Alexa play tap Root, My passage isn't here, I gotta go, and
I'm Dave and you were listening to Life Is Peachey, a nostalgia field podcast
that allows me to sit here and waffle on about the bands and the albums
that became the soundtrack to my life growing up in the nineties the early two
thousands, and while we're at it, sharing a few memories from her Name
is Murdered Productions. Hey, Hey, and welcome insert dad joke here.
Well, this is too serendipitous to be true and the best life is peachy
segue to date because we are here to look back on tap Roots sophomore.
Welcome with bassist Phil lipscom whatever your name is good, Ready for the big
surprise and before the end of twenty twenty three catches up with us. Let's
jump straight into that wondrous time machine and deep dive dissect this amazing album and
period of life and existence found Ray found Phil, Thank you for your time
and energy, and welcome to the Life is peag podcast. Anthor Man,
how you doing, I'm good. I'm good. Sorry if my voice is
a little raspy. It's four thirty am. Where I am but I have
my coffee and banana and oo infinity and are I'm good to go? Where
are you at? Originally from Australia, but at the time of this recording,
happily living in the Netherlands with my wife. And I only say at
the time because when this episode sees the light of day, my wife and
I will have moved out of the Netherlands and who knows where it will be.
Right. We just married earlier this year and the plan is to spend
a little time in Australia soon. Congratulations, Yeah, thanks man. We
married at the end of April, so yeah, it's all very lovely and
fresh and feels amazing. Okay, wow, very fresh, yeah, very
fresh, very fresh. And speaking of fresh, Taproots celebrated new music in
twenty twenty three, and this marks the longest gap between releases for the music
because I don't know the lyrics are missing. The moment I first heard favorite
song, I was taken to a very special place, and if I'm being
completely honest, it's a place only Tapero take me. It felt like catching
up all reconnecting with an old friend, that familiar, comforting feeling, you
know. Yeah, man, connection never went away. I don't even know
the missing seems my free treeful. I'm all about celebrating tap Root and anything
from your back catalworld. Your music really means a lot to me and comes
from such a special time in my life, and it's most likely the same
for many listening right now. There it can be only one, but some
listening may also find themselves thinking, why are we here somewhat randomly deep diving
welcome when the twentieth anniversary was actually in twenty twenty two. But to do
is a gift? Well, I didn't have a chance to make that happen
last year, so here I am doing it now because I just couldn't let
this one slide. And beyond that, I don't think there ever needs to
be any reason to celebrate tap Root's highly unique sophomore and that special feeling your
music gives so many of us. No one doesn't like tap Root. You
love a bang Bam, I get that again, drenching my bans in an
hour, I'll be okay, I way, that's bang, We'll go why
boman and list I'm bad ly fa then shin and so. Amongst the whirlwind
of everything that's going on right now, in the tap Root camp. If
we pump the brakes for a second, take a deep breath, and allow
someone like me to come up to you and say welcome. What are some
of the first thoughts or feelings that come swirling to mind? I'm olgasy.
Welcome is our second album, possibly most popular album, and it's the one
that's got Pullem on it, which pretty much solidified our career. Right.
I love that album with my second favorite, probably out of our albums,
with Blue Fair Research being my first. What did we just become best friends?
Yep? Yes, man, Blue Sky Research is my favorite Type Root
album. Too awesome, man, lots of good memories of that album.
I might can go on and on about that album. Yeah, it's a
real special one and definitely deserves its own episode in twenty twenty five, that
one hits the big two. Oh, just saying where the way right?
Thanks? I remember first coming across tap Root thanks to an Australian music video
program called Rage which in the hours of Friday Saturday morning it would play new
released music from some of the heavier bands. And it was thanks to this
I first saw Gift's debut single again and again on TV. This song ticked
all the boxes for high school Dave and what I was into and definitely paved
the way towards a lifelong love for tap Root. Amongst that explosion of Gift,
a very exciting time for music, the scene and Pandemonius fanfare. What
would you say were some of the main lessons you learned about yourself, whether
let's see personally or creatively Following its release and this subsequent touring cycle, Yeah,
it was a whirlwind. Let me try to take us through it.
So lead up to Gift, the whole getting signed thing was pretty wild because
we're just a band from Michigan, you know, and getting all that attention
pretty quickly. Let's see, we played a show with System of a Down
to kind of get our management solidified under us, which was Velvet Hammer.
They got us an opening game with the System, who they managed, and
about a month later they had us flying out to LA to showcase for Rick
Rubin and American Records. And then after that Fred Durs thing hit, Hey
man, he fucked up. You don't ever bite the hand the seeds in
this business bill and you're fucking managers of its a fucking idiot, loser,
motherfucker going nowhere. He just chosen that parent, took you under my wing.
What you don't want to have fucking talk about your excellent radio on per
He embarrassed like me and interscoll family association. When the buss does maybe three
man interesting and name around, he's going to be blackballed and probably be really
and he will too. He's a fucking idiot. You're gonna fucking learn from
this time. Right here, he'll be what you're band now. You just
s fucked yourself. You need to be associated with somebody in this business.
He needs something to get you out there and put you out there and believe
that's what pissed off bred Durrist is that he thought we were going behind his
back, but we were just looking at our options. I think we could
have communicated better about the whole thing with him, like say, hey man,
this is what we're looking at. It's not that we're trying to do
anything behind your back, but we're just trying to explore our options as a
businessman. You should understand that. But we're young and dumb and we just
did it and was like, well, let's hopefully he doesn't get mad about
this or hopefully it's okay. Without actually asking him, we're being upfront about
it. Now, you're a real Blue Flames special, aren't you so young?
Dumb and full of comb I know, I guess we just must have
ourselves an asshole short of John. So it turned into what it turned into.
It is what it is now. You got enemies and you're fucking yourself
already. Don't fucking show up my show if you do any gift. Fuck
all right, you fucking punk. You're fucking dumb, motherfucker. You're learning
right now exactly how to ruin your career before it gets started. Fuck you.
We ended applying to LA and New York several times the showcase with the
various labels, which was just I don't know, man, I've traveled a
lot with doing it like that. I remember flying into Lax and have a
limo driver holding the sign that says tap root on it, and just like
what is going on here and this game to play for these different labels and
feeling all this movement about the band going on was again just a wild time
and eventually signed to Atlantic Records and from there it was record Gift and we've
done recordings but all of our recordings were like save up about seventy hundred bucks,
go in the studio for a weekend and record three tracks as fast as
we can. So doing Gift was just such a different experience, and that
we had a little bit of time, not a lot of time, but
we had a little bit of time to focus on drums only, and then
bass and then guitars and then vocals and really flesh the songs out a little
bit. I don't even know what I learned in that first session. Man,
it was just such a whirlwind of just go and play the songs the
best you can and play them again and then he ended, and again,
and just trusting the producer Lerick Wilde at the time and to see where he
goes. And I think we did a good job of capturing who we were
because the first album was essentially a culmination of the past three years from when
the band started. When we did the first album, the songs we'd played
live a bunch of times. For the most part, I think Now was
the only song that was written specifically. I don't believe we ever played that
one live before we recorded it. But everything else was stuff that we played
live and played over and over again, and we're familiar with one of the
things. I still find crazy because like one of our first days in the
studio, MTV came in and did one of these like you Hear It First
things for us, and that aired, and all of a sudden people knew
who were so many people saw that. Years and years later, I hear
the story over and over again. That was the first thing that people heard
on us. And for that little clip of us playing to have had such
an influence on people, like actually wanted to check us out. It just
shows the power that MTV used to have. It's like a five minute clip
or something. If I remember I MTV News You Hear It First. And
on the topic of tap Root's debut gift over on my second podcast channel,
the Life Is Peachy Mixtape Sessions, I go track by track through tap Root's
debut with the amazing gents of the New Breed podcast. I'll link that in
the description of this episode. That are a stack of other tracks waiting for
you too, so after this episode, don't forget to go check that out.
And the following is an excerpt from track eleven of the mixtape sessions.
The link to the second podcast channel can be found in the description for this
episode. So I want to start with you, David. Were you aware
of these guys before you actually picked up the album, Like, had you
heard anything or was this like a blind purchase for you? The music video
Again and Again was my first introduction. I probably had Red Hype because you
know, there was Korng, there was Metal Hammer. There was so many
magazines and they were my bibles. That's how I discovered everything, particularly in
Australia as well. When a lot of these bands before they were signed.
Obviously we're playing in a Marria on the independent circuit. Unsigned, we didn't
get them over to Australia, so it was all magazine education for me.
I was aware of Taproot, and then I saw the music video, and
then the album came out and I got the album. Back in the day,
I would go to the music store, put the headphones on, listen
to the album and if the opening riff got me, you know, it
had to be such a good opening riff, and then I would follow through
with the rest of the song, and if I enjoyed that first song,
I would just buy the album. The opening riff of Smile, I mean,
it's huge. It's amazing. That song ticks all the boxes. I
think it's a perfect example of Mike de Wolfe's signature sound, huge, crunchy
guitar tones and the vocals got a bit of everything vocal wise as well,
and the end of the song it's just an amazing, perfect Defton esque ending
riff. So yeah, I was hooked man after hearing this song. Yeah,
I mean it's a hell of a way to start the record. Alexa
tap root smile. How would you describe what it was like for you during
the Gift during cycle going from this somewhat green band from Michigan to then doing
some pretty heavy hitting tours and festivals in front of, yeah, thousands of
people. Was that a natural adjustment for you? We played a bunch of
shows at home and built up a really solid following, but our first actual
tour was with popa Roach and I get it. Yeah, we felt we
were a pretty good live band, and then those first shows with them just
really made us go, wow, we need to step up our game because
those guys were so solid and so good and so energetic and they still are
and they made us step up what we were doing. Our energy on stage
and I remember, I actually remember there was probably five shows in and we
were playing I think LA My back was hurting so bad. I was trying
to push and just move more and my lower back was just dying. I
remember leaning on my legs. Guys, you know, like I'm just getting
down, but I'm just tired. I was. My back was just giving
out on me. That's so funny. Yeah, dude, those guys were
great. We got really lucky on that touring cycle. We got to tour
with Depth Tones, we got to store with Incubus, Lincoln Park, Alien,
m Farm, Dpe, Papa Roach, Disturbed, Who's who of bands
you know, mud Baine, Slip Knot, Faticac. I remember playing this
short run. It ended up one of the guys got sick, Clown got
sick. It was five shows and we end up only getting to play like
two I think maybe three. Mud Bain was just coming out, and you
know, it was seeing them sound check. This is the man, you
know, obviously we're fans of. And also we're seeing these guys sound check
without their masks. No one saw them without their masks, and we're like,
oh my god, we get to see them without their masks. How
cool a wild man, Yeah, wild times Man. Even as I'm thinking
about it, the names just keep coming. Osbest two thousand and two thousand
and one, that seemed like an amazing time right there. That traveling Circus.
Yeah, that really again just solidified us as a band that people knew,
especially in that genre. Again, the power of them to be the
power of Ozbest. It didn't necessarily make everybody blow up by any means,
but it at least puts your name as a forerunner, you know, something
that people remembered because everyone was going to Asbest back then. Aspes was the
concert of the summer. You go to ospest, you knew all the bands,
You at least knew their names, You remember them, you saw them
if you could. Yeah, being from Australia, I've vicariously lived out was
first through the music magazines. Yeah, that was definitely a great way for
me to hone in on what was going on, what was worth looking into.
I read about it in a book. But yeah, teenage Dave would
have probably done many questionable things back then for a chance to experience all's first.
Just once, I don't love someone, you gotta be a stranger when
I look into you. Help Me. Joy's just help Me to your Famselephants
of Everything Day. Was there a natural, conscious or subconscious moment where it
felt like ideas were starting to take shape and form and it was time to
begin writing new material or was that timeframe decided for you guys from any outside
factors. I think it was always happening if you looked at I guess the
timeline of the songs we wrote on Gift. We kind of went this progression
from the very rap rock elements and then started moving away to more just the
heavier and then also more melodic type stuff that we are pretty much known for,
and just that songwriting growth of trying new things. I just kind of
our entire career. One things I've always found funny because we're the same group
of guys. What we find is a song that was like, oh my
god, this is such a different song for us, This is such a
step away from what we normally do, and then we play it for people
and be like, yeah, yeah, this is you guys in a bad
way or good It just was what it was. It sounded like us,
even if we felt we were stepping outside of the box. I mean,
we're like all of a sudden doing some salsa or something. But for us,
we were still within our genre but still stepping and doing other things.
But by just pushing those boundaries and working with the different producers we work with,
we're able to craft our songwriting into what it became because I think at
the beginning, you know, you're young and you're just trying to figure out
what songwriting human is, and a lot of the stuff we would do early
on would be just trying to kind of mess with our crowds, you know,
like weird time changes, throwing extra beat here and there, just what
we found fun, right, And I think that stuff's still cool, but
it can take away from the actual song itself. And so we started more
writing for the song instead of just for these weird moments. And we said
those weird moments because that's just kind of what we do. But I guess
we just smoothed out some of that that makes sense. I'm a big fan
of each tap Root album predominantly because they all stand alone, and you guys
are the kings of progressing your craft and songwriting between albums while still maintaining that
core substance that fans fell in love with in the very first place, you
know, not losing your identity along the way. Guys, and I've always
thought that's quite a difficult thing for a band to pull off and execute well,
to have a back catalogue of progressive albums evolving one after the other.
But in the same instance, you always know, you always can feel it's
that same band that not a lot of bands can do that, let alone
do it as seamlessly and impressively as Tap Root and Welcome has always particularly interested
me. It's quite a strange record in terms of its writing, its approach,
and delivery. And if we go back and use that overarching label known
as the new metal umbrella, which essentially every band was somewhat lumped under for
a period of time, then I would happily call your sophomore avante gode new
metal. I'm committing to that. Well, first, let me address new
metal thing. Yes, let's do it. Is it the ehant in the
room? So new metal in and of itself? I mean for a while
there, you know, I'm guilty of feeling this way too. It sort
of got a bad rap pun intended, and looking back on it, though,
with the nostalgia we have now of that time, period. To me,
new metal isn't about the rapping and the DJ and all that stuff that
it was known for at the time, because when you look at the bands
that are considered new metal, most of them don't even have that. New
metal to me is more just that time period, that generation of music that
just had that vibe from when Corn and Deftones and those bands just changed the
landscape of music, and everything that came out after that just had this different
feel to it for me. I mean I say Corn because that was the
band that changed the way I even thought about music, because before that,
metal was like like and Slayer and Pantera, you know, that's metal that's
heavy, and then Corn comes out and it's just this whole other animal,
and I'm like, what is going on here? And I just loved it.
That first one record, I wore the crap out of it, man,
that was one of my favorite records of all time. And from there
finding you know, bands like Depthtones and It's Monny. I didn't even like
depth Zones at first because it didn't sound enough like Corn. I wanted that
exact thing. It took me a while to warm up to them because I
had such expectations from here and the Oh yeah, they're similar to corn even
though they are in the art, you know, I mean, they're really
not looking back again. Just that time period of music. It just had
a certain angst and feel and vibe to it that music before and after it
didn't quite have that. To me, is new metal if life was a
just looking back, you can see it more clear really than when you're in
the midst of it. And then for us, in a lot of the
bands that were like us, where we're trying to distance ourselves from it because
we didn't want to be pigeonholed in this one genre, we're not like that.
We're trying to do something different. But then looking back, it's like,
no, that's our generation of music. Now. I embrace it.
I think it's great. Anything you have to comment on that, well,
it definitely feels more like a term of endearment in twenty twenty three, right,
it really is. It really is, man, and I think it's
cool again to become what it was where it was kind of a joke to
now it's just this thing that we have all this nostalgia for and we miss
the same way I did. I missed hair metal when like I loved it
at the time, and then it became cheesy, and now I'm like,
dude, I love that stuff. I still love that stuff. Just because
you like rock and roll doesn't make you stupid or any significant I think that's
what every maybe generation of music goes through to a degree. I don't know.
I didn't go through the other stuff, so I can't say, right.
So would you then say that when maybe you and other bands were trying
to alienate or distance yourselves from the new metal label, was that in itself
an influence and did that have an impact with regards to the writing of Welcome.
Probably to say that it wasn't would be probably disingenuous to a degree.
But songs like again and Again One night Stand impact. These are like the
later songs in our gift cycle and then we talked about with Welcome. Welcome
doesn't really have hardly any of those elements to us of just a natural progression
of just we tried it out and then we're moving away from it. And
I don't know if that didn't become such a big thing, if we would
have moved away in the same way, or if we would have ended up
here anyway. But I feel like we kind of would have ended up where
we ended up anyway. To a degree, that was our trajectory as it
was already, so to figure it out because I've got no doubt that when
my dream's gone, Jill, it's because of you. Writing Welcome was a
processes. We were fortunate in that we had our hit song right away.
Steve actually wrote poem on his own in like I want to say, early
two thousand and one or late two thousand. Yeah, I remember the song
floating around prior to Welcome under the title poem to soph Yeah, funny brother
song. We were playing at ausgest and it got one of the biggest reactions
and no one even knew the song. It just had a certain feel to
it, and so we knew right away like this is our single. We
weren't writing as to be a single. It's just a song that just came
out and this is it. And so from there it was just write what
we wanted to write and see what came out. And we had a lot
more time. The first record, like I said, was the culmination of
the three years before that, and now we're in a situation where we've got
maybe six months to write a new record, and that's what we get,
you know. I mean, there's no playing live and seeing what people think
of it. There's none of that. It's just you just sit in here
and work on writing. You are the one. Therefore me tear they trains
and dance up, boorns and men, thrill, dmic and the fan.
I'm you're al brand, thanks Jill me. Which isn't what we were used
to doing either. And so a lot of long days, boring days.
Some days come up with something, some days you don't. I believe we
wrote like eighty ideas what during that time period that obviously most of that on
the cutting room floor just didn't quite make it into being anything. Some really
cool songs, and I was still listen to some of myself. We would
just released pressed the B sides that had some of that early stuff and our
actual the B side thing with like one hundred and forty semi tracks, which
is absolute madness, by the way, Yeah it is. That's one of
those things that we discarded and I still listen. I was like, man,
what would have that happened with Toby Wright helping us develop that into like
a full on song. Some of these songs I think could have been something
more right, Yeah, I mean even a B side from Gift. That
track day by Day is one of my favorite tap roots songs, and it
luckily turned up on the Dracula two thousand soundtrack back in the day. But
until B sides was released, there were obviously countless tape root songs up to
one hundred and forty to be exact, Wow, that never saw the light
of day and could easily have not only been partial fan favorites, but a
favorite for you too, perhaps for sure? You know it is what it
is. I mean, our album Welcome is a great album. I'm very
proud of it. And so what did we learned? A few things?
We usually write altogether, and one of the things we did on that album
was there's a few songs Steve would be doing something else, like working on
his vocals with somebody or something, or work with Toby on lyrics. And
Steve's a really good songwriter. Like when we have trouble I can't figure out
something, we kind of lean on Steve a lot, like, Hey,
Steve, what do you think we can do here? Kind of thing,
and not having him there made us depend on ourselves and figure it out.
On our own and just dig in a little harder instead of having this sort
of crutch, as it were, of what we can do in certain parts.
And I remember mine being one of the first songs that we wrote without
We were all all the instrumentation without him being there, and then he came
in and if I remember righting, the lyrics kind of came out of that
feeling of like him coming in and hearing a song that we did without him,
and he just got inspired to write those lyrics just from hearing the song
that we came up with, which is pretty cool. Yeah, one of
my favorite songs from Welcome to Be Fair. It's a very unique way to
open the album. Yeah, it's a fun one. I mean, just
straight in with those hits and everything. I see myself, But it's not
random. How could I and I am may? I guess maybe when doing
an album, you have working titles, right. And Spacey is another one
I like to talk about, even though it didn't make the record. The
greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And
then it became Kevin Spacey just because Kevin Spacey was an actor that we you
know, just ought to be funny to call it Kevin Spacey, well before
all the controversy around Kevin Spacey that is around now. But that's also a
song that stands out to me because it is the only song that we just
organically just straight up jamming. Someone started something and we all start playing,
and then the next part comes out just organically, and then the next part,
and it just kind of flowed and the arrangement changed for all of those
parts to that song pretty much as is came about just from no communication other
than just playing NonStop for about fifteen minutes of just letting this vibe happen throughout
the room. And I mean that was still really the way of the world
back then, right, four guys in a room jamming and vibing, opposed
to say now where members obviously don't even need to live in the same town,
let alone in the same state or country to essentially run together. Yeah,
exactly. And that was just such a cool feeling to that have that
come out like that, and then to arrange it afterwards into the song that
it became. And it didn't quite go because of the trategy of Lane,
Stali and Steve just never had anything that he loved that he did with it,
and then we had the chance rather for Lane Staley to potentially record on
it, and then he ended up passing away instead. It was just like,
we just don't want to do anything more with it other than keep it
as an instrumental at this point, man the what if hey Yeah yeah,
wow, I'd never heard that story before. Yeah, So just to flesh
out that story a little more. We'd written the song, recorded the song,
but just there was no lyrics to it. There's a couple of things
Steve had done melodically and kind of like more sounds that I'd heard him do,
and it just wasn't quite coming together. And so we're talking about who
could possibly record on it, who could possibly be a guest vocalist or something.
And Toby Wright was our producer who'd worked with Alison Chains previously, so
he had sent it to Lane and he was actually on his way up to
see Lane and talk about it more in depth when we found out that Lane
passed away. The rock world lost one of its more honest voices this weekend
when Alison Chains front man Lane Staley was found dead in his Seattle home on
Friday. He was thirty four long, and I guess his mom had told
Toby that our CD was in his CD player. Wow. I don't know
if you had any ideas. It's just one of those big like what ifs.
It's daily quote was a sweet man with a keen sense of humor and
a deep sense of humanity. He was an amazing musician on inspiration and comfort
to so many. Following on from mentioning Toby, just now, how did
the band come to work with producer Toby Ryan? When we've did our first
record, our top two choices were all work in Toby, you know,
like some guys know all of the producers and who produced what and all that,
and we weren't as big into that aspect of it, you know.
We do. Ross Robinson, That's one of the guys that we're very familiar
with because he was just doing so many cool albums at the time. I
can't stress hard enough how important it is to shine something beyond your fucking body.
Okay, you got to conjure the thing that's just screaming to come out
of you, screaming, dying to come out of you. This is it.
Everything that you ever loved has to come through, right now this is
all we have. This is all we have. We have nothing else.
We don't even get to keep our fucking bodies. But this lasts and inspires
jealous I know, losing scenting Scar. But we left it to the label
and our management to find and introduce us to people. And we'd go on
these lunch meetings with these guys and see how we vibed. And Toby and
Alric were the two, and I think Toby was more expensive, so label
went with Alric, which works for that record though, right because that record
was more like we just needed a good engineer. We weren't really developing the
songs too much further than where they were at. We just needed it to
sound better than our demos before that. And then so for the second record,
we wanted Toby, and we got Toby because our label was willing to
put a little bit more money behind us. And yeah, we clicked with
him really well, and working with him was fantastic. And I remember when
I was doing Breathe, it's the only song I played fretless on front to
back. So there's a couple of little parts I do on a couple other
songs. That's a song I played front to back. It's just stuff and
it was standard tuning. I'm playing it and I'm just not quite getting a
couple of things on it. Flass coming back down me, I know.
And I don't know if this is true or just told me just mess with
me, or if it was legit. But apparently he took a phone call
while I was taking a little break and it was Less Playpaul, and he
kind of said, hey, I just talked to Less But I forget exactly
what told me. Saif just kind of gave me some words from less plap
or just saying basically some words of encouragement from less stapable, And I was
like, all right, let's do this, you know, like you know,
let's just keep plugging away and nailing this. On the Wikipedia page for
Welcome, it states that during the early development of Welcome, Taproot had given
producer Toby Wright roughly forty complete songs. Wright said that while they were good,
the songs were not up to the band's potential, and he forced you
guys to start from scratch. What did you take from working with Toby and
what would you say was some of the things he brought to the Welcome experience,
so having worked with Alison Chains, I know he worked with Steve a
lot on the harmonies and just kind of getting those a little bit more dialed
in and developing that style of vocals that Steve was already kind of doing and
just making it more so. This guy's methonical sacting and most of all patient.
He's a nutbags comming. Toby, you had this way of hearing what
we were doing and just making us here a little differently. Several times I
remember we'd have a song and you'd be like, why don't you take what
you have in the verse and try to make at the chorus and take what
you have in the chorus and put that as the verse and try that as
the bridge. You're kind of moving our parts around with the orchestration and to
seeing what will come out. And there were definitely a few that that worked
really well, and it's just like, wow, how did you hear that?
Dad? I was lucky enough to have Toby join the podcast with forty
below Summers, Max and Joey to celebrate their major label debut Invitation to the
Dance, as he was the mixer on that release, Gaslas. The following
is an excerpt from episode fourteen of the Life Is Peachy Podcast with Toby Wright.
Oh, that was an extremely amazing time in life. I feel that
this is a time and place in music, and today's music doesn't mean as
much as it did that back then, and I think that's especially true for
people your age, people a little bit younger than you. And I don't
know whether it's the bands and their music now or whether it's just my attachment
to the past and all the great music that I was a part of for
so long, you know what I mean. I'm still part of a great
number of musical ventures, but at the same time, I don't feel like
it's as important as it used to be. Of course, don't know him
on a personal level by any means, but my impression is that he has
quite a unique connection or relationship with music and its energy and impact. Would
you say there's any merit to that observation or did you pick up on anything
interesting while working with him? Toby was great to us, man, it
was such a fun time working with him. I mean, he's very into
musicianship though right like he wants bands to play live. He's very about the
live experience of music as opposed to just programming it in or any of that
stuff. He wants live drums. He wants as live a feeling as you
can get helives. Musicians should be able to play their instruments. Crazy thought,
right, And we practiced a lot. He had us practicing a lot.
And I actually just finished Jared's book True rock Stars about a month or
two months ago, Jared being our drummer, and I kind of realized this
at the time, but I wasn't paying as much attention. I was just
kind of in my own world. I did not have the I guess empathy
that I have now for the situation. Toby wanted a different drummer at one
point, like He's like, man, I don't know if Jared can do
this. I don't know if Jared's good enough to be doing the record that
I want to hear. And Jared talks about this in the book. He
ended up buying a practice kit, bringing it to the apartments where we lived
at, like one of these mesh heads and all that stuff, so he
can practice and work on his techniques and work on his writing and work on
everything. Love in missing thing, he was just plug away at it.
I remember him doing it. I just thought that's just what he wanted to
do. I didn't realize he was making a point to step up his game
so that he can make sure to be on the record. And so again
that's this kind of guy Tolb he is. Toby was always like, if
you can't hack it, we'll find someone that can. Now that Jared would
have been out of the band, but just some might not record on the
record. I guess other bands may or may not do that. I don't
know, but that's kind of what his feeling was, and Jared stepped up
and he nailed it. Jared got to the point where Toby was happy with
what he did. I feel in many ways, all four of you stepped
up on that album and took things to a whole of a level. Yeah.
Yeah, we're kind of had to. Yeah, it sounds like it
on my side. Yeah. The other crazy thing was work with Toby or
anytime the studio actually, but this time in the studio was where it affected
me the most. I think just with the concentration and the focus of working
on a song is we would have lunch and then work on the song a
little bit, and then you're taking a break and next thing, you know,
it's like, hey, what do you guys want for dinner? I'm
like dinner? What time is it? And it'd be like six hours later
and your dinner time and you're like I just time just takes on this whole
different feel when you're just in the studio listening to the song and just trying
to play to it and trying to get it just right, and they're punching
you in and trying to clean up some things that you were doing, or
you're trying to rehash a part that you had written it wasn't quite fitting in
like we thought it were an hour on my side, time of the studio
is just this whole another thing. It just flows fast, feels slow,
but it goes by fast. I like to play looking Back as a Welcomes
track list. What are some of your favorite songs or ones that have stood
the test of time for you? Breathe as one of them. Reade's one
of my favorite songs on that album. Art Art is one of those ones
that just turned into so much more than what it started as myself, that
little scream slash harmony. Steve, doesn't that chorus so good? Yeah?
Right, so good? So good. That's such a cool song. Time
was cool. That's when we don't play enough live. Dreams is another highlight
for me. Yeah, Dreams Man Dreams is a cool one. I love
that one. Yeah, say it again. It's just a very interesting,
intricate album. Did the songs translate live? I think so. We still
play myself all the time mine obviously poem Dreams was one I wanted to play
more. Steve for some reason, didn't love it as much live, but
we did play it quite a few times. I thought it did well art.
We used to do a lot time. We did it for a small
stint. Everything's a song we did for a while live a lot. That
was a cool one. It's just an album. A thing is really Yeah,
that's a name, like, oh yeah, that is that album.
Yeah, it's kind of like, huh, this song's on this album.
Wait, this one's on this album too. This is a good album,
isn't it. It's science. What I excesest is my excess adness, so
deprecasion. I hate myself sometime some songs. When with one of the ones
that was not fun to play live. It just has such a weird deal
to it when you try to play it live. It's hard, not harder
than technical, but just not fun to groove to. It's a cool song
to listen to, but not a cool song to play live. We did
that a few times and we put the plug on that. To be,
Oh, not to be, not to be. Do you have any particular
moments or memories that come back to you when looking back on the actual recording
experience of Welcome And let's see what do I got that moment with less paple
or you know, not with less payple. I was recording Breathe was a
big one for me. See I'm mixing because we worked with Blue Sky Research
and Welcome with Toby, we kind of melding my head and I think I
remember Blue Sky Research a little bit more as far as some of the goofy
stuff we were doing. It's been a long time. Sometimes sometimes okay,
well, digg in on something more specific, then I'd love to wreck your
brains about the mind music video directed by Chavo from System of a Down.
Very cool video, but I had no idea he was a director at the
time, or if maybe that was even just one off for him. So
how did that whole collaboration come together? Chavo's cool sharing the same management.
He gave us an inside scoop into what each other was doing to a degree,
and so Chago, if memory served, he was trying to get out
there and wanted to direct more. He try his hand at different things.
And so when it was brought to us, like, hey, Havo is
interested in this, he's got a treatment, he's got an idea. Would
you guys be interested, it was like, of course. I mean they
were one of our favorite bands and they were always cool to us. So
him wanting to do that, it's sort of like a mutual benefit, you
know, we get to have him, he has to have us. It
just worked out really nicely. And then the concept I don't know if that
was his or some treatment someone else wrote and he just took it and turned
into what it did. But I love that video. It was such a
cool video. We have that idea of like that little special effect of the
aura would stay behind or whatever's going on in there. They actually built those
rooms, wrote all the lyrics all over it. And what's funny, I
don't think of to see this if you actually just watched the video, but
we started looking at it and certain words would be changed, and people were
kind of having fun with it along the way, like they would change some
the lyrics a little bit, or some of the spellings, and that was
kind of a neat little thing. We have these two rooms of the like
silverish blue room and then the red room. It was just a fun,
quirky little video. And then we took to people from the poem video Cooper
and I want to say her name, Jessica. I could be wrong,
but I remember Cooper because Cooper we actually hung out with outside of there a
few times and he became kind of a friend of ours. And the male
lead, so we brought them into that video too, which I thought was
nice. And it's always cool to tie in from previous things. Yeah,
I'm a big fan of that interlinking and creating universe within your own body of
work. Not in my movie, yeah, but music videos, honestly,
they are pain in the ass, oh man. A lot of work,
A lot of work, yeah, because you're not actually playing, but you
gotta pretend to play, pretend to go crazy, and it's like a lot
of waiting around and then all right, everyone out here, and then you
just try to go crazy for a bit and then play a bunch of times,
and then you sit around for a while again, you eat too much
food because there's craft services and long days, man, long days. Honestly,
my least favorite thing about being a band. I thought I recalled reading
back in the day there was a third music video plan for art. Is
there any merit to that? I don't think it ever got to the point
where there was almost gonna be a video. I think it had been talked
about, but my recollection never got that far. People only do things because
they get paid, and that's just really sad. There's often a lot of
pressure when it comes to the sophomore follow up. So at that point in
time, did any of that ween on you guys either placed on the situation
from yourselves or the label to follow up Gift? Well, we didn't write
eighty songs for fun, but to that end, and I think we're very
fortunate on this, and maybe so we had already a poem in the bag,
right. We kind of knew what our single was gonna be, so
we didn't get much pressure from the label. We never got much pressure from
our label in that sense, because we wrote melodic songs, we wrote catchy
stuff, we'd like that anyway. So we never got a lot of pressure
from our label to specifically write a song like this band or that band,
or do this or do that. It gave us a lot of freedom to
do whatever we wanted. But I'm sure also if we went completely left field,
they might be like, get back over here. We're gonna give you
freedom, but not too much freedom. You have freedom as long as you
play in the area that you're supposed to play in, as long as you
don't test that freedom too much. That's interesting to hear though, because I
actually consider welcome to be quite left field. So father to that point,
and going a little deeper into what you just touched on this point in time,
how did Tabroot feel on the roster of Atlantic Records and what elements of
a relationship with a major label factors in or impacts on the creative process if
at all. Let's see good and bad. To be honest, I think
one of the things where Atlantic could have done better is they seem to have
this idea of like we have our bands, we have our pod, we
have our kid rock, we have jewel, we have whatever right they have.
These people that they know is are going to do well and that's their
main focus, and then everyone else they kind of give a half assed effort.
Canna make it lotchuna take it. And I say that because even though
it ended up being a hit on every radio station across the country, poem
didn't have what they called buzzworthy time feel to it where every station's playing at
the same time, because it didn't have that big push from Atlantic to say,
hey, this is what we're doing, this is what you guys need
to play, this is what we're pushing. Let's make this into something,
because it obviously had that appeal. It was more like these five radio stations
liked it and they start playing it right away, and then a month later,
these other stations are playing, and then another few weeks these stations are
playing. By that time, those first stations are trying to play the next
single because they've had it for two months, while these other stations that's brand
new to them. So it eventually became a hit again across the country,
but it never turned into this big like millions of records, sold, millions
of dollars in my bank account, any of that stuff. Their early work
was a little too a way for my chage made some money on it,
for sure, but I mean the record even go gold. You know,
as big as that song is, I mean it still gets played on radio
today. As big as that song got on radio stations, it just never
turned into that because it never got that national at the same time appeal,
which I was upset about it at the time, But looking back, I
think it's helped our longevity of our career. Now we have a certain amount
of credibility because we never were that one hit and done. We've had to
work hard. We've had to plug away and plug away and plug away,
and we've had songs that have been modest hits, but never this runaway thing
that people got sick of because they heard it so much or anything like that.
To do this, I still function, Yeah, why did Jones side
line? How go on that Gerones side? My body and my soul mind
right now, I can't make you go out right. So I think that's
helped us at this point because we've kind of kept this what I call you
know, when you have that band that you like that no one's really heard
of yet, they're still kind of close to you. They just stay that
way and you can kind of keep them close the whole time, or they
blow up real big. And when they blow up real big, if they
end up in everybody CD player, it loses something of that feeling of like
I feel like I'm part of this, right It's like now everyone's got it
and it's just not as special anymore. Exactly what you're talking about. I
had that back in the day was system of a down. Oh love them
when their debut came out, but then they just became so big and too
known, and good for them. Of course that's amazing, and you want
bands to experience success, but it definitely felt like I had lost my personal
connection with them as a result. And that does happen. It's just a
very interesting concept. I can tell you. That's not I can tell you
right now. Yeah, it just is what it is, like, you
can't deny it. It just is what it is. It's something about human
nature and the way we are with music. But by not having blown up
like some of these other bands, I think to a degree, we've been
able to keep that with our fan base, and our fan base has been
very loyal. Even through this period where we you stop playing shows and weren't
doing much. You have this not very strong social media presence, and we
write weird albums like the Episodes that kind of take fans in a different direction.
And we have Our Long Road Home. Funny thing about that album,
I'm jumping ahead a bit, but Our Long Road Home was a pretty good
selling record in its first week, but because it was so different than what
we've done, it was the most returned album the next week after that.
But then years and years later it's one of our most requested albums because even
though it was unexpected at the time, when you look back on it,
it's a really solid album. Oh yeah, definitely, dude. Like I
keep mentioning, I consider tap Root as masters of progression. Whether one hopes
for more or this or less of this between album releases, I don't really
care about that when it comes to listening to new music from you, because
it always just feels authentic. It never feels forced or contrived or following the
new gimmick you guys. It just always talked with I can tell you you
either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
I'm a fan of my band to a degree, I can see it
from an outsider's point of view. In addition to being an insider, I
don't know what it is about that. You know, Steve byte the lyrics.
I can see where the main songwriters. So I would contribute my parts
and stuff, But some of these songs came out without me, you hardly
having a part. And to be honest, Paul, for instance, poem
was literated by Steve. We just played it and kind of made it our
own to a degree. But I mean, if you hear that first demo,
it's like, yeah, that's the same song. Because of that,
I can kind of have both viewpoints. A fan of Steve and Mike and
their old bands before I was even in the band with them, So I've
always been a fan of Steve. I've always been a fan of the things
he does and the way he writes and all that. So when I look
at our albums, I think each one and I think you've alluded to this
has its own feel, its own voice's own vibe. Yeah. To me,
it's that moment in time for where we were, and that's why it
sounds like it does. Our Along Road Home, I mean, that's the
first album we recorded at home, and we did three records out in LA
and all that time spent, and you know, months and months away from
family, and we're just like, we're done with that. We're gonna spend
this time at home. We just traveled to the studio every day, went
back home, fleshed out this record, a lot of it just in the
studio that didn't write everything beforehand, and then you know, rehearsed a bunch
and then going to the student record because we didn't have that luxury. But
we also now had the luxury of just going to the studio fleshing out parts
and fleshing out the songs as we wrote them. And so that album is
actually one of the albums that I can play the least, right, some
of those parts. That time I played it is the only time I ever
played it. We didn't play it live again later. I never had to
relearn it, and that particular take was the one that worked, and I
might have written something completely different or that's the first I ever played it like
that, and then we moved on and then that's what was there, and
that's it. Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah, do you remember how
you were feeling on the eve of the album's release. M M, Yeah,
definitely proud the album release was cool. I think we made a point
on almost every album to go buy it in the record store. That's cool,
And we'd always grabbed the records and put them up front, right of
course. But what always made me just really excited was whenever I heard the
song on the radio. That to me, it was the culmination. It's
like, oh my god, I can't believe we're on the radio right now.
This is just crazy. Yeah, man, I can imagine what a
trip. It sounds the same from a Vivio or something. Every once in
a while it would just come on or get an I'm just listening to the
radio and boom, there it is. It's like, oh, that's so
cool. Do you know what sucks about being a Baldwin? Have bomb myselfla
black glass and tire. Youre going browning effect and drenching my very night.
All building Okay some day so I can say that, Jill Moodmin's the right
way way same. You and Steven have spent so much of your life together
decades long as friends, bend maids, business partners, whatever it may be.
I'm sure over time that's an extremely nuanced relationship. How would you describe
where you and Steven are at these days with each other and within Tap Root.
It's interesting. I mean, the thing with Steve is when you're in
a band with somebody and in just thinking happens because we're friends really before we
were in the band, and then we obviously became better friends because of the
band. But then when you spend so much time with somebody on the road,
when you get off the road, you generally don't see them at all.
You're just like I am doing my own thing and you do your own
thing, like we don't need to hang out. And it's always fun though,
So there's these cycles of like I went and talk to them for months,
and then we'd get together and it would just be so much fun getting
back together, you know, like we never lost a beat. And that's
what I love about it. That's what I love about Steve, That's what
I love about Jared. These guys that I've been with for so long,
it's like you see them again even if you haven't talked to them for months,
and it's just boom, You've got this connection that's deeper. You've experienced
things together that most people have not gotten to do. So to myself,
it helps me Jesus, Sam literally travel the world together. So when we
get together, it's just like finding your brother again, seeing your brother again.
I have to not seeing them for a while. You don't have to
talk to them all the time, but when you do and you see him
or you talk to them, just all good again. We've been doing these
weekly live streams that we call Taboo Tuesdays. That's really where I talked to
Steve often during the week, but I get to see him. We'll do
some interviews together sometimes, and it's funny. We've done some interviews lately and
that's us talking for the first time in years. I'm really talking. We'll
talk while being interviewed and then we'll just kind of share stories and all learn
stuff about him that I didn't know because we're not talking that much. You
know, it's more business when we're not actually in the same room. Song
don't know girls. Just so over twenty years of fresh respect, where does
Welcome sit with you personally and creatively? Within the back catalog of tap Root
and your own life? So I'll summarize it like this. The first three
albums, almost any song on there other than say something like like right,
which we never played live, but almost every other song I can play having
not played them in years. Some of those songs I haven't played since like
two thousand and three or two, And when I went to just kind of
play through it we're rehearsing for our tour, it was just back there,
no problem. They sit in my memory so strongly because of all the time
we spent on them in the studio and just playing them afterwards and listen to
those albums over and over again. They're pretty strong in my head. Whereas
I hit Fracture, which I've played hundreds of times from Plead the Fifth,
I went to play that one and I'm like, what do I do here?
What's going wrong? You know, there's something special about those first three
records and the time and place and the time we spent and the touring we
did on them and all that. There's a much stronger sense in me then
the later albums. Again, I love our later it's just something about it.
Those are the records to me right, Gift, Welcome, Blue Say,
Research, our Atlantic records, those will hold the special place. I
love our Long Road Home, I love Plead the Fifth, I love the
episodes eight or each their own things, but when I think of really what
pitomizes our band, it's onose first three records temperary. Then oh absolutely,
I mean, you know, we're touring on tour busses, we're playing with
all the bands, we're doing all the festivals. Everything was still real easy,
you know, because after Bruce got researched, the music industry kind of
took her this downturn. Our genre kind of took a downturn. Became a
struggle for a while after that, which was well, honestly, where I
learned the most about myself and the things I can do as far as our
band cycle. That's some kind of where I had to step up. Jared
left the band. I had become more responsible. I had to learn how
to do budgets. I had to learn how to talk to people. I
had to learn to bandage the band to a degree, dig into the business
side, figure out the tax stuff, figure out so many things that were
being done for us before that. A lot of new life skills prolonged from
never completely growing up because being full time in a band from a young age,
well without that that a good job. Now I've not learned to do
spreadsheets by having to learn to do budgets. I learned to do so many
things that help me and just talk to people and how to interact with people
that help me In my job now, I'm a facility manager at a warehouse
and I deal with so many different things and this ability that I've learned to
kind of go with the flow and guide that flow certain directions and know how
to talk to people, know how to not be a dick, you know,
deal with somebody that's being a dick, but not be a dick back,
because that's what I have to do. All that came from having to
help manage the band for the second half of our career. And if you're
still here with us, and we'd love to hear more about Phil's life beyond
the band and coming back to the scene after a decade with a new Taproo
guitarist in Taylor Roberts, and what that dynamic is like. It's just a
hop and a skip over to patreon dot com. Slash Life is Peachy podcast
Episode twenty nine's bonus interview is available right now under the Michael Bolton teer.
But yeah, it's amazing man being able to take life skills, learn from
the band and incorporate them into other aspects of your life. Bank goodness,
I don't know what I would have done about it. Amazing. Well,
on that note, Bill, thank you so much for taking the time to
look back on Welcome. I appreciate it so much. Yeah, man,
Yeah, it's got all over the place, but I hope it's really okay.
Oh nah, it's great. Man. I love letting these interviews go
wherever they like, and it's all relative and important, so I'm here for
it. Definitely, no complaints from me. Man. I appreciate it.
Man, Thank you so much. I appreciate the interview. This was fun.
I'm always interested to see what direction interviews go, and I'm glad we
got to go some different directions and where it usually goes. And thank you
for being so in depth with the questions you want to hear about and the
things you want to hear about, and letting me expand upon things and being
interested. It's nice to talk about these things. And it's nice to kind
of revisit this time in my life. Because I have kids now, I
don't get to think about this anymore. That time it was just such a
separate life. It's just other life. And as I do interviews like guys
like you and other people. It's just like, oh, yeah, I
remember that now, I remember there's some of this stuff, so I don't
walk through this again. Man. In a few months after replay some shows
or something fine about when we can bag do you want to hit me up
again? We'll do something again and hopefully some more stuff comes to my as
I'm back in the mix. Yes, man, I would love that because
I could keep racking your brains for ages. So that would be great to
Yeah, take you up on that offer if you still feel like it in
the future, and of course yeah, definitely. Twenty twenty five Blue Sky
Research that one hits the big two. Oh Arthur Van, They'll have and
there we have an episode twenty nine of the Life Is Peachy Podcast, my
chat with Phil Lipscoon looking back on taproots amazing sophomore Welcome. Next up in
twenty twenty four, The who, the what, the where and Why is
always revealed first up over on Patreon, where lip patreons find out early guest
and album reveals exclusively via two of the available three tiers, and as mentioned
before, additional episode content and interviews are waiting for you under the Michael Bolton
tier at patreon dot com slash Life is Peachey Podcast Any Love over at Patreon
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look and to get production sound that was more popular at the time. It
was just going for something different and different at that time was Corn and that
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