Spotlight on Seether featuring interview with Dale Stewart
Throughout the years, Seether has been through a lot of changes, personal and lineup but nothing stopped this great band from doing what they do best: unleashing their unique, killer sound through their riffs, beats, and dark lyrics. Songs like “Broken” featuring the chilling beautiful vocals of Evanescence’s Amy Lee, “Rise Above This,” “Breakdown,” and many more all have deeply impacted the lives of their fans in more ways than one. After the death of Shaun Morgan’s brother, the band started an annual festival to raise awareness on suicide prevention in 2012 called the Rise Above Fest. The money raised from the festival goes to non-profit organizations, recently to SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education). The past lineups have included Black Stone Cherry, Buckcherry, Avenged Sevenfold and many more.
Their more recent album, Isolate and Medicate, shows a softer, more mellow side of Seether, if you will, with the exception of their current single, “Suffer It All,” having a heavy touch similar to past hit singles “Remedy” and “Gasoline.” This was one of their more quickly made albums and the response from their fans was a very pleasing one for that matter. Their first single from the album, “Words As Weapons,” quickly became popular, now following with “Same Damn Life.” Currently, they are touring with Papa Roach in support of the album.
Seether's live shows are indeed ones not to miss. Filled with such a unique, remarkable energy that washes over the crowd and being able to feel the passion and emotion behind the lyrics is like no other. Their fans behind the barricade watch as their idols sing the lyrics that got them through dark times. However, before the show, GetAMPED Magazine's Kate Drexel had the opportunity to sit down with bassist Dale Stewart backstage where they talked about their lyrics, the progression in music recording and many more topics. Check out the interview below!
GAM: How did you come up with your band name?
DS: We just lifted it from a song, it was sort of a grungy girl group in the 90s, Veruca Salt and it was probably their biggest hit, I guess but the song is called “Seether.” We needed a name and that kind of sprung to Shaun’s mind, I guess, like “yeah, that’s cool, short catchy.” Doesn’t really mean anything, I think, but yeah no significance, we just liked the name of the word.
GAM: So you guys have six albums out now, is it hard to create a setlist with so much material to choose from?
DS: It is, yeah with each single that gets played at radio it’s definitely more of a challenge. It’s more of a case of “okay, what are we not going to play tonight?” Because, you know like tonight, we only have an hour, it’s maybe like 12 songs or so. We’ve really had like 15, 16 singles on the radio…that these are the songs that people want to hear. They’re the reason people want to come to these shows. We try to change it up a little bit, like this tour we’ve been doing a lot of new stuff, and dropping some of the singles out. It’s been fun, I think people are responding pretty well to the stuff off the new album and some of it is heavier stuff too because that’s the other thing that happens, is that you become sort of more mellowed down over the years because the radio won’t play the really heavy tracks, you know they’ll play sort of the ballad type songs or the middle of the road type songs. So the full set becomes sort of toned down, we were like a really heavy band when we started and now it’s a lot of our mellower songs. So I guess the teen angst is gone.
GAM: You guys have written some really dark lyrics, what inspires that?
DS: I think lyrically, well Shaun does all of the lyrics, for him its like a diary, a way to vent, I guess, a way to get something off your chest, purge it out of your system, so you don’t have to keep it locked up inside so it just festers and grows. It’s kind of like a therapy, music, at least it is to me and I know it is for Shaun, too but it always has been…ever since I was a kid, if something happened, if I was upset, I would put on music. It would be my escape, make me feel better and at least feel like someone out there knows how I feel and has gone through the same thing. That’s the beauty of music, being able to play it. It’s a pretty cool job, like there’s a sort of afterglow like when you get off stage at night and you sort of relax, it’s a good feeling. I crave it when we’re away for a long time, like when we’re here I’m like, “ah, I can’t wait to go home!” Then I’m home and I’m like, “I feel like playing.” I can’t win!
GAM: What do you miss most when you’re away from home?
DS: I think loved ones is the main thing. My girlfriend is in Chicago and I live in L.A. and I tour on top of that. It’s a very long distance relationship and suffice to say I spend a lot of time in Chicago in the cold because she works over there and she can’t always come to L.A. when I have time off so I kind of go that way, which is fine, I mean I love Chicago, but it was like minus 9 when I left there so…and they said they’re factoring in the wind so it feels like minus 22. I was like “yeah, I’m ready to go…” But yeah, I obviously miss her a lot and I miss my family, they’re all the way back in South Africa so that’s not sort of a quick flight, that’s like you need a full three weeks off to make it worth flying all the way down there so…I haven’t had a while, I haven’t had a decent break in a long time so I haven’t seen them in a long time. I try to go back every year…I’ll go this year though, I think we might play there this year, might do a show down there again. If we do that, hopefully there’s time before or after so I’ll just stay or go early, if not then I’ll go another time. Hopefully my girlfriend will get some time off so I’d like to take her down there and show her the stomping grounds, show her what decent weather is.
GAM: So your new album, Isolate and Medicate, what was the song-writing and recording process?
DS: Well, Shaun writes some of the songs, about half the songs and we did the rest as a band. We got together and kind of had ideas, rough ideas sort of on our own I guess and then Johnny’s buddy has got a studio in Oklahoma City, just a little casual studio so he was like “oh, you guys can come in for free…” so we just flew to Oklahoma for a week. The songs just came easy, they came very easy, I think within four days we had like 6 songs on the album, we just sort of knocked them out so it was good…it was a very easy streamlined process and then we just recorded them very roughly and then basically emailed them to our producer Brendan and he was like “yeah, good to go.” It started first thing in January, we did it in L.A., which was nice for me because I got to be home, but we did the whole thing, recording-wise, after we had the songs and the writing went quick too, after we had the songs it took us a little over two weeks to record the whole thing, top to bottom. So it was the quickest we’ve ever made an album. I think by industry standards, it is really quick, unless you’re a punk band, you know, guys who make an album in a couple of days, in like two days or something but I think for the amount of production we put into it, I think we achieved a lot in fifteen, sixteen days but I’d like to think we’ve become better players, we’re good studio players and Brendan is an amazing producer and then with the technology, with the ProTools, it’s easy…you’re not rewinding wheels of tape and going back, which kind of sucks because back in the day you used to be able to play your instrument and now anyone can make an album because you can just manipulate it on the computer. We’re try not to do that, we try to play through properly, and not abuse the ProTools, but it is handy, it does make recording much easier than it used to be with cord range tape and reels, and splicing tape, you needed one guy who knows how to work the machine, so it was a mission, it was tough back in the day. That’s why bands would take 3 months to make an album...like how long did The Black Album [Metallica] take? A year and a half or something? It was crazy…but that was part of it and I think Lars’ drumming might have been a part of it but yeah, it used to take long…to make a decent sounding album, 3 weeks.
GAM: What inspired the album name?
DS: I think Shaun came up with it too…I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, you know, I can relate to it because I tend to isolate and medicate myself from time to time. I know he was going through some relationship stuff. He bought a little home studio and he was living in New Hampshire…he had a beautiful house right on Lake Winnipesaukee so [he] actually flew out for a week when we were writing and we worked on some stuff together…but basically that’s what we did…we’d hang out during the day and then we’d make a fire, draw up some meat, had a couple drinks and then at midnight we’d go to the studio and just sit there and guzzle booze and jamming music. I know, his girl at the time, what was going on at the time, if he wasn’t happy he’d go hide away in the studio and just drink wine and put on headphones and get lost in the music kind of thing…but we were jamming out like really loud and we had the window open because we were smoking and Shaun turns the music down and says “did you hear something?” I’m like “what?” He’s like “go look out the window.” I guess he heard someone call his name and he’s like fishing for his gun and shit so I go out and look and I’m like “it’s a cop.” So he goes out to the window and it turns out he knew the cop somehow so we go and he’s like “I got a complaint from the neighbors...” plus his neighbors are half a mile away, like that’s how loud it was…we’re like “oh, sorry man, we got carried away,” and we’re like “c’mon, come in! Want a coffee? Have a donut!” We gave him donuts and coffee, we’re wasted and we’re like “ah, man, we’re wasted, you should give us a sobriety test, see how drunk we are!” And he’s like “okay” so we’re out on the deck and he’s giving us the test and shit. He turned out to be a cool guy and we went down to the garage and Shaun’s got a Nissan GTR and he’s like “oh I love these cars!” Shaun’s like “get in!” He starting, like, revving it, like making the noise…it was hilarious…we have a pretty nice little studio though, some good times there and a lot of good music came out of it, I think.
GAM: You guys started a festival, successfully, three years ago, Rise Above Fest. What prompted the decision to making it about awareness on suicide?
DS: I think mostly, we lost Shaun’s brother in 2007 to suicide. It’s something that’s very close to us…we’ve been affected by it. It’s something that could be avoidable in a lot of cases, obviously not all, but yeah, we just wanted to basically get together with a bunch of cool bands and friends that we’ve made along the way, have a show, have fun for a good cause and raise a lot of money for SAVE, we’ve partnered up with SAVE and basically we give them the money and they know what to do with it better than we ever would so…it’s a good thing, we missed last year but I think from now on, we’ll be doing it every year and we’ve got like Godsmack on it, we’ve got Slash and Myles [Kennedy] on it, like Papa Roach, there’s so many cool bands, it’s gonna be really cool. It’s an honor for those bands to want to play the festival and all that so…it’s cool.
GAM: What gets you AMPED?
DS: Aside from music, I think speed…I like going fast in or on things. I love motorcycles, I love cars, I enjoy racing, just generally anything that gives you a bit of an adrenaline rush. I’ve always been a big Petrolhead since I was a kid, so I’d say vehicles, cars, and motorcycles, that’s my thing.