You also covered The Doors’ ‘Five To One.’ How did that come to be?
Yeah, we did that at The Machine Shop [studio] when we were doing the record. We figured we wanted to give something to the people. We were taking a long time with the record and they were writing into the MySpace saying they wanted to hear new stuff. So we said, ‘Fuck it, let’s do a cover.’ We said, ‘Let’s do The Doors, let’s do it right!’ We did, and it was fun. We recorded. It might come out sometime, but as for now, we just recorded it and put it on MySpace.
That’s my favorite Doors song.
Yeah, that’s one of my favorites, too. We actually played it a couple of times in Europe too. That was fun. It was cool to hit the Europeans with some good old-fashioned rock and roll.
Speaking of Europe, you have been on some really cool tours out there, playing with Alice In Chains and Metallica. Any good war stories?
There would be too many. The major underlying factor would be hanging out with these cool, big bands. They really inspire you to do better and they had a heavy hand in the inspiration for the record we just did. We wanted to step it up and stay relevant, and to do that we knew had to take it to the next level. But not go too far off where people go, ‘What the fuck do these guys think?’ We had a great time hanging out with Jerry Cantrell, Mike Inez and Corey Taylor. Meeting the guys in Metallica, and hanging out with Vinnie Paul here and there. It’s pretty cool now.
This record has a great chance of putting you guys up there with those big names.
We just buckled down and wanted to do a more live type of heavy as opposed to more contrived stuff. That was another motto for the record. Let’s make it heavy, make it feel more organic and alive.
That really comes through. You even introduced the title track, which feels like you’re listening to a live CD.
Me and Machine, we were just like, fuck it. It just felt right. We just left it on there, just going off in the studio, no microphone stand, just ripping through that song like it would be a live show.
