I had the pleasure of catching up with the members of BLACK TUSK a while back to discuss the release of their Set the Dial (Relapse) album. Andrew Fiddler, Jonathan Athon and Jamie May were cool enough to give me some of their time to discuss the band, the songwriting process, artwork and friendships. There is nothing cooler than a “round robbin” style interview as far as this intrepid metal reporter is concerned and I think you will dig it!
Set The Dial came out on Relapse in October.
MAA: Please talk about the making of Set the Dial.
AF: We started writing Set The Dial right when Taste The Sin came out. We wrote a little of it before we put that record out. It came together pretty easy.
JA: It was in between weekends and weeks when we were on and off touring from Taste the Sin. We’d come home and get bored so we’d go into the practice space and just kind of write and get it down on our little tape recorder. And we kept revisiting it every time we were back in town. It just kind of took off from their
Heavy Metal Parking Lot: Black Tusk Style!
MAA: You guys seem pretty prolific with four albums in five years. Are you always thinking about the next stage?
JM: We are usually thinking about the next step all the time. We get bored really easily and we don’t stop playing.
AF: We love writing music and making songs. We are constantly working on stuff.
MAA: Do you think the dynamics of being a trio affords the band certain writing opportunities?
JA: When you are a three piece like in our case, being that we are a three piece our equipment needs to be louder. You don’t it to be lacking because you don’t have four or five members.
JM: We want to sound more full. And we all three do vocals, so there is no dead space.
AF: You just have to think about what you are doing more because there is no someone to cover up for you if you are messing up a part.
"Agatha" has appeared on many of the bands' albums, posters and other merch.
MAA: I love the entire creative package of the band with lyrics and artwork. How much thought goes into that?
JA: We usually start writing the music first. Within a couple of songs we’ll usually know what path we are on during the album. From there we start to fugue out a theme to go with the record and usually around that time we figure out what we want to cover. Then it’s ‘when can we talk to John (Dyer Baizley of BARONESS) and then get an idea of what is going on with him. That is pretty much that’s how it goes.
JM: Everything is intertwined: the lyrics, the music and the art are always interwoven in to each other, somewhere.
MAA: I was going to ask if you guys give John any directions or do you just let him go to work?
JA: It’s all thought through. All of our art work has symbolism and meanings from art history and old texts, stuff like that. Everything we do is referenced an we give him a strict outline of what we want, what everything represents and all the imagery we are trying to wrap up. We give him two pages of reference material and then he gives us back one cover. We want him to have his freedom because that is what is cool about his artwork and you wouldn’t want to take that away. At the same time we want certain elements to be represented there.
MAA: Do you feel a kinship with the other Savannah scene bands?
JA: Absolutely! We’ve all been friends for a long time. We try to help each other out. It’s cool, we’re all from the same place. We are definitely like a big family.
JM: It was always a friendship first, like doing our artwork before there was ever a business relationship.
JA: We don’t get to see them too much anymore since KYLESA is always touring and BARONESS moved to Philly. (laughs) But when we get together it’s just like old times.
MAA: Who are the the not so obvious influences on the band?
JM: We don’t really listen to any music and say we want to emulate that. It’s just what happens when we get together. That is just comes out.
JA: It’s a combination of everything, different genres all the music we listen to. It just comes from us. It vibes with us all the time and this thing we are trying to create, it just flows from us. It comes from us. We would never sit down and consciously think to try to sound like any band like ‘let’s get this sound over here and sound like someone else’. That doesn’t factor in our writing process at all.
AF: Our only boundaries with us is we make sure you can tell BLACK TUSK is playing. That is the only thing. Whatever we write, how ever it goes, we wanna play if it’s thrash or punk or metal or anything else we want our fans to know they can tell it’s us still.
See the band live if you get the chance- they are killer!
MAA: What do you guys have planned for later in the year for touring?
AF: After we do some dates with MASTODON in Texas, we are going to hit the road with MONSTRO AND THOU. We’ve known Juan from TORCHE a little bit, so we have done some stuff with them before.
MAA: That is great! Thanks for your time guys! Hope to catch you on the road soon!
AF: Looking forward to it man!
(Special Thanks go out to BLACK TUSK, RELAPSE Records and Freeman Promotions)
by Keith (Keefy) Chachkes
