Interview with Morgan Rose @ Carnival of Madness 2010
Miranda: This is Miranda Wilson and I’m sitting backstage with Morgan Rose of Sevendust
Morgan: Hey how are ya?
Miranda: I’m good how are you?
Morgan: I’m great
Miranda: How is the tour treating you so far I know it’s like 5 or 6 days in
Morgan: yeah, this is a great tour for us we’re friends with all the guys on this tour and we go on pretty early so it’s been a learning experience to get back to playing when we usually nap. Like right now is when we usually go to bed for a few hours and get a nap in before the show but now we’ve got to get ready to do it so. That’s starting to catch up to me a little bit. But other than that you know and usually were a little wary you know and a little worn out but when we hit the stage but when the lights go off it’s all back to normal. So it’s been good.
Miranda: Step out for what you hour of fame?
Morgan: 40 minutes of pain (laughs)
Miranda: 40 minutes of pain? Is that from a drummers perspective?
Morgan: We like to call our band a full contact sport, that’s the way we like to do it.
Miranda: it’s some way of people showing their love for one another.
Morgan: absolutely
Miranda: with pain (laughs)
Miranda: Ya’ll did the Rock on the Range, what did you guys do after that before this tour? Take a break?
Morgan: No we haven’t been breaking to much we headlined for a while, did some spot shows with Puddle of Mudd and Papa Roach and a few other bands. Then we went to South Korea and played for the troops, and came home for about a week and a half and then went out on this. We usually don’t take anymore than a week or two weeks off after the tours so.
Miranda: you keep going
Morgan: we work as hard as anyone has ever done it in this business for sure.
Miranda: So what has been your most memorable show if you can name one?
Morgan: Woodstock ‘99
Miranda: Woodstock
Morgan: yeah 175,000 crazy people is hard to beat.
Miranda: was there mud there?
Morgan: Naw there wasn’t any mud, but there was riots (laughs) they made up for the mud with burning everything down. (laughs)
Miranda: there’s your full contact sport. (laughs)
Morgan: exactly (laughs)
Miranda: So how did you become a part of this tour? Is it because you all are friends?
Morgan: Were all managed by the same company, and they have been trying to put this together for a few years. I think there is usually a bunch of political stuff that happens with people wanting to play in certain slots, and you know I mean there was jockeying and everybody trying to get a better slot, when this thing got put together. But at the end of the day it was one of those things were we wanted to play later as thought maybe it would be right for us to play later but at the end of the day there’s going to be more people there at this tour then when we go out and play headlines. So let go hang out with our buddies and have a good time you know and take our spot where it is. When we came up we were the band that always said we’ll play first we’ll play last we really don’t care what slot it is. We just go and try to deliver the hardest punch that we can you know for however long you give us to play at whatever slot so you know were cool with it right here.
Miranda: Let’s see, how long have you been playing drums?
Morgan: Right out of high school I got into it, I was really meant to play sports instead but, you know I thought that it would be funnier to play drums but I was sadly mistaken. Know I’m just kidding (laughs)
Miranda: (laughs)
Morgan: I had a choice to make it was a crossroads for me, would it be Baseball or was it going to be Drums.
Miranda: So you’re a jock at heart
Morgan: Yeah, I’m totally a jock
Miranda: So what’s your favorite Baseball team?
Morgan: Yankee’s all the way
Miranda: What about football team?
Morgan: Buccaneers
Miranda: (laughs) I don’t watch either sport, but I like the food
Morgan: yeah
Miranda: But I know about sports and teams
Miranda: So how is your last album doing so far?
Morgan: The one we just did is doing great. It debuted at number 12 on Billboard, which is the highest we’ve ever been for a band that has been around as long as us to watch a chart pop up like that and see it land right there. You always want to feel like your relevant and I think the minute that we don’t feel relevant we will graciously take off. Because I don’t think we want to be the band playing, um not that we don’t enjoy playing in front of 15 or 20 people but there is a form of dignity that comes with you know that graceful exit. I think once the people don’t want to listen to us anymore we will bow out nicely.
Miranda: I don’t think people will stop wanting to listen to you guys. I think you will go on for a long time.
Morgan: It’s cool, I think we will be going for a while because we appreciate the people that have supported us for some long I mean were a lot different than a lot of bands. I know a lot of bands that thank their fans and they like to say that, and we have a hard time calling them fans. I feel that, that’s almost belittling them, like you’re a fan of me. It’s more of you know we have a relationship with them.
Miranda: Kind of like a family
Morgan: Yeah totally, and if we could hang out with every one of them every night we would be got to get to the next place. Were not the kind of band that has security blocking people away from us, we have security with us to be able to get us from point A to point B because there is a schedule. If there wasn’t a schedule then we wouldn’t care. So we really adore the people that support our band.
Miranda: Yeah, I remember back in the day security was there to protect the musicians or perse to push people away, maybe it was to get them from point A to point B, because there is a job to do
Morgan: some times, yeah you got to get to where you got to get to.
Miranda: depends on the situation
Morgan: yeah and we drive our security crazy, constantly telling them “no no” or “hold on”
(laughs)
Miranda: How has your music evolved from your first album til now?
Morgan: Probably the thing we’ve grown with the most, may have hurt us the most is we’ve stopped dumbing it down. We didn’t write music for the masses so to speak and lyrically sometimes the guys get better at what they do, writing guitar riffs. We just don’t write lyrics like “Who let the dogs out” you know and we down fall for that ya know. We’re more Nine Inch Nails fans of lyric writing and stuff to make it vague, but open for interpretation. So it’s a lot harder for blue collar American to really grasp on to that, and you know as far as the guitar playing goes you know AC/DC can play those same four chords and get away with it for a 100 years and I think they’re the greatest band in the world, and we just couldn’t do it. We couldn’t play the same thing over so even though I don’t think we sound totally different then we did in the beginning, I think that it’s just not as simple.
Miranda: Ya’ll grow up
Morgan: Yeah unfortunately
Miranda: and you’ve added a little more depth to it.
Morgan: Yeah
Miranda: Hey, there’s nothing wrong with it.
Morgan: naw you gotta enjoy what you’re doing.
Miranda: Of course, So where do you guys see yourselves going in the future? Do you keep going up?
Morgan: Yeah we’re just pluggin along. We’re booked for a long time on this. We’ll be booked til the end of August, and take September off because we’ve been going for about six months. Then we will head out and be gone til the end of October doing a headline run for a month, and do some stuff in November into December and take off for Christmas. We have to take off in January because Clint is having a baby.
Miranda: awe
Morgan: Then we will be in Australia in February and back to headline in March and hitting Europe somewhere in between all of that, and then it will be almost summer time again so we gotta hit the festivals in Europe, and get something going here again. So were planning on a two year cycle on this record for sure.
Miranda: there is nothing wrong with that you gotta go to work.
(laughs)
Morgan: I mean if the records doing anything, then you keep working it, the minute nobody cares then you move on and try to give them something better to listen too.
Miranda: So you start another project
Morgan: Yeah, right now, they seem to be liking it still
Miranda: So do you have any messages for your fans?
Morgan: Well, I mean again they’re like family to us so it’s like thank you for supporting us and it’s weird to see people that where 20 years old in the crowd when we started and all of a sudden they’re 33 and they’ve got kids in the crowd. I’m like jeez this is now turning into a real family affair it’s like its crazy. There were people that were like 35 or 40 coming to see us with you know 20-year-old kids, there’s grandparents that are in there that are in their 50s and their kids are in their late 30s and they got kids so it’s crazy its hard for us to figure out what to play ya know. Are we suppose to play a bludgeoning set to try to beat all the young people up a little bit or are we suppose to do more ear candy stuff for the people that don’t want to get in the pit anymore. It’s kind of tough for us to figure out what to do so we just “wing it”.
(laughs)
Miranda: There’s nothing wrong with “Winging It”. You can still rock it no matter how old you are.
Morgan: Yeah I mean if their seeing us 13 years ago then they got it in the blood somewhere.
Miranda: Yeah they still got the dose of the dust.
Morgan: That’s it.
