This is the third Clutch interview to be posted on this site in the two years it’s been active (here’s one with guitarist Tim Sult and one with drummer Jean-Paul Gaster). Coupled with the talk I had with bassist Dan Maines about the last album from jammy Clutch offshoot The Bakerton Group, and the Q&A that follows with vocalist Neil Fallon will mean that all four members of the band have been featured on The Obelisk one way or another. Total coverage.

While I wish I could say the occasion serving as impetus for ringing up Fallon was the impending new Clutch album — which is about due but still won’t be ready to go for some time from the sound of things — instead it’s a tour. Now, Clutch touring is no more “news” than are the crabcakes in the band’s native Maryland except in the particulars of where and when the crowd needs to show up, but when you hit the road alongside gen-you-wine legends Motörhead for a massive US run that you’ve in fact delayed writing your next record to undertake, well, I think that’s worth chatting about. I know if I was touring with Motörhead, I’d want to talk about it.

I found the same to somewhat be the case with Fallon, who is notoriously terse in interviews. He’s not impolite, not a dick by any stretch, but hardly one to sit and pontificate on the band’s history and future. It stands to reason that with the massive work ethic Clutch have displayed over their years on the road, writing and recording, and launching their own Weathermaker Music label on which their former DRT Records catalog — Blast Tyrant, Robot Hive/Exodus and From Beale Street to Oblivion — is in the process of being reissued and which put out their last offering (2009’s Strange Cousins from the West), Fallon would be more about the doing than the talking.

Nonetheless, from the road in Minneapolis, the singer took some time out to talk about reinterpreting older tracks acoustically for inclusion as bonus material on the impending Blast Tyrant reissue, progress writing new songs, playing with Motörhead and tour openers Valient Thorr, his growth as a vocalist, and more. It’s not a long conversation by the standard of some of what gets posted around here, but it’s always great to check in and find out what Clutch are up to next.

Unabridged Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

Is it strange to be looking back at your career, in terms of the reissues? You guys are usually more focused on what’s next.

Yeah, you’re right. It’s usually much more exciting making something new than revisiting something that’s already done. But I think this is different for us. We reissued these [albums] because DRT, who had initially put these records out, lost a court case with us, and as a result, we were awarded these masters back. These records haven’t been in stores for quite some time, so it’s good to get them back out there, and I won’t lie, there’s a bit of spite and vindication in getting these back and putting our Weathermaker label logo on them and putting them out there.

I remember when Beale Street came out there was something about the artwork…

That was one of a long list of screw-ups on their part. I think sometimes are under the impression that you’re better off with an independent label than you are a major label. There’s something to be said about both, but at least with a major label, they’ll just turn around and drop your ass. Sometimes independent labels have more reasons to strangle you to death. But, you know, that’s water under the bridge at this point, and we were able to do the artwork right. If something goes wrong from this point forward with that kind of stuff, we know who to blame and it’s that much easier to fix it.

Having put out an album on your own on Weathermaker and worked and toured to support a new studio release, is the extra work worth the tradeoff?

Oh, it’s worth the tradeoff a thousandfold. Like anything else in life, with more work there’s more reward. By the end of our relationship with DRT, it was as if we didn’t have a label anyway. We were just waiting for them to pay for the studio time, which was something we would have to reimburse them for anyway. Now we’re responsible for that, and it wasn’t that difficult of a transition, because we were already touring and selling our records ourselves. It’s more responsibility, but these days, it’s hard to sell CDs. If you can cut out as many people in the process as you can and sell them directly to the fan, I think you’d be a fool not to.

You guys have the advantage of being long since established too. I think the Clutch fanbase is pretty loyal, and that’s got to help.

It sure does, but that wasn’t a happy accident. That was a lot of blood and sweat and tears. I think that kind of fanbase – there’s other bands that are like that, but it takes a lot longer to build up that base via word of mouth and live shows, but I always liken it to, “You can build a house out of sticks very quickly, but it takes a lot longer to build a house out of rock, but you know which one’s going to last longer.”

Do you get much time to reflect on the growth of the band? Is that something you like to think about? You’re on the road so much and it seems like two weeks later, Clutch is doing something else.

I don’t think any of us spend too much time looking back. For me, not to get too philosophical, but the creative process – whether you’re making music or art – is always about what’s new. To either rest on your laurels or to think that there’s more days behind you than there are in front of you is not creative. That’s not to say there’s no self-examination going on. We’re always trying to improve.

How was it for you — thinking of the Blast Tyrant reissue bonus material and the acoustic tracks — going back and reinterpreting older songs?

It was fun. At first, I approached it with a lot of trepidation, but then I realized listening to the tracks, “Wow, we’ve become much better musicians in the 15 years that were between those songs’ initial recordings and today,” which is good to know (laughs), that we’ve somehow managed to stay dedicated to learning and practicing. Whether it be getting better at rudiments or learning about other people’s music, you have a much broader palette to draw from when you’re trying to make something.

Was there something in particular you were able to draw from for those tracks, either adding to your approach vocally or redoing patterns?

Speaking for myself, I think I sing now whereas, on the first couple records, there’s just a lot of bellowing. I’ve gotten better at actually conceiving of a melody (laughs), and playing guitar as well. But also, collectively as a whole, the band, I think we understand compositions better. Sometimes I listen to our first records and I think I would love to go back and rerecord those, just because there’s so many things I would love to change. But I wonder if that’s like an artist breaking into a gallery and touching up his paintings. I don’t know if that’s cool or not, but it’s something I do think about.

So something like bonus tracks for a reissue seems like a really good avenue to do that.

Initially, we were going to put out an EP of acoustic stuff. It all started, Bonnaroo invited us to do an additional set of all acoustic stuff. We tried doing literal interpretations of the acoustic stuff and it wasn’t working out, so we just said, “Let’s start from scratch.” Putting it in that context of a bonus track, that it’s not perhaps “the next official Clutch release” makes it easier to wrap one’s head around, maybe. Some people are very puritanical about bands’ releases, or episodic, like some kind of story, but we’re very… open-minded about music. There’s never any kind of program that we need to stick to, if that makes any sense.

Along those lines, how is progress for the next Clutch album?

We have a bucketload of riffs that we’re starting to comb through, that we’ve been recording over the past two years. I would imagine just a fraction of those will end up on the record, but we just played a new idea last night on stage, just instrumentally, but that was the first time we’d done anything like that since Strange Cousins. Once this tour is over, in four weeks, three weeks, however long it is, we’re really buckling down and gonna start focusing on the next record, which should be out within a year, I would hope.

Is that your plan for the summer? You’re going to come off the road and write and record?

Yeah. That was our plan for right now, but then Motörhead asked us out on tour.

Yeah, you can’t say no to Motörhead.

Right (laughs). We’re gonna do some shows in Europe. Not too much – a couple weeks here and there – but we’re going to set up shop on the US front and then probably do some dates towards the early fall. What we’d ideally do is play some of these songs live on stage and work them out there, because that’s a much better litmus test than in the studio.

Do you have a plan for someone you want to work with recording-wise?

J. Robbins. He’s local and he’s great. What else could you ask for?

I guess it’s worth changing your plans for Motörhead, although I seem to recall you’ve played with them before. Am I right about that?

That’s correct. We did a UK tour with them about four years ago. Or five.

Is there anything in particular other than being on the road with them that you’re looking forward to about the tour?

They’re a great group of people. Their crew is awesome to work with. Sometimes going out on a tour can be made hellish by the headlining act’s crew, but they’re great people. Of course Motörhead’s awesome to watch every night. It’s pretty inspirational, because we’ve been a band for 20 years, and you can sometimes start thinking about stuff like your age or the age of the band or whatever, but then you see Motörhead go, and it’s like a motivational speaker. And Valient Thorr, the first band of the three, is a great band. Tours are so much easier when you enjoy the music that you listen to every day, day in and day out.

Clutch’s website

Weathermaker Music

Tags: Clutch, Maryland, Weathermaker

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 17th, 2011 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.