THE DESERTFEST LINEUP IS LOOKING STRONG. ARE YOU HAPPY TO BE A PART OF IT?
Woody Weatherman [guitar]: “Oh man, we all joke about doing this festival in the vast desert of North London! Ha ha! But it’s a great festival, put together by people that have a real love for this type of heavy, doomy, sludge rock. And we’ve done our fair share of that, so we fit right in there.”
IS THERE ANYONE ELSE YOU’RE KEEN TO WATCH OVER THE WEEKEND?
“Well we just did a festival, that was put on by the Obituary guys, with Trouble. They’ve been friends of ours for decades now, and they were on real good form. I‘d highly recommend people make sure they check those guys out. And we have to go on straight after Crowbar! Kirk and the boys have all the riffs! We’ve taken them out a whole bunch of times in the past and it goes well together, because we aren’t quite the same. There’s a little bit of diversity between us.”
IIT’S ALL A FAR CRY FROM TOURING WITH METALLICA IN THE 90s, ISN’T IT?
“The Metallica world is a whole different world to inhabit. Those were heady days. We did nearly two years on the road with Metallica, and we did a South American tour with Iron Maiden, too. So I’m pretty happy to have that on the CV. As much as I love going out on our own, I got no problem touring as support. You get done early, so you can hang out and drink beer and actually meet people!”
HAS THE TOURING EXPERIENCE CHANGED RADICALLY SINCE YOUR EARLY DAYS?
“Going back to ’83, ’84, it was more of a DIY network, a kind of unspoken thing between the fans and the bands. Lots of slums and tiny clubs, put on by some dude! Trading off shows, ‘We’ll put you on when you come to town if you put us on in… Phoenix!’ or whatever. But the idea of turning up in some town and just putting on a kick-ass show and keeping that camaraderie? That’s stayed completely the same for me.”
