Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds was in the headlines this week for getting kicked out of the Grammys, while the other Mastodon shredder, the cooler, calmer, more collective Bill Kelliher probably just stood by and laughed. Kelliher always struck me as a laid back dude who just wants to riff.
Lace Pickups recently posted this video of Kelliher's Guitar Center clinic promoting his signature line of Dissonant Aggressor Lace Pickups, and one question in particular was about the band's evolving sound and how that particular fan enjoyed it. Kelliher's response is nothing groundbreaking, but it's an interesting perspective on evolving as a band:
I’m glad you appreciate that, because a lot of people don’t. They hear their favorite band and they want them to stay the same until they get old and die. That’s just not human nature, not to me. We get older, we grow, we have different experiences. Since the band has started a lot of different things in my life have changed. I’ve had kids, got married, built a house, tore down a house, lost a lot of friends, toured all over the world… a lot of things are different than when I first started. When I first started we were barely eating, super skinny, ripped up clothes, jumping in a dirty, stinky van, traveling all over. You’re gonna write differently when that happens. Things get more comfortable, things change, it’s inevitable, and I think it’s good to change.
People are all like, ‘You’re never gonna beat the Remission record, why don’t you write another record like that?’ Why don’t you just pull it off your shelf and listen to it if that’s what you wanna hear? I can’t go back in time; to me that was a place in time we can’t go back and touch. That’s who we were then. I don’t wanna be like Metallica, ‘Let’s go try to find our young roots and try to do it.’ For us it just happens. You’ve got to mature, you’ve got to get older.
That makes sense. The struggles you about write while touring in a bus and having a hotel room to yourself to sleep in will certainly be different than when you were in a van, searching for loose change for some late night Taco Bell. Personally, I enjoy all of Mastodon's musical output for different reasons.
Even more exciting was that Kelliher showcased a new riff, possibly to be featured on the next Mastodon record, which the band may already be working on. Here's the whole video. You can fast forward to about 4:15 if you want to just hear the riff…
[via MetalSucks]
