Interview with Lewis from 10 Years @ Carnival of Madness
Miranda: I'm Miranda Wilson I'm sitting in the back of... where am I at?
Lewis: You're in 10 Years' dressing room.
Miranda: Alright, I'm in 10 Years' dressing room with Lewis.
Lewis: Yep.
Miranda: Formerly or always known as Big Lou?
Lewis: No, I dunno how the hell... You know Wikipedia people just put stuff out? The only person that calls me Big Lou is my mom. SO yeah, there's a mystery behind that.
Miranda: Somebody got it somewhere! Your mom's conspiracy behind wikipedia. Haha. So how's the tour treating you so far? I know it just started, pretty much.
Lewis: Yeah, I mean we're probably a week in and this is something we've been looking forward to for a long time, only because all of the bands on it - we're really really really good friends. We've been having a fair share of fun here and also I feel it's a good mix of bands as far as like the styles and stuff. We've toured with all of these bands before so a lot of the crowds we've played in front of. It's just when you get all of them together, the crowds become bigger.
Miranda: Well I mean it's a good bill for the... it's more bang for the buck when you have a lot of good bands together. So what's it like playing in your hometown?
Lewis: Ten miles down the road where we grew up, we used to play a place called Prince Deli and right next to it is a hotel we had to rent to do our first show because we couldn't get a show anywhere. We went and fliered it, and got people to come out. But you know there was 50 people there... and it's not 50 people but 5,000 so it's surreal for us to be standing up on this stage and actually playing a show.
Miranda: So did all you guys go to school together, or was it neighborhood friends, or...?
Lewis: SOme of us went to the same school together, but it was pretty much the culmination of a couple of bands. We took the guys that were in one band... it was half of us were in one band, half in the other and we just picked the people out of those two bands that really wanted to take this all the way. That had the dedication, wanted to make the sacrifice to get to where we're at now and that's basically how we did it.
Miranda: You have an album out, or is it coming out?
Lewis: It's coming out. August 31.
Miranda: Feeding the Wolves. It's out what the end of August?
Lewis: Yeah, August 31.
Miranda: What can your fans expect from that?
Lewis: I think that they're gonna hear a side of us that some people might be... I mean it's still gonna sound like 10 Years, but it's definitely a more heavy, it's a heavier more aggressive sound, people are probably going to be like "Whoa, I didn't know they were capable of this." Especially like with the first single, you know, I felt like on the last record we released two ballads as singles. In the whole singles game, what sucks, is that a lot of times the record label is going to want to release stuff that they feel like a cross-over or going to the Pop world or something like that... we wanted to really come out with a rock song to show people this is really who we are. Because people will come out to our shows after hearing "Beautiful" as a single and then we're up here throwing down like we do and they're like "Whoa I didn't know that you guys were that type of band." And that's something that we don't want to happen anymore. Definitely a lot heavier of an album, definitely a lot more up-tempo of an album, too. It's not as...
Miranda: Laid back?
Lewis: Laid back. As maybe say the other ones are. But there's definitely still that side of us that people have heard on the other two records, as well. There's definitely a few songs on there that, you know, the slower tempo and what people might be used to hearing from us.
Miranda: When you all write stuff, what kind of writing process do you go through?
Lewis: Usually we've been at home for 9 months or 10 months after the last album cycle, we got together and we wrote some, but it's so hard to write when you're at home. It's just there's so many distractions. Between wives, and families, and friends and stuff like that. But we wrote some stuff for the record, we wrote enough material on the record to get approved from the label to go ahead and record the record. So when we went out to L.A. we had like two weeks of pre-production before we went in to actually do the record and we had a rehearsal space and we sat there and wrote half the record in that room, two weeks before the thing came out. Just because when there's no distractions and we've got the four of us in the room, we're really really vibing with eachother, then we can crank out some of our best material when we're all in good head-space, which we were, to go ahead and record this thing.
Miranda: WHen you're not having to think about life in general?
Lewis: Yeah we're not having to think about life in general and we're all getting along again. It was the complete opposite experience writing this album than it was the last album.
Miranda: Have you ever thought about recording in Nashville?
Lewis: We actually did some. We recorded a few songs - demos - with a guy named James Michael in Nashville. We actually were going to do the record with Nick Raskulinecz in Nashville at Dark Horse Studios but that fell through at the last minute and we used Howard Benson and he's located in L.A. so that's just kinda where you go. You go where ever the producers are.
Miranda: Well and it also gave you kinda a vacation over the by the beach, away from Gatlinburg. You might be able to answer this, how did Ryan get the nickname Tater?
Lewis: Oh god, you know, it's not even that cool of a story. He wishes it was a cooler story. He was in 9th grade and a teacher came in and was like, "You look like a guy that I used to know named Tater." And then everybody in the class started calling him Tater and it stuck so there you've got Tater.
Miranda: I thought you were about say she said he looked like a Tater. I was like "Wow."
Lewis: Oh no, looked like a guy named Tater.
Miranda: New album coming out, new sound, new tour. So are you finishing this tour out and doing something else to support the album or...?
Lewis: We're going to finish this out and then we have some shows that we've got going on in September, a few spot shows a few radio festivals and stuff. We're going to do a full on tour of us and Sevendust. The "HardDrive" Tour. That starts in October and runs into November. Then we've got planned in December. We're gonna be out 'til Christmas so I always tell people when I get messages on our Myspace page and facebook, they're like "Come play our town!", like don't worry we're gonna get there cause we're gonna be on the road for the next couple years for sure.
Miranda: You've got something, you've got new material to share with everybody. Do you have any message for your fans?
Lewis: Just, I mean, the biggest thing about this band is we've been able to do what we do and do what we love because of our fans. Even when we're off the road, we've been gone a year or year and a half or something like that, and come back out we still have tons of people that come out and support us. We've got an incredible fan base of die-hard people that see in to our message and what we're trying to do that dig a little deeper into what we play so I know that they are always going to be there for us. And it's always going to get bigger and better from here.
Miranda: Well of course, you tour with many different bands you're going to pick up new fans and people that are "Hey, I've never heard of them." Because honestly, what, four or five years ago when we first heard you, I hadn't heard of you. And then I started listening, I started listening, "Oh hey, they're coming! Looks like we get to see them." So, here we are. Thank you very much!
