Dave: It must feel good to have the record out!
Chuck: Hell yeah! It took a while, but we`re getting them around to some people now.
Dave: The thing`s a monster. How quickly did these songs come together?
Chuck: It took about eight months to write. Some songs came together in one night and some took as long as a month to get together. We change up songs quite a bit before they`re finished, and we usually drink a bunch of whiskey while we`re writing them so sometimes we`ll forget what the hell we wrote.
Dave: Folks who hear similarities between Deadbird and Rwake may not realize the connection between the two.
Chuck: All of the guys in Rwake are good friends of ours. I played in their band before we started Deadbird and it was an awesome and educating experience. We saw their first show ever in Batesville, AR, and we have all been big fans of them ever since. I`ve been playing in bands with Jeff since I was 15, and we have a lot of the same influences. We totally look up to and respect those guys and there is definitely some inevitable influence. We started writing the songs about a month after I had quit playing with them, so there is probably some residuals from that experience. I think our new songs sound a little more like our own thing, though. We just think of those guys as family.
Dave: Is End Of Existence solely for Deadbird`s stuff, or will there be more output?
Chuck: We definitely want to put out more than just our stuff, and we want to make it a real, functional label. We`re looking for distribution right now. Our friend Terry Trigg, who we play with in Ill Conduit, has some awesome country songs that he wrote that we want to put out, and we`ve talked about trying to get the Ill Conduit stuff out there. Also, we really want to do a Hellhawk/Deadbird split. The main problem is that all of us are usually pretty broke, and it takes a lot of money to put out a record, but we`re trying to get it going.
Dave: How`s the new bassist working out? You guys always covered the low end nicely beforehand.
Chuck: Todd`s helped out a shit load. I think that we`re a lot tighter sounding now and definitely pushing some more volume, which is always good. The louder the better. We`re all going deaf a lot faster now that he has joined. He`s filled in a lot of the sonic gaps that we had before. Also he doesn`t drink (much) so that helps all of our drunk asses to stay a little more focused.
Dave: How does future roadwork look? I know you guys just did a few dates on your way out to Weedeater`s place for July 4th.
Chuck: We want to play out as much as possible. We`re going to Cullman for the Rebel Heart Heat Stroke Fest, which should be crazy, and we are planning on doing as many out of town weekend shows as we can until Phillip gets out of school for the summer. Then, hopefully, we`ll have a summer tour planned.
Dave: The mellow sections on the album have a lot of breathing room, yet retain intensity and total heaviness. Is that stuff pre-conceived, or does it happen more naturally?
Chuck: I think most of those parts are written at the house on the acoustic, but some of them just come out of the flow from the riff before, when we`re putting the song together at the jam room. It`s definitely something that we are trying to work on and get better at.
Dave: If I looked in your CD changer right now, what would I find?
Chuck: The new Neurosis and Mastodon, which both kill. The new Rwake, which also kills. I`ve also been listening to the new PJ Harvey, Spirit Caravan’s The Last Embrace, Zeppelin, Ozzy, Sabbath.
Dave: It`s the ol` "Desert Island Albums" question: If you could only bring three albums, which would they be?
Chuck: This is the question that I`ve been dreading the most. This shit is hard. Neurosis’ Souls at Zero, Ozzy’s Diary of a Madman, a disc full of all the Sickshine I could get on it, especially Stickerbrush. Damn, that`s a tough one!
Thanks for the interview. Sorry it took so long. I look forward to killing a bottle of whiskey with you and doing some serious headbanging soon.
