Crib Notes

Mastodon's Troy Sanders (right)

The following interview with Mastodon bass player and vocalist Troy Sanders was conducted at noon on Friday, Feb. 30 while en route to Fox Bros. Bar-B-Q.

Chad: Let’s talk about Crack the Skye. I’m familiar with the stories that shaped the album from Brann and Brent’s perspectives, but what’s your take?

Troy: With all of our previous records we’ve been happy with the end results, but collectively speaking we’re more excited and proud of this one than anything we’ve done before. It feels good that we’re still excited to be playing music and still pushing ourselves to tread new waters. It consumes us and we’re all immersed in the Mastodon lifestyle. It’s nine years later and five records down the line [including the Call of the Mastodon compilation of early material], and the fire that burns in all four of our guts is yet to be extinguished.

Crack the Skye is a much more focused effort than any of your other records …

The bulk of it was crafted by Brann and each song is like a different chapter. We’re all movie buffs and when we write records it’s sort of like writing a movie. After all of the music is created we start laying the story line and the vocals over the actual piece. Kind of like how dialogue is placed over a scene in a movie. All of our records have themes and concepts at work in them. The art of the record is much more important to us than just putting seven unrelated rock songs.

Is it difficult to pull that off each time without coming across as cheesy or heavy handed, or even predictable in your approach to the record?

We’ll throw out pieces of a story that fascinate us, like time travel, for example. And Czarist Russia and the journey of Rasputin and the afterlife and the journey of the soul and how it’s judged. We have these ideas and we put them on the table and make these various and unrelated things come together in one story. Yes, it can be tricky, but it works and we have always enjoyed bizarrely concocted stories.

How important it it for you to blur the lines between metaphor and blatantly exposing what your record is about?

We like to think of Mastodon as thinking man’s music. Our influences come from the prog era, so it’s not traditionally crafted heavy metal music. On top of that, when we write stories they are all metaphorically spelled out, so it’s not so literal, like ‘hey, we had this horrible tragedy and now I’m going to write a song about it!’ It’s left incredibly open to interpretation, which is really important.

The whole idea behind Leviathan, for example just clicked with us. We were on our third van and were finally starting to get guarantees of like $100 a night and it felt like, ‘Dude! Alright, we’re finally doing it and making money….’ We came home from a tour where the four of us were all stoked from playing packed-out basements and filling up clubs and having a blast and loosing, I think collectively maybe about $1,000, but we were having an amazing time just pushing for it. Meanwhile our ladies, girlfriends and wives who were supporting our grown-up asses are telling us that we’re nuts, but they were supporting us. So there was this fine line of insanity and this incredible personal sacrifice for this dream that we had. It wasn’t an option. It was a must, and it was the exact story of Ahab. You’re going away for months at a time and not coming back until you’ve caught this whale. At the same time Bill and I are leaving our kids behind and all four of us are leaving our wives and girlfriends behind for weeks at a time because we had to. We were in our third white Econoline fart box and it was the white whale. It made total sense for us to do that.

At the same time if you hear about some heavy metal band that based an album on Moby Dick you think, ‘Man that is so lame.’ But it made sense of us to do it when we were carving out our niche and making a name for Mastodon.

How did getting nominated for a Grammy affect the band?

It turned all of our parents into devoted fans! I remember the phone call very well. We were on the Tool tour and we were in this little back room before a show and our manager called to tell us that we had been nominated for a Grammy. At first we were like, ‘OK, that’s cool….’ It sunk in after the show when we started talking about how it’s something that’s been around for like 50 years and gives nods to the cream of the crop of all genres of music. It’s a higher accolade.

When we told our parents they were more proud of their kids than ever before. At that moment our parents went from being supportive to be just 100 percent over the top bananas about our band.

Then we got to walk in on the red carpet. We were in New Jersey the night before and caught a plane in the morning. We Flew in to Los Angeles, landed and went straight to the Grammys. Bill and Brann put on their suits in the airport bathroom or whatever, but Brent and I were still in our stage clothes. We were forced to enter on the red carpet and there is this show called “E! Fashion Police” where they degrade or glorify people by what they wear. It’s the most ridiculous thing in the world. Joan Rivers daughter, Melissa Rivers or whatever her name is does it. Anyway they said that Mastodon was the worst dressed band at the Grammys. They asked what rock we had crawled out from under and they said that Brent looked like a narc. Our parents got a big kick out of that too, so that made it all worthwhile.

It also made me realize how candy-coated and fake that whole red carpet experience is. It’s really bizarre when you walk through and see all of these people parading and posing and begging for attention, and as soon as you step on this colored piece of carpet you are the center of the world’s attention. You are an idol and when you walk off of the carpet you are back to the real world and nobody really cares to even talk with you anymore. It’s a really eye opening experience and I’m glad that we did it, but how it affected the band, I don’t really know.

How will you present the new material when you head out on the tour for this record?

We are playing Crack the Skye in its entirely and that will consume about one hour. Then we will come back and play another 30 minute medley of stuff from the previous records. We’ve always talked about playing an entire record live, and it feels like this is the one to do that.

Do you have a favorite songs on the album?

Our sweat and souls are in each and every song on this album and now that I’m bouncing through each one of them I cannot pick a favorite. The entire record is my favorite one

You have played a lot with Metallica and you will be touring with them again. I have often thought of Mastodon’s approach to writing albums as being somewhat a kin to …And Justice For All-era Metallica.

We get that comparison quite a bit. To have people compare us to Metallica from the …And Justice for All / Ride the Lightining era is an insane compliment. But we don’t want to be the next Metallica, We are concentrating on being the first Mastodon. There are many other bands out there who are worthy of that title. It’s lovely to hear, but that’s not what we want to be. I learned how to play bass by locking myself in my room and learning to play Master of Puppets. It took me over a hundred plays to develop the ear to be able to pick out the bass and learn how to finger the fret board, and learn how to play Master of Puppets in its entirety. That’s really the only bass lessons I ever took.

How’s Bill holding up after the stomach ailment in England that left him hospitalized?

He’s fine now, but man it was one of those moments where you realize just how fragile you, your friends, this band and everything really is. When true life kicks in you realize that and it takes something like that to force you to be a bit more grounded and focus on what life truly means to you as an individual. In the past two years we have had scares with two of our brothers, Brent and Bill. But as like the old cliche goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and that’s the truth.

Like I said before, it’s nine years and five albums later and we’re creating our best material to date, and our firendship and brotherhood is stronger and more tact than ever before.

(Photo by James Mincihn)

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Tags: Crack the Skye, mastodon, Troy Sanders.