By Andrew Bansal
After his well-documented departure from Metallica in 2001, Jason Newsted explored his musicianship with various bands and projects like Voivod, Papa Wheelie, Echobrain, Gov’t Mule and WhoCares, but his true return to metal came about with his new band Newsted’s debut EP in January of this year, aptly titled ‘Metal’. The four-track EP gives a us taste of what to expect from Jason Newsted the frontman, and a full-length album is on the way too. Of course, Jason is still very much respected and admired by Metallica fans, and it’s no surprise that the new band and EP have been embraced gleefully by those people. Right now, the Newsted band is getting ready for a US tour. Earlier today, I had a chat with Jason to talk about the band, the recording sessions, future plans, and other things including Flotsam. Check it out below!
You’re going on tour soon with the Newsted band, starting this coming Friday actually. How’s everything going in terms of the preparation and the rehearsals?
I’m feeling very good about it! We’re in our third and final day of pre-production over in Oakland. We’re in the same building where a lot of Bay Area bands do their thing. Testament’s in there right now. Faith No More is in there. It’s going very well. We’ve had this four-piece band together for about seven weeks now, with Mike Mushok as the fourth member and we’ve already finished our LP. We’ve finished all the recording and we’re delivering 13 songs to the record company. So the momentum is fantastic, everybody’s pretty psyched and feeling strong. A couple of minutes yesterday there were killer moments in the rehearsal that were pretty fucking epic. So I’m excited!
That’s great to hear. What was the reason for going with a four-piece lineup? The EP that you released was done by the three-piece band, right?
Yeah, the EP and its four songs that everybody’s heard so far was just a power trio of Jessie Farnsworth on guitar, Jesus Mendez on drums and myself. I played guitar and bass on the EP, almost all the rhythm guitars, and Jessie did all the lead guitar stuff. Now having Mike in the band is a big addition, and he’s made the heavy sound heavier. He has really brought a new dimension to it. So we’re firing on all cylinders now.
So, on this tour what can people expect? Obviously you’ll play songs from the EP, but will you be playing songs from the upcoming full-length as well?
Yes, we have about 21 original songs to choose from in total. So people will of course be seeing all of the EP being played, because that’s what they’re familiar with so far. But we’ll have a lot of other stuff at the show for them from the new record, and then I’m going to dive back into some history stuff. We’ll do little pieces of old Metallica songs and may be a couple of other little treats for people. We’ll try to pull out some Motörhead and stuff like that, just to keep everything entertaining. The Metallica songs that I feel I have a right to play, that I have songwriting credits on, ‘Blackened’, ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ and ‘My Friend Of Misery’, there will be pieces of those. I don’t plan on playing any of the entire songs of that newer stuff, but just pieces of it as a reminder to people, just to pepper up the set and also to dig back into the old things that people know me for. There have been two singers in Metallica in 32 years, and that’s James and myself. So the songs that I sing in Metallica, I’ll probably sing in this band as well. We’ll play pieces that people know me for, like ‘Die Motherfuckin’ Die’ and all that stuff. We’ll share that stuff with everybody.
That sounds great! Talking of the vocals, the Metallica fan base has always loved you for your contribution in that department. But what’s it been like for you to do lead vocals on this new music of yours?
It’s a very different thing. In my other band Papa Wheelie where I play punk and stony metal and all that, I play guitar and sing. It’s much different to play guitar and sing as compared to playing bass and singing, because you’ve got to hold down the bass while trying to sing at the same time. It’s quite difficult actually. So it’s a challenge that I like. I’m assuming a few different roles in this band that I’ve never had before, being the frontman and the bassist at the same time. I’m also playing guitar live. I’ll switch back and forth between bass and guitar during the performance. Singing other than just the cookie monster vocals, actually trying to sing sing, for me it has been developing for eight or ten years, trying to get my real voice. I can still do all the crazy, heavy stuff but I’m really trying to sing a little bit more now. So all that stuff for me is really exciting and every song is a challenge.
Coming back to the full-length album, when can we expect it to be released?
Right, we have 13 songs for the LP, like I said, and the record company is so far very happy about what they’ve heard. So I think they’re making quite a big plan for the rollout of it. We’ll probably put it out in something like September, because we have about 70 shows in front of us right now starting on this Friday, taking us around the world. We’re playing 13 countries in June, and come back for a big tour in July that you’ll be hearing about very soon. So we have a lot of shows and a lot of things to be done. There’s a lot of work that we want to do to bring the LP to the people. We’re trying to work out a new video, kind of like ‘Soldierhead’, very simple and to-the-point, to let people know what’s going on. We’ll use the social media to let everybody know, and we’ll launch it by putting singles out first. So I would say early fall, late summer for the first Newsted LP.
Were you happy with how the EP came out in terms of the taste it gave to the people of this band?
Well, for what it is and how it was created, I’m very proud of it because we made the entire thing in 6 days. What we’re used to is, we’ll go in and jam it, then we’ll record it and share it with the people. There’s not too many overdubs, not much bullshit and not too much messing around the studio. We just kind of play it. So, the initial intention at the every beginning of what became the ‘Metal’ EP was, I had 11 songs that I was going to go in with Jessie and Jesus Mendez to record for fun. But I had actually written an acoustic ballad for my wife as a wedding present that I had talked those guys into recording with me. So that was our initial intent going into the studio. I hired a cello player, I played 12-string guitar and all different stuff on there to make a real nice pretty song for her. It’s more like a ‘Fade To Black’ type song, kind of quiet in the beginning, then it becomes hugely epic at the end and super fucking heavy. But in the meantime, once we got that song done, I had this bunch of songs in my pocket and those happened to be ‘Soldierhead’, ‘Godsnake’, ‘King Of The Underdogs’ and ‘Skyscraper’. We recorded all those as well, and they were just meant to be initially for ourselves, to have a CD to blast in our truck and drive around with it, just be happy about jamming in Chophouse and everything like that. It was fun, but then one person played it for another person, then the next person, and ‘Soldierhead’ got around real quick to labels and radio. Within about two weeks from when the first guy played Soldierhead for somebody, we had three different labels asking us to sign. So it was a very quick thing that wasn’t really intended to be this, but it just transpired. It was out there, so we decided to make some copies and sell it from the Chophouse, sell it from my garage, put it on iTunes and see what people thought. I had been reading about bands like Clutch and Down putting out EPs on the internet to see what was going on with fans, to kind of test the water and the response of fans. That’s what I wanted to do. I’d been out of the ‘big business’ since 2003. That was the last time I was out on a big tour going around the world, with Ozzy Osbourne. So I haven’t really been in the business seriously as long as I was in the underground with Voivod, Echobrain and different bands. So, with a lot of new avenues for me to discover with the internet and everything, once I put the music out there and started seeing the response of all the long time fans and the new fans, I realized we really had something. So now here we are about 6 months later, and we have a world tour at our feet. We have Sony, Universal and Geffen distributing the record throughout the world. We’re getting some great tours and some great offers. It was really just meant to be, I guess! The fans asked me to come back to this. Their desire and their response to the music made me want to come out and do this again, and that’s exactly what happened.
Now here’s one question which quite a few people actually wanted me to ask you. What’s your overall aim with the band? Are you going full-on long-term with this, or are you going to just see how it goes?
I’ll see how it goes. I’d of course want it to be long-term. I think the EP is an instant classic, and it will kind of be forever. The LP will be that as well. It’s about the demand of the people and going back to my last answer, I haven’t been out on the road for a long, long time. I’m not really sure what’s out there. So right now I’m spending a lot of my own money to make sure this band happens. I want to give it a real good effort. My name is on this thing. It’s my voice, my songs from top to bottom, my compositions and my words, all of that. So it’s very important for me to see it succeed. How far it will go, I don’t really know. I’m willing to chase it as far as I can, for as long as the people keep demanding it. There’s a lot of unknown right now that we’re preparing for. We definitely are able to take the music to the people in a fierce way, and that’s what I want to do. As long as my body holds up and I’m mentally able to do it, I’ll keep doing it!
One final question I have for you is, I interviewed Eric ‘A.K.’, the singer of Flotsam and Jetsam a few days ago and he had a lot of good things to say about your new music. He mentioned that you worked on a couple of songs for their new album. What was it like to catch up and work with those guys again?
Fantastic! I love Eric, and they’re a great band. We’ve been brothers for 30 years now, man. It’s crazy to even think that 31 years ago Kelly and I started Flotsam and Jetsam. So that’s a long, long time to be friends. I respect them greatly and I think their new record is good. I did help them with their new music. Michael Gilbert asked me at about the same time that I was starting to write music for my band. He asked if I could help with some music for the new record that he was working on. So he sent me some tracks and I started putting some of my poetry on it. He came up to the Chophouse and we actually had a jam. Michael Gilbert, myself and Jesus Mendez, we had a power trio jam. He stayed for a weekend, we put some hours down on tape and kind of helped him with his songs. The title of the album is the one I gave them. ‘Ugly noise and beautiful life’ is from my lyric, so they took the album title from that, and the lyrics are all mine in that song. I wrote lyrics for three of the songs on their new album and that’s what it ended up coming down to. In the January and February of 2012, I went to Phoenix and got together. The original band of Flotsam and Jetsam actually played together two different weekends the entirety of ‘Doomsday For The Deceiver’. It was the first time since 1986 that we had played together, the original band. It was pretty fucking cool (laughs). As a fan that’s really exciting so I made sure to record everything on video and audio. It was a wonderful time, trying to remember all those old songs. I was like, ‘Who wrote this shit?’ (Laughs) And then I got the reply, ‘Oh you did when you were 19!’ It was hard to remember all those parts. Those are quite difficult and challenging songs, impressive for a 19 or 20-year old to write. So that was a really good feeling. We were thinking about rekindling the band but it wasn’t going to work as far as bringing the whole thing back. So I just had a good time then, helped them with the lyrics, and now they have a great new album and we have a great new band going. We’re actually going to play a show together. On May 4th there’s a big festival in Phoenix where Flotsam plays a couple of bands before us. We’re headlining the stage that they’re playing on. It’s the first time that’s ever happened that we have bands playing on the same stage together after all these years. It should be wonderful!
Jason, it was a pleasure talking to you, man! Thanks for your time, all the best with everything, and take care. Anything else you’d like to mention before we wrap this up?
Thanks a lot! I just wanted to add that people should check out the official site newstedheavymetal.com for the information for all the tour dates. We’re adding new dates about every 3 or 4 days now, and there’s information about new swag. Old tour stuff from Voivod tours is also available on the archival recordings if anybody wants to check that out.
Other Links:
facebook.com/jasonnewstedofficial
twitter.com/jasoncnewsted
Newsted US Tour Dates:
Apr. 19 – Red House – Walnut Creek, CA
Apr. 20 – Red House – Walnut Creek, CA
Apr. 23 – San Jose Rock Shop – San Jose, CA
Apr. 24 – The Starline – Fresno, CA
Apr. 26 – The Alley – Sparks, NV
Apr. 27 – Ace of Spades – Sacramento, CA
May 01 – The Roxy – Los Angeles, CA
May 03 – Vinyl – Las Vegas, NV
May 04 – KUPD Ufiesta – Mesa, AZ
May 15 – Planet Rock – Battle Creek, MI
May 17 – The Crofoot – Pontiac, MI
May 18 – Bottom Lounge – Chicago, IL
May 21 – Highline Ballroom – New York, NY
May 22 – The Middle East Downstairs – Cambridge, MA
May 23 – The Stone Pony – Asbury Park, NJ