SILVERTIDE
www.silvertidemusic.com

Live Silvertide pics

(Winter 2004) by George Dionne

I’m always amazed when people tell me that they’ve never heard of Silvertide. It’s hard to miss them when their hit single “Ain’t Comin’ Home” is tearing up the rock radio charts (read CD review). Perhaps people are confusing them with the Black Crows, but we’ll touch upon that later. It’s hard to believe that people could miss a band that’s been opening for some of the biggest names in rock music; Aerosmith, Van Halen, and Velvet Revolver to name a few. I was able to catch up with Silvertide on a rainy Friday night in Massachusetts. What better time to catch a show? I was originally set to speak with lead singer Walt Lafty, but bassist Brian Weaver and drummer Kevin Frank asked to tag along. The result was one of the most enjoyable, funniest, laid-back interviews I’ve ever been a part of. Silvertide are all rock and roll business on stage, but before the show they’re down-to-earth and full of laughs.

Walt Lafty – Vocals
Brian Weaver – Bass
Kevin Frank - Drums

RIL: How long has Silvertide been together?
WL: About four years roughly.

BW: Four years in January. January 17th to be exact.

RIL: Oh you've got that down to the exact date??
KF: Were going to have a candlelight dinner, champagne, and the works (laughs).

RIL: Who’s going to pay for that one?
WL: Actually, were going to go in, gonna order, then we’re gonna leave (laughs).

RIL: That's the way to do it. Am I correct that the band met at an open-mike night?
WL: Multiple different forms, but that's the sum of it. We were in two different pieces at the time. Mark the guitar player and myself and Kevin and Nick. Brian had grown up with the Mark so he called him, and the five piece puzzle was completed.

KF: That’s a big puzzle, right?

WL: Well it’s the little kid one with the huge pieces (laughs).

KF: Put the Silvertide logo together in five pieces.

RIL: Silvertide released an EP in 2002, but you're full-lengthed album Show and Tell just came out this fall. What took so long?
WL: It was actually done. It was being mastered and mixed at the time of the EP. We weren’t really happy with the first mix, so a really cool guy Kevin Shirley came in and helped us find what we were looking for. He took some time on it, but at the same time we were trying to build up a fan base, and touring, touring, touring, touring.

BW: One of the things with us being on the road for so long…

WL: That’s Brian speaking by the way

BW: We were able to establish a fan base, plus make a lot of friends at radio that wouldn’t have necessarily have played us unless they had seen us live. Our sound isn’t exactly what’s going on the radio today. If we were to just release our single to radio without doing any touring.

WL: It probably would have been in the trash can.

KF: We established that buzz that we’re a live band.

WL: Most of the radio stations that have played us have been friends that we made early on, just from touring a lot of places. The people at the stations just happen to be there watching the main band. They would hear us and they would kind of fall in love with us.

KF: So to speak.

WL: They saw Kevin and they just said they wanted to make out with him.

KF: [They said] I want to buy your candlelight dinner check (laughs).

RIL: There aren't a lot of rock bands on the J Records label, how did you end up signing with them?
KF: Drugs (laughs).

WL: We had a bidding war. In the contract they put hookers and blow in it. They were the only ones willing to do that (laughs).

KF: That was serious. Joking around, Clive Davis is the man. We thought he was the best, so we went with him.

RIL: You didn’t even have to go on American Idol (laughs).
KF: There was a lot of underage drinking involved.

RIL: How old are you guys.
KF: Twenty to twenty three.

RIL: You look young.
WL: When this was all happening we were twelve or thirteen (laughs).

RIL: Could you tell me a little bit about your latest single “Ain't Coming Home”?
WL: Why’s everyone lookin' at me?

KF: Didn’t you write those lyrics dude?

WL: Actually, Britney Spears wrote them. We worked on it as a co-writing, co-publishing deal. Me and Britney Spears sat down and wrote the song together, while Silvertide wrote the music (laughs).

KF: We had to translate the sounds of orgasms into music (laughs).

WL: The song was basically written a long time ago. We wrote it about just having a good time. We didn’t really put a lot of thought into it. People today don’t really go out to have a good time for themselves. Are you married at all?

RIL: Yes.
WL: So having a wife you know that most likely she has to plan everything. With women it’s like, ‘we can’t just go out at seven o’clock. Men are like, ‘what are you talking about, just grab some sweatpants and let’s go”. I was watching Dave Chappelle last night and he was saying men don’t want to buy a house. We buy a house because we know that women buy houses. We’ll fuck in a cardboard box; we really don’t give a shit. We don’t need a house. It’s basically that kind of philosophy [with the song], having a good time and not contemplating any responsibility. Keep that out of you’re head and just go out and have a good time at a rock show.

RIL: One of the songs on the new CD, “To See Where I Hide”, was described by you as being about addiction. Not particularly drug addiction, just addictions of any kind. Is there or were there any addictions that you suffered from that inspired the song?
WL: Well, that’s kind of a weird, personal question.

RIL: I wasn’t sure if it was about a serious addiction or something like you had to touch the carpet three times before entering a room or something.
WL: We all experiment, we all try different things, and we all make mistakes or whatever. I’m not gonna be the one to say that one thing is bad and one thing is not. I have a very addictive personality so if you put it in front of me, I can get addicted to it.

KF: He’s addicted to the soda right now.

WL: Yeah, I drink soda non-stop. In that song I was saying that a lot of the things that I had done since I was sixteen, my addictions became the building blocks of my body, so to speak. When you’re that far into it, and you try to get away from it, it’s very difficult. In the song: I’m running in circles / With hopes held up so high / My skeleton’s got faster legs then me / So he always looks behind / To see where I hide. The skeleton is the addictive personality, the ‘Type A’ personality if you will, that gets ahead of you when you try to get away from it. It just kind of waits for you to get ahead, then it jumps you and hits you with a beer bottle. It’s just a very frustrating experience for someone with that kind of personality.

KF: Our drum tech is addicted to porn movies and marijuana (laughs).

RIL: Together or separate?
WL: I know that when I smoke I get real paranoid. If I’ve just seen people eating flesh, I’ll be sleeping and be like ahhhhh. Have you ever seen Cannibal Holocaust?

RIL: No, Cannibal the Musical though.
WL: No, Cannibal Holocaust, don’t watch it!

KF: It’s one of those realistic documentaries banned in 61 countries.

RIL: Is it one of those cheap 70s horror movies?
KF: It’s like they’re really cutting people up and actually killing animals on tape. I had nightmares after that one.

BW: It’s like a documentary were they follow this tribe and their customs, but they lose their tour guide and they end up getting killed.

RIL: You guys need a better selection of movies on the bus. There are a lot of religious references in your music, not so much as Creed, but enough to notice. Did you grow up in a religious family?
BW: The area we grew up in was a very Catholic area; we all went to Catholic schools. You went to school every morning and you had to say prayer.

WL: Where I grew up my father was always experimenting with religion, as did I. He was more of an Episcopalian and my mother was always Catholic. So it was sort of a split decision when Sunday rolled around. My Mom would say you’re going to church and my dad would say that I didn’t have to. They would always just go back and forth, so religion has always been an interesting topic for me to write about. I actually wrote a song the other night called “Trophy Martyr”. The first line goes, You’d think your name was Jesus by the way you die / It’s never quick like a heart attack / You have to visit hell a few times. I always love to toy with religion. There are just so many good metaphors and so many good visuals. A lot of people know who Jesus is, so it’s easy to use him as an analogy. You’re friend and mine, J.C.!

RIL: How many times have you read or heard Silvertide compared to the Black Crows?
WL: Oh Christ!

BW: I’ve never heard that before in my life!

KF: How many words have we spoken in this conversation? Multiply that by ten!

RIL: Why do you think that comparison is made? Do you think it’s the sound, or a little bit of your voice?
WL: It’s more or less my voice. I don’t think that the two bands are similar at all.

BW: We’re rock fans; you can narrow it down to that.

KF: We both have good guitar tones.

WL: That would be it. The main factor is that my voice has a very bluesy tone to it.

RIL: Who influenced you musically growing up?
BW: For me it was The Beatles, Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Steely Dan.

WL: In all seriousness, and you’re going to think I’m joking right now, but the Jesus Christ Superstar Soundtrack. It’s my favorite musical of all time.

RIL: Now is that with Donny Osmond?
WL: What? No!

BW: You’re thinking Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

WL: That was blasphemous!

RIL: How about Sebastian Bach, he was in JCSS.
WL: No, the original on vinyl. Judas was just great.

RIL: You can tell I’m married, I know about Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I’m a rock journalist for crying out loud!
WL: Have you ever seen the movie? Rent the movie, because the music in that is much better that what you’ll hear nowadays.

BW: The old movie with Ted Neeley.

WL: I grew up in a very musical family, so [JCSS], Earth, Wind & Fire, The Beatles, The Stones, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, R.E.M., The Counting Crows, and I’d just keep adding on. I think that our band has the most amounts of influences. I think each one of us could name a thousand bands that we listen to.

RIL: What's the one style of music that you can't stand?
KF: Pop-county.

RIL: So a band like Big & Rich; would you call that pop-country?
KF: I don’t know them.

WL: There’s good country, like Hank Williams.

KF: You know pop-country like when they mix computer stuff with it.

WL: You have to get past the voice thing; then it’s not bad.

KF: I mean like the one-hit wonders of pop country that you never hear from again.

RIL: Like Billy Ray Cyrus?
KF: I mean the stuff of today. People just try to write hooks for money.

RIL: I hate death metal. I can’t stand it.
WL: You know what I hate more than anything in the world? Pop-punk! The lyrics are so fucking stupid. What ever happened to good lyrics? It’s like we took a few steps back from the seventies and the sixties. We’ve gone from songs like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; teach the children well… to like; Girls don’t like boys / Girls like cars and money (laughs). I’m like oh my God, is it really that bad? It’s either a really much younger listening audience than it used to be, or it’s just plain stupidity. I’m gonna go with the later of the two.

RIL: I’m gonna have to agree with you on that one. Except when I type the interview, I’ll leave my opinion out. I need that pop-punk audience.
WL: You’re fucked! You know what’s funny? The kids that listen to that listen to our music. I sit there and go; I don’t know how people can listen to that stuff. When I think of punk rock, I like to think of the Sex Pistols or The Ramones; good, real punk music. Those guys lived it, breathed it, and slept it. The only band that I think of today that kind of fits in with the punk-era; that has good lyrics, good songwriting, and I’m probably going to fuck up their name (thinks about it)….Sum 41. I love the new song, have you seen the video, what’s the name of it?

RIL: I haven’t seen the new video, I know their new album is Chuck.
BW: The video has the Solid Gold Dancers in it (“We’re All to Blame”).

WL: If you listen to the lyrics it touches on a real topic. I hate to throw them into the punk band label, but they kind of fit in there. I just think that they’re the only ones that can pull it off today. You see other bands like that and you just go click…click…click.

RIL: In your press kit you say that ‘the trick is to give people something to see. You can be five virtuosos up there but if you don't put on a show, you are not going to create the kind of fans the comeback week after week’. What is it that you do onstage that gives people something to see?
BW: We read that quote before we start playing (laughs).

WL: We try to have fun. We try to create a fun environment that people will want to have fun with us. As opposed to normal first bands who think they’re fun. We bring that fun to the stage where people can see that. It’s like; let’s bring people together to have a good time. It’s not come see us play. The most important part is to come to our show and have fun. Drop acid before you come in the door, see what the fuck happens. You might start freaking out; thinking bugs are crawling all over you.

BW: We might also get people to move and dance that might not be inclined too.

KF: By the process of forcing them to.

WL: Like this shit; it’s okay to mosh and all, but it ain’t gonna get you laid.

KF: We’ve invited people on stage to come up and party a few times.

WL: You know that’s what we should do at our shows. We should create a fenced in are for people who like to mosh, and keep them in that area. That way, they can have fun their way, and everyone else can have a good time (laughs). That way none of the little kids or girls can get smacked in the face. I was at a Korn concert when I was 15 years old and I saw a guy with a nose ring, elbow and punch a girl that was 14, because he was in a mosh pit and he was being a tough guy.

RIL: Really?
WL: This guy’s like six foot something, ridiculously huge and built. He fucking does this and the girl’s on the ground. She’s a little kid and he’s like, I’m a tough guy. Hey, you just knocked down a 14 year old girl! Real tough buddy. You’re a strong guy; I’d love you to date my daughter. The best thing about that night was, for the first time and last time that night, I saw payback. The girl’s father was there. The father got two security guards to walk up and grab the guy. The father goes up and rips the nose ring out. I was like, fuck yeah! So after that, once you’re bleeding you can’t be at a concert, so out he went. He lost his $35-$45 dollars for a ticket, got his nose ring pulled out, just for being a tough guy. Doesn’t sound like a good time to me.

RIL: I guess not.
WL: A good time to me if I were going to a concert and I was single would be to smoke a joint and try and find a chick to fuck. Or drink as much as I can and see if I can get home (laughs).

RIL: What's the biggest rumor you’ve heard about yourself or Silvertide?
WL: The biggest rumor I heard was that my dick was bigger than Tom Jones (laughs).

RIL: I don’t really know if Tom Jones does either way.
KF: That’s the story going around about Tom Jones. That’s why he’s so famous.

RIL: I thought that was Tommy Lee?
WL: I’ve heard he has a very large one.

RIL: Why the hell are we talking about this!
WL: I can’t really think of any good rumors.

RIL: Maybe you’re still to new to have heard any rumors. I interviewed Shinedown, who are playing with you guys tonight…I’m sure you know that of course.
WL: No, Really!?

BW: No way!

KF: I’ve been waiting to play with those guys forever.

RIL: Barry the drummer, I asked him that question…
KF: Barry’s the drummer?

RIL: I interviewed him on the phone and asked him the biggest rumor he’s heard about Shinedown. He said that Shinedown got their big break from Lynyrd Skynyrd. I thought that was interesting because the guitarist is married to one of the Van Zant daughters. Kind of strange that he would pick a rumor that may have a little validity to it.
WL: I think they were signed way before the hook-up.

RIL: Oh they’re a great band, and probably didn’t need any help. But if someone can open a door for you, you’d be a fool not to take it. Where you go from there is on your own.
WL: It was Kevin that opened the door for us; he was in the Detroit Rock City movie. He was the drummer.

RIL: No kidding? I haven’t seen the movie.
KF: Check it out.

(Guitarist Nick Perri walks in)

WL: This is Nick.

RIL: Hi, George from Rock Is Life.
WL: He plays lead guitar.

NP: I’m also the lead flute player in the band.

RIL: A little Jethro Tull action huh? Hey, now you can win a Grammy. Do you have any horror stories from out on the road?
WL: We have the worst transportation luck that you will find of any band.

BW: Before we got this tour bus a few months ago, we were driving around in a van that constantly broke down. We were driving from California somewhere far, I can’t remember. When we got to the Mohave Dessert in Phoenix, we blew out a tire. We waited for AAA to get that fixed.

WL: Which was 30,000 miles away.

BW: Then were driving in the middle of the night and the engine light just keeps flashing. The battery goes, but we got it fixed at t rest stop, then we had to replace the alternator. We started driving for five minutes before the transmission went.

WL: It was like seventy miles an hour winds outside when that happened. When we opened the door to get out of the van, the door flipped completely the other way. Then they’re trying to figure out what wrongs under the hood. All of a sudden, the hood smacks into the windshield, busting it up. It didn’t break, but it was fucked up. It just kept getting worse and worse. Then were in Bakersfield California waiting for this transmission, and they end up getting the wrong one. Have you ever been to Bakersfield?

RIL: No
WL: Korn’s from there. I now know why they are so angry. There’s nothing to do there. There’s one casino and a Barnes & Noble. If you spend to much time there, they kick you out.

BW: Then on the Velvet Revolver tour we went 6000 miles on a stuck bearing. The minute we get home from the tour, the engine dies.

RIL: That’s a little good luck.
WL: We were driving through Michigan by the Ford plant, the van is a Ford and it starts shaking more than it did on the whole tour. We said that this is going to be some sad irony, born and died in Michigan. We should have taken a picture of that and send it to Ford. Built Ford tough in 2001…it’s dead already. You know how you get that e-mail with pictures that are sad and ironic? That would be one of them. I would send that to everyone.

RIL: That should be the cover of you’re next album.
BW: There is a picture of the van being put up on a tow truck with all of us inside waving (laughs).

RIL: Slash from Velvet Revolver described Silvertide as ‘a great down-to-earth rock-and-roll jam band with tons of energy, hulks, and charisma to burn’. …I can’t believe that he said what was typed; hulks…I think he meant hooks.
KF: Hulks, what the fuck is that?

RIL: Hey, it was in your press kit. Do think the label ‘jam band’ is accurate, because I think of the Dave Matthews Band and Phish when I think of jam bands, and you sound nothing like them.
KF: We’re a band that changes things live, I think that’s what Slash meant by that.

BW: We do a lot of improvising live. We break down songs and extend sections.

WL: A lot of bands practice that stuff. We just go for it.

KF: We toured with Velvet Revolver for a bit and Slash came out and saw us a few times. I think that when he saw the show it was different every time. I think that’s what he meant by the quote.

BW: Rock and roll jam band is more like it.

RIL: Speaking of Slash, Silvertide has opened for Velvet Revolver, Aerosmith, The Darkness, and Van Halen…but you knew that. Who was the coolest to tour with?
WL: Shinedown, they’re pretty high up there as well as Velvet Revolver. They’re people are really cool and they were all really nice to us.

KF: Van Halen was great, but it was just a different experience.

WL: Yeah, we became really close with Sammy Hagar, as you can tell by the Cabo Wabo trailer that’s attached to the tour bus. We went down to Mexico to play his birthday party and we’re going to do it again next year. Every single tour was a little bit different. Van Halen was good, but we liked Velvet Revolver a little more. I mean, we liked playing stadiums and all, but Velvet Revolver was a more intimate, younger based audience. Van Halen was a very mixed fan base. I bumped into a kid the other day that saw us open for Van Halen and I thought that was cool because I’ve only met 10 young people that saw us at Van Halen. They’ve mostly been older. It’s kind of hard to get older people to come into a stadium early.

KF: It’s hard to get an audience in there early that just wants to see a so called legendary band.

RIL: Wouldn’t you say that Velvet Revolver plays to an older crowd?
WL: They have a song on the radio, they have a video on TV, and a lot of kids know their songs.

BW: The members of the band are from previous groups, but they have new material.

KF: Van Halen was playing all of their classic songs. There were way more kids in the audience at Velvet Revolver.

WL: We were touring with Velvet Revolver even before their album came out. People that were coming out to the shows didn’t know many of their songs and they didn’t know any of ours, so people we coming out to see something. It’s not like they were saying, I want to see them play Jump or Eruption or something. Velvet Revolver would throw in a Guns and Roses song and a Stone Temple Pilots song here and there. The fans would go just as nuts for “Slither” as they would for “I Used to Love Her”. It’s a really hard thing to accomplish if you think about it. Some of them are probably hardcore Guns and Roses fans and some of them are probably hardcore STP fans, to be able to have them just as excited to hear a new song by this new band that a metamorphosis of the two of them. You would think that they would only want to hear the old tunes, but they were up for the new ones.

RIL: Everybody just wants to hear “Freebird” anyway. Doesn’t matter what band’s playing.
KF: Yeah, we’ve heard that.

RIL: Were there any bands that were just a pain in the ass to tour with? I know that you guys are just starting out, and that might be a loaded question.
KF: The Darkness are a bunch of assholes.

WL: The guitar player from The Darkness was really cool. Justin Hawkins is a fucking dick!

RIL: Isn’t the guitar player his brother.

WL: Yeah, but Justin was an asshole! We really don’t know much about the other guys. The guitar player was really down to earth, but Justin didn’t really treat us with respect.

KF: He didn’t get our name right. He said you guys are Silverchair right?

WL: It’s a shame, they only have one song on the radio, and we’ve only got one song on the radio; we’re at the same fucking level. If they had been cool with it, maybe we could have put a tour together, or just hung out at the bar. Instead he had to go off on the rude foot and ruin that chance.

RIL: You said in Rolling Stone magazine that, ‘Aerosmith was good, but I thought we were better’. Why is that?
WL: I was misquoted. We played two different shows with them. If it wasn’t for Aerosmith then we wouldn’t have gotten any label attention. I would never say anything like that about such a great band that has really helped us out. I actually said it about The Darkness, that was the trick.

RIL: I got ya.
WL: The lady that wrote the article for Rolling Stone taped the conversation the night before. She called me at seven o’clock the next morning saying that he tape player broke. She wanted to go over the conversation again. I didn’t say that the second day, so I don’t know how she got that out of the conversation. It was on the previous day’s conversation that was on the tape that broke. To me it was really shady. It just left a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak.

RIL: Hey, it happens all the time. Rest assured the fifty people that come to my site will know what you really said. So now you can sleep comfortably (laughs). You've described the song “Devil's Daughter” on your new CD as being a metaphor for how you were feeling about the music industry. What aspect of the music industry didn't live up to your expectations?
WL: I think it’s a place filled with greed, a place filled with anger, jealousy. Growing up you believe that it’s this huge canopy of freedom, a place that you can really explore. In all reality people don’t really give a shit about the music anymore. They care about the quickness they can get the next hit single out. They care about the quickness they can make a quick buck off of a band. It was really a huge disillusion for me. Again, I just got a really bad taste in my mouth. It’s gotten a lot better now because of the people surrounding us. We have our team in place. We have an incredible booking agent, great A & R guy, and everything is in place the way we like it. We went through all these different experiences before where we didn’t know who we could trust. Even though we come from a large city like Philadelphia, in our heart we’re really small town boys.

RIL: Does Silvertide have any new material coming out soon?
WL: Nothing really coming out, we’ve been working on new stuff.

BW: There’s a song that we recorded about a month ago for a soundtrack. I don’t know if it’s going to be used or not yet. It’s actually being considered for other stuff. The Philadelphia Eagles are considering using it for like a play-off push or something. It’s called “We Won’t Give Up”.

RIL: As long as it’s better than Megadeth’s “Crush Em” (laughs).
WL: On top of that, we have a fuck load of new material that we’ve been working on. We actually still write on the road. I don’t think that too many bands are still doing that. You hear a lot of horror stories were bands go into the studio and they don’t have any songs written. A co-writer will come in and write the song with them.

RIL: Or studio musicians will come in.
KF: Yeah, that happened with our first album (laughs).

WL: Yeah, I’m not singing on anything. We were just the best looking out of the studio guys, so they used us to sell the records (laughs).