A Quote by Steve Harris
Once you start out, you are kind of finding out who you are, and then by the time you get to the second album or you've been touring a lot, doing live shows or whatever, the sound starts to shift slightly to something that is more the true essence of what the band really is.
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In 2008 it's easy to get huge before you have an album out with the Internet. I think that's great and you see a lot of artists like that. It seems like it's becoming rarer to find a band that has been touring for six years, doing small shows and then breaking out.
It's nice to have some perspective, when you are just touring, touring, touring, it becomes kind of a crazy experience. But, when I have time off and live my life at home, and then I get back to the airport and I am back with my whole family again. My brother, my band, my tour manager and sound guy get to re-unite, it's kind of an uplifting feeling to be rolling with such a crew and so much gear from country to country. It feels good.
Karl Agell sang for our Blind album which was our second best selling record. He's a great guy and as a matter of fact, before Mike, Woody and I really got going on touring on the old Animosity stuff, Karl & I did about a dozen shows performing the Blind album from start to finish. He's still a good friend of mine and is now in a band called Lead Foot that's more Rock and Roll but they're fantastic, kind of Thin Lizzy or MC5 sounding.
Basically, every band that makes it has some dude with some sense of business. I don't know if our band would've been so successful were it not for Daniel's [Kessler] insight into how things really work. Daniel was the one who was diligently saying, "We should make a demo, send it out, play shows but not too many shows, get on shows with touring bands that are coming to New York."
What I really love is touring on a bus with my band playing shows every night and feeling the audience, feeling the presence of people actually listening to my music. Feeding my soul is what touring feels like for me and I absolutely refuse to have a bad time doing something I really, really love.
I wrote 'Torches' before experiencing touring as a band. I really had no idea what they would sound like live, and that was something we had to figure out along the way.
When I don't feel like working out, lifting weights or doing serious cardio, the best thing for me to do is just go on the treadmill and walk. I walk and listen to music and 10 minutes will go by, then 15, and then I'll speed up a bit. Once my blood really starts flowing, I'll get a second wind and then I want to work out.
It's funny when you start writing an album and then recording - the songs begin to take on a spirit of their own. Once you start to perform it live, this happens even more so than in the studio. They really start to develop a personality that takes shape over time with the audience.
If you don't make a total commitment to whatever you are doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking.
It doesn't make sense for me to try to be, like, a dance dude who only releases two 12-inches a year and then plays every weekend. Making an album, you get to put out a body of work that shows a lot of different sides of you. And you get to work on it for an intense period of time and promote that album. And then you get to move on.
I think a much better use of time and resources is to really focus on your existing users or customers and figure out what changes can you make in the Web site, the service, the product, whatever, to get them to come back more often to generate that repeat business and once you kind of figure out that formula, then when you get new customers the whole thing just kind of grows exponentially.
I think I would be much more enthusiastic about a band that covered more than just one particular album of mine. I don't ever really intend to record or to do shows with a live band. I don't really have a problem with it, but it doesn't really affect me either way.
You sit and you let your fingers go to wherever they are going to go. You wait until you start to hear something, and you start to figure out what it is that you're doing. And then you add another piece next to that piece, and wait to see if some kind of pattern or something interesting starts to grow, and then you cultivate it.
I block out a good amount of time - could be 6 or 8 months - and I just write. I do a lot of traveling, and I do a lot of co-writing with different writers just to start getting ideas out and kind of get a little bit of direction as far as where I'm going to go with the album.
In my career, there've been three stages really. There's been the stage when you come into a team, you don't feel the nerves, you just go out and play. Then through your 20s you start thinking a lot more about the games and what's at stake. And then, as you get more experienced towards the end of your career, you enjoy it a lot more and you're a lot more relaxed.
I took Second City out of desperation, and that's what ended up working out. It shows that you should be doing a lot of different stuff, taking whatever opportunities are there, to see what works.
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