rozhovor_2017-04-18_Invidia_en - HELLMAGAZINE
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ROZHOVORY
Not long ago, I heard some music from american band INVIDIA. Never heard of them before but music was something that grab you and won´t let go. After reading line-up I realised this is not a group of amateurs and when I get opportunity to talk with frontman Travis Johnson there was no chance I would say „No!“. Travis talked a lot and told us stuff that is kept in secrecy by many. We heard about drug addictions, young bands or fact that there is band everybody loves but many is ashamed of it. I belive that this piece is worth the reading!
Let´s start with band itself. INVIDIA is classified as a supergroup by a lot of medias. How do you feel about this?
Ehm ... I don´t like it. (Laugh) Being called supergroup puts a lot of pressure and kind of misrepresents. We´re just group of dudes who´s been in music for a long time, been in other bands and luckily done some stuff and had some success but word supergroup puts automatically lot of pressure on us and to be honest I find it kind of traumatic.
So how would you call it?
Well just group of musician that got together and put best they could in the record. It´s just group of dudes who already had a name that makes a band but supergroup might be a little too much for what we are doing.
On your sites there was said that we can expect unexpected. What do you men by that?
In process of writing material we do not wanted to have set parameters of what we are going to do. We didn´t tried to be heavy or whatever. We just wanted to make best record we could and so we tried not to stay in the box, we just tried to have fun and do our best. Nowadays a lot of bands are scared to experiment or to write song that would be something totally different from the rest of the album. Our record is so diversed and it have different feelings different vibes and premises and it goes through the whole record so it never could really be scaled. We were actually in the studio the other day and we´re doing something really special that I can´t tell you right now but it´s right off that alley – we´re doing the song that people wouldn´t expect. We´re just keeping it fresh, keeping busy and want to keep pushing good stuff out there and keep everybody guessing about what´s coming next.
Maybe any hints on what´s coming?
OK. It´s cover song ... and that´s all I can tell you ... (Evil laugh) It´s coming from the genre you´d never expect and I got to say it´s gonna be pretty cool.
Imagine situation that you are describing your upcoming album „As the Sun Goes Sleep“ to someone who never heard it and never heard of you guys. What would you tell him?
Oh, wow. Like I said it´s very diversed .. I mean there are some heavy stuff, as I was always super heavy fan, there are some Pantera like songs on the record, there is some deeper radio rock stuff, heavy radio metal, if you will, there is even some kind of rap rock song so ... if there is any genre of metal and rock you like in the metal or rock, you´ll totally find something you´ll like in this record for sure. It´s everything – all in one. There are different vibes through the whole record and this is exactly what we tried to do. We didn´t wanted to be pidgeon holed in one style. What you got to do is to check every song as own piece of art. So if there is anyone who don´t know what to expect – if there is any piece of rock and metal you like listen to our album – you´ll find something you´ll love in this record!
You already released music video to the song „Feed the Fire“ and to me it looks really like something that came out of personal experience. Can you tell us background story to this song?
Yep. Definitely. It´s pretty powerful song to me and I think that a lot of people can identify with it. I´ve had a long run with doing alcohol and drugs and stuff in my life, I am on the bright side of it now and I´m done with it already but before I was in that vicious cycle – I was drinking, doing drugs, trying to make myself clean and than doing that all over again and it took a long time till I figure out how this cycle was working and till I realised that I am keeping doing this. And this is what song really is about – it´s about feeding the fire by not stopping this whole cycle and just staying in it and it´s about realisation how to clean off my deamons and addictions. It is a lot of personal song to me and a lot of people asked me if it is hard to put things like this on the table, but I think this is meaning of it – to talk about it and if it helps somebody you have more reasons to talk about it. That´s what music is for! It´s supposed to put your words out there for people to hear you and to people to listen and to help them. If anybody can take anything from „Feed the Fire“ and realise that there is bright side to all the darkness and he´d fight through it. I am better and happier than I´ve ever been in my life and I´ve spent years in the dark side and I justified my drug and alcohol abuse for a long time. I was using it as excuse.But that is over now and I am clean and I want to share it that there is a way out of it. It really is very personal song to me and I am really happy that we could make music video for that one.
You kind of already responded but how hard it really is to share something so personal to thousands of people who are listening?
Well, there are few songs on the record that kind of tells my story if you will. I can´t really write songs about something that is not personal to me. And even if I wouldn´t really put it out of my chest, music is like platform to express myself and being able to write that stuff on a paper and to sing about it night after night, it´s kind of therapeutic to me and if it really helps the people with the lyrics and they are like „Oh, that´s a powerful song“. There is actually another song on the album – „Making my Amends“ and it´s quite off the same alley – coming out from the darkness and saying sorry to people I was hurting when I was using drugs and alcohol and that one is even more obvious of what I was talking about. I literally say I am sorry in the song. For me it´s not scary or awkward at all to get personal in my songs. It´s actually why I love singing so much. For me it´s therapeutic and I have to do it. I can´t sing about daemons and dragons and stuff ... it has to come from my heart from things that I experienced. I sing about everything I ever believe in from aliens to drug abuse to anything. (Laugh)
I think we can say that band started from your need for sing. Can you tell us that story?
Well I´ve been on break from the tour with In This Moment, it was something like six months break and as you said, I´ve got big urge to sing again. So I got my laptop with microphone and started to track everything, just for fun. So I was singing and adding electronic drums to it, electronic guitars and I came up with one song that was pretty good so I said to myself that I am gonna record video of me singing vocals and put it online just for shock value. It´s been so long since I sang last time and I´ve done so much musically since then so I thought people would freak out that I am singing. So I was waiting for reactions and they came. And I have to say reactions were great. Brian Jackson hit me, he saw the video and we never spoke before but he wrote me out of blue on Facebook like „Hey Man, what you recorded was pretty cool, don´t you want to do something sometime?“ and I was like „Yeah, we totally should!“ as I was on break on time and wanted to start again with singing. He send me a track that him and Logan were working on. I loved it so I sang to it, recorded it and sent back to him. He was excited and from that moment it was just like a big snowball. It was back and forth, back and forth, sending songs until we´ve made seven or eight songs until it was already time for me to fly to Vegas. We came to all of that from nothing, there was no previous concept or anything. We were just planning to do something about three songs but suddenly, three turned into five and five turned into ten. It was so creative and so easy that we just decided to keep rolling with it and suddenly we´ve got album which is the most organic piece of music I´ve ever done. And it was effortless.
You already played some shows and you´ve been already touring in US. What was response from people to your live performance?
It was actually really good. On the first run we are catching out some bugs. We weren´t really trying to dominate the world yet. Right now we are only trying to get used to living in close quarters with each others and find the right things to say between the songs and keep everything going smooth. But the reactions were great and everybody loved it. What is positive is that we got along great as well, whole tour went smooth. It was some kind of trial run but it went good and everybody was enjoying it. And it is big change for me as well because I used to be so agressive on stage, you know, went all „AAAAGH“ and stuff and I was yelling whole time and it´s different now. I love it, don´t get me wrong but there are actual melodies and songs and it is nice to see even girls enjoying our songs, not only dudes in the pit hitting each other around. For everybody in the room we got something thanks to diversity of the songs. Funny thing was that we´ve seen some people reacting on some songs and than other people who weren´t reacting before are reacting on other songs. It was really refreshing to see that everybody can find himself something from what we put together.
That sounds pretty cool, to hear that not only your material but even chemistry between you guys is working great. But what about some tour plans for Europe? Do you already have some?
Definitely. We are on European label, you know so we are completely opened to that and we´re thinking that very soon we´d be heading there. I mean we get most press, most reactions and everything from Europe so we kind of want to establish in the Europe first and then really hit the US. We are opened for everything that makes sense, wherever people want us to be we´ll be there. We still have some run over US which is trial run and then we definitely want to get to Europe. For sure.
Maybe a little more personal question, but even if this is metal music it kind of still can be represented by „Sex, Drugs & Rock´n´Roll“ and you already mentioned the dark side of yourself from the past. Can you tell us the wildest experience „from the dark side“ you have?
Could be even in life in general?
Yes, sure.
OK. Oh, geez. The dakrest times I´ve been in my entire life, I´ve been already doing music for a while, I was 28 and I was drinking too much, smoking pot, doing hard drugs already but in 1999 my sister was murdered and it somehow filled my justification of why I was using. I was already deep in drugs and using stuff but when my sister was murdered my whole life crumbled, my whole family was shocked and a lot of people moved away and suddenly I was all by myself when she passed. So that was when I hit drugs and alcohol the hardest because it washed the pain off. So for next few years, and we are talking something like 5 to 7 years, I was so deep in drugs and alcohol, but still doing music somehow. I needed to do music – it was some kind of outbreak but I was so fucked up! And I was using my sister to justify all the drugs and alcohol. And now that I am clean and looking back to that, I feel like I had to go through it. At that time I don´t know what I would have done if I wouldn´t have that some kind of (really bad) outlet to self-medicate, to get through the morning process. I´ve lost some moments and years in that time but that was part of „Making My Amends“ song because at that time I could be using crack and if someone would come and tell me „What the hell are you doing, you are killing yourself“, I would tell him „Fuck you, my sister was murdered!“ And that was something that they couldn´t respond to. So I somehow adapted to using that .. I realised that I am so addicted at that point that I am using in my head death of my sister as justification for me to pretty much kill myself. Now I live every day clean and sober and I am trying to live in her honor because there was time when I lost her and I lost myself kind of in the same time. So that is the darkest time I´ve ever been in my entire life. But I am on the other side now. I said sorry to her for what I´ve done and for that I didn´t stayed strong after that, my marriage fell apart and everything went to shit but I kind of rebuilt my whole life from ground and like I said I am stronger than ever now. And I am ready to conquer the world at this point, you know. (Laugh)
You mentioned that you want your songs to be changers for people out there. Have you had something like that when you were down?
Yeah, I think that that is what music is for – to change life, to help you get through and there are definitely a lot of songs that helped me to get through hard times, songs I can identify with and that is probably why I want to do it so much myself. Because I took so much from music myself. Mainly lyrically, songs that are about getting better and getting through hard stuff. There are many songs that helped me through the years from really different genres as well. I´m big on all music and I am taking good stuff from so many different songs and so many different genres that ... you know what, that might sound like cliché but if I can make one person straight, one person to stop doing coke or whatever, my job as musician is done! That´s what I´m here for. It´s about taking and giving back. And I am so happy ho have chance to do that!
And what are you listening to right now?
I listen everything. I mean daily .. on daily basis I listen to .. in rock world, I am huge Shinedown fan. I didn´t know them until we toured with them and I mean personally they are great and very positive. I mean Brent is great singer and very positive guy as well. And he effected my life very positively. I love the feeling they put into music. I love Limp Bizkit, I always had. It´s so fun, so good. And I think that whoever is telling you that he hates Limp Bizkit, they are just lying. A lot of people secretly listen to them but only at home but you know what?! Fuck that, I love them. They are so fun and I think that Wes Borland is one of the most innovative guitar players. They are great overall band. I love P.O.D. as well, they are great band, I´ve seen them recently and it was just mind blowing. The whole band is just one of the most positive Christian people you´d ever meet. They are not those rock stars, in mentality they are just normal people. When it comes to heavier section, Pantera is one of my all time favourites and I listen to them all the time. But if I´d straighten it to three bands, it´s always Shinedown, Pantera, Limp Bizkit, Pantera, Shinedown, Limp Bizkit and so on and so on. (Laugh)
As a musician you get to see a lot of concerts but from a different point of view as a normal people. What was the last concert you´ve been to in a crowd?
The last show I´ve been to in a crowd was here in Las Vegas right when I moved in and it was Lamb of God and Anthrax and it was awesome. They were great as usual. Lamb of God always crushes and Anthrax is one of the old ones, great ones. It was amazing. And it´s cool, you know, because when you are on tour, you see bands you are touring with every night, you catch pieces and parts of the sets here and there but it´s nice to walk in there with tickets and to be there for whole entire show. When you do it for living you don´t do that so often. It was nice when I moved to Vegas four months ago and that was one of the first things we did. It was like remembering how was it to be fan, to stand in the crowd. It was amazing for sure.
Even if a lot of magazines called you supergroup .. and you hate it .. you are still band that is starting from point zero. What would you recommend to bands that are on same position to do to get most from the music industry?
Geez, nowadays it´s tough. There´s no question. Now that I think about it, the most important thing is patience. No matter how great your music and your product is, you have to keep pushing and it would be longer than you expect. It´s different and if you expect it would be like in old days that you record demo, send it to label on Monday and on Tuesday they´ll call you „Hey, we love it, you are signed, here is your money“, well, that does not happen. And a lot of bands are doing independent stuff, which is really smart. You put there your music for free, get your product out there and be patient to get noticed. You have to belive it and it is the main thing. It takes extra long nowadays. Everybody is stealing music and everything is just .. cluster fucked .. you know. If I´d have to say what is most important, it would be to belive in your music. Put it out there, at least some of it, for free and let it get to people and let them see it and well, hope for best. Be patient. Don´t wait something big .. don´t wait to be in Atlantic Records in a week. Believe, push and be patient. Hardest thing is that people nowadays starts band, maybe get out single, get on tour and then brake up and start another band with new name. They don´t let it grow and become something. It looks like everybody wants to be rock star yesterday, but you have to let it become what it is, to grow, you need to let your band become the band ...
We got it all ... if you want to say something to fans, people who don´t know you, haters maybe, whoever, now is your time ...
Well, for the fans – watch the Facebook, check our pages, watch for all that would come. We would be touring as much as we possibly can, hopefully in Europe soon and big thank you for all your support and everything. And haters? Well, they don´t exist. They love us but only secretly. I love them with all my heart. So all good. (Laugh)
Added: Samuel Sámel
Added: 18.04.2017