of a death metal sound at times, I’d never call us a death metal band but we were quite technical at times. I think as time has gone and when we get older and wanna go in different directions it gets harder as you’ve established your band as a certain style and you’ve established your fan base but with Infinite Mind it’s awesome because there is no expectation really. Other than guitar work and guitar playing. Also, in BORN OF OSIRIS we have two vocalists and you could put lead guitar parts everywhere but when you throw two vocalists on top of it and a drummer going nuts underneath it, it can get really busy so this was fun as I was in a position where I didn’t have to think “Am I doing to much here?”. This album was fun as there was no rules and I could do whatever I wanted. It’s not a heavy album but it has heavy moments. There’s a lot of clean guitars, saxophone, piano. It’s all over the place and I could kind of just take the lead on what I would use as a melody or what I would use in place of a vocal line. I’ve had a blast making it and I think people can somewhat expect kind of a rollercoaster of sounds and emotions and things like that.

Of course, there are usually a lot of people contributing to the writing process so to have the freedom to do your own thing and have your own artistic experience must have been exciting. You could go down whatever path you felt like.

Lee: I’ve been playing guitar for 20 years now and I’m glad I didn’t do this any earlier as a musician and as a person. BORN OF OSIRIS got signed when I was 17 so we went through immature stages in front of our fan base and in front of the music scene. We went through growing up and hardships and all these different things like drinking problems and all this shit y’know? So now I’m 20 years into this and I feel like this record is coming from a good state of mind. I’m just ready to perform it as well. If I put out a guitar record out like 8 years ago I’d have probably tried to perform it wasted and just butchered it [laughs].

[laughs] so there are definitely plans to take this out on the road then?

Lee: Absolutely. I’ve just got to ride the line between BORN OF OSIRIS’ commitments and I still need to find some players to perform with me as I played all the instruments on the albums but yeah it’s a little progress before I’m doing it live. I already know the whole thing. One of the biggest things is tackling relearning it again after you’ve left the studio and kind of got a breather from it for a while. I just went on tour for six weeks for the The Simulation tour so I just need to make sure everything is clean as I could get called on a moments notice to perform it at the likes of NAMM or whatever so you’ve kinda just got to be on your shit for any last minute call-ups.

As you’ve quite rightly stated, you’ve been with BORN OF OSIRIS for a significant amount of time now. Did you find it difficult to break yourself out of that creative mindset?

Lee:  I think that it was quite free flowing to be honest. I learned some things I didn’t realise because it was so free. With BORN OF OSIRIS I’d start with a drum beat and freestyle some guitar parts and see what I liked for a few minutes and bring it to the front, make the drums fit and I kind of had an approach to writing but with this solo album I would just start with a chord progression on the piano or an acoustic guitar. If I heard a song on the radio and thought “That’s a beautiful chord progression’ I’d just strum it on my acoustic and start writing leads to it. It’s always about the ride and the progression for each song. That’s not something I’ve ever done with BORN OF OSIRIS but I may do it in the future. It’s all based on piano or acoustic or the foundation that comes from a completely different place. It was fun and I think I may start exploring in the future starting songs for BORN OF OSIRIS. I think it’s gonna open my mind up a little. I kind of got stuck in a box for 12 years and fell into a habit and I remember seeing comments stating a similar mentality so it took that kind of thing to wake me back up and this record right here made me start looking at things with a different approach and I can look at it a different way and inspiration can come from anywhere and turn into any kind of music.

Did you start this project completely from scratch or did you go in to the process with some pre-existing ideas from previous writing sessions that you wanted to breathe some life into?

Lee: It’s funny as I had one guitar part from like being young, I mean like 15 or something. I’ve had this guitar part for like 14 years and I’ve never really found any chords underneath it that I’ve liked but I found a couple of things that they managed to make their way onto the record after all this time! Most things were from scratch from either my acoustic or piano. I thought I was gonna go into it and I thought I had a clue what it was gonna be but once you really get in there and see how everything happens, for this first album I thought I was at least game planning but once I got in there I realised things were turning out better than I anticipated and in different ways. I almost became a passenger to the situation.

Do you feel that you’ll continue to release solo material in the future?

Lee: I already have two songs ready for a new one! I’ve got an addictive writing habit. I’m always writing non-stop. I don’t really like to do it on tour because I need to do it when I’m comfortable. Touring is an amazing thing and I’m lucky to do it but I need to be comfortable. I don’t wanna be cramped in a venue doing it. I write constantly at home. My wife has helped me discovered this as she works a normal job and I know I’m lucky I get to do music for a living but I don’t just wanna be like everyone else when they come home and just sit around or party all the time then all of a sudden we need to work on a new album. Writing music is my number one passion. I like it more than touring, I like it more than any other aspect of being in a band. When she does to work I’m in the studio 9-5. People always ask me how I manage everything but I’m obsessively in the studio, constantly writing.

It’s not a bad habit to have as it keeps you sharp for when you’re going on tour.

Lee: Absolutely, I think the hardest part about this kind of schedule is burning yourself out. So I feel like once a week or once every two weeks we get out and go to a concert or something, stimulation of the brain. I love this schedule but you get around to the fifth day of the week and you feel like “I need to get the hell out of here as I’m just staring at a computer screen now”.

Where did the inspiration for the artwork and album title stem from?

Lee: Actually the title is really important to me and I’m glad you asked this. Basically for the last five years I was really struggling with anxiety. I’d been touring for like eight years and the partying was getting to an excess and it was getting unhealthy and I think that led to me kind of breaking down mentality and realising I had a lot of anxiety. It was infiltrating almost every aspect of my life. I was afraid to do it or just wanted to be alone, which is more troubling when you’re in a band and you’re doing meet and greets and hanging out with a lot of different people. It was the worst combination to have. I started navigating my way through, starting on medication prescribed by a doctor and that wasn’t really doing my any good either so I started reading more about the subject and what anxiety is. Basically anxiety is your fight or flight response and in history of evolution, whether you’re human or an animal. It’s a good thing, to be cautious in the wild. Being aware and over thinking lead to survival. I started realising my brain is going nuts all the time and thinking about this and that but what I realised is it’s not my enemy. Through times in history it would have been a positive thing. I kinda started making it my friend in a way and me constantly thinking helped my music. When I’m in the studio and my brain is going crazy there is infinite possibilities hence the title Infinite Mind. Not in a cocky way but basically me coming to terms with the fact that an overactive brain isn’t something I need to be panicking about all the time. I can be thankful for it and enjoy the fact that it helps my music.

Of course, having an overactive brain is definitely not a negative. A lot of bands I’ve spoken to never stop, they have an overactive mind. They’re always looking forward with what they can create next and writing on the road or picking parts out of jam sessions or warm up sessions so it’s absolutely a gift to be so driven.

Lee: Exactly and just like you’ve said it’s just realising that it’s not even that bad in the end. I’d much rather over think than be a sedated person on a couch that doesn’t think. That’s why I don’t wanna be on Xanax or any of that shit anymore. I’d rather over analyse and put it towards music.

Infinite Mind is out now via Sumerian Records.

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