Rockezine.com interview with Taproot on Mar 10, 2001

with Jarrod & Philip on Mar 10, 2001

Taproot is one of the most promising "New Breed" bands of this year. At this very moment they`ve packed up their gear and left home to hit the road for the Ozzfest U.S. tour. But before they left off they finished some preliminary demos of new material for their forthcoming album which they plan recording by fall this year. A while ago Taproot was in Amsterdam and Rockezine had a little get together with Jarrod Montague (drums) and Philip Lipscomb (bass) to let you know a little bit more about this unique "new" Metal band...
		Why did you choose the title "The Gift" for your album? "The Gift" is a present for all the people that supported us the last years. It`s four years of hard working in a concise form. As far as the message goes we like to do something more positive than other bands do right now. We`re getting a bit tired of bands that are always whining and bitching about their problems instead of doing something about it. Kids are getting the wrong message from music a lot of times and they end up shooting at schools. I think we need to do something more positive with music. We`re also pissed off and aggressive once in a while, but we want to show them the other side of that spectrum.
		The producer of "Gift" is Ulrich Wild, well known for his work with Pantera, Stabbing Westward, Static X and many others. Did you enjoy working with him? It was a great honour working with him, he choose us above the new No Doubt album. Actually he became a kind of member of the band for a while. He liked the songs the way they were, he only trimmed it out here and there or added something to it. We were playing these songs forever, so we didn`t have an objective view anymore. He became our ear for that moment.
		Your first album "Something more than Nothing" and EP "Mentobe" (later reissued as mini CD called "Upon Us") had a huge worldwide distribution through your Internet site. Why give up your independence by signing to a huge label as Warner/Atlantic? We found some people that would allow us to push our own version. We weren`t an independent label, we were just doing it all by ourselves. Burning the CD`s, packing it and sending it to our fans. That`s very hard working! A record company is a great way to get it all across the country, their distribution rate is a lot bigger than when you have to do it all by yourself. The company just gets the name out there a lot better. Maybe in the future people will just go to the internet for mp3`s and stuff, so that the bands don`t need a record company anymore. But now you still need a big company so that they can give you things like tour support. We can`t effort to do a tour across the country. So the record company serves as some kind of bank. They give you the wallet and hopefully you make the money back for them. Fortunately they don`t break our legs if we can`t pay them!
		What`s your deal and further tools you can work with in the future? A record contract for about 7 albums. We first hooked up with our manager, who also did System of a Down and did a great job for them. He`s such a big fan of our music that we trust him 100%. We signed on his own label that works under Atlantic. He`s got his own imprint there. It`s an Atlantic release but he`s got a lot more to say than when we would have signed to Atlantic straight up. So we`re really lucky.
		How did you manage to do a European tour with the Deftones? We told our manager right from the beginning (1,5 years ago) that touring with the Deftones would be our ultimate goal. I guess he kept that in the back of his mind. Fortunately our CD got into the hands of Steph (guitar player of the Deftones) and he really liked it! He fought really hard to get us on the bill with the Deftones/Incubus tour in the U.S. So we earned some of their respect and got to know them. After the tour Chino (singer of the Deftones) said ; " I think you`re the band that we want to take to Europe with us". It`s amazing, almost surreal that we`ve been able to do a tour with our favourite band.
		Why did you bring your fight with Fred Durst out in the open? Fred Durst makes an important history of the band. Fred was pretty much the only one that was looking out for us for about two years. He helped us a lot with teaching us the business aspects in the music scene. Especially he and Stephen became good friends. After 3 years other labels also got interested and made us an offer. We like to give him some credit for that even though we`re sorry that our contact ended up by that message on our answering machine.
		What will your story be in a year from now? I think we are walking the same path the Deftones did. When they started out they also didn`t get a lot of video/radio support. But that`s cool, that`s the way we want to do it! The thing with Deftones fans is that they are going to see them every time they come to town. They can play to thousands of people anywhere in the world. That`s where we want to be!
(Cyn Nederpel)