Intervista Devin Townsend Project (Devin Townsend)

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In the backstage of one of the last Devin Townsend Project’s shows of this tour we met Devin Townsend who unfortunately cought a flu and wasn’t in the best shape; we cut part of the interview to let him rest.
Dispite his health conditions he later performed so well that hardly anybody in the audience could imagine how he was actually doing.

Let’s start with start with your latest album “Transcendence”; how was the critics’ reaction compared to your expectations, how is the reaction of the fans to the new songs you’re playing live and how’s the tour going in general?

The tour is going really well, the critical reception was maybe slightly…better than it was with the prior record, but typically what I do is pretty consistent in terms of people who like it versus people who don’t so I think this record was not about to change anybody’s mind…but overall I think it was a pretty good reception, surprisingly so to be fair.

Why surprisingly so?

Well, just because this many years into a career it’s hard to maintain the interest in it, in this type of music, like one style of music, so the fact that I got away again with it’s pretty good.

I’m particularly interested in the story behind one of the songs from the new album, “Stars”; you recorded it (and write it too?) in a live streaming in December 2015: who had the idea for this streaming, and were you ever worried that something might go horribly wrong while the whole world was watching you?

That’s a fear that I’ve had to get over in many ways, you know, with Retinal Circus, Ziltoid [Live at the Royal Albert Hall] or “Ocean Machine” next week, I mean, everything I do I feel I can fuck up, sometimes it does, but I also think that in the past when we experienced that, when something goes wrong you get over it and I think that if there’s anything that allowed me to progress as an artist is the fact that I have failed so many times.
So, when it came the Toontrack thing, I’m friends with them so they offered me the opportunity and if it had failed we’d probably still be here talking, so keeping that prospective is probably the easiest way that I found to not bulk up opportunities like that.

You played many different genres from your work with Steve Vai, to Strapping Young Lad, to your solo career and Casualties of Cool; is there any other genre you’d like to explore in the future?

Orchestral, I wanna do orchestral stuff, the next project I’m doing, “The Moth”, is…that and hopefully it turns out as well as I’m hoping.
In terms of other genres, I mean, I never really know, like I don’t think of that beforehand, don’t think “I’d like to try this” I just follow where it leads, I’m like “Oh shit, I guess we’re doing Folk music now” or “I guess we’re doing Metal now”, I just let it guide me versus the other way around.

As you mentioned “The Moth”, this is a question I would have asked you later, a few months ago you talked about it and instantly made a great headline for every music website, “a 10-million-dollar symphony about dicks”.

That’s actually incorrect, it should be a 10-million-pounds [laughs]

Even more then, why do you need this much money? Can you explain me the “dicks” part?

It’s not just dicks, it’s vaginas too, equal opportunity you know.
I think it will be really cool to do a sort of classical opera style thing about humans and how we’re fundamentally just afraid to die and that has manifested in the need to attribute a reason to things and on that front is like a quest for understanding of what the nature of God is, guess…? And maybe the idea of unity is simply represented by humans that are just hardwired to fuck [laughs] and that’s like a way to connect with unity, temporarily.
So I’d like to do a really profoundly big thing about basically sex, power, death and like ultimately a quest for meaning.
I think it’s going to be a tragedy on some level, and I think that…I don’t want to be comedic, I want to be frightening but it’s best described as “dick symphony” [laughs].

Changing topic, what was you first reaction when you saw the cover of the new Deep Purple’s album [which many found very similar to the Devin Townsend Project’s logo, Ed.]?

I thought it was cool [laughs].
I mean, I love Steve Morse and…I don’t care, I don’t care man.
I think it’s funny that people care for me, they care on my behalf, but my care doesn’t even register [laughs].
You know, a “D” and a “P” together are a pretty obvious way to make a logo, I would suggest that there’s a good chance they never saw our logo.
I’m a huge fan, Steve Morse was my favourite player when I was a kid, so even if they have a vague knowledge of what I do I would be honoured.

You released a huge amount of albums over the years and managed to keep a very high quality for all of them; at the same time, you’ve also always been very frank about the huge amount of money you need to keep the band alive so, are the two things connected? Are you releasing this much music just to be able to “survive” as a band?

It was for a long time, yeah.
I turned the corner right now because of the book I did and I signed a publishing deal that allow us to keep the bills paid if we are touring without me having to make another record this year, but I also recognize that the quality of what I do raises if I’m allowed to have more time to work on it, so I hope in the future I’ll be able to do that.
I also think that in the past I worked excessively because of the addictive part of my personality.

So you’re addicted to songwriting?

I think I’m addicted to anything, so I was addicted to drink, to smoking marijuana and then when I let that go I think that the mechanism had to shift somewhere else, so now I’m trying, in the last couple of years, one year and a half, to shift that addictive thing to health, exercise and that sort of things, because that’s a productive way as opposed to a toxic thing.
Hopefully it’ll work.

You’ll be playing the whole “Ocean Machine” in London in few days, and again in Pvlovdiv in September.
Are you planning to play it somewhere else too? Why aren’t you playing it for a whole tour?

I think would probably devalue it if we did it excessively; we’re also doing it in Spain, so it’s three shows now.
I mean, a lot of times I don’t make the decisions on where we play or when we play, a lot of times is the management and the booking agent, so if they said you are to play the whole “Ocean Machine” album…

So you don’t decide even that?

Yeah, it works great for me, I mean, I don’t really…care.
I’m happy to play shows, I’m happy if the shows are regular after “Ocean Machine” and we don’t have like huge…we are not a super popular band, so it’s like we’re able to sustain ourselves and do things, so if what it takes to raise the interest is to do these shows in a limited capacity I’ll take that.
I hired the management and the booking agent to make those decisions on my behalf because up to the point where I started working with this company all the decisions that I made were basically…the wrong ones [laughs].

I remember reading a while back, so correct me if I’m wrong, that you had some problems at the late times with Strapping Young Lad with being in front of large crowds, with your performance at Download Festival in particular being a very difficult time for you.

I wouldn’t say it was difficult, it was the intention of what I was doing…I felt like if I was going to be in front of that many people I wanted to have a different thing that I represented.

Yeah, I remember it seemed strange to me because when I first saw you at Wacken 2014 you seemed incredibly at ease with the crowd and it blew my mind how you got hundreds of metalheads hugging each other before ‘Grace’, I thought “Wow, this guy’s incredible”.

[Laughs] I’m not typically nervous in front of crowds, sometimes, it depends on the day, but I think 10 years ago I had a couple of practical lessons in accountability and by that I mean, what I say, what I write, what I choose to release, my world becomes that and it’s not a metaphysical assumption, it’s like it really seems to be that way, it’s like your vibe attracts a tribe, right?
And I started to feel towards the end of Strapping that what I was representing was coming from a place…I was really afraid, you know? I was afraid of confrontation and anger and all these things, so by singing about it as much as I did it became my world and I was really uncomfortable with what I did and then ad Download, it was a good show, but I remember looking out and thinking like “You may want to rethink this, this is getting bigger and if it gets too big and that becomes your identity this will be really psychologically unhealthy”.
So things like Wacken, like where I am right now, it’s still Metal, it’s still Progressive, whatever, but I believe what I’m saying is something that is healthy for me and I really needed to make that decision for myself, some people would rather me not make that decision but, I don’t know what to tell  them.

I’ll cut it here and let you rest now, thanks Devin.

I really appreciate it, thank you my friend

Davide Sciaky