In an age in which the music industry is in turmoil, Seether, since bursting onto the scene with in 2002, has defied the trend by releasing hit single after hit single and hit album after hit album. From their latest release, 2007’s Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces, the heartwrenching “Rise Above This” has followed “Fake It” to major airplay on rock radio. The band, originally from South Africa, is on the road this spring with Flyleaf. One day into the tour, bassist Dale Stewart called in to chat with Live-Metal.net’s Greg Maki.
Live-Metal.net: You just started this new tour with Flyleaf. I guess the first show was yesterday. How did it go?
Dale Stewart: It went really well. It was a sold-out show. A lot of people. We just incorporated a whole bunch of new production stuff. We have videos that we play while we’re doing the show and lights and things. We were a little bit nervous as to whether everything was gonna work. It actually went off pretty well, pretty painless.
Good. What is the billing on this? Is it a co-headliner?
Yeah.
Are you closing all of the shows or are you flipping?
We’ll close the shows. We play for the same length of time.
Do you like doing these co-headlining tours? Is there less pressure than when you have to carry it all on your own?
Definitely. A band like Flyleaf, they’ve been around for quite a while now and have a really good fanbase. It’s always easier when you can have another band to help draw people. So yeah. We just did a tour with Breaking Benjamin and Three Days Grace. It was great. We were doing arenas, which we probably couldn’t do on our own, but between three of us we were able to pull enough people. So it’s definitely cool. I definitely enjoy it.
I saw you guys a couple years ago on the SnoCore tour, with Flyleaf on that tour, too. Is that where you first met them and got to know them?
Yeah, that was the first time we got to actually meet the guys. We just became good friends with them and became fans of the band. We wanted to do another tour with them. I guess we really didn’t get the opportunity until now, so we jumped when it came around.
When you first get the tour schedule, are there any places that you look at and you’re excited to get to go play there?
Yeah, a couple places stand out. Las Vegas is always a fun show, as much for the show as for the after-show activities. Yeah, I’m looking forward to Vegas. It’s been sold out. There are a couple places that have been sold out. We’ve always done really well in Texas . I’m looking forward to L.A. I actually live there, so I’m looking forward to going back and playing at home.
I saw there is a promotion on this tour with the video game Rock Band where some fans get to play with the guys in the bands.
Yeah, we basically have a competition every day and then we bring back maybe four winners and they come backstage, we have the whole Rock Band thing set up, we get to hang out little bit, play a couple songs. It’s fun. We usually do meet-and-greets and stuff, but that’s kind of boring. This Rock Band thing, you actually get to have fun and play the game. It’s really cool. It’s a really cool thing. I’m glad they jumped on board.
Which of the instruments do you like to play on the Rock Band game?
I like the drums. It’s funny. I’m a bass player. It should be the other way around. I think at the heart of it all I’m a frustrated drummer.
[laughter]
Seether had gone back to being a three-piece for a while and then you added a second guitarist again, is that right?
We have, yes. It wasn’t as much of a case as “Should we do it?” as it was a case of “We should do it.” We wanted to do it right and get the right guy, so we took our time and ended up with a friends ours, Troy [McLawhorn], who we’ve known for years in various bands that we’ve toured with. So we’ve been friends for about the last four years. He’s just a good guy and a great player, and as it happened, he was coming to the end of a tour that he was on and was available to do a tour with us. I called him up and said, “Hey, man, we’d love to have you out.” And yeah, I guess we’re gonna keep him now for the tour.
The newest album is Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces. How would you compare that to the previous albums?
I think it’s a little bit out-of-box for us. It’s, I think, very different sounding to what we’ve done in the past. In a good way. It’s something we set out to do. We didn’t want to focus on any type of guidelines or rules on this album, like, “Let’s make an album that sounds like this or sounds like that.” We just wrote a whole pile of songs and basically chose our favorites of those songs.
I think it has kind of a looser type of feel, maybe, than the other albums.
Yeah, yeah, I think so. We incorporated different kinds of instruments. We have drum samples in one song, a sitar in another song. We didn’t want to be like, “We’re drums, guitar, bass and vocal, and that’s it.” We just said, “Let’s make music. Let’s just make the kind of music that we want to hear.” And that’s what we did.
Some of the songs, the bass is more prominent than it’s been in the past, like on “No Jesus Christ,” “Fallen” and even “Fake It.” Is there a reason why that came out that way?
Yeah, once again, it was just one of those things where we had all the songs and it just so happened that those were songs that started with a sort of catchy bassline. Those were some of our favorites, which is cool for me. There’s nothing better than kicking in the bass and watching people start jumping and reacting to the songs. It’s cool. I’m definitely happy about it.
After having a couple of pretty big hit albums, did you feel more pressure when you made this album?
You know what? I don’t think we really thought about it too much. We just went in and said, “Hey, let’s make an album.” On this album, quite a relaxed kind of feeling when we made this album. I always think that the writing process is often the stressful part. “We need more songs, we need more songs”—the label is asking for more songs all the time. Once we have the songs and we already love the songs and we’re kind of confident in our own minds that it will be a good album, then the actual tracking and putting the album together in the studio, that’s the fun part because the work’s done now. Go in the studio and record the stuff, experiment a little bit while we’re there and have fun with it. It was a fun recording.
I read that Shaun came into this with like 60 songs or at least 60 song ideas. Is that right?
Yeah.
What happens to all those that you didn’t use? Will you go back to them again or just start over next time?
Possibly. We usually write new stuff for the new albums. Now and then we’ll harvest a riff or something from an old song. But we like to keep it kind of current because things change. The band changes, people change and the music changes. We want that album to be that sort of snapshot of that point in time, so I think it’s definitely important to have all new material. If you’re really in a bind, you can go maybe pick one that nearly made the album.
The current single, “Rise Above This,” that’s a really powerful song. It seems like it would be pretty emotional for all of you guys when you play that.
It is, yeah. With Shaun, his brother passing away and everything. We have pictures of him up on the screen, clips of the video. It’s definitely a tribute to him, definitely out of respect and love. We were all pretty close to him. So I think for the band and our crew, as well, it’s definitely an emotional song.
I think my favorite Seether release so far was One Cold Night, the acoustic album. I know you’ve done some shows where you split the set between acoustic and electric stuff. Would you ever do a full-on acoustic tour?
That’s something we have considered. After One Cold Night, we’ve done a lot of acoustic stuff. We want the acoustic stuff to be kind of special. We ended up doing so many of the acoustic things we eventually said, “You know what? We’re gonna stop doing these things” because it just becomes normal. So after this album cycle, it might be fun to come out and incorporate the new songs in with the One Cold Night repertoire and maybe do a tour. So it is possible.
I know Shaun has said in the past that he wants Seether to put out some sort of new music, new release every year, and I guess for the last three years now, you’ve done that. So is there anything planned for later this year?
Not yet. There’s a chance that something might come out. I’m pretty sure we’re gonna be touring for a long time still to come, which is a good thing. I guess it’s good that the album’s doing so well.
In your live sets, you’ve played cover songs before. Have you ever thought about doing a covers album?
Yeah, we actually have thought about that. It’s something that would be really cool. It would be hard to pick the songs because there are so many good songs to cover. We have thought about it, so it is possible. I think for the meantime, we’re just gonna concentrate on sort of establishing ourselves as a band. I don’t want to come out with a covers album and have that stigma being attached—“Oh, they’re just a cover band.” It might be cool. Metallica released a whole bunch of albums, then a cover album and it was great. Guns N’ Roses did it. So maybe in the future after a couple more albums, it might be a fun thing to do.
