Finger Eleven

Scott: Yeah it’s pretty cool every time I talk about the band name it seems to mean something a little different every time. But the general idea is follow your idiotic dreams. And it’s kind of like stick to your convictions, even though everybody else thinks they are totally ridiculous. It’s a total metaphor for being in a band with your friends and trying to make music for a living. It’s ridiculous, you know, it is the most stupid idea. It’s a great idea but as far as the outside looking in its like, “how are they going to make any money? How are they going to support themselves?” You know, “that’s not a real job” and it’s all true but you got to make sure you are doing what you do for the right reason and that was definitely true for us and still is. So that’s kind of the idea, it’s often misconstrued and thats just another part of rock and roll, sometimes its wonderful to be misunderstood.

Scott: Yeah it is, it absolutely is, no matter what anybody else thinks, you have to listen to your own convictions as much as you can.

Scott: You know, it was our high school band name, its still an awesome name. We just had this idea of the kind of music we wanted to play, it was a little more happy go lucky and funkier and stuff it was just a high school band name. We stole it from James’s buddy, one of the guitarists in the band, he was sitting in class, cause obviously this is back in high school and he could not remember the name of mangroves. He was like “what are those rainbow butt monkey things called?” So James and I were going to different high schools, and he called me up and said “Dude I have a name for the band” and we laughed and laughed and laughed about Rainbow Butt Monkeys and then we made a record and got signed and it kinda became real and sort of ran away with itself and so we thought, okay well, not only do we not want to be known as Rainbow Butt Monkeys for our entire career, the music we were writing was getting a little more serious, probably a little too serious. With every record we made under Finger Eleven, I think our sense of humor shows through a little tiny bit more, which is really important when you’ve worked out a lot of your angst on one song or another, you know, that’s it, you can sort of exercise that idea and kind of move on. Now that I am not a teenager I can’t really write about the same things I used to. So you gotta find self-deprecating issues, you gotta sort of laugh a little bit more than you used to. That’s true for us. Every band thinks they’re hilarious, first of all, that’s the rule. Every band has all their inside jokes and everything. Think of the most serious band that you can think of right now. They sit around and make jokes… all the time. It’s nice when it sort of transfers into music and it’s not like ultra serious all the time. Now, I don’t even know what the point of all that was.

Scott: I just had a coffee, forgive me.

Scott: You know, the band, every time we set out to make a record, I guess there was sort of a bit of a pressure, depending on what and who you ask. We felt no pressure other than you know, “this album has to be better than the last album we made”. That pressure’s always gonna be there, otherwise, what are you doing this for? But we kind of had some success that was kind of disproportionate to anything else we had ever done on the last record. So you make an active choice to write songs you love or if you try to repeat success, that’s a horrible idea when you try to contrive some sort of song that you had a hit with. I think the powers that be would’ve loved to have heard “One Thing” a second time around. But that’s not how real bands work. We just have to wait and see what happens and see where it carries us. That’s why it takes us 3 to 4 years to make a record.

Anyway that long winded speech is kind of about how it works. We are doing things our way. We are basically listening to ourselves more than anyone else with every record that we make, because you have to understand when you present your stuff, your finally honed demos to the outside world, meaning your record company, your manger, your prospective producers, everybody has a lot to say about it and everybody wants to do it their way and its like, well, the band’s sort of gotta stick to its guns, so the longer we go on our own terms, the more we’re not gonna listen to anybody else. We’re too old now to listen to anyone. There’s still a democratic approach in the band but the band gets happier with every single record they make cause its their own.

Scott: A lot of times I will steal from the musical sense of it. I have the luxury of having music written for me first a lot of the time. So you can sort of carve something out of what the music is telling you. It usually coincides with something you happen to be thinking of. You know that is not really a coincidence, but with “Paralyzer” it was easy because it was just such an uplifting song. Something like “Thousand Mile Wish”, it has such a melancholy vibe you can’t help but be a little bit sad just listening to it, I mean all I did was sing and if there was some sort of idea that I had written down or something maybe came to me over the days of trying to work on it, I would sort of try to construct some sort of…

Scott: Yeah, as a lyric guy, you obsess over it and get really bad headaches, you try to, it takes a long time to distill some sort of silly 3 minute idea. You know, just cause it is simple does not mean it was so easy for me to do. That’s why like, when I listen to Green Day, I’ll hear it on the radio and I’m like, wow, I bet you a lot of people think they can do that and it’s just not true. He just makes it sound easy.

Scott: Well I think once you write something it’s great exercise, when you go on and take that risk, when you decide to write and just put pen to paper or express something, you can really exercise those real negative feelings. For a song like “Quicksand”, I sing that song every night and I love the song. It’s kind of a depressing song once you listen to the lyrics, it’s a downer. But sometimes that’s the best music. My favourite music I have to listen to by myself, that’s when it makes the most sense. But from a writing standpoint you can sort of get that stuff out of your system. It’s really important to do that, otherwise it comes out in really strange ways, I mean, I have one of the best jobs in the world where I get to sort of exercise that stuff and turn it into music with my friends. It’s a really good deal. Now that I have sort of done that it’s really important to still keep writing about whatever keeps you up at night. We’re just a little bit happier now than we ever were before.

Scott: Yeah see, that’s awesome, The Greyest of Blue Skies that was our second record and I have to say that that was a really really crap time, that was not a fun record to make at all. And it kind of sounds like it. I mean, it’s a pretty sterile, depressing record and a lot of people will say it’s their favorite which is kind of alarming.

Diana: Yeah that is probably one of my favourites as well.

Scott: The problem is it doesn’t have any other side to it, it’s a really down record.

Diana: It’s good on that side though.

Scott: I agree, I agree, it’s cool. You know, once you finish a record at the end of the session you gotta sort of assess how happy you are with the material. I remember at the time I was close to 100% happy, with the objectivity of time, you sort of go, “well I’d like to go back and change this” or “I wish I did this different”, but it’s always fun to go back and listen. Things build up in your head that are not necessarily true. It sounds a lot cooler than I think it does. Honestly. It’s just that, oh my God, I had such a bad time. We were stuck in the studio for like 6 months and it was pretty tough, it was hard to wrap that record up. When you start writing in the studio it’s pretty dangerous, cause you just burn money. You don’t know when the end is, you don’t know when the song’s gonna get finished. I think we have been bitten by that in the past, that’s why we don’t even enter the studio without a real solid game plan anymore. Just for the sake of not killing piles and piles of money. You know studio time is crazy. We have a different idea of what we want out of the studio and what we want out of ourselves and we do it with a little more confidence these days actually.

Scott: Well, you’re just making me sound like smart or something.

Diana: It is smart! Have you heard your lyrics?

Scott: I don’t like to write about absolutely nothing. Isn’t that the cardinal rule? You’re not supposed to say how happy you are, even though in this interview I have said it like 4 times. You are not supposed to say that because you are just supposed to be happy. I guess I was sort of taught that. The music I listen to, I didn’t grow up on like bubble gum pop, I guess. Everything always had to like have this gigantic meaning attached to it.

Scott: Well you can live inside the song that you write. Then once you express them through there, I think sometimes you feel like you don’t have to express it any other way. I think maybe that’s true. It’s like that, who sings that? Is it Jim Croce that sings “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song”? That’s a really cool, it’s true, it’s tough, singer get really used to or lyricists get really used to expressing things in their lyrics and songs and foret to do it in real life. I try to work really hard on that, but that’s definitely true for me.

Scott: Well I would do it sooner rather than later. If you need help, don’t be afraid to ask. What’s the harm? There is absolutely noting to lose. Sometimes it takes an objective point of view. Sometimes you can’t see who you are or you need help with that. The problems build up in your head so much that it’s just not worth it to keep it inside, it really isn’t. If you can’t immediately find help around you with your family and friends, you’ve have to look else where and do it tomorrow

Scott: Oh yeah! There is so much, if you are like me, an idiot in high school, then you didn’t understand the power of books until way later. It’s like my favorite record, my favorite books, where you enjoy them so much you get scared that you almost missed the chance to read or listen to them. And you’re like, wow, one chain of events led me to this awesome, awesome piece of music or book, and you are just so glad! It’s like mental comfort food, I suppose. If I am all screwed up I tend to listen to Bill Hicks. You know where there’s those classic comedians who say so mush truth that makes you laugh, you kind of smile a little more and you get sort of re-calibrated and you step outside your head a little bit and you realize that there’s awesome pieces of art out there that can affect you. So, even though Bill Hicks was kind of a bitter guy he was funny as hell.

Diana: Comedy, comic relief.

Scott: There you go.

Diana: My questions have been pretty heavy so far, mainly because you can’t ignore such great lyrics.

Scott: Ha, that’s really cool by the way and I have not said thank you, so thank you.

Scott: This is pretty cool, this just happened. I think it was in March maybe. We were in New Orleans and we were playing a big show with Evanescence and those guys were filling arenas. They were playing huge shows and we got to open for them and so it was kind of fun. So we are parked outside and we played the show and we opened, right, so we would go on pretty early, around 7 or 7:30. And we are finishing up and we see these two girls kind of running to try to get to the show and they have to go by our bus. For some reason our bus is a security compound and that happens sometimes and it’s cool. I am done and I am sweating, I have my little inner monitor across my shoulder and this girl runs up out of breath and is like, “Oh can you tell me, if Finger 11 has gone on yet?” I was like “Yes, yes I can. I can totally tell you that we just finished”, and she was like “Oh, are you with the band?” Like, I started growing hair a while ago so I forgive her. But she was like, “Oh, no!” and her heart sank, “The only reason I bought tickets was to see their set.” It must have cost $40. And she was like “I just wanted to see you guys play this song, I wanted to see you guys play ‘One Thing’” and she had the most incredibly heavy story about what it meant to her. I won’t go into it because I will start balling on the phone. So she tells me this really heavy story about this song means to her and that’s what’s wonderful about ambiguity. Everyone just makes up their own meaning to that song, you know, cause it is kind of vague and it means so much more to everybody else, like it no longer belongs to me and that’s fantastic, it’s great. She was like “Is there anyways you could maybe play it for me?” and we just got off stage and we have this like band rule, where nobody bothers us for like half an hour after the show. We sweat, we change clothes, and we kind of relax and talk about the show, whatever. And she is like for real and she’s not bullshitting me. So I looked for James and asked him if he could break out his guitar.

Diana: That is awesome.

Scott: So we let her on the bus and we sang this song for her and her friend and I am thinking these lyrics are being completely re-interpreted in real time, by me, because of what it means to her and I’m losing it! Like, I’m trembling and I am trying to finish this song. And it was this really cool moment, it was pretty fantastic. It’s a pretty strong memory. I think she was happy. So we played the song and it was a neat moment.

Diana: Well that sounds like a great, great moment.

Scott: I hope she got her $40 worth, even though she missed the show.

Scott: I guess it’s hard to top Superman. Superman doesn’t really have a dark side, does he? It doesn’t really make him a colourful character.

Diana: Batman has a dark side.

Scott: Batman is kind of the one, I think, but he does not really have any super-powers, does he? Let’s go for Wolverine cause he’s Canadian.

Scott: Have a good time, all the time, that’s from “Spinal Tap”. The more you remain a band, the more moments you can just pluck ‘em out of “Spinal Tap” and it’ll become real life. Have you ever seen the movie, Spinal Tap?

Diana: No.

Scott: Well if you do, you’ll find it funny, but most bands don’t, cause it’s pretty much real life.

Diana: I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for talking to us, that was absolutely awesome.

James: Finally, we finally have enough gathered footage spanning our entire career to make a worthwhile DVD, so we decided to put that together, spanning from the beginning of our days to a couple months ago. The 2 recent concerts are mixed in 5.1 surround sound so it’s a cool trip if you have a home theater. And then the CD that comes with it is a bunch of rarities and unreleased songs that we just loved but never surfaced on any records. We kind of use this as a way to get some ideas that always excited us out there that just kind of never found their place. So, yeah, it’s exciting, and I’ve worked on the booklet in the DVD. I’ve gathered all kinds of art that I’ve done over the years that was involved in the band for t-shirts, posters, or concepts for videos or things like that, so I’ve kind of put together a display of that kind of stuff too. It’s neat to be able to have 3 different formats in this one package, so it’s exciting to be able to do that.

James: Well, the DVD, most of it, somebody else was doing it, so you kind of give them input and that’s about it. It’s definitely a new experience though. Having to assess footage of yourself, it’s always hard to do. Be self-critical, especially, it’s kind of funny to watch, because there’s some old interviews where I remember thinking at the time, I just knew everything about everything, and now that I’m watching myself, I’m just like, “Ah! I can’t believe how much I didn’t know!” So it’s kind of funny that way, it definitely makes me feel like I’ve grown a lot. So, it’s cool. It’s neat to have it all gathered. If you’re just getting to know our band now, you can see where it came from.

James: I don’t know, I think more than anything it’s more just to represent us as a live band, which is really all we’ve ever wanted to be or ever said that we were kind of thing, so, along the way, we feel that we’ve become recording artists and are starting to get good at that, but we’ve always just been a live rock and roll band, so it’s cool to finally just put all these shows from all our different stages of our career together. But really, that’s all we’re kind of trying to put out there is our live shows and our music.

You can either kind of go a celebrity route where you start to sell your characters in your band or you go with the music. And we just all agree on the music fully and completely. And that’s what we hope people will get out of it.

James: Yeah, it’s cool, like a selection of videos from our career as well, videos, live stuff, interviews and stuff like that. If you’ve been into the band, I think it’s a pretty cool thing, if you followed along with us over the years. But I’m excited about the CD as well, like when I listen to it, as a whole, I feel like in a sense, it’s a record of it’s own, rather than just a collection of B-sides.

Diana: I am very excited about the CD actually, I saw that you have songs that no one’s ever heard before coming out.

James: Yeah, there’s like demos, the first demos of “One Thing” and “Paralyzer”, and you get to see like the birthplace of it and I always think that’s kind of cool, to see where the song ended up and where the song started, how similar and how different it is.

James: Some of them were written during the writing of the self-titled record and some of them were written during the writing of this last record, Them Vs. You Vs. Me, and some are just kind of like, there’s an alternate version of a song that was on the Greyest of Blue Skies that we had recorded at the time, but it never came out anywhere, so it spans back a good way, but in the early days, we never really had extra songs, we would record every song that we had and that was the record, so it was only in the last record that we started to write that much more, that we had extra songs.

James: There definitely is. Well, these were written sort of in the later portion of our career, but there’s still, there’s a track called, “Wake Up Demons”, that really hearkens back to the early days, in the kind of aggressive rock sense, but I think it has our sensibilities of space and psychedelic kind of trippiness, and that’s where a lot of it excites us cause they’re home recordings that we produced and Rick mixed them himself so they’re really kind of trippy, good headphone songs. So, it’s hard to categorize them, cause they never fit on any one record but for some reason, they all make sense together here. It’s hard to determine what they are. Some of them are dark, but they’re not heavy, and some of them are heavy but they’re not dark. I don’t know, but I’m excited for people to hear them.

Diana: Well, now they’ve found their place together.

James: Yeah, yeah, I guess like a bunch on the island of misfits.

James: I think for me, I like ‘The Berkeley Church’ performance. I remember that night and having a good time and feeling like it was a good show, I think it was like maybe 5 songs from that show. It’s fun when you watch back a concert that you know you were having the time of your life. Some nights, you know, the stars don’t align. Most nights they do, but some nights they don’t, when you have that magic night, it’s cool that it was filmed. So it’s always a different thing, like going to a live concert, it’s a one of a kind experience, there’s no way to film it really, cause it’s so loud and sweaty and people are drunk and falling on you. I don’t know, for some reason there’s a great appeal about it. To describe it, it sounds kind of weird, but it’s a hell of a time.

Diana: It’s a good time.

James: Yeah.

James: I don’t know, I suppose everything about our personal lives is what affected it and I think the reason that the records kind of changed along the way is I suppose having, developing different priorities in our lives and our personal pursuits, so I think in the early days, because it’s kind of a more aggressive and loud, it’s just, that the way you are at the point, in your 20’s, you’re just fierce and want to make as much noise as you can cause you want everyone to notice you and then as you kind of grow along the way, you kind of realize, ‘hey you know what? I may be better suited to say this properly and eloquently rather than kind of scream it at someone in a kind of, I guess aggressive and hating way. So I don’t know, I guess just the way that we are as people has changed and that’s why the music is different.

James: I suppose that it’s a little bit of both. I like that question though. But it’s a little bit of both. There’s things in your songs that there’s levels of emotions that you put in your songs that sometimes it’s surprising and reveals to you a new level and a new depth to what you’re willing to feel or willing to sacrifice or say, so that is really revealing about yourself and has emotional value. But I guess the reverse applies too. I don’t know, I think they both just feed each other kind of thing.

James: I don’t know I suppose you see a little bit of our interactions over the years but there’s nothing really.

Diana: Not like a story.

James: No, not like a narrative in the documentary sense or anything. We had talked about trying to piece something like that together but that’s not what this is.

Diana: Ok. That would be really cool to see in a book.

James: Oh that’d be interesting, yeah. I think that with the online factor now you can probably do a really neat documentary kind of website I suppose, that is like a book, but a digital book with animated screens and lyrics and all that stuff. That’d be a neat idea, you may have just sparked some new thoughts.

Diana: Good! I look forward to seeing that one then.

James: It’s exciting to see the way technology is allowing for so many things in different contexts, like this kind of stuff.

Diana: Yea, it’s crazy.

James: Like, just an idea like that is actually a realistic and viable idea, that’s just crazy that technology has come that far.

Diana: Absolutely.

James: Well, I suppose in a tangible sense, I have songs that I know I’m in love with cause I associate them with having been the broken-hearted teenage guy. And so now, when I can look back on it, I’m fine now, but I can look back and I can remember just that so vividly and that to me that was like, I don’t know, the method of dealing with it, I suppose, was just getting lost in these songs, and just forget the kind of misery you thought you were in. That continues on through your entire life, you know. I think if you really need to hear the right kind of advice, the right words, the right sentiment, there’s a song out there that has that in it. When you’re looking for it, the answer can come. And it wouldn’t be rare if it’s in a song. And that’s happened countless times, I suppose that’s why that’s what I pursue in making music, is trying to do that, maybe do that for somebody else or even do it for yourself, where you finally say it in a sense of like, ‘Oh yeah’. I think in some ways too, that a great song, the lyrics, they sound like they came from your own head and it gives you that feeling that you’re not the only person in the world that thinks that way and so that’s a comforting feeling, that there’s somebody else out there that knows what you feel like. So the songs, they can become friendly like that, where it’s like you can just keep going back to the song cause, ‘he knows what I’m talking about’.

Diana: Well I think you’ve said about 10 different things just now that totally hit home with me and what music does for me, so I think it does that for a lot of people.

James: Yeah, even that, sometimes when you hear someone talking about music and you realize that it’s the same thing for you, it just enhances the whole community of it and the fact that it’s supposed to connect a bunch of people and it’s supposed to be shared, it’s just so powerful and so great, it’s kind of like a religion, I suppose.

Diana: That was really nice actually. Yeah, I can totally see what you mean by that. Yeah.

James: I don’t know if I’ve ever listened to those kinds of things. I’m a little too cynical to be giving kids advice. But I suppose there was a lyric that said, “It’s better to regret something you did rather than something you didn’t do”, but I don’t know if you want to teach kids that.

Diana: Well, I would think that’s good advice.

James: Yeah, the Butthole Surfers said that, and then Flea said it again on the Red Hot Chili Peppers record, he mentions it again, but it just always struck me as like, it’s true. I never, I can justify when I’ve decided to do something when it hasn’t worked out, but I can only regret when I didn’t do something and just kind of left it, so yeah, I think that’s killer advice. It’s just one of those lines that you’re just like, ‘Yeah! I feel like I’ve wanted to say that for my whole life’ and finally I’ve just read it here in front of me.

Diana: Absolutely love it when that happens. Thanks so much for talking with me today James, that’s all the questions I have for you. I look forward to this website I’ve sparked an idea for [and the DVD! ].

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