By Michele Stefancic MICHELE: You’ve been around for 18 years, what’s the secret to your longevity? WOODY: i guess the more serious answer to that (would be) we’re a couple of jokes. MIKE: My secret to that is quitting for a while and then coming back. That worked for me. WOODY: It’s one of those deals where I guess a little luck roles in there too and kind of always doing our own thing and avoiding the ‘hot things’ that happen for a little while and then go away. It’s almost like an intentional thing where we kind of ignore what’s going on and just stay true and do our own thing. MIKE: If you’re fully embraced as part of a really current trend then you can be fully disposed of when that trend is over. WOODY: Which is always inevitable. MIKE: It’s good to be kind of above that … if you sort of don’t go with the script of what the music industry is trying to market at any given time, to rise above that to be your own entity then you can sort of avoid the pitfalls of that. MICHELE: You guys have always been known for being two steps ahead of a trend and maintain a distinct sound. Where does that come from? MIKE: It’s kind of like an idiot savant thing. (Laughs) Woody’s the mastermind and does a lot of market research. WOODY: Absolutely, I’ve got my men out in the field polling people and stuff. Try and stay ahead of the curve. MIKE: I have no idea. WOODY: Yeah, I don’t know man. It’s like we said … we just whatever comes out when we start making the tunes is just what happens. We kind of wear blinders as far as the rest of the music industry (is concerned). Probably, especially with the last three albums, I think we’ve harden in on our own sound and aren’t looking towards the outside influences as much as we used to. It’s like we’ve got our own thing and we’re feeing off of (it). MICHELE: Over the last four years you’ve departed with Columbia (record label). Was that a drawn out process or a quick one? WOODY: It was in some respects. Basically it all boiled down to … the guy that signed us to the label and a lot of our other friends we had on the label were left, which is common in that industry, blazed on to other labels and that kind of stuff. There we were sitting on the label not really having anybody gunning for us. They didn’t know what to do with us at that point. It got to the point where we were like, ‘Well, you know what if we split, cause you don’t know what to do with us?’ It came to be where they finally agreed with us on that. Then wound up being p! retty cool about it. MIKE: It was prolonged to getting to that point where we recorded a lot of material and they were like, ‘We don’t see the hit songs. Well, you signed us, you know what we are, what do you mean where are the hits? What exactly do you want us to do?’ WOODY: We’re not the Backstreet Boys. (Laughs) MIKE: Once it was getting to the point where we could be getting cut loose, that was prolonged. Once they decided to do that, they were pretty accommodating about it, I guess because we never really rubbed anyone there the wrong way. MICHELE: Did it at all make you feel upset that they weren’t pushing you? I mean, I imagine you’d feel disappointed. WOODY: Well, during the Wiseblood Tour, hell we had a couple of really good tours. MIKE: We played a lot of shows with Metallica, we played with Monster Magnet and we felt they didn’t … we thought we made a really good record, one that we really liked and were proud of and that was somewhat accessible to people. They (label) didn’t seem to feel that way so that was kind of disappointing. They have like these huge resources but they didn’t use those resources for promoting (us), that was kind of upsetting. Not anything worth losing sleep over, though. MICHELE: With that said, are you happy to be where you are now (on Sanctuary Records)? WOODY: So far, yeah. MIKE: Definitely yeah. WOODY: It’s a much better scenario. People are more friendly. MIKE: We’re working with people (now) where their bands are their priorities. They were actually pushing us to finish this record (Americas Volume Dealer), which is actually a good feeling. MICHELE: I understand you had 40 plus songs written for this album. WOODY: Yeah, we had a shit load; we had a lot more then what wound up on the record. MICHELE: Why didn’t you, after a four-year gap between your last release, why didn’t you go with releasing a double album? WOODY: I think the idea is like, that we had in our mind from the get go of Americas Volume Dealer was do this record, tour like madman for not a super lengthy amount of time but on through to the summer. Then, jump back in and start writing another album. MIKE: We sort of have a leg up on that process with having some songs already done. I wouldn’t say we had 40 great songs; we took the best ones we thought we could do in a short period of time and put them on this record. MICHELE: Do you think you might put out some B-sides, or an EP or something? WOODY: It might be cool to (do that). There were some extra songs that were included as bonus tracks on the European version (of Americas Volume Dealer) and the Japanese version. MICHELE: What did you do over the four-year gap? WOODY: Well, we toured like hell with Wiseblood. That took up about two years. Then what else did we do (Woody holds up his bottle of beer and looks at it, suggesting drinking and laughs). MIKE: We would go down to the basement and write songs and make demos. We’d send them to the record company and they’d be scratching their heads. WOODY: We played a few strings of shows, stay in shape, keeping our show shoes going. MICHELE: What have been some of the gigs that have stood out for you whether they be bad ones or good ones? MIKE: Uh, 1997 in a football stadium where the Madrid soccer team plays, 60,000 people with Soundgarden and Metallica, 60,000 people barely fills the place because it’s so huge. The following day in Portugal was another one, it was outdoors. WOODY: Some of the better tours, shit man, we did a whole tour with Soundgarden in Europe and that was a trip for me. MIKE: January 2001 at the Bovine Sex CluB... MICHELE: Yeah, last night! WOODY: That's a standout. MIKE: That was very memorable, that was last night. (Laughs) Any of these gigs that we’ve recently been doing with Clutch have been memorable. MICHELE: What’s notable for COC is, you guys have received a bit of a backlash from your fan base. I’ve noticed that people (fans) either love you or hate you. There was this backlash on you when you started to receive some airplay (on radio), you were branded a sell-out. What’s your take on that? WOODY: It’s happened (to us) pretty much every record; you get a few people who say stuff like that. Our intentions are not to alienate anybody. We just do what we like to do and want to do. The bottom line is we’re not trying to piss off or alienate any current or former fans. You can’t please everybody. Especial if you’re in a rock band, you can’t please everybody. MICHELE: Do you ever play any of the older material still (live)? WOODY: On this tour we don’t go too much into the … we don’t go any further back then the Blind (CD). We’ve been known to (go back though). MICHELE: The older material, do you sometimes forget how to play it cause it’s been awhile? MIKE: Sure, yeah. WOODY: I mean we spend five minutes to re-learn it. They’re not that hard to remember. MICHELE: What was the moment in life for you when you realized you wanted to be in a band, that you wanted to perform for a living? MIKE: Probably hearing my brother’s Led Zeppelin records or something like that when I was about 5-6 years old. WOODY: You know, I never really made any kind of decision like that, it kind of just kept happening. It was never like a light bulb went off in my head and said, ‘Hey I want to be in a band.’ MICHELE: On Americas Volume Dealer, do you have any personal favourite tracks? WOODY: I like “Diablo Blvd.,” it’s fun like hell to play live. MIKE: "Fire"... WOODY: We’ll eventually get around to doing “Zippo” live and that should be fun. MICHELE: What do you do to keep yourself entertained while out on the road? WOODY: Uh? (Looks at his bottle of beer again – suggests drinking). No … listen to music, walk around whatever town we’re in, look around. MIKE: I’ve got my (mountain) bike out on the road, so I’ll just go out and explore unless there’s like three feet of snow. I’ve got my big smelly bag of hockey gear just incase there’s a drop-in hockey game somewhere. Copyright 2001, BallBuster, The Official Int'l Underground Hard Music Report