Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Times Of Grace

It’s hard to remember a new band that set the metal world aflutter the way Times of Grace has in early 2011. The reason: The act teams Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz with his band’s original singer, Jesse Leach (who spent the better part of the past decade in Seemless and now fronts The Empire Shall Fall), for the first time since Alive or Just Breathing, the landmark Killswitch album released in 2002. The Times of Grace debut, The Hymn of a Broken Man, released Jan. 18, 2011, shows Leach and Dutkiewicz’s creative partnership is stronger than ever. The band recently kicked off its first tour in Baltimore, and before the show, Leach talked to LiveMetalNet’s Greg Maki about all things Times of Grace.

LiveMetalNet: First tour, first show—how are you feeling right now?

Jesse Leach: I feel great, man. Very excited. I can’t wait to do this. It’s gonna be so much fun.

You’re going out and headlining right away. Was there any doubt that you would do that from the start?

No. We kind of wanted to present it a certain way. We were offered some tours. But for us, with the visual aspects of the show and everything about it, we really just wanted to be able to do it on our own terms without any sort of things holding us back. We kept it small-scale and decided to do it this way. Your first impression as a band is important, so instead of us having to bend at all, we just wanted to come out totally legit, do it our own way. It’s exciting.

When you first started working with Adam on these songs a few years ago, did you envision it getting to this point, where it’s become a full band and you’re on tour?

It wasn’t even a though in our minds when we started writing this record. This record was written without the thought of how we’re gonna make money off it, if it’s gonna sell, what’s the record label gonna think—any of that stuff. No one really knew about it, and it was just a way for us to help us cope with what we were going through. The fact that the record’s out and the fact that I’m sitting here on a tour bus talking to you is just absolutely mind-blowing for me. It still hasn’t really set in yet.

The story’s been out there that Adam started working on these songs, or at least thinking about them, when he was in the hospital back in 2007. When did he call you, what did he say and how long did it take you to say yes?

He called me when the record was pretty much done—he had it demoed. It was right after he got out of the hospital. We made small talk because we’ve been friends, we’ve kept in contact throughout all the years. He popped the question midway through the conversation, and I was just absolutely elated. I think his exact words were something along the lines of “I can’t think of anyone else I’d want to sing on this record.” That was very flattering to me, and I jumped at the opportunity. I was like, “Dude, send it to me.” Literally, within a week, I started writing, and I wrote “Strength in Numbers” the first day I got the record from him.

Over the years, before that conversation, had you ever discussed working together again? Was that something that you thought, down the line, might happen?

Yeah, actually, we did talk about potentially doing maybe a rock record, just strictly rock, trying to do something different. We’re both big fans of bands like Radiohead, Travis—that whole British movement in the ‘90s. We thought it would be fun to do a rock record. It was just something that we would sort of half joke about. I kind of knew something would happen sooner or later. The music he gave me—I didn’t expect that. It absolutely floored me. It was exciting to write to it.

You said the songs were pretty much done and demoed when they came to you, but what was the process? I’m sure you worked together on the lyrics, but what was that process like?

When he gave me the music, I started writing with the songs that hit me right away. When I was ready to lay down the vocals, we’d set up a week and I’d go down with a couple of pages of lyrics with ideas for each song, and I’d run through them roughly with him, and then he’d sit with me and say, “I think that’s good, but maybe try this.” So it was a little bit of back and forth. And then some songs, he’d come with a full chorus written and a whole concept for it, and I would sort of fill in the blanks and write according to the concept of the song. Either way, it was a collaborative effort. It’s definitely a true collaboration on the vocals and the lyrics.

What was that like when it came to the vocals? He’s done backing vocals in Killswitch, but the two of you are singing together a lot on this album. What was that like?

It was great. It was just something that happened naturally. It would be a part where I was really dumbfounded or a part that he felt really good about. It was very much in-the-moment stuff. There wasn’t a lot of thought out “oh, we should do this here.” It was like, when a part came up, “Oh, I’ve got an idea.” I’d lay it down, and he’d be like, “That’s great. Let me back that up.” Or he would jump on the mic and go, “I have a great idea for this part.” Then sometimes he’d say, “Hey, I think you should sing this part,” and I’m like, “Nah, you know what? Dude, I think you should sing it.” Very quick, mini discussions and a lot of it was just off the cuff. As it was coming out, we just wrote.

You’ve mentioned some dark times in your life. Could you go a little more into the inspiration for some of your lyrics?

Yeah, as far as what I was going through or what happened, that’s something I wish to keep private. Here’s the thing, too, about these songs. To me, the way you write music and lyrics, I love the idea of putting something out there and having people listen to it, and they sort of gain their own interpretation of what this song is. The song means something to them. I often find that when artists explain too much, you can lose some of that magic, if you will. I tend to sort of keep it fairly general. I paint a broad brushstroke and say that these songs are about struggle, they’re about pain, they’re about being at the end of your road, hitting rock bottom, but it’s all about maintaining your hope and your faith and knowing that at the end of the day, things will work out, there’s always hope. I think that was important for us. As much as we were in a dark place, we maintained our hope and tried our best to spin that through each song so you’re always getting a positive, uplifting message regardless of the darkness of some of these songs.

That’s kind of been your signature over the years, that sense of hope that comes out through the lyrics.

Yeah, that’s just being myself, I guess, the way I was raised, the way I tend to think. I harkened back to the days of being a hardcore kid, the whole positive mental attitude, the PMA that Bad Brains used to sing about. I really held on strongly to that. Also, just ‘cause I was raised by very positive parents, that no matter what you go through, you always find a way and God is always with you. So that’s something that’s paved my life over the years.

At any point when you were working on this, did you feel any kind of pressure? Because the last time you and Adam worked together obviously was Alive or Just Breathing, which has become a very influential and important album over the years. Or was that just so long ago that you didn’t even think about that?

Thankfully, no, that didn’t come up in conversation. That wasn’t our thought. We had to make this record for us first and foremost. It was a necessity, something we felt like we were almost channeling in a sense, just being instruments to this greater thing that was moving through us, this spirit, if you will. There was not any discussion of should we try to sound like this or not sound like this. This record is very much a spur of the moment, emotive thing, which was great ‘cause that’s the kind of way I like to write. But Adam, if you’ve heard his recordings, he’s a perfectionist. He can be tough to work with for some people, but I really admire that about him. He polishes up my rough edges. I think that’s why we work really well together.

What kinds of things have you done over the years to not just maintain by improve your voice?

It’s funny. I think touring. I finally did some proper touring with my band Seemless a few years back. When you’re out on the road, you sort of figure out what to do and what not to do, and I was able to complete almost a year and a half of touring without having to cancel a show. So that was a huge deal for me. Between application, just doing it, and then doing some training, doing some research on my own. I took a class or two with a few teachers, but for the most part, just researching online and learning my voice on my own. Working with Adam is like having a vocal lesson, too, because I feel like he knows my voice really well. He was able to guide me and actually get notes out of me that I didn’t even know I could hit. I’ve spent the past year or so rehearsing that and hearing that on the record and then duplicating it. It’s been an interesting process, writing a record and not even thinking about how we were gonna perform it and then hearing the record and then learning how to perform it live—‘cause live is different than the studio. It’s a matter of muscle memory. Just training in general. I think just being self-aware is really important as a vocalist. And also, being confident with who you are. There’s that whole other mental aspect of being a singer that if you’re not confident in who you are as a singer and what you have to say, it can actually affect your voice. It’s all in your head.

Getting back to touring just a bit, can you tell me about the band you’ve put together. I know you’ve got Joel (Stroetzel) from Killswitch. How did you choose these guys?

Joel was one of my picks from the early days when we started deciding that we were gonna actually form a band. That just sort of happened as a fluke. He was helping us out on a press tour, playing acoustic guitar for us at a gig we did in New York. It came up in conversation, and he was like, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” That solidified everything. I got really excited. The other guys—Daniel (Struble), the bass player, is an old friend of Adam’s. He used to sing in a band called Five Pointe O. Someone I remember from my Killswitch days. He’s always been a really great dude. He’s got a great voice, too. He does backups live, so not only does he play bass, but he adds a third voice to help with all the layers of vocals we have on our record. And then Dan (Gluszak) we found through our management, who just turned out to be an amazing drummer and a really sweet guy. So we’ve got a little family out here, and we all enjoyed our first night together on the bus. Vibes are great so far. We’re all really excited. They’re just capable musicians. It’s not something where you have to sit there and show them the part over and over again. We gave them the CD, they learned the stuff, we had maybe five, six rehearsals, and then we’re on tour. Very, very quickly it just happened.

What’s the set list like for this tour? Are you sticking just to the album?

Yeah, it’s the record minus two songs. Midway through, there’s a bit of an improvisational jam thing, which we thought would be interesting to add in ‘cause none of our bands really have done that for the most part. With the whole visual show, it adds a whole other element to it. We’ve put some ambient-sounding music between songs, so there’s really no real break in the sound, and there’s not going to be any stage banter for the most part, just saying “thank you.” It’s not gonna be your typical metal show with the lead singer barking over the microphone and asking people how they’re feeling. We wanted to consciously come out with something that was different, that was more of an experience—even down to the music that you here in between the bands. Playing in the club right now, it’s stuff from my personal iTunes, my person collection, getting a different mixture of songs and sounds so you’re not just getting bludgeoned with metal at a metal show. For us, it was the whole package, down to the way it’s gonna be lit on stage—everything. All the little details, we sat and talked about, and it’s happening. So it’s very exciting.

We’re gonna take a little month break. Adam has to produce a record with a band, and we’re looking at jumping the pond and getting over to the U.K. and doing some festivals, and Europe, as well. After that, we’re doing some Canadian dates, and we’ll see. We’ll see what happens from there. If the momentum keeps up, hopefully we’ll get to go out a little further into the world. But we’ll see.

I would absolutely love that, but nothing is guaranteed, nothing is promised. Everybody has their own things going on in this band. We all have different bands and projects, so it should be interesting. I can’t guess, but if I were to say, I’d say it’s probably gonna require a lot more time than we thought it was going to initially, just from the reaction to the record and the way we’ve all been feeling from playing this music. It’s just something special.

Just gratitude to anybody who’s ever supported myself, Adam, especially this Times of Grace project. We’re just so thankful to still be doing this after all these years.