Papa Roach – 12-07-2011

Interview with Jacoby Shaddix
By: Nina Mende

Prior to the last show in Germany for 2011 of Papa Roach we had an interview with Jacoby Shaddix, the singer of Papa Roach.

This is the last show in Germany, after they get back, Papa Roach will do the Rock Of Legions tour in the US plus some additional shows in Alaska – they play there on Jacoby’s birthday, since they have never been there. Once that is done Papa Roach will take a well earned break before they head out to the studio again to work on the new album. Papa Roach has been on the road for a long long time, but that is part of the job as well. Jacoby also mentioned that it is good to give Germany a break from Papa Roach touring there. Right now it seems like fans are not going to every round of shows and tend to say “nah, I can still go next tour”. But they are supposed to come. So now it is a “go now or not” since it is unsure when they will be back.

During their time off, Jacoby is going to work a little bit on the backyard his father in law built. Also Jacoby will go camping an fishing, snowboarding on the hills, chilling on the beach and so on. Basically have all kinds of vacations in one. After that the recordings for the new album will begin. The band has some stuff written already like a song called “You’re Not That Beautiful” which is going to be old school Papa Roach with some rapping, but Jacoby is also gonna go through old stuff and see if anything fits in right now. Like for example “She Loves Me Not” was one of the first Papa Roach songs but was not released until the second album. It just didn’t fit in right away. Further Tobin has a whole hard drive full of riffs recorded which he is going to send to Jacoby’s house and he is going to go through that material as well and categorize it into useful right away, yes – lets work on that, yes but no and let’s wait with this.

Also during their studio work Papa Roach will release and post quite some behind the scenes footage, pictures and blogs to give the strong fan community an insight of how it is behind the stage and show them the recording process. Let them be part of it. The band finds it very important to stay in touch with their fans, whether it is through paparoach.com and the community on this page, or the mainstream social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Myspace, which are mainly updated by Jacoby at the moment. The guys don’t have private accounts on that though. Instead Jerry and Jacoby take turns in updating the band spaces. That is enough of work. Jacoby and Jerry both told us that having their own profiles consumed way too much of their time and they almost lost track of the real world. After all it is nicer to talk to people on the phone or in person rather than on a social network page. Yet, Jacoby found it amazing how many people actually come up to him telling him how they met through Papa Roach’s myspace, facebook or the paparoach.com community and are now friends in real life as well.

Papa Roach owns their own recording studio in Sacramento called the Red House. There they only work with producers that are willing to come out. Of course are there producers Papa Roach wants to work with that won’t come out, but then the guys would have to travel elsewhere and pay a whole lot of money per day to record whereas they can also record “at home” with a great producer that is willing to come out to their studio. Papa Roach decided before they pay a whole lot of money for renting a studio they can also build their own studio and basically pay themselves. They also rent out the studio to befriended bands and bands in the area. It is a pretty cool hang out spot for bands in the area.
When you get in, on the left there is a room that is built like the alley of a tour bus with six bunk beds which are a little bit bigger than original bunk beds. They had bunk beds in their old studio and since Papa Roach definitely is a touring bed, they thought why not build bus bunk beds for their own studio so they get the “on the road” feeling in there as well. Also when you work there late you can just crash there. Jacoby told us that even though he lives only half an hour away from the studio, he still often spends the night there. When Jacoby is working in the studio he wants 100% of his concentration and commitment to be put into the studio work and not get “distracted” by the family and other things at home in between. So it happens that he just calls his wife and tells her that he’ll end up staying in the studio for a few days. If he gets too lonely there, she’ll eventually come over to spend a night with her husband.

Papa Roach has changed from a major label to an independent label. Eleven Seven is the new label Papa Roach is on now. Their manager owns the label too. Some people say there might be a conflict of interest if your manager also owns your label, but Jacoby only sees the upside of it: They have the same interest. When the band wants to work with a certain director or photographer on a video or album, they tell their manager and make the phone call. Decisions became easier to make since the way of getting these approved are shorter now. There is a synergy between the band and the record company now and a lot of trust.
Great bands are on this label such as Mötley Crüe, Buckcherry, Trapt, Sixx AM, Crossfade and also bands like She Wants Revenge – who by the way just released their new album.
With the major labels when you don’t release enough records right away it’s over. But this company believes in the band, in who they are and what they do. So far it has been all good with the new label. The last two singles of Papa Roach hit the top 10 in the charts and they have “No Matter What” coming up next. Let’s see where that one will end up. Jacoby is sure that that one will do well for them.

Their manager understands that the guys need a break after this tour and has no problem with the guys taking some times of – like some major labels would have. Of course will Papa Roach end this tour strong and rock as hard as usual, but they are not sure if they could continue much longer without losing the passion and the fun and have touring become a sort of routine. Jacoby is passionate about being on stage, just not as much about being on the road and what it brings along. When he gets on stage every night he is being reminded why he is doing that and how much this all means to him. When you see the people smile, sing along and do the mosh pit and stuff.

“Kick In The Teeth” was directed by Jason Corror, but “Hollywood Whore”, “Burn” and “No Matter What” were directed by Jesse Davey. He is a great blues guitarist and a top-notch guy. He just gets the vision of things and the band just trusts him. They saw a video he did for a commercial his manager suggested to the guys and wanted to work with him immediately. Jesse wrote the scenario for “Hollywood Whore”, the first video the band worked together with Jesse Davey. They shot that video with one video camera only. It was the cheapest video they ever did. And it looks super expensive. That is also a thing about the industry: They take away the mystery and have tons of staff and assistances for literally everything to do all that. With Jesse Davey it is all done with one guy only. Pretty awesome when you are looking at the results. His rhythm of editing is amazing and the cinematography for “No Matter What” is stunning. They went into that direction and thought it has to be believable. It has to look like it is really going down, it has to move you and touch you. “No Matter What” absolutely does. As Jacoby saw the first final cut he was convinced that this is the way they need to be going. Everybody knows by now what the band looks like when rocking, so they don’t need videos where they simply play and rock. And also shooting a video like “No Matter What” is a lot more fun than rocking out 8 hours straight in the heat.

During this set of shows the guys also hit Siberia and Russia. All the cities are so spread out there that they had to fly everywhere. Moscow was great, the crowd was awesome, St. Petersburg was awesome as well. In general the Russian crowd was excited to finally have Papa Roach playing there. Papa Roach will definitely go back to Moscow and St. Petersburg but they are nor sure about Siberia yet. Talking about this he also told us that as he landed back in Germany he all the sudden felt like coming home. He likes Germany, but also he thinks Russia has a quite aggressive culture, then some areas there were a little behind with technology and such. He loved the time in Russia but was still a little relieved as he was back on German ground.

Famous last words: Get your ass away from the computer and come out to a show!