Windhand: The 13th Floor Interview

American doom metal band Windhand return to New Zealand later this month for shows in Wellington and Auckland. This time around, they are bringing along fellow Virginia natives Cough, with whom they share a bass player.

The 13th Floor’s Cameron Miller spoke to Windhand’s Ryan Wolfe about the upcoming tour. Here’s how it went down…

Windhand are heading to New Zealand for the second time this tour- how did you enjoy the first one?

It was really, really fucking awesome. I was actually just talking about it with some friends of mine…we went to [pause] I wish I could remember the name of the beach! But they had these crazy alien eggs all over the beach, and as we were looking out over the ocean, one of the guys from Beastwars, who we toured with, was like “yeah, right over there, that’s Antarctica.” And you’re just like “woah!” [laughs]

How’d you find the crowds here, did you get good turnouts?

Yeah, yeah we did. I mean, that was a lot of credit to Beastwars! [laughs]. They’re loved by their country.

So you guys are touring this time with Cough. It seems there’s quite a close relationship there. Tell me a bit about how that came about?

Well, we share a bass player.

Were you fans of each other’s work before that?

Yeah, it’s not a very big city we live in, so we’ve been around each other for ages. For 8 or 9 years we used to practice in the same building.

That’s even before the first albums came out?

Yeah, and Parker [Chandler, bass player for Windhand and Cough] helped us with the band logo, he always printed our T-shirts…and when our bass player left the band…we asked him to fill in. And he played a couple of shows with us, and practiced, and we watched what happened. He kind of added…a little something different that wasn’t there before, so we asked him he wanted to stay and here we are five years later.

Have you done a tour with Cough before?

No, never.

How’s that experience been? Do you think you share a similar fanbase?

Well so far we’ve only played about one or two shows together! But it is very similar crowds, we’re kind of rubbing elbows in the tonal range together. We think it’ll be a really good match.

Your last album, Grief’s Infernal Flower has been out almost two years now. What’s it like when touring that material? Do you get more comfortable? Does the crowd respond in a different way to when it was brand new?

That’s actually a good question because we’ve done very limited touring on this album. We played a couple of shows before the album came out, then we did the full US tour, then we kinda took a little break, we had to handle some business within the band. And it’s only recently we’ve started playing again. So we’re still kinda figuring that out [laughs]

We do play some new songs, we did a run with Sleep back in the summer, and there were songs we played off the new album and it was a really, really good reaction. And it was kind of cool, because we hadn’t played in almost eight months, but people were still very excited and responsive to these songs.

 

How’s a gig structured when you play? Do you play straight album versions or do you jam and improv a bit?

Well what we try to do is we try to write particular setlists and we try to include something from every album. We try to make it totally composite…of our band’s history, because there’s always that one person who’s like “Oh, the first album was the greatest!” So we try to keep it moving throughout everything that we’ve done.

But yeah, we do have areas in our setlist or certain songs that are somewhat improv, and it’s kinda cool.

What are those  parts like in terms of your playstyle as a drummer? Does it give you room to flex your improv muscles a bit?

Yeah, that’s called flying by the seat of your ass, man [laughs]. That’s called trying not to get called the fuck out!

No, I think that’s part of the big draw, in that, we’re not very centric in what we listen to…we listen to all types of music. So it’s kind of a weird melding of ideas and it actually kind of works out. Talking about the jam, I love Pink Floyd, I love Grateful Dead…the early 70s is amazing to me. So that stuff I like to put into what we do…fucking with people, and making people question and not know exactly what’s going on is a good thing, you know?

And I think that speaks for all of us, we’re all listeners, we’re not heavy heavy heavy, loud loud loud all the time. So we allow each other to move about when we make these songs, it’s pretty cool.

On that subject your singer just before the latest album released a blues project

Yeah, that’s her solo project. She’s actually been playing those songs probably for half her life.

When you have band members go off and do something like that, or when your bassist has been doing something with Cough, do you notice people bringing those influence back when you record? Or are they separate zones?

Nah, I think they’re different zones. Like, we put a couple of acoustic songs on our last couple albums. But like I said, she’s always been doing that, she’s always been playing those songs. And it’s not because she’s been doing that that we want to do this, it’s because these are things that we want to have on the album. You know, we want the album to breathe, and this is the thing at the time we felt was right.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEfIba4NNjc

But you know, I think it all fits. We’re all influenced, obviously, by what we go and do, but there’s that are obvious like “That’s Cough, that’s not Windhand” or “That’s Windhand, that’s not Cough.” There’s a line, and we all know what fits and what doesn’t.

Click here for tickets ind info for Windhand & Cough in NZ.