Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Burn Halo

No, this was it. It was Eighteen Visions for 12, 13, 14 years—however long it was—doing shows with that band and then the Burn Halo show here at the Rams Head was the first-ever show I’ve ever done with another band, fronting another band. I can definitely say it took me three or four songs to really have it set in, like what I was doing and that I was on stage with a new band. It was a little weird at first. I didn’t know what to think. I was borderline nervous and I had never had those feelings before because I’d been doing it for so long with the other band. But it was good. We got it all out of the way. So we’re all good now.

Yeah, we were here with Escape the Fate and Black Tide barely two weeks ago. We got the opportunity to run a string of dates together with Rev Theory. This is one of their stops, so here we are again, and we’ll be back again in April at Sonar with Saliva and Static-X.

Yeah, that’s not good. [laughs] That’s not good ‘cause it’s cold.

I didn’t. Well, when the band finally played its last two shows, absolutely I knew. I absolutely knew what was going on. But beforehand I had not thought about doing anything else. Eighteen Visions was kind of winding down. I sensed that. I didn’t really know what my next move was gonna be or my next step was gonna be. My manager had brought up the idea of getting together with a guitar player and starting a new band. I really wasn’t sure. I knew I still wanted to do music. I knew I still wanted to play, write, tour and record—all that good stuff. I just didn’t really know how to go about it. And then he set something up for me a week after the band played its last two shows. I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, writing music for what became the Burn Halo record. Once I knew that I was going to be given the opportunity, I knew what I wanted to do with it.

Yeah, I was and it was like that for a very, very long time because I knew the record deal was gonna be my deal, that I was gonna be the only one that was tied down to the record deal, that I wasn’t gonna have a band come in and write music with the band. I was gonna be writing with a songwriter and whatever guitar player he brought into the studio, which I ended up becoming very, very close friends with. I knew it wasn’t gonna have a band feel right off the bat, so I was like it’s gonna be James Hart and that’s what it’s gonna be. The more the songs came together, the more there was guitar leads and stuff like that, which I knew I wanted, the more it felt like a real band recording and not just James Hart as a solo artist. It wasn’t singer-songwriter-type stuff at all. It was full-on rock. It wasn’t the difference between like a Chris Cornell Audioslave record or a Soundgarden record compared to a Chris Cornell solo record. There was no difference there. It was like a total rock band. So when that came about, the songs came together, we had discussions on what to do, how to market it and we just came to the conclusion that because it did feel so much like a pure, real rock album that marketing the songs as a rock band would be the best idea rather than as a solo artist.

Zac Maloy, yeah. He was the songwriter that I worked with and the guitar player that he brought in was Neil Tiemann, who worked on the whole record, worked on the demos, he even wrote on a couple of tracks. He ended up leaving this gig because it took so long to get up off the ground and he’s actually out with one of his best friends right now, David Cook, who won American Idol, doing guitar stuff for him.

Totally. I made a record with no compromises and I’ve always been wanting to do that. In the past, with Eighteen Visions, the songwriting was a collaboration with two songwriters. I was given the music bed, told to write to it and that was that. Everybody gave up a lot of ideas because somebody didn’t like something. I knew going in that I wouldn’t have to do that, and what I really wanted to do was make a modern rock record with what you said, the throwback type of fun, ‘80s vibe to it, with some of the gang vocals—like “Our House,” it’s really more upbeat and it’s got a really Motley Crüe feel to it. But the real thing I wanted to accomplish that had the throwback vibe to it was the guitar solos. I wanted the guitar solos to really be able to sing their own song within the song and that’s the one thing today I feel like modern rock is missing.

Old friend of mine, yeah, all those guys, Avenged, toured with them back in the day with Eighteen Visions, went to high school with a couple of them. We made friends and we toured together in the past. When I was originally gonna do this record, before I had even gotten together with Zac Maloy, I approached the guys from Avenged—“Hey, how would you feel about co-writing a record or at least a few songs with me?” And they were all about it. They got home from tour, I called up Synyster and he’s like, “Hey man, we’ve gotta go into the studio this weekend. We’re starting pre-production and the writing and stuff like that.” I was like, “Oh, it’s all good.” Calls me up the next day, goes, “Can you come over to my house? I whipped something up for you.” Went over to his house and he had just stripped down guitars, just like the root notes and the changes, the chords and that’s it, and he laid down a little vocal melody which we actually kept some of. And that track turned out to be “Anejo,” which is one of the cooler live tracks that we’re playing and it’s, I think, the third to last track on the record. So that song came together that way. And then when we were in the studio, he had some downtime and I called him up and I was like, “Hey, how would you like to come and play on that track you wrote?” He was like, “Dude, I’d love to.” And that turned into like, “Hey, the song ‘Dirty Little Girl,’ the solo in that section would be really cool for you. So why don’t you write your own thing and do your own thing to it,” which he did. And then, lo and behold, have some more downtime and pop him in the video and call it a day.

Oh wow, the biggest challenge? I would just say the perseverance through the whole record label thing, with Island falling through, not really knowing what this record would come out on, what label it would come on or if it would even come out. That was the big question at hand. It wasn’t a fact of who’s gonna be in the band with me, who am I going to bring into a live setting, am I gonna be able to work with these guys on a future record, are they gonna be cool guys. That wasn’t the problem. The issue was really, hey, is thing ever even gonna come out? Did I just spend entire year of blood, sweat and tears and sacrifice a ton of my life financially and personally to make this record happen and now it’s not gonna happen? God willing, it did and here we are, and I’m so thankful that I’ve been blessed again with the opportunity to be here.

As far as getting it up off the ground and getting the proper tours and stuff, Eighteen Visions got those tours, but we were a band for so long and had released so many records and done so many pretty good tours that when we did get those big tours, it was like OK, we should’ve gotten those big tours. With this band, we’re so new, we’re so young—I mean, maybe not in age, at least for myself—but we’re a new band to so many people that have never heard of us before and to be given the opportunities that we have, the guys in the band realize this and I realize this—regardless of who I’m friends with in this industry, bands aren’t given these opportunities to go out and do these types of tours before their record comes out. So I don’t think I’ve ever had an easier time with anything involving music than I have over the last three months.

That just goes back to the writing and the compromise. As a songwriter, the more I developed my vocals as a singer and not as a screamer, the more I enjoyed it and the more I wanted to push the envelope with doing stuff that would cater to my vocals melodically. Unfortunately—I shouldn’t say unfortunately ‘cause I love all the songs that Eighteen Visions did—but some of the songs didn’t necessarily cater to my vocals the way that this stuff does. I loved every single record that I put out with Eighteen Visions. I would never take away anything I’ve done with that band or put it on the backburner ‘cause it’s a big part of my life. I spent almost half my life in that band. With this, I’ve always been a big, big fan of Guns N’ Roses, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Skid Row—those nitty gritty rock bands that I grew up listening to and those were the bands that I loved and that was the musical direction I wanted Eighteen Visions to go in. I think anybody that’s familiar with my career in Eighteen Visions knows from record to record the music shifted and progressed or degressed to some people, they would think. But it was a natural progression and I think that it was really an eye-opening experience for me to be able to progress as a songwriter and as a band, and it really paved the way for what I wanted to do with this album.

I don’t if it comes from getting actually older. I think it comes from experience as a songwriter, just getting in the experience, whether it’s two albums or 10 albums. I feel really experienced as a songwriter. I know how to build a song, I know how to build a melody and I know how to bring a listener in vocally and lyrically. It took me a lot longer than probably it should’ve just because I started out as a metal vocalist and changed into a rock vocalist. So I missed a lot of time there where I could’ve been working, focusing strictly on what I’m doing now, but that wasn’t the way everything panned out. Everything that I’ve done has led me to here and it’s been a very educational experience as a songwriter.

Not necessarily that they’re taking on a new life to where they’re gonna come across differently from the album. Joey, the guy that I’ve got playing guitar, just rips and he can pretty much play everything note for note, which is what I wanted. I wanted somebody to come in and be able to do their thing. Now had this record been out for five years and this record ended up being a huge album five years ago and I got a new guitar player in that was a very seasoned guitar player, a veteran, somebody that had their own name, I would say, “Yeah, dude, play those leads and play them how they’re played, but if you want to do your own thing to them to make them yours, go for it.” But since this record’s so early—it’s not even out yet—I definitely wanted to be able to translate everything on the record the way it was meant to be played and bring it into a live setting. And man, the guys have had absolutely no problem stepping up to the plate and getting the songs across and I just think the more and more we play together, the tighter we’re gonna be and it’s just one of those things where a band needs to grow and gel together.

Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. I definitely would like to leave the door open to writing with Zac again. I think that me and him had great chemistry and we wrote some great songs together. I also understand what it’s like to be a musician and not just a performer, that somebody’s gonna want to have the total package. They’re gonna want to play on stage, they’re gonna want to record and they’re gonna want to write, and I would never want to say, “Hey, you can’t write.” Maybe that’s their favorite part of playing guitar, is writing music. There’s something beautiful about coming together and writing a song, and I would not want to hold that back from anybody. I definitely wouldn’t want that done to me, just to be a guy that sings songs and performs on stage. I wouldn’t want to be that guy. So I definitely want to pursue writing with these guys in the future. I think it’ll be great.

You know, I haven’t, and the reason why is I had so many goals and so many high expectations with Eighteen Visions. I was told so many different things by the presidents of record labels and A&R guys and head radio promoter people, and none of it was really fulfilled, even though as a band we felt like it could be. So I’ve kind of put my goals on the backburner and kind of said just take me where it goes. If it doesn’t end up happening six months from now, I’ll know and I’ll know it’s time to move on with my life. If it does happen six months from now, then it was meant to be.