Goatwhore – Sammy Duet, Guitars

While I was originally going to interview Ben from GOATWHORE, he was busy with band business so guitarist Sammy Duet gladly stepped in at hinted at a possible future side project with people he played with early on in his careed…..hmmm, who could it be?

SMN: What time did you get into town today?
SAMMY: We left San Diego around 1:00 I would say, I think we drove half way last night then half way this morning.

SMN: Where’d you end up last night?
SAMMY: I don’t even remember dude!

SMN: Somewhere in the middle of nowhere?
SAMMY: I was so fucking tired, I laid down in the van and woke up and we were almost here.

SMN: That’s the easy part when you can sleep the whole way.
SAMMY: Absolutely!

SMN: Was last night part of the Metal Blade Tour?
SAMMY: Yeah!

SMN: How was it?
SAMMY: San Diego is a very strange town.

SMN: Where’d you play?
SAMMY: It was the House Of Blues. San Diego, I don’t know, people there are very unenthusiastic.

SMN: Worse than LA?
SAMMY: LA was actually good for us the night before.

SMN: Where was that?
SAMMY: House of Blues.

SMN: Did that get moved somewhere? The Disneyland show?
SAMMY: That one isn’t allowing any more Metal Bands. That show just got moved to the Galaxy Theater in Santa Ana.

SMN: So LA was actually cool?
SAMMY: LA was actually bad ass.

SMN: That’s normally the arms crossed crowd.
SAMMY: Yeah Yeah, totally. It was totally the opposite compared to San Diego. We’ve never had a good show in San Diego to save our lives, for some reason they just don’t dig us at all.

SMN: You’d think with the whole AS I LAY DYING think taking off for them that maybe they’d have a little it more respect for extreme forms of music.
SAMMY: It’s just a strange area.

SMN: Can’t win over everyone.
SAMMY: That’s where I’d kinda get scared if we do win everyone over then I know I’m doing something completely wrong. I think they’re more of an extreme Death and Grind crowd compared to a Punk/Black Metal vibe that we have. They just don’t get it.

SMN: That tour going well? Getting any days off at all?
SAMMY: Absolutely! We don’t like days off. You get bored on days off and fuck that.

SMN: Unless it’s a long drive?
SAMMY: Only if it’s absolutely necessary that’s the only way we’ll take a day off as I’d rather be in a place playing instead of in a hotel room watching Jerry Springer or something stupid like that or spending money on shit I shouldn’t be spending it on.

SMN: You’ve been touring nonstop for a year now.
SAMMY: It’s been over a year now, we’ve been on the road since 2 months before the album came out. Little breaks here and there.

SMN: What about when the SOILENT GREEN thing is going on, what’s the downtime like?
SAMMY: The downtime I’ll spend a lot of time writing for this so it’s kinda good, I don’t know if it’s good for Ben. It just gives me a lot of time to think and concentrate on the music for this. And you know we’re from Louisiana and everybody’s in 80 bands so I’m sure there’s gonna be some side projects formed on the downtime.

SMN: I interviewed Kirk (Windstein from CROWBAR) here a couple years ago and he was talking about the scene down there.
SAMMY: It’s a strange town down there. Everybody just likes to get drunk and jam with each other and that’s why you get all these different bands with different members from different bands and all these different things.

SMN: That’s part of the essence of music that people who just like to play and get on well. They’re not making a band to make money.
SAMMY: Exactly! Just have some fun and see what happens and if it turns out good, play a couple of shows and if that goes good somebody’s gonna take some kind of interest.

SMN: You talk about the downtime and you do a lot of writing, how does that look?
SAMMY: A lot of the times I just sit in my house with a little $10 jambox I bought at WalMart and I just plug into my practice amp and come up with an idea and just work with that. Ideas pop in your head at the weirdest times so you just sit down and record it and work on it later. Our drummer’s from Arizona so it’s kinda hard to sit down and jam with him so I just collect all these ideas and riffs and stuff and just sit down with him and Nathan our bass player in a room and we already have a lot written so we just sift through the good stuff and see what everybody likes and then fine tune it from there.

SMN: What’s the hardest part of writing for you?
SAMMY: The initial idea. Actually starting off the song is the hardest part. To come up with 2 riffs that just click. Once you get past that it’s pretty easy after that.

SMN: But your songs aren’t Part A Part B type things, they’re a little bit more involved. How do you get from those 2 parts at break neck speed then you break it down slot.
SAMMY: It’s a feeling thing, something has to feel right for maximum impact. It’s hard to explain, it’s something you have to feel. If it doesn’t feel right, then change it so the transitions have to feel natural.

SMN: Some people think like, “let’s add the cool part here.”
SAMMY: We don’t look at it like that at all.

SMN: When you sit down in the room with everyone and present ideas, how much change goes on in the song?
SAMMY: Usually before the final product is done, usually a lot. We over analyze everything constantly. We’ll start off a song and have all these crazy parts thrown together that could be cool, then we’ll simplify it and make it almost verse chorus bridge type of thing. It’s strange the way we right.

SMN: Is everybody present?
SAMMY: Yeah! Everyone’s there the whole time. Mainly I’ll come up with the initial idea of the riff. Then somebody will come up and go, “why don’t you change this part of the riff and change this note and try this?” It’s real flexible. In the end the riffs almost so bastardized it’s not what I initially came up with but it’s better.

SMN: Growing up, what inspired you today and how did involve to what you do now?
SAMMY: Right when I actually started getting into music was when MTV had first gone public and started getting it on regular TV. It was JUDAS PRIEST Heading Out To The Highway came on and all these guys in black leather and spikes and KK Downing with the big red flying V and I was like, “that’s what I wanna be, that guy right there.” Ever since I saw that it’s destroyed my life ever since.

SMN: New JUDAS PRIEST coming out soon.
SAMMY: I’m very excited about it. If it’s anything like Angel Of Retribution, it’s gonna be fuckin awesome.

SMN: This is going to be a concept album about Nostradamus.
SAMMY: Yeah, that’s true, it is! It’s gonna be awesome I’m sure.

SMN: Where did it graduate from Priest?
SAMMY: It evolved to ACDC, BLACK SABBATH and just getting into that stuff into the underground stuff like SAINT VITUS and BLACK FLAG. Then the whole thrash scene came in at that time like POSSESSED, BATHORY, and CELTIC FROST. Then the Death Metal scene this big barrage of heavier shit came out and I sought the heaviest stuff I could find.

SMN: Now you’ve done shows with some of these people like CELTIC FROST.
SAMMY: That was a dream come true. Tom and I became very good friends on that tour. I’m very happy about that. They played for about 1 Hour and 45 minutes every night, they were awesome.

SMN: You just finished SOUNDS OF THE UNDERGROUND.
SAMMY: That was pretty good, I was expecting the worst.

SMN: Why were you expecting the worst?
SAMMY: I was expecting a Nazi Camp where there are so many bands and so little time. I expected the situation to be really bad as far as the band being treated, but actually the crew at the SOTU were some of the nicest most kind people I’ve ever met in my life and they treated us with ultimate respect.

SMN: Any bands stand out to you this year?
SAMMY: GWAR is always a good time. AMON AMARTH was awesome. A lot of good bands.

SMN: What’s after the current tour?
SAMMY: We’re gonna go home for a couple of months, Ben’s gonna work on the SOILENT album, take a much needed break. Then we go back out in January with EXODUS.

SMN: It that with TESTAMENT too?
SAMMY: No.

SMN: Chuck Billy was stating there’s going to be a TESTAMENT, EXODUS, DEATH ANGEL tour.
SAMMY: That’s going to be awesome.

SMN: So you’re gong to start writing again soon?
SAMMY: Absolutely!

SMN: Any downtime?
SAMMY: A little. I can’t keep still for long.

SMN: Side project?
SAMMY: Definitely!

SMN: Definitely?
SAMMY: We’ll see what happens. I can’t let the cat out of the bag before the cat’s actually born you know. There’s something being talked about that’s really special for people that have followed my career for a long time let’s put it that way. It’s going to be some people that I haven’t jammed with in a long time.

SMN: End this talk with a funny story. (Nathan walks up)
SAMMY: I can give you a funny story from last night. We were all outside smoking cigarettes and stuff with THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER guys and they’re talking to these little scene girl, chicks, mousey wanna be brutal. This guy gets kicked out of the show and all sweaty, kind of a Skullet goin on, he was wearing a red backwards hat, a MEGADETH tattoo on his arm, big, white puffy shoes. You know, one of those guys. He does a somersault onto the concrete on the sidewalk and lays down on the ground and starts talking shit to these girls and says…
NATHAN: “You ever hear of balls deep? To the hilt with my 9 inch iron pickle!”
SAMMY: People watching on tour is awesome dude!

(+40 rating, 8 votes)

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