Lighting it up with Rev Theory

March 12, 2009

With the singles “Hell Yeah” and “Light It Up,” Rev Theory is getting to know what success feels like. The band worked hard to get here, touring for two years behind their first album, the 2005 indie release Truth Is Currency. With a new attitude and a new album (2008’s Light It Up) that was more than a year in the making, Rev Theory just might be on the cusp of something big. Live-Metal.net’s Greg Maki recently caught up with guitarist Julien Jorgensen and frontman Rich Luzzi backstage at the Recher Theatre in Towson, Md., to relive some memories, talk about the new album and discuss what the future holds.

Live-Metal.net: I was doing a little reading online and I saw in an interview one of you had done that a pretty big show in the band’s career was in Baltimore. It was the first show you did after becoming a full-time band.

Julien Jorgensen: Oh, that’s right. The first show we ever did on tour was in Baltimore.

Rich Luzzi: Yeah, for five people.

Where was that?

Rich: Uh, the Royale? It was called the Royale, I think. It was in the ghetto.

I’ve never heard of that.

Julien: I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t exist anymore.

Rich: It was literally the ghetto. There was some crack deals going on. We saw some pimp beating up a hooker. There was some serious shit going on where we were.

Julien: It ended up being the bartender, the manager of the club, two of his buddies—

Rich: Our bass player’s mom.

Julien: It was ugly.

The first time I saw you guys was here, about three years ago, when you were on tour with Hinder.

Julien: We were on mushrooms that night.

Rich: Yeah, here.

Julien: Yeah and we went to the bar.

Rich: I didn’t go.

Julien: Oh. I went to the bar with Matty [bassist Matt McCloskey], and it started kicking in. We were like, “Dude, we gotta get out of here.” ‘Cause there’s that bar next door. It’s cool. The guys, everyone was there and we ended up reverting back to the bus—it was a safety thing.

Now you’re headlining here. Aside from when people like me ask you these kinds of questions, do you think about how far you’ve come in just a couple years?

Rich: Yeah, of course you do. You’re just thankful each day that you get another day to do it. Whether it’s headlining or playing with another band, just being able to do it is a good thing.

Between Truth Is Currency and the new album, Light It Up, there’s a pretty big shift in tone or mood. The new one is more positive, upbeat. Was that a conscious decision you guys made?

Julien: I think so. We always talk about the record kind of reflecting the experiences we had over the two years, three years that we had between records. So there’s a lot of growth and we got to see a lot of the world. We toured, we got to party, we got to kind of taste a little bit of the dream. I think a lot of the songs on the first record were sort of indicative of our lives before the first record, which were kind of grueling and harder and we were dealing with a lot more sort of depressing issues. When we got the chance to draw from experience for the second record, it was like we had some party stuff to draw from and a little taste of the dream now, and I think we wrote some songs reflecting those experiences.

Rich: We also found touring over those two years, too, that when people come to see a show and want to listen to music, they want a good time. So it’s almost like your job to take them away from their bad times and give them a good time.

Did your approach to writing songs change at all from how you had done it before?

Julien: We collaborated a little more because on the first record it was primarily—We all had jobs and stuff we were working, so I was doing most of the writing primarily, with the guys coming in in the 11th hour. I think on this record we had a chance to really dig in and work together, guys coming in and everyone contributing. That is why the songs are a little bit different, as well. It’s just different perspectives and more input.

Did you like having a long time to work on it. Was that by design?

Julien: We really had eight, nine months to work on it ‘cause we started writing in …

Rich: December of ’06 and then we worked all of ’07, and it came out in June of ’08. So we wrote, actually, a really long time. Honestly, it was a solid year. It was a solid year because we started writing in December of ’06 and we actually finished the last bit of recording in January of ’08.

Julien: And we didn’t stop writing until September of ’07. We were recording the second half in Vancouver. That’s where we wrote “Hell Yeah.” We were finishing songs as we were recording. Sometimes they say some stuff happens like that where last minute things will just kind of come together, and it happened like that. “Favorite Disease” and “Hell Yeah” were kind of the last songs to come together.

With a song like “Hell Yeah,” were you going for that anthem-type feel?

Julien: Totally. The label was like, “Hey, we need another up-tempo song.” So we just sat down and tried to write, I guess, an up-temp, hard-rocking tune. We didn’t really set out like, “Oh, let’s write this anthem.” But it just kind of ended up feeling like that and I think everyone kind of got behind it. It’s definitely been played in a lot of arenas in the last year.

I’ve seen you guys play live a couple times and it’s a very high-energy show. What do you do to get yourselves ready for that?

Julien: Well, we have a mix CD.

Rich: Monster.

Julien: Yeah, a lot of Monster energy drink. They sponsor us now, so we’ve got a boatload of Monster. Matty drinks Jager Monsters now. He drinks them like it’s his job. We stretch for a good hour, and we just listen to Avenged, Jane’s Addiction, Pantera.

Rich: It doesn’t take you much to get pumped up to play a show.

Julien: The more fans we get the less it takes.

What about afterwards? You’ve got all this energy. How do you sort of come down from that?

Rich: It’s weird ‘cause for a long time we’ve just been supporting. So you have tons of time till the end of the night to kind of relax. And then on this headlining run, we’re done at like 12:30 and you’re up until 4:30 in the morning no matter what just because you have to calm down from the adrenaline. Usually, it’s just hanging out, eat some food.

Julien: Smoke some pot.

Rich: Some people drink.

Julien: Smoke some wacky tobacky, a few drinks.

Do you still like to go out and meet the fans?

Rich: Yeah, yeah. We do it every night. Yep, every night we try to do that.

You’re doing some little acoustic sets for some fans.

Rich: Yeah, it’s a VIP acoustic thing. Whoever signs up for it pre-show, we bring them on the bus or if there’s a ton of them, we’ll have them backstage and we play an acoustic song for them and do stuff like that, a question-and-answer-type deal.

Do you ever think about doing more with the acoustic stuff?

Julien: We want to do a whole acoustic album or maybe an acoustic EP sort of in between, if we can, because we have a bunch of stuff that translates well and actually we change some arrangements of certain songs. So we feel like there’s already material there. We already have in our back pocket three or four different songs that we would love to do acoustically. So if there’s time and hopefully some money, we could throw that together and at least give the fans something in between records.

Have you had any Spinal Tap moments?

Rich: All the time.

Julien: So many, dude.

Rich: All the time. It usually happens before. We can’t find the stage for whatever reason. We’ll be outside and we’ll walk to one door and it’ll be locked. It happened in Canada. They locked me out. Yeah, they locked me out in Calgary in minus-40-degree weather five minutes before we were supposed to go on stage. The runner came to get us and I had a bag in the back of the car and these guys walked in and just went to the stage. I’m banging on the door and nobody would let me in. That’s Spinal Tap.

Julien: Constant, constant shenanigans. It doesn’t cease to amaze us all the times we don’t know how to get to the stage.

Rich: I don’t know why it’s so hard to find the stage. It doesn’t move. We always just seem to not be able to get there.

Julien: You’d think we would take five minutes to walk to it to see where it would be. But no, we don’t. But now that we’re headlining we get more soundchecks, so we know where it is.

When did you add the second guitarist?

Rich: It was a year ago in like December/January.

Why did you decide to do that?

Julien: We wrote the new record with sort of that in mind. It was just little bit more dynamic. I think we wanted to grow the band and I think with the direction the music was going it sort of called for it.

Rich: Yeah, we needed a true lead player.

Julien: And Rikki [Lixx]’s a great guy. We know him and he was a perfect fit to round out the band.

The song “Light It Up” is on Guitar Hero now. What do you think about that?

Rich: It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool to go over to my cousin’s house and my niece’s and have them playing it on their PlayStation or X-Box. That’s pretty cool.

Julien: I still haven’t seen it.

Rich: It’s a pretty big deal. It’s cool.

If I picked up your iPod right now, what kind of stuff would I find on there?

Julien: I’m always listening to Nine Inch Nails. I always have that in there, somewhere in there. I’ve been listening to that Angels and Airwaves. [to Rich] Do you listen to that stuff?

Rich: No.

Julien: It’s not that heavy, but it’s pretty cool. I don’t mind it, actually. The Shinedown record. It’s really good.

Rich: I’ve been on a Pearl Jam kick lately. I don’t know, maybe with the re-release of Ten coming out—I don’t know, I’ve just been listening to it.

Julien: We were listening to this band the other night called Ours.

Rich: Ours, yeah. They were really good.

Julien: It was incredible, man. It’s always cool when you find something that moves you, and apparently they’ve been around for three or four records.

I saw them play last year. They were out with Filter.

Julien: Oh cool. Filter’s cool. Their new record’s not bad.

How did you guys get involved with WWE? [In 2008, “Light It Up” was the theme for WrestleMania and “Hell Yeah” was the theme for the One Night Stand pay-per-view.]

Rich: I think it was a combination of our label and our management having a relationship with them. We sent them our record, they really liked the music and kind of liked where we came from as more of a grassroots approach. We were actually just willing to do things where a lot of bands kind of aren’t as open to some suggestions. So I think that just struck a chord with them, like “Here’s a band that’s willing to do stuff, so we’ll work with them.”

That had to have been good for you.

Rich: Oh, it’s great. It’s an amazing thing.

I don’t watch it regularly, but a year ago every time I’d flip through the channels I’d hear you guys on there.

Rich: Yeah, it’s a great promotion for us. Really, really great.

Have you had any career highlights so far, something that really stands out?

Julien: We’ve done Rockfest in Kansas City.

Rich: Twice. The first time was great and then the second time our single “Hell Yeah” was No. 1 on the station. So to go play for 50,000 people that all know your single, that was an amazing feeling.

Julien: And STP played that night. We got to see them play. We were just riding high from the show and we were all backstage watching them.

Rich: Going to Europe, getting to tour Europe with Evanescence, that was really, really cool. To have a band with that much clout over there and play in front of great crowds every single night, that was really cool.

Julien: That was an awesome experience. Can’t wait to do it again.

What goals do you have left to accomplish for this band?

Rich: Make a living.

Julien: Yeah. We just want to build this thing, man. We just want to sell some records so that we can stay doing it. Just keep building fans. Grow it overseas, get this stuff to Europe ‘cause we feel like we can really connect. When we went over there, we really connected. Things are going good in Canada. Just basically take this thing worldwide. We just want to be the biggest band in the world.

You toured for two years on the first album. How long do you think you’ll be out on this one?

Rich: Hopefully, the same or more.

Julien: There’s a lot more potential for things to grow. It’s happening a little slowly, but it’s like we’re getting little wins everywhere. Things could go here for another year, but then we launch it in Europe or we have to go to Australia or we have to go somewhere else, that’s like starting all over again and building it over there. So you never know.

Rich: We’ll see what happens.

Is there anything else you want to add?

Rich: Get the record, Light It Up, in stores. Buy it. [laughs]