My Story As Metal Frontman: Devin Townsend (DTP, ex-Strapping Young Lad) transcript

do you remember the time when you first got interested in music as as an art form I think it was after a motorcycle accident when I was a kid funny enough when I was when I was very young um all I wanted to do was race motorcycles and uh maybe I was about 12 years old and I had a motorcycle and I crashed and hurt my back and then I just started playing guitar while I was uh recovering and I think from there it just never stopped interesting yeah so you didn't pick up to impress woman no I uh I didn't pick it up to impress women no I I do remember though in 8th grade maybe it was about 14 or 15 I was an awkward kid there was a bunch of cool kids that were in the back room and they were talking about guitar and one of them mentioned to the other that oh I think that kid out there knows how to play guitar and so they invited me in and I played a Judas Priest song wow and then from there I had friends [Laughter] well how about the singing part how did did that come as a you know means to an end or did you also love singing well it was kind of a means to an end but also I kept wanting to find a singer uh I would audition people and and um it wasn't long until the people that I auditioned I recognized were just not that great so I decided to sing just temporarily just to kind of uh until I found a singer and here I am yeah what which one came first was it the clean singing or the more harsh vocals it would have been clean singing Because when I was younger I used to sing with my family we at Christmas time we would sing like Johnny Cash and and Clancy Brothers and things and uh yeah so it was always clean to start and it wasn't until I got a job at a restaurant and I had to wash dishes and then when I was washing dishes I could I could um sing in the back room and it wouldn't bother anybody so I started practicing there and then after about 6 months of being a dishwasher uh I got to the point where I could do the prep work for the for the appetizers and by doing that I would go into the freezer and just start to scream I guess because no one would hear me so I learned how to do the the harsh vocals by uh screaming at a wall of frozen chicken that's like there's there's nothing like minimum wage job to make you angry enough to practice some harsh workers I don't even think it was anger I just think it cuz at the time you know what was what we were listening to was all like Jane's Addiction or Sound Garden or panta or whatever so all those singers could do that vocal style that I didn't know how to do so anytime I went to practice it it seemed too loud so if I was in the freezer the walk-in cooler in the restaurant no one would be able to hear me so it seemed like a perfect place to to learn so yeah I I thank uh walls of frozen chicken and a walk-in cooler for my vocal technique that's like a rocky Balo of Music going to the I'll I'll take it I'll take it for sure did you struggle with the technique at first or did you find comfortable way to do the harsh vocals fast well I I I did struggle for sure and and in fact when I moved to Los Angeles and I started working with Steve uh he sent me to a vocal teacher that uh was you know he a famous guy and he taught all these famous people in Los Angeles and and I went to the class and I remember this singer saying okay sing me sing me some stuff and I did what I did and he just looked at me and said I I suspect that you'll only be able to sing for about a year before you no longer can do that because I didn't have a technique my technique was screaming at chicken right so I remember going back to to Steve and saying oh the sing the teacher thinks that I'm going to [ __ ] up my voice but again here I am 35 38 years later and uh I'm still doing it so jokes on him did you ever find out that because in the past you had some unhealthy habits and things like that did they affect your voice so that when you stopped you noticed a clear change yeah I found that combustible smoking would was was bad for my throat as was whiskey yeah I remember I remember in about 2000 however whatever it was when we were doing Syl and before we went on stage every day we would just do we just you know do shots of whiskey and and drink uh and then smoke a bunch of joints and at the time I thought it was kind of Macho but then after a while live my voice just sounded like Marge Simpson and uh it became clear to me that this was not sustainable how about when you record albums and you have all this range that you can show them there but obviously doing tours and doing all this live [ __ ] night to night you have to do all these extreme techniques that you have your operatic voice and growls and everything how difficult is it to maintain your voice when you're on a road well I do about 40 minutes of warmup before every show I mean I think it's it's it's your best laid plans for for sustaining your voice uh while on tour are often more in theory than in practice because they say okay you have to get enough sleep but touring you never [ __ ] get any sleep you know it's like you up at 6:00 and then you have to fly and then you're in a bus and it's a rough road or whatever it's like and I sleep very poorly at the best of times so I don't sleep well on a bus and I rarely sleep well in a hotel either so that's out the window and they say okay well you shouldn't eat you know certain types of food right but when I tour I tend to eat vegan and um so a lot of times I mean I'll eat whatever if there's nothing else it's not like a like a fundamental thing other than just a daily dose of discipline that helps me in other ways but um but yeah a lot of the times you're just subject to whatever the catering is or whatever the food at the venue is and a lot of times it's like cheese and tomatoes right which are the worst possible thing for your voice they say uh talking loudly is bad for your voice yet in order to facilitate the touring that we do now I I do VIP prior to the shows which means talking to people and and uh so long story short is all the things that you should do to sustain this type of singing technique on tour touring doesn't allow so I just have to cross my fingers and hope that it lasts and for the most part it does yeah but there's been some shows where it just yeah it's just you just feed yourself to the wolves and just get it over with right yeah for sure what is your warm-up routine type like what do you do when you do warm-up before the show well I do a series of of um exercises that start at the lowest note that I can sing to the highest note that I can sing and uh I start quietly and then I go through scales and arpeggios and I do them with different consonants and different vowels you know like ha hey go gug and then I do scales and arpeggios within that and at the end of it I I work on falsetto and the transition from falsetto to chest voice and I do that as well as just a couple other you know I've got a little um a little plastic mechanism that I blow into that I've been doing that now for maybe 25 years that particular technique and to the extent that I can understand what it's doing my voice lasts longer now than it did before so I'm going to keep doing it what what is your lowest note you can seeing what is the highest note that you can well the lowest note lowest note depends on uh how early in the morning it is and the highest note depends on how late in the afternoon it is right but I've never checked like I have no idea right um and I think that's one of the things with me as a vocalist that has been confusing for me at least is that because I still don't consider myself a singer I just sing and so when people talk about it specifically professional singers like I'll talk to people who are really professional singers and they have they know the notes and they have the sprays and they do all these things and they seem to understand their voice so well and then they ask me questions about my voice and I I just feel like I'm in kindergarten I'm like ah I just scream until I taste blood and then I hope it keeps working and it's like when when you have to sing some low stuff you would wake up early in the morning to go to the recording yeah that's true actually that's true when I get my lowest voice is when my voice starts getting damaged on tour so about two weeks into a tour all of a sudden in the morning I'm able to go you know what I mean but uh but I'm I'm a baritone like I'm not a Bas so and you know right on the verge between baritone and tenor I would say because I do both of those things but but other than that man I think everything I know about my voice you now know yeah so much as you do it's also interesting to think about that I guess I'm not the professional Al either but I I feel like you could have technically been like an opera singer at some point when you listen to some of your vocal takes it's really really powerful and you can hold on really well oh thank you I mean sometimes I feel that way but I also feel that uh I'm a vocal actor in that I can kind of sing opera I can kind of sing metal I can kind of sing all these things but it's not because I'm a metal singer or I'm an opera singer or whatever ever I just have a strong willpower and so if I have written something that requires Opera voice then I can probably figure out how to replicate that and if I've same thing with death metal vocals or quiet vocals I can kind of do whatever I need to do but uh uh I'm not uh I'm not a professional at any of those things think if you put me up beside an actual opera singer it would it would underline how how self-taught I actually am I mean yeah w I guess so but doesn't really mean anything you're you know you're not singing opera or anything but yes yes you have your you have your own opers in the words I do yeah we will hear about it soon probably but also mentioned about being a vocal actor I mean you also known besides singing you're playing characters you know famous with zto and how did that voice come up like how did you figure out the voice of yes ziltoid like anything that I've done with was a surprise to me in the same way as it was to the audience I didn't think you know what would be great I got something that I'm going to give to the audience next it's going to be a puppet and it's going to be fueled by coffee and he's going to be an omni dimensional Overlord that uh is just gets picked on by all the other aliens like that was never the intent how the work tends to manifest for me is I just write randomly and then I put it into piles on my desktop and then as they evolve those things sometimes some sometimes uh you'll get an idea for a theme or a concept that you think oh that's really cool and I could use that pile of material to illustrate it and ziltoid was really it's a great example of how I write because we had just had children I had just quit strapping young lad and I had you know come off some really bad habits on a personal level the character seemed like it seemed like a way for me to to observe myself it's like I don't understand how I feel right now about having kids I just came out of this metal band and I got this stupid hair and I you know feel like a weirdo or whatever so when I started making this puppet just just as a hobby I was looking at the face of this thing and I was like oh he can be a personification of that frame of mind by having something that I could draw from personally the character then has a life it's not like um it's not like you're making like a version of Shrek or something it's like no no ziltoid is me so it's easy to write it's like okay so if you were an alien you know like a guitar playing alien from the fourth dimension or whatever what would you sing about what would you do and if you're confused and if you're depressed or whatever those things are that's going on then the alien becomes that and so it it becomes a vehicle for me to express myself that seems U much more comprehensive than if I was to try to write from the point of view of like well here's just a song and a lot of times the people that don't understand what I do like within the scene they look at it they're like why this [ __ ] guy is always making like aliens or he's dressed up like a superhero like like what's the deal and my whole thing with it is first off that's what I felt like doing and if somebody doesn't like it I mean I I really truly don't care and then uh each one of these things that I do is based on trying to represent a certain period of my life to me and they do the writing process is usually just I just work on intuition and um and I know when it's wrong before I know when it's right how did The Voice come up did you have some inspiration for it s's voice yeah yeah so my buddy be Brian who used to be in the dtp when we were younger cuz we grew up together uh when we were younger we used to make these little videos and uh I had a sock puppet with uh two marbles that I just taped to the top of the sock and I called him ziltoid the omniscient because I thought oh that's that's a alien name and that's where the voice started I started like yes right and then um and then it just evolved into this thing that it is now which is super crude because I think in the beginning it was much more like right but then I remember when we played played in Helsinki with the ziltoid show the first one at that point The Voice started becoming much more malevolent it became much more like the yes and then and then it's just it takes on a life of its own right you ever speak to your children when they're young in this tillo voice well I talked to my son like that and he just looked at me like I was wearing his shirt you know and one thing about being a vocalist and also a guitarist there comes the fact that you play particular intricate stuff and you have to sing on top of it was that difficult for you to sort of manage both things at the same time oh yeah and sometimes it still very much is so what I tend to do is hire guitar players that are better than me to play those parts so I'll record them in the studio but then live I'll just give it to to Mike and then I can just put my hands in the air and sing right so and not all of it and the other stuff the stuff that I do because obviously I do sing and play um a lot of that is muscle memory and sometimes I have to make little charts for myself like with little chicken scratches and I think here's like it's two levels on one line it's straight lines and I'm like that's where your downpick is and then I write the words over top so this is downpick where the downpick and then I can sort of read it and it becomes like a a musical language that I can understand that that helps me right yeah how much did you practice uh both singing and playing guitar individually and together in the past versus how much you do it today I admit that my life has been so complicated over the past couple of years that I haven't practiced enough and uh now that I've got shows being booked and tours coming up and all this sort of stuff every time I pick up the guitar my fingers are are are like sore so I've set up a room uh in the back where I can practice singing and playing guitar simultaneously and uh when I did it last week for the first time in a long time it was not good by the time we get to Finland though it'll be good again I mean you know we we love you anyway it doesn't matter yeah well and vice versa I love it there yeah how much did you practice in your sort of golden age of practicing when you did it the most all I did as a teenager was play guitar and masturbate I think that's all I did you know I mean which did you become better in my Oh by Guitar by a huge margin yeah yeah yeah I I I'm a I'm a terrible I'm a terrible masturbator but it's like uh but guitar is was was uh where I was at and but back then I would practice you know like every other kid that was into it at the time I would practice eight hours a day kind of thing 10 hours a day that's all I did was play guitar right and nowadays it's I play guitar every day for sure but the thing that I never recognized about becoming a full-time musician is how much of being a full-time musician doesn't include music the amount of music that I made before I was a professional musician was 20 to1 versus what I do now because my days are emails and interviews and you know gear and and like presets and Logistics and and family stuff and so when I finally do get a chance to play guitar now it's it's like I'm like oh God this is rare I forgot how good it is yeah oh wa it is that's true that's true and I also remember that my dexterity at one point was really really accurate and now sometimes after I haven't played for too long it's like I'm wearing boxing gloves when I'm trying to play guitar you know it's like everything is just rough but it doesn't take long it usually just takes about a week to get it to get it back same with the voice you can correct me if I'm wrong but I find that it's interesting that you are known as a very skillful musician in many ways but I find that your solo spots you take more time to do it melodically and have some like I don't know word is soul or something but you don't wank as much as you know the next next guy would probably well I had the fortune of playing with some of the world's best guitar players so it made it very convenient for me because I remember at a certain point hearing some of these players I was with whether or not with Steve or any of these other incredible players and then I remember hearing them do a solo and thinking oh that's great now I don't have to worry about that like yeah they do that that's not what I do and for me I mean I can I've got a certain amount of proficiency like for lanking but whenever I have a section in a song that I think a guitar solo should go there it's it I always have thought of it more like a voice rather than a you know like a technical exercise like as opposed to just doing raging arpeggios over the whole thing i' i' think oh it's if I was singing What would the line be and I kind of tend to default to that for for guitar but you didn't go the route of like George Benson and sing on top of your I mean yeah I think uh I I uh I uh no I didn't I think that if I did that and you just took the vocal track and soloed it it would sound like I was having a stroke right I understand totally yeah did you ever have this inferiority complex for to others because you have had the chance to play in the past with great guys but also like recently you know you've met all these honey M leaders and all this oh yeah no no I got I I'm very confident in what I do and I don't do that you know what I mean like my whole my whole musical trip is to be me and I don't do that I don't do what they do I do what I do and therefore I can jam with anybody like you could put me in a room with any musician I it's not that I'm going to be as good as them but I'm me so if I'm listening to music mus and I think oh this section here requires something that I do then I'm a perfect cidate for that but also if I'm if I have a guitar in my hands and I'm with a jazz Trio I I don't know how much I'd have to say because I'm not a jazz guy right so interesting though I would I would probably do pads I would probably do ambient stuff and that's an example of like how I would treat an environment like that I think what can I offer to this and and so therefore like when animals as leaders and tosen and Javier and everybody there it's like when we Jam together which we which we do and which we have there's no intimidation because I don't do that I don't play like them I don't do the thumping I don't do that incredibly complex sweep arpeg like that's not what I do you know it's like that that silly quote about fish will think it's a failure if it's judged on its ability to climb a tree yeah you know like if playing Animals As Leaders music is climbing a tree and I'm a fish then why would I worry about it that's that's a very good point I think but on the point of jazz music it would be interesting to hear you play one because I don't know if you ever heard the album there was this album some guy who doesn't play jazz piano but he recorded with a a b oh yeah yeah that' be great exactly how you think it sounds like but it's funny as yeah I would like to hear that actually I I I have a feeling if I was to do it it would probably be similar I would just play a bunch of wrong notes and pretend that it was it was tasteful yeah yeah exactly and now you have this new new record coming up once once again you're a very prolific man but was there any challenges when it comes to or not necessarily challenges but are there any new approaches for your vocals and your guitar playing there power nerd was a very difficult record to make for a lot of reasons it started as being an easy record it's the first record of four records in almost every way it's like Devon towns and project part two in a sense and Power narz wanted because the moth and axel and everything else I'm doing is so complicated that I thought before I challenge an audience Again by saying hey guys here's something [ __ ] up I thought I would offer a white flag of power nerd first and say well here's some songs right here's some rock songs but during the making of it my family went through a period of really intense grief the lyrics and power ner ended up being about how to deal with loss of a loved one loss of you know how to deal with death and the contradiction is that it's simple music it's like rock music but all the lyrics are so depressed it was like I've never been through that level of sadness while trying to make a record so power nerd ended up being a really surprisingly intimate and Melancholy record rather than what it started as which was like a party record so the combination was very unique for me but I feel like perhaps it's for the best that the album became what what you needed it to be at that time I agree yeah I agree I mean it's going to regardless that's just the nature of it but this one in particular I've never I think in the past whenever I went through some sort of you know somebody died or or something I I don't think I processed it I think I just kind of pushed it away but this time I couldn't and I had the deadline already so I couldn't you know what I mean I had to finish it and so by the time it gets to the the end of the record like Glacier and goodbye the hardest part about making this record was just singing it it was just lyrically it was just so I was just really it was really a difficult thing and I I like up to this this point I never really cried in my life like I don't cry but this all I that's all I did for the whole thing it was just I couldn't stop it's like it was coming out and so trying to sing while that was happening was so [ __ ] difficult man like I've never yeah the last CH of goodbye I was just like I couldn't get through it it took me so long to get through that in the long run I think it's healthy I think the fact that for the first time I actually was forced to sort of surrender to the intensity of those emotions I think it was something that maybe has been needing to happen for many years so I'm very proud of the the record as a result of that strangely yeah for sure and sorry for your loss that's thank you I don't want to end in a somber note so I'm trying to think of something can can you tell some um funny Mish happening in your course of becoming a musician something you remember well actually if we don't want to end it on a somber note that's why I ended the record with Ruby Quaker the coffee song because that's exactly the decision that I made at the end because prior it had ended with goodbye and I thought it's too much to leave people with that's not how I want to end it because the process of grief on the other side of it there is resolution so I ended it with Ruby Quaker so you could be like that was so difficult and then the next day it's like hey do you want a coffee and I'm like yeah I want a coffee and so I think that that leaves it so it's not on a somber note on another level some sort of story that has happened on tour remember we're in the middle of Texas and there was no air conditioning on the bus and it was so hot it was like sweat on the inside of the bus it was so hot and there was all these people on the bus there was women and and a bunch of guests and everything and I woke up and we couldn't get into the venue and I had to take a [ __ ] like I've never had to take a [ __ ] before and I thought oh I'll just I'll [ __ ] in a bag in the in the in the bathroom and then I'll just run out and throw it away and no one will notice and so [ __ ] in this bag and this really really really hot bus and then I opened the door to run outside and just it just exploded and the whole bus was just unusable for the next 30 minutes yeah I mean I think it's funny that always when you have to think about something funny you will eventually just result to talk about you know [ __ ] and piss and stuff like that Parts as well I think that it's like I think maybe it's because I think that everything else in life is just so Grim most of the time that it's like a default to that because I know it can uh I know it can bother people right yeah yeah Andia it's great talking to you brother thank you for the support and I'll talk to you soon okay thank you so much man and hope to see you soon