You know, Schechter in Yiddish means “butcher?”

The jovial, open-hearted and raging guitar master of two of my most beloved acts let me into his beautiful Method of Groove Studio located in scenic Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY. An hour long interview is to be transcribed.

The ups-and-downs of Life of Agony?

Why he built an awesome studio (with very nice color co-ordination) in seven weeks with his own hands, customers of which include Brand New Sin and Sworn Enemy?

Summer tour with Iron Maiden, Ozzy and Drowning Pool? Mountain goats? The power of positive thinking? Golf?

Kirk Hammett a friend and a brother?

Pete Steele (yimach shmo) a musical messiah?

Wanting to help out kids with cancer?

It’s all in here (well, we didn’t tape the cancer part, but because Joey’s now a father of a very cute ten-month old baby girl (knayna hara), he sees kids that suffer and his heart goes out to ’em so he plans to donate something to St. Jude’s Hospital (this is a beautiful person, this Joey Z. this)…..

FIRST NINE.SOMETHING MINUTES (TIL MY BATTERY DIED WHILE TRANSCRIBING)

JZ: Let’s get down to business then, Aviva!

MI: First I want to tell you a little bit about me.

JZ: Yeh, yeh, go on, I want to hear.

MI: In 1994, I saw you in Newark, NJ in Studio 1. I think it was the first show I saw you, I mean, I’d seen you in L’amour’s.

JZ: Studio 1? Wow. When Keith passed out?

MI: Yes! You guys promised you were gonna come back, but you never did, cuz the place closed down.

JZ: Yeh, he never got medical attention, but we thought he needed it.

MI: He passed out, boom, right in the middle of the floor. Someone picked him up, eventually.

JZ: Yeh, one of the road guys, the tech guys picked him up and took him off stage.

MI: I was sitting right there, and you smiled at me. I was like, “That’s a nice man.”

JZ: Heh, I think it was like 113 degrees, like some kind of crazy number in there.

MI: So I know you all the way back from then! And I know you from L’amours.

JZ: Wow. Those were great shows, too. I heard L’amour’s is coming back once again! By the way, thanks for the necklace. Let’s get that on record. Thank you. It’s like a demon head, or skull head, with fangs.

You can get that right here, people.

MI: It looks good on you. I made the original for my friend because he fixed my computer.

JZ: So ’94 was your first show.

MI: Second! I have the demo, from my old friend in Hackensack, from when Keith still couldn’t sing.

JZ: Oh, my G-d!

MI: It had “Here I Am, Here I Stay< ' on it, and some songs from River Runs Red on it - JZ: Well, Keith probably COULD sing, it's just that he chose to bellow. MI: No, well, he could bellow. And he can bellow now! But back then, he sounded like a dying cat. But now, he's a really good singer. JZ: He's one of my top - he's one of my favorite singers. I would have to say my cousin is my favorite singer. If any voice that can pull emotion out of me - well, he's family so I'm kind of biased - MI: No, me too! Meaning I think he has a lot of emotion in his voice, too. JZ: He really knows how to sing with heart. MI: (giggles) This little guy, belting out with this huge voice like this... JZ: (probably sick of me ragging on his cousin) I feel like, the whole band, we all play with a lot of heart. MI: OK, one more story... Six months before you did the reunion show, I was on the Type O board nagging (drummer) Sal (Abruscato) that you guys need to get back together. People were posting back, "baah, leave Sal alone, blah blah" but then, a few months later, you guys said you were doing a reunion show. I was happy, so happy. But then, you know I'm religious. The tickets went on sale on Shabbos. I couldn't buy them. JZ: Couldn't you get someone else to get them for you? MI: Well yeh, I was friends with Diana from the Type O board at the time, and she tried to get tickets, but they sold out in 20 minutes. JZ: Yeh. They actually sold out in 18 minutes. That was the real number. And when we got that number from our manager, we didn't believe it at the time. We didn't believe it at all, when he told us. None of us expected that! We expected up 'til the last day, maybe, people walking in and it selling out. One show. But when the first show sold out that quick, we had to put a second show right away. And then that one sold out. Unbelievable. MI: It was unbelievable. Well, my non-religious friend had tickets. He would have given me, but I told him, I can't benefit from you breaking Shabbos. My non-jewish friend, she doesn't have any laws on her, so it didn't matter. But him, I couldn't. So every day I was praying, "G-d, please, please give me Life of Agony tickets." Walking down the street, "Please, please gimme tickets!" And then I saw Keith at a show! and I was like, "Yo, can you help me get a ticket, they're going for like $600 on Ebay." Did you know this? Those tickets were on Ebay for $600. JZ: I knew it was a big number, but I didn't know it was $600. MI: Yeh! So I told Keith and he was like, "Sure I'll give you a ticket. For $1000! Ha, ha, ha!" JZ: What? That's what he said to you? Where, where?
Goofin‘.

MI: At Rexplex! (It was the WSOU Birthday Bash, Brand New Sin, Keith Caputo, Clutch and the Dillinger Escape Plan played with other acts back in December 2002). I was like, “Thanks so much.” 😛 And then, Jimmy from (awesome sludge act) Borgo Pass was at an Earl’s Court show, and I told him my story and he was like, “Well, I just happen to have two extra tickets to the Saturday night show. I can’t go, so I’ll give them to you for free.”

JZ: Woooow!

MI: I was like, “There is a G-d!”

JZ: You know something? I just watched a movie the other night. And it had nothing to do with religion. We all have our different beliefs about religion, obviously. But this movie had to do with what you just said. It’s called ‘The Secret”. And there’s nothing wrong with watching it, whether you’re religious or whether you believe in anything because it has nothing to do with religion or G-d. It has everything to do with being grateful for positive things coming your way. And the more you think about what the message is from this movie, it’s more like a documentary, the more you think about positive things and the more you wish for what you want, the closer you become to them. It draws these things in. So it’s not only the G-d above that gives you these things, but it’s your willpower. It’s from within. If you’re giving so much energy into wanting that item or wanting that healing –

MI: Or those Life of Agony tickets –

JZ: The movie will blow you away. You know how, sometimes you find yourself thinking about negative things?

MI: Yep.

JZ: And you get trapped in that whirlwind, and then you notice how bad things will happen? Like you just stubbed your toe, or your car won’t start, or your telephone will break? Once you get into that negative energy and you’re putting that out there, more negativity is attracted to you. So the move says that once you start putting out that positive energy, people recognize it, people want to be next you you, and you’ll notice people treating you a certain way, the movie is killer. It’s an eye-opener. After I watched that movie, I felt different. I just wanted to start doing more things, being more positive, and I have been. I saw it like three weeks ago and I’m still thinking about it. You know, usually you watch a movie and you forget about it the next day. This one made sense. I just want to throw that out there, because it relates to LOA in away. It relates to me, Joey Z., I’m a positive guy, I’ve always been, you know what, we all fall into our whirlwind of negativity, and I’ve been there. I’m a regular human being. I’ve gotten into crap pretty heavily, like the band didn’t do so good, or this happened or that, but this is part of helping, it’s part of like therapy. Music is therapy and the movie is kind of like therapy.

MI: Let me ask you. “River Runs Red” is an album that got me through school, got me through a lot. But…well… it’s negative as hell, brother! I understand what you’re saying, but that album is negative as hell.

JZ: What happens is, that when “River Runs Red” came out, or how it translated, I should say, we were a certain age and a certain age group related to what we were saying. Somehow, that all turned around into a positive message because no longer was a rock band putting themselves on any kind of a pedestal and we weren’t saying that, “We’re different than you, we’re a fucking cool rock band, and who the fuck are you?” We weren’t a rock band like that. We were more like, “We’re one of you, we love music, these are our struggles, you understand what we’re talking about. And we’re sharing realistic true feelings, experiences with people that had the same experiences. Like you. You were able to say, “Wow. These guys go through this shit too.”

MI: To hear people going through similar things, it gives you hope.

JZ: Exactly. The album kind of gave you hope. These words and music keep me living, keeps me breathing.

MI: On the other hand you have lyrics like, “I buried my friend the other day – and I knew some day I’d end up that way.” It’s a mix.

JZ: It’s in between, it’s both sides of the coin.

MI: It’s one of my favorite albums, ever.

JZ: It is the classic LOA album. You know, if you want to call any of our albums classic. There’s a lot of musicians out there that I have a lot of respect for that said to me that this album inspired them. People like Rob from Machine Head. People like David Draiman from Disturbed. David who passed away from Drowning Pool, a good friend of mine. People that told me that that record inspired them. So like wow, I fucking love machine Head. I listen to Machine Head. You go in my truck right now, you open up my CD jacket the first fucking CD you’ll see is Machine Head “Hell Alive”, cause they’re killer. Disturbed,the same thing. A great band. I toured with them, they’re great guys. Drowning Pool, they’re actually coming out to Europe with us and opening up on this European tour with us. That’s going to be killer. So these are guys who I enjoy their music and they’re telling me that my album is a classic. And these guys sold way more albums than I ever did. All of them. All of the bands I’ve mentioned.

MI: When I was in college, and “These Weeds” came out.. I don’t know, I always felt that if they had marketed you better it would have gotten you a whole new audience.

JZ: Yes. You know, I think we were bordering the fine line and I think we kept our… see, what happens in music is that you walk along that edge. And if you just do what pleases you sometimes, it may not be right for the commercial side, but that’s fine. That’s fine for LOA. And yeah, over time, we tried to cross the border, with albums like “Soul Searching Sun” and some songs on “Ugly” that we tried to cross the border with like “Lost at 22”, “Other Side of the River,” you know. But we kept our dignity. I’m not saying that we sold out.

MI: You didn’t sell out!

JZ: No, not at all. But we put our foot over the border and tested the waters, like what if we DID get a little more catchy and what if we did put in more catchy choruses..we tested the waters, and we did that on “Broken Valley” as well.

MI: Yeh, it sounds like you’d been listening to a lot of Velvet Revolver, that album..

JZ: Yeh. We were all very heavily influenced by STP and Velvet Revolver had just come out…we were listening to that record, so obviously…

MI: It still sounded like you. It still had your stamp.

JZ: Well, we stayed true to what inspires us. We’re not sitting there saying, “Alright, we want to write a song that sounds like Velvet Revolver,” but we listen to music, we’re jamming music like over dinner and stuff, writing in Woodstock. We wrote “Broken Valley” in Woodstock. We rented a house. It was totally cool. We lived together, we ate together, it was just a very kind of like, bonding experience. We would play some music, jam some tunes, turn each other on to new music and then we’d eat dinner, and then we’d jam more, and then we’d wake up in the morning and play…

MI: My creative Woodstock vacation.

JZ: Yeh we did. For a month straight. In October of 2004. We wrote the whole “Broken Valley” then. We started in Jersey at LOA Studios in Jersey City and we started there. We realized it was too much distraction. We were driving in traffic to meet up every day. From Brooklyn, from upstate, from Rockland County, so we were all dealing with a lot of bullshit. So we came up with the idea “Let’s get out of here. Let’s all go live together somewhere and finish this record the right way, and we met up in Woodstock. We came up with preproduction there, we worked on the songs a little bit and then we all shot out to LA together. To Sunset Studios. It was a very cool experience looking back on it. The record didn’t do as well as we’d hoped, obviously. We’re not on Epic Records anymore. I think we had a lot of killer tunes on there, a lot of killer songs that – you can’t always point the finger at one – at the label, or at anybody, or at the songs. I think that in reality what happens is, and this is the truth, when a record comes out, either it’s the right time or it’s not. And I just think that that is the bottom line. And you know, I say it every time I release an album. I have six records there. Moderate success with some. Little success with others. And really decent success with a couple. That’s good, but I gotta say that, I haven’t gone gold. None of my records have went gold. So like, you know, do I want a gold record on my wall? Fuck yeh, I do. And that’s the positive energy that I’m putting out there. So that hopefully, the next record that I do, with whatever it is, whether it’s LOA or a new project, Carnivore or whatever I’m doing, hopefully….

MI: Wuh. Carnivore.

JZ: We’ll get into that…

(to be continued) 29.4.07