Before their show last night at The Knitting Factory here in Hollywood, I had a chance to sit down with Paul Waggoner (lead guitar), Dan Briggs (bass), and Dusty Waring (guitar) of prog-tech-metal masters Between The Buried and Me. Colors is still one of my favorite albums this year, so believe me, it was a treat to talk to the guys about touring, their record, and music in general.

Read the transcript I've typed out. Enjoy!




M: So I wanted to know, first off, generally, how’s your tour going so far, supporting Colors?

Dan: Awesome!

Paul: It’s great so far.

Dan: This is the second leg of it and its been…awesome!

M: How are the audiences responding to you guys playing the album from beginning to end?

Paul: Uh, well…on this tour actually, not every night are we doing that. But the night’s that we do it, it’s good. There’s always a handful of kids that want to hear the old stuff.

Dan: Like…it gets better and better. When we first started doing it, the record had only been out for two weeks. But it’s gets better and better the more kids know the material.

M: Do you guys like playing the album in that order?

ALL: Yes! Definitely.

Paul: Well, I think, more than that, we’re just getting tired of playing old songs.

Dan: Yeah!

M: How were you guys invited to be on the Progressive Nation Tour? [2008 tour with Dream Theatre, Opeth, and 3.]

Dan: Well, basically….it’s a long story, about how we got in touch with Mike Portnoy, but once we actually did, um…he was pretty much wanting us to get on tour with them this past summer and that was a situation like, “If a band drops off, I’d love for you guys to come on, because I’m a big fan of your guys’ band.”  Then we heard about the Opeth tour and he contacted us and said, “Oh, you guys would be perfect for this, but our management just wants to keep it at just us and Opeth, because Opeth’s gonna be playin’ an hour.” And a month later, he gave us an actual invitation. He said, “We’ve been able to expand this to a four band package. And we’d love for you to be a part of it.

Paul: We said, “We’ll think about it.” [Laughs.]

Dan: “We’ll think about it; we’ve got some better offers.”

M: That’s insane. I couldn’t even imagine playing with those guys.

Paul: Well, I can’t either. It’s going to be…horrible.

Dan: [Laughing.] It’s going to be incredible. I can’t wait.

M: Where did the idea come from for you guys to run that art…the Colors art contest that was run through Victory?

Paul: Victory.

Dan: Some lowly Victory art department person.

Paul: Yeah, we didn’t have anything to do with it, to be honest with you.

M: Did you even see any of the entries for it?

Paul: Yeah, yeah we did. We did get to look at it. There were actually some pretty cool [entries]. But to be honest, I was kinda…when the did that, I think we all were kinda like…well, this is kind of stupid or whatever. But it ended up being kind of cool. There was a lot of response to it.

M: Well, that was the thing I was most surprised about, looking through all the entries and especially the literature stuff, where people would actually write stories and poems based off of your songs.

Paul: It’s weird, man. It’s definitely pretty humbling.

M: Now, as far as art, looking at the record and the way it turned out, you know…it’s specifically based on a full color spectrum, how does art tie into your music, besides the actual music itself?

Dan: I think this was the first time around where we were pretty….not specific about the art, but we were very hands-on with our friend Brandon who was doing it. And he kind of tied it in with the….with “Informal Gluttony,” I think. It was a lot of going back and forth, and it’s the first time, really, that we cared about the whole package.

Paul: We kinda wanted the visual to sort of reflect the lyrical content to some degree.

Dan: Because of how hard we worked on the music. We wanted everything to be awesome.

M: As far as writing this record, did you actually write the songs in the order that they are? Or did you…at what point did you realize it was going to flow as one complete batch of songs?

Dan: Well, the first song that we wrote, “Ants of the Sky,” which is…fifth track?

M: Yeah, it’s in the middle.

Dan: Yeah, it’s right in the middle. And that, when we had the ending note to that, well, obviously it’s going to go right into this. So we kind of had the vague idea that, “OK, well, we’re going to start the next song in E major or whatever. Or…C sharp major, harmonically. [Laughs] And then we kind of just figured from then…that we’re going to have this massive piece of music. Right then and there.

Paul: So I guess we wrote from their to the end of the record, and then—

Dan: It was kind of splotchy.

Paul: --and Tommy had written the little piano thing in the beginning, and Dusty had written that heavy riff that starts out, “Decade of Statues,” so we had a beginning, so we sort of wrote from there.

Dan: We filled in!

Paul: [We] filled in the gaps.




M: Did you all individually write and then bring it together or does it happen during practice or…?

Dan: It’s a lot at home.

Paul: Dan and I definitely write at home, I guess, more than anything. Dusty will just…well, ‘cause Dan and I kind of communicate with Power Tab software. And Dusty just sort of writes on the fly and he’ll just show up to practice with a bad-ass riff, and we’ll be, “Oh, well that’s cool.” So, everybody writes and we all have our different ways of writing. But it somehow all kind of works out.

M: One of my favorite songs, at least lyrically, is “Informal Gluttony.” I wanted to know your guys’ personal take on….how do you guys personally find escape from the monotony and routine of life everyday and do you do that through your band and through touring and whatnot?

Paul: For me, I mean, the band is a sort of perfect way of sort of getting out of that daily grind, as they say. You know, at times, it can seem like a job, I guess. But at the end of the day, if you put it into perspective, it’s something that we’re all pretty grateful that we’re all able to do this. And, you know, you see your parents and the life that they, you know, having to work and…well, my dad worked the same job for like 35 years and I’m like, “God….that’s depressing.”

Dan: And even if we have to do this for the rest of our lives, awesome!

M: That’s a pretty good thing to have for the rest of your life.

Paul: I guess it can seem routine at times, but you know when you write music and stuff, it’s always something new. I’m sure the next album will do some different stuff. So you’re constantly progressing as a person, and you’re not…and as a musician, you’re not just stuck in a cubicle pushing papers all day.

Dan: But then we go home and we’re just super boring. Sit around and do nothing.

Paul: Yeah, I mean, this is our life.

M: Who sings the guest vocal near the end of “Prequel to the Sequel”?

Dan; Adam Fisher.

Dusty: Fear Before The March of Flames.

M: When you guys had written…did you write that part for him or did you just consider putting him on the album?

Dan: We knew he wanted…I mean, we knew we wanted him on our record. We’d just gotten off tour with him.

Dusty: Tommy said after the Norma Jean tour that we did with him, that he wanted to add him too…or I guess have him do a guest spot on the record. And I guess he just put a lot of thought into it. You know, picking out the place for him.

Paul: Yeah, I think Tommy picked out the place that he wanted him to do it, but I think he gave Adam some creative freedom.

Dan: Yeah, Adam had like…he’s one of those people where…well, when we’re working with each other, we trust each other with each other’s parts and with everything you know. We’re at that level where we trust the other person  and what they’re going to do.  And when we can be around other musicians like Adam, where Adam’s a musician and he’s the head of Fear [Before The March of Flames] and we love them so much. So we just wanted his thought process to come in and to go nuts.

M: Did you guys actually have any idea of—I mean, I don’t know if you’ve heard any feedback about that song and that part, but universally, almost everyone I’ve talked to about this record, that is one of their favorite parts of the record. When you first heard it, did you—

Dan: Oh man, it floored us.

Paul: It really stood out and—

Dusty: I mean, it made that song so cool to me. I thought it was great.

M: That crescendo, and it builds up, and he hits that first note—

Dan: It’s just so unexpected.

Paul: It jumps out and it’s him, you know? It’s not like a lot of guest vocals on albums, you know, where it almost sounds like the same dude. “That’s so-and-so? Well, it sounds just like the singer of the band.” You know, it was definitely like, “This is him and his creative input,” which is very different than ours. So it was just a cool collaboration.

Dan: And he kind of got to do every vocal styling that he does. Kind of like the screamy rock stuff, and then the real intense scream, and then like the real light screaming.

Dusty: I’d love to do it live with him. I’d like to tour with him.

Dan: Next week, man! Next week we get to do it.

Dusty: Oh, is he coming? Well, that rules. We have to make sure someone films that.




M: It’s obvious listening to you guys, as you keep making records, that you guys have such a wide range of influences that are nowhere near attributed to metal. Why did you guys choose to play such an extreme and technical form of metal to express yourselves with if there’s so much else too that you guys enjoy?

Dan: It’s the most natural thing for us to write.

Paul: Well, I think we’re all—even though we’re into so many different kinds of music—we’re all….I know Dan was very young and got into hardcore and stuff. I’m the same way, you know? When I first picked up a guitar, one of the first types of music that I got into was hardcore. I was sort of attracted to the straight edge/vegan thing and so that is kind of our foundation, and that will always have us kind of expanding and growing as musicians and actually being competent enough to bring in all these other influences that we’re into. I think that, at the very core, we’re a metal band.

Dusty: I couldn’t see myself playing anything that wasn’t heavy music, you know?

Paul: It’s always gonna be that way. That’s not to say that—I’m sure the next record will go out in even more [ways] and have some other cool stuff, but you’re guaranteed there’s gonna be some blast beats and stuff.

M: Well, I mean, it’s nice to see that, because so many metal bands just want to stick to one specific genre, and you guys don’t have that fear. And I mean, even in “Prequel To The Sequel,” that one part sounds like Tom Waits to me, and when are you ever gonna hear that on a metal record?

Dan: That was kind of the idea of Colors. We just kind of wanted to break away completely.

M: Is there any difficulty in playing your material live, both in the technical sense and the fact that you have an audience there watching you?

Paul: Yes and yes.

Dan: It’s a lot of work preparing for it every night, especially preparing to play Colors for the first time. We had a solid week of rehearsing to get it down.

Paul: I think we were all pretty nervous because when you think about it, you’re all, “Shit, I gotta (literally) play for over an hour straight.” And we’re playing it to a click track, so there’s literally no margin of error. You just gotta play, especially if you’re Blake. You can’t screw up.

M: I missed you guys the last time you came the last time. So when you played the full record, did you have any time when you stopped or did you just play it straight through?

Dan: After…right before, “Informal Gluttony.”

Paul: And it was only to say, “Hey, we’re Between The Buried and Me.”

M: Wow.

Dan: And to take a sip of water. Stretch your hands.

M: That’s rough.

Paul: And if there was something wrong with the monitors that needed to be tweaked, that was our 30 seconds to get all that done. And then after that, it’s just a straight shot until the end of the record.

M: That’s impressive. What are your guys’ plans this holiday? I mean, you’re not on tour?

Dan: Just chillin’. So no.

M: Have you ever actually had to be on tour for Christmas?

Paul: Not during Christmas, no. During Thanksgiving, all the time. In fact, this was the first Thanksgiving—this past Thanksgiving—it was the first Thanksgiving I’ve been home for in four to five years. But yeah, we always try to be home for Christmas and…well, we always try to take most of January off too. We don’t really like touring in the winter, to be honest with you. We sort of have to, but yeah, we’ll be off for a little while.

Dan: Yeah, we’ll be at it again during February in the UK.

M: As far as a closing up question, what records have you guys enjoyed that have come out this year in 2007?

Dusty: I don’t know the name of the record, but one of the guys from Behold…The Arctopus, he’s in another band called Blotted Science.

Paul: Oh, that’s “Machinations of Dementia,” or something like that. [He’s correct.]

Dusty: It’s…[gives me the A-OK sign.}

Paul: It’s ridiculous. Really tech metally, awesome stuff.

Dusty: But it’s got these Danny Elfman parts that are just really atmospheric.

M: Holy shit, really?

Dusty: It’s really good stuff.

Paul: Yeah, I don’t know what else.

M: Anything in general? I mean, you’re on tour and it happened to me when I went on tour last year all summer. There’s a whole period where you don’t know any other music besides the bands you’re on tour with.

Paul: Yeah, you kind of forget. You live in a cave or something!

M: So do you guys listen to music throughout the day or do you guys take breaks from it?

Dusty: I’ll listen to shit that I really don’t want to tell you about. Like just….stupid shit.

Paul: It just depends on the day, man. Some days, I’ll just feel like listening to Gillian Welch and then like…folk and bluegrass stuff. And then the next day, I’ll feel like listening to Radiohead. Then the next day I’m listening to Suffocation. I don’t know, I listen to it all. That probably doesn’t come as a shock.

Dusty: A lot of Deftones lately for me.

M: Which record?

Dusty: White Pony. “Digital Bath” is such a great song.


Check out Colors if you're a fan of metal. You won't be disappointed.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tommy Rogers is the singer, keyboardist, and founding member of the North Carolina Progressive Metal band Between the Buried and Me. His vocal style combines brutal screams with peaceful, sometimes falsetto melodies. In 2004 he released a self-titled debut album for his techno side project, Giles. Tommy was one of the vocalists for the metal band From Here On. Tommy has appeared in numerous other musical projects including the influential metal bands Prayer for Cleansing, From Here On and Undying. He is a vegan and lives a straight-edge lifestyle.