Jim: You guys have been around a long time, for about 20 years now. What is the key to your longevity? Jim: You guys are currently touring with Hellyeah. How’s that been going? Jim: The Body of John Wilkes Booth What is that song exactly about? Jim: How’d you guys come up with the name Clutch for your band? Jim: What kind of music would you describe yourself as? Jim: You guys started the label Weather Maker Music. What made you decide to do this? Jim: So by doing that you control your own destiny so to speak, you have more control of your music. Jim: Do you think you’ll ever sign any other bands to your label? Jim: You’ve got another band called The Bakerton Group...Can you tell me a little bit about it? Jim: Your touring schedule, you’re on the road a lot. How do you keep in shape on the road being a drummer? Jim: When can fans expect some new material? Jim: Alright well I look forward to seeing you guys in the future on the road. Jim: Thank you very much for doing this interview, I really appreciate it. Related Links: Back to Interviews Directory If you do not see a menu on the left click here to launch BeyondReflection (main page) in a new window.
Jean-Paul: Well the main thing is that when we started the band the intention was to play good shows and make good records. That was really the end of it. The idea of making a bunch of money was not something that we had on our radar at the time. The kind of bands that we liked and the music that we liked to listen to were not popular bands at the time and really making money at it and was not really part of the equation. By that I mean bands like The Bad brains, or Fugazi. These were bands that were really important to us, but at the same time they were not bands that received a lot of commercial success. So for us from that very beginning that was the idea, was really to make good music and play good shows. None of us really imagined that we would be able make a career out of this, 21 years later.
Jean-Paul: Good. We’ve been out now for about 2 ½ weeks. You know it’s a good bill there are some new folks that are coming to the show that don’t really know about Clutch, and I think the same goes for Hellyeah. That is kind of the idea; you wanna play with as many different kind of bands as you can. It exposes your music to as many different kinds’ people out there as you can. So it's good and we are having a good time out here, the turnouts are great. It’s been great.
Jean-Paul: Well, thankfully I do not write any of the lyrics. That’s all Neil, I think one of the coolest things about Neil’s vocals is that they’re sort of very image driven. He’s uh, good at putting together a few words and being able to conjure up some cool imagery. I think that there is also that period of time around the Civil War that is a very interesting part of our history. Us being in Maryland, we are sort of surrounded by alot of places of historic value whether it is battlefields or sites where there might have been some protests or some skirmishes. That is just part of growing up in Maryland. It is just a very interesting place to grow up. I think because of that he tends to draw sometimes from that period of history and make that part of the words.
Jean-Paul: Well it’s a pretty unexciting story to be honest with you. We were at the time we just liked one word names like Prong and Fugazi Or uh Shellac you know, and we kind of wanted to go something like that and clutch happened to be one of the words on the list. We had to pick one cause we were getting ready to go on, so we chose Clutch.
Jean-Paul: Rock n Roll
Jean-Paul: Well at that point you know we’d been on several different major labels, several different independent labels, a medium sized kind of label and the writing was really on the wall for us. We knew that signing with yet another label was not the way to continue to do business. The climate is changing by the minute and the labels now really don’t have much to offer us. To be quite honest, it was time for us to take the reins of it and it’s still a work in progress. We learn stuff about running a label every day. We have to really stay on top of stuff and you cannot trust anybody. In this business you really got to pay attention to what’s going on around you and try to learn as much as you can.
Jean-Paul: Yeah, I think we have more control over the music, and really more importantly we have control of funds. You know it’s one thing we’ve learned as soon as you start writing your own checks all of the sudden there's left is a little more money in the bank account. That is something for young bands to remember.
Jean-Paul: Well we have the Seven Inch coming out by The Mob. The Mob is our manager Jack Flannigan’s hard core band. Jack started playing In The Mob in 1979 in New York City, and they were really one of the cutting edge bands of the time. They played a little harder and a little faster than the other bands. It was a little bit of a more metal kind of a sound. There’s definitely some Bad Brains influences in what they were doing, and so since then of those guys have reformed from time to time. And what better way to try putting out somebody else’s music than to put out The Mob? We’re excited about that and then we also have another project coming out called The Company Band. Which is Neil who sings for Clutch; one of his side projects. Jess Margera who plays drums for CKY, Brad who plays bass with Fu Man Chu, and Jim Rhoda who played in Fireball Ministry. They got together and they made a couple of records, and we’re gonna be putting out one of those records. Probably sometime late summer early fall.
Jean-Paul: Yeah, The Bakerton Group is sort of an instrumental sci- fi bit that we do. We started experimenting with some instrumental forms in the 90s. It really brought through as kind of a way to explore different styles. So we played some covers with it, some blues covers, and we played some jazz covers. It was a way for us to stretch out a little bit and do things beyond what we normally would do in Clutch. It’s kind of grown from there. We haven’t done a lot with The Bakerton Group lately, just because we’ve been so involved with Clutch, the touring the writing the music, but I suspect we’ll do another record probably one day soon.
Jean-Paul: Well kind of by default, you know paying every night is physically very demanding. So you sort of get a little bit of exercise in that respect. Myself I try to watch what I eat and I try to get on the elliptical, If the hotel has decent elliptical machine and if they don’t have a decent elliptical machine that is an excellent excuse for me to say I’m not gonna do it today.
Jim: Hahaha
Jean-Paul: Yeah I try to do that and you know you’ve got to pace yourself out here, that’s one of the things that really can bring a band down, is getting out on the road and folks really don’t understand that it’s really a long haul sort of proposition that you have to be aware that you are going to be doing this for a long time and for me that means from the minute that I wake up that day , I’m thinking about the show that night and what do I need to do to play the very best show.
Jean-Paul: Well we’ve been playing some new songs in the set, and so far they are real rockin, we’ve for whatever reason sort of more upbeat more stripped down tunes are kinda the one that have been the most popular within our group. Every record is a little bit different form the last. We don’t really make a conscious effort to so okay we’re gonna make this a bluesier or this one’s gonna be more funk based. It just sort of happened very naturally, and this time around this seems real rockin.
Jean-Paul: Yeah man.
Jean-Paul: No problem anytime.
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