Intervista Alter Bridge (Mark Tremonti)

– Hi Mark, how are you?
Good, very good!
 

– It’s been 9 months since the release of “The Last Hero”, how do you feel about the album? Are you happy with the way the fans and the critics reacted to it?
Yeah, it’s been amazing, you know, it seems that every album gets more excitement by the fans and the critics alike so we’re happy, I think we are…moving in the right direction, keep trying to reinvent ourselves.
 

– I was at your show at Hellfest, a couple of weeks ago, and I was surprised by the incredible reaction of the crowd to “Show Me a Leader”, even louder than with classics such as “Isolation” and “Blackbird”. Is this the kind of reaction you found from the begging of the tour? Were you expecting it?
Yeah, we’re getting great reactions!
I think because it was the first single it’s the song most people are familiar with, then it’s got a good energy, vibe that translates well live so it’s been one of the staples in the setlist.
 

– Considering the period the album came out and some of the lyrics it seems a somehow political album. In particular, “Show me a leader so hope never dies” reminded me of Obama’s poster “Hope”, is it actually referring to that or is it about something else?
No, no, that song was just a cry out for, you know…a lack of leadership, a lack of choices.
You know, when you have Hillary Clinton, you have Donald Trump and you have no other choices, it turned into a circus, it was very disarming for all of us ‘cause there was no good choice left.
I think there were a lot of great choices when there were 30 people running, there were a handful of bonafide people, but in the end it turned into a circus and it was…when we were finishing to write the record all you could see everywhere, on every channel was “Hillary this, Trump that” and there was no way for that not to infiltrate our subjects.

– I was reading that the album was written while you were on tour with Tremonti and Miles with Slash, how does it work, everyone writes their own songs and then you arrange them together when you meet once the tour is over?
No, in Alter Bridge we write parts, so I come to Miles with the “Show Me a Leader” chorus, you know, and then he started putting together the intro for that song, then we came out with the verse together.
Every single Alter Bridge song we both have written parts, so I don’t come to Miles and say “Here’s a song I wrote”, he doesn’t come to me and say “Here’s a song I wrote”, it’s always “Here’s a part I wrote that combines with your part” so we finish like that.
 

– As you were on tour with your own solo band, was it hard to switch from “Tremonti mode” to “Alter Bridge mode”?
Mmh…no, because I’ve been doing Alter Bridge for so long now…it’s hard to go back into Tremonti mode because I’ve got to get my voice cracking again, that’s what’s new for me, being a singer as well.
Luckily I get to sing “Waters Rising” on tour with Alter Bridge, ‘cause that helps me keep my voice strong, you know, ‘cause if you don’t push it at all you can practice all you want in your bedroom but it’s not going to translate to when you are on stage.
 

– In our interview last year for Tremonti we talked about how your vocal performance improved thanks to the experience; have you thought of having a more central role singing in Alter Bridge too, or, anyway, is it something you think will eventually happen?
Yeah, it just depends, we never pre-plan anything, if it happens it happens, if it doesn’t…it doesn’t.
 

– And how was it to be back in the studio with Alter Bridge after three years since the previous album?
Great, I think for us doing the other bands, Slash and Tremonti, keeps us fresh, we’re reinvigorated, ready to try out do what we did in the past, and we bring our experience doing what we do with these other bands back into Alter Bridge and, hopefully, it helps us keep developing the band so we don’t put out the same record every time.
 

– So, isn’t being constantly on tour, Tremonti-Alter Bridge-Tremonti, exhausting? Is it just inspiring?
It’s exhausting, like, right now I’m exhausted [laughs] ‘cause we’ve got one more show left and we’ve been on tour for five weeks, and before that we had tour after tour.
You know, we’ve been touring since…the beginning of last spring, and we’ll be touring more at the end of the year, so it’s more exhausting just to think how much work is ahead of us, but the thing with touring a lot is that when you play live it’s [snaps his fingers] it just clicks.
 

– This was your first album with Napalm Records; nowadays it seems like many artists prefer to take their business in their hands self-releasing their albums. How did you came to work with Napalm?
Well, with my solo band we did it all ourselves and put it out on FRET12 Records which is in-house, and then I explained to the guys that this was the best way to do it because nowadays record labels are so different…you can hire the people that the record labels hire to do the same job, so why not just do it yourself?
But Napalm came in and said all the right things, made all the right offers and made us feel good about working with them and they’ve done a great job.
You know, we’re happy that we landed with a good labels, to be fair it didn’t always happen in the past.
 

– I saw you live twice, last year at Hellfest with Tremonti and this year with Alter Bridge, at Hellfest again; how different is it touring with the two bands?
It’s very different!
You know, the Tremonti stuff is much more aggressive at times and I am the guy who has to talk in-between songs and entertain the crowd, that’s something I wasn’t used to at all.
That’s another thing, you can’t practice that unless you do it, it’s not something you can go on YouTube and search “How to be a frontman” [laughs] you gotta go on stage.
I’m naturally a shy person, so when I was pushed out there I learned that there’s a switch that turns on when I go on stage and turns off when I get off stage, you just have to become a different…entertainer out there and that’s something nobody can teach you, you’ve got to just do it.
 

– How long did it take you to get used to it?
I think once we had our first good show, I was like “Yeah, I can do this”, when you get more confidence…
Right off the show were fun, the band was playing nice together and then you pick up some tricks like, “In this spot I can get the crowd to do this” or “In this spot I can say this to keep the crowd energised”.
I try not to do things that other singers do all the time, you’ve got to try to do something that is unique to your show, but it’s pretty hard to do. 
 

– Talking about tours, Alter Bridge toured quite a lot in the States in January/February and again in April/May, and now you’re doing this European tour. How different are the venues you play in the two continents and how different is your audience?
In America we play theatres or…you know, it depends, like, this venue is a kind of venue we would play in the States, but usually when we’re here we play the arenas, last time we were in Milan we played the arena, but because the other venue was cancelled that’s where we landed…that would be a large venue for us in the States, we play Hard Rock Cafés, House of Blueses or theatres.
I think the UK is our biggest market, we play places like four times larger there.
 

– As you mentioned the UK, it was recently announced that you’ll play two shows in London, at the Royal Albert Hall, with an orchestra; how did this idea come about?
Our manager actually had the idea, you know, he created the orchestra thing and at first I was like “Hmm…I don’t know, maaaybe”, it could either be great or horrible, so we switched the setlist, we made it all our more atmospheric songs, we’re not gonna try to be super heavy with the orchestra, we’re gonna do songs that fit the atmosphere, songs that we never played live, “Fortress”, songs like “Blackbird”, “In Loving Memory”, more atmospheric stuff I think will work great with the orchestra, and they’re sending us their arrangements of the songs, so we know it’s gonna be great.
 

– So is the setlist and everything already planned?
Yeah.
 

– After many years of career, do you feel like you reached your peak as a guitarist, or do you keep trying to learn new techniques and so on?
Constantly, constantly, I still feel like I’m a beginner at the guitar, there is so much to learn, you know, every day I see other guitar players doing stuff like [snaps his fingers].
 

– What’s going to happen next, are you planning to keep on touring more with Alter Bridge, or are you jumping back into Tremonti as soon as the tour is over?
Yeah, I’ve been writing all day today, I write every day, I’m putting together as much Tremonti material as I can so that when we get together I can knock it off fast, be as prepared as I can for when we go to the studio, hopefully next January.
 

– How far along are you with this new material?
Well, I don’t have any of it with the whole band, we had just a few days to write and I wasn’t organised so we put together just two songs, but now I have 10 or 11 ideas that I’ll develop.
By January I’m gonna have 20 or 30 ideas, and have these ideas come down to 15 or 20, not all ideas works!
 

– Just the best get on the album.
Yeah.
 

– That was my last question, thank you for your time.
Thank you, it was a pleasure.