RC: We are surviving the weather out here at the
Post Gazette Pavilion with a band that it
could have been blizarding out there and I
would have waited cuz I just dig the **** out
of Static-X, Rock Circus has played the ****
out of Static-X, repeated the videos, this is
the new CD Machine. This is the man Wayne
Static, where did you come up that head thing?
Wayne: What do you mean?
RC: You know what I mean that pivot thing.
Wayne: Oh, I ripped that off Paul Stanley. He used to do that and his
afro would be goin'.
RC: I always wondered, you do that very well you got a good rythym,
it's like you're a metranome with that thing.
Wayne: Absolutely.
RC: We got the man on bass here Tony.
Tony: Hey.
RC: We know you're feelin a little down in the rain. We got the new
man on guitar here Trip.
Tripp: Hi.
RC: You came from Dope?
Tripp: Yeah.
RC: And we got the man who's been talking for a while Ken.
Ken: How's it goin'.
RC: We missed a lot of the good stuff too.
Wayne: It's so unlike Ken to be talking too, it's a strange thing
(kidingly).
RC: We're talking about Warner Bros., yah know they'll pay a movie
star 20 million up front that could be a flop but they're out
here bustin your balls. You're out here touring hard, you can
sell out a mid-sized venue every night ...
Tripp: W'sup with that?
Wayne: It's the nature of the beast.
RC: Is there any way to aproach anybody in the offices and say hey
we've got something here, this is good **** kids just don't
get exposed, we try our hardest on this show. How do they
justify that, as artists don't you feel a little slighted?
Ken: Yeah, a little bit but some if it has to do with what we were
talking about the changeover at Warner Bros. in the last year.
RC: They're finding new ways to consolidate it from what you're
telling me.
Ken: Yeah, but the thing is a lot of bands still have this trouble
when they sell 50-70,000 albums. We have this trouble and
have a gold record so it could have been a lot worse.
RC: Machine went gold didn't it?
Ken: Yah.
Wayne: I'm not pissed about anything dude, three years ago I was
bustin' my ass at some crappy job making nothing and now I got
a platinum record, a gold record, a nice tour bus, playing
music every night for people. What's to be pissed about? I'm
not a millionaire but I'm making a good living doin' what I
wanna do.
RC: Well then you're doing alright. Wouldn't you like to have a
little more exposure? Like I was telling Ken I saw more kids
out there with Static-X shirts then any other bands.
Wayne: Well we tour a lot more than the other bands and you can't
fault the record company there's a whole gigantic machine out
there called the music industry. You're a part of it that,
we're all a part of that.
RC: I'm the piece of **** part of it, the excrements of it.
Wayne: No, you're one of the street level people that supports bands
like us and we owe our success, part of it, to people like you.
But there's a whole machine the radio, MTV, it's not just the
label. I think our label supports us as much as they can, as
much as the system will allow.
RC: I know they spent some money on the videos. What about you're
last video did you like doing a soundtrack?
Wayne: It was good.
Ken: Oh yeah, it was awesome, "Cold" was written for the album and
then we did a remix version. The video shoot was awesome. It
was on the Universal lot like 2 minutes away from the Psycho
house.
RC: Did you get to vivit that?
Ken: (laughing to themselves)Tony and I did and the Baites Hotel.
Tony: Yeah, I actually jumped in the shower.
Ken: It was such a cool thing to do and Nathan Cox (the director)
was awesome. But we got fangs made and we got to fly, it was rad.
RC: It was a cool video, I'm not a big fan of the Rock though.
Wayne: No that's a different video. We did the video for The Queen
of the Damned.
RC: I'm geting my videos confused, I'm thinking of the Godsmack
video.
Wayne: I'm not that short, I'm not as short as Sali, and I don't
have any songs that go Go Away.
RC: When you did Black and White you did the robotics so good
Trip.
Tripp: Camera tricks.
RC: I don't know, how's he fitting in with the band?
Wayne: He's fitting in as good as anyone could but he'll always be the
new guy. The three of us have been together since 94 so he's the
new guy he takes most of the ****, he's the butt of all of the
jokes.
RC: Kind of what Jason Newstead went through with Metalica.
Wayne: Exactly.
Tony: In his defense he constantly provides us with material so it's
all good.
RC: You should have him write scripts and you can do a TV show Living
With Static-X, we'll put it on cable access.
Ken: We're trying out for the Osbournes.
RC: Who's gonna be next Ted Nugent, I don't know?
Ken: Actually it's P Diddy.
RC: Was it a hard transition from Dope?
Tripp: It's totally in the ball park. Static-X is even more of what
I'm into. Where as these
guys are into Prong, Ministry, more griddy, more straight
forward, more metal, more heavy vocals. It's definately more like
whats in my heart.
RC: Well with Wayne's stage presence you can't go wrong. (turning to
Wayne)Did you write most of Machine on the back of the
bus?
Wayne: Yeah
RC: What inspired a lot of it?
Wayne: Just bein' on tour for two years. You get worn out and burn out,
a lot of the songs on the album are about that.
RC: Now it seems that you integrated the cyber part of it a little more
in wth the music as oposed to having stops, where it's brought
into the forte' of the music. Was this working with Protools at
all?
Wayne: We did the album in Logic which is similar to Protools but I
don't really do ny of that myself. I just have a sampler that
I put a lot of stuff on and I didn't have the piece of equipment
when we did the first record. This record does have a lot more
loops and things going on throughout the music. Good observation
no one else has ever picked up on that at a interview.
RC: What can I say I'm a fan. So where you guys going from here?
Tripp: Heading to Flyin J (everybody laughs).
RC: And where in the hell is that?
Trip: That's actually a new song on our album, inspired by the road.
Tony: No the name of the album.
Ken: I like TA, TA's better, travel America (he says in a trucker
voice).
RC: No big plans?
Ken: We're gonna be touring through the end of June, we just came back
from 2 months off. We actually did some writing then, we were just
doing are new album. Instead of burning ourselves out on tour, it
was an option but...
RC: Would you contribute that to what was behind the success of
Wisconsin Death Trip, all the touring and grouling ?
Wayne: There just comes a time, this is our second time around
now touring for an album. You can just kind of tell when the
time is right to go back and work on our next record. You can't
really put a time frame on it, on how many tours, it just feels
like the right time when we're done with this tour.
Ken: We toured for a year and a half behind Death Trip before
somebody told us you know you can tell us no. We're just here
to advise you, by that time we were coming up on a headline tour
and Ozzfest and it seemed like the thing to do. In retrospect I
don't think any of us would trade it for the world but we wouldn't
want to do it again.
RC: The whole trip of the Ozzfest and the deal.
Ken: Ozzfest is rad to do but by the time we did the second one we were
pretty deep in to the touring cycle and it was tough. The last 4
weeks of it we just couldn't wait to get it done.
RC: Do you kind of have to try to suck up some of the lime light? You're
touring with so many other bands.
Wayne: That's not hard dude, we outshine all the other bands all the
time.
Ken: That's the easy part .
RC: Well you got some good music.
Tripp: (laughing to himself)We're headlining today, we're the last band.
Wayne: We're the last band playing in the parking lot to make sure
that everyone can see us while they're leaving, walking to thier
cars.
RC: You got to hand it to them PR guys. So you're talking about
recording again, where you gonna go, whats the deal, back to LA?
Tripp: (jokingly)We're gonna record in PA.
Tony: Allentown.
Ken: HE'S going to PA.
RC: You could just record here.
Wayne: We all live in LA, we're just going home, he's gonna move to
LA.
RC: Where you from Trip?
Tripp: Burbank.
RC: Burbank, he's the outcast in the band.
Ken: Burbank, New Jersey.
Tony: Pretty soon he's gonna have to pay for it on his own.
RC: See what happens, they'll bust his balls til they're old and grey
and doing classic rock tours. So you're done with the videos for
this album, 3?
Wayne: Yes sir, we're done.
RC: Who's idea was it for the "Black and White" video with the steel
skulls and all?
Wayne: It was kind of mine. The original idea I got from the director
was another Wayne trying to escape out of Wayne and Tony trying
to escape out of Tony, our innerselves trying to bust out. But I
was like why don't we make it like machines trying to bust out
cuz that's what some of the album's about.
RC: (refering to the CD)You kind of revised the Static-X logo for that,
is that your work.
Wayne: Yeah that's my nads right there.
RC: Really, I thought that was the prostate, I didn't know.
Tony: His spleen.
RC: Spleen, that's like the most useless organ you can have. They say
it's the gateway to heaven but I don't know.
Ken: I thought that was the taint.
RC: The taint, yah you heard that first on Rock Circus. What video do
you want me to play? "Cold", "Black and White", "This is not"...
Wayne: Just play "This is not" dude. First video off the record, we
did it low budget, we filmed it at the Roxy in LA.
Ken: We are gonna have a comic book coming out, that's something new
we're gonna be working on.
RC: A Static-X comic book!
Ken: It's coming out July 24th, it's coming out on KS Comics.
(Tripp holds up a postcard with the comic book cover on it)
Ken: There you go.
RC: Awesome.
Wayne: The actual cover is going to ge bigger than that though.
RC: That would be like the thumb book.
Tony: The cover will be bigger but the comic book will be that size.
Ken: Well you could read it really fast then.
RC: Now you got to get McFarly to make you the dolls. I wish I had the
comic book now for you to autograph.
Wayne: We could autograph that postcard for yah.
RC: Would you do that?
Wayne: Yeah.
RC: Oh man, these guys just made it worth sitting in the rain all
freaking day. Right now on the Rock Circus the first video off
machine "This is not"...
For More Info Go To www.static-x.com
Click Here To Look At Pictures From Interview
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