Thanks to Chris Pacifico and Eli Levin for this…

MI: Where are you now?

TS: We’re playing in Orlando, Florida.

MI: Awesome, how’s the tour going?

TS: It’s been great so far.

MI: You guys have been around for almost twenty years. I’d call you one of those legacy bands. Why do you think you’ve been around so long?

TS: I don’t know. It’s just something that we want to do, you know? We’ve never had a huge commercial success or really been a huge band. We just do it because we like playing shows, and people show up at our shows, and we’re just going to keep playing until people get sick of us.

MI: Mkay.. where do you see yourself in the next 20 years?

TS: In 20 years I’ll be 60, so hopefully I won’t be in an iron lung or in a wheelchair by then. I can see us going another 20 years easily. We might end up sounding like the Grateful Dead, but we’ll still be going.

MI: Yeah, you guys progress! First you had the punk sound, and now you have the blues sound, I call it, like Americana, because between the mix of your style and your lyrical content, you guys are different, completely different than a lot of things… you once said in one of your interviews that you kind of bite off of ZZ Top a little bit, but I don’t think so. You have your own sound.

TS: Yeah, I guess we do. We’re kind of doom Americana, right?

MI: I don’t know. It sounds good to me.

TS: I just made that up, right now.

MI: That’s pretty cool, though.

TS: Or maybe we’re just stoner blues? I don’t know what we are. I’ll go with doom Americana.

MI: DOOM. You’re happier than doom though. You’re chill. My husband said you sound like Entombed except less aggressive, because you take the blues and put it into the metal.

TS: (nonplussed) Like Entombed? What, that one album they did?

MI: I don’t know which one, I’m not an Entombed fan – he said it, because you take the blues and transport it into metal in a way that still keeps the integrity of the blues, but you’re more chill.

TS: Yeah, we’re not doomy and gloomy. I don’t know. I have no idea what we do. We just do it. It keeps constantly changing. There’s definitely a little bit more of a blues influence I think these days. Even though that’s been something that’s been there since the second album, really. But it’s come out a little bit more because the songs have more of a straightforward blues type progression going on, y’know?

MI: Cool. Your lyrical content also.. do you write the lyrics? Are you involved in that at all?

TS: No, Neil writes all the lyrics.

MI: Crazy shit! What is he reading? Amazing lyrics… you guys are completely unique. You guys have your own sound, your own thing, and it’s just…

TS: Well, yeah. The lyrics are definitely out there. There’s a lot that’s open to interpretation, I believe. But yeah, we do totally, luckily, try to have our own sound. Sometimes I just think we sound like a cross between Black Sabbath and Funkadelic.

MI: (laughs) Funkadelic is like one of those 70’s pimpin’ bands, like hip-hop…

TS: A little bit, yeah, George Clinton…

MI: How old are you guys?

TS: I’m 40. And the other guys are rapidly approaching 40 as well.

MI: Oh. That’s probably why you guys are unique – you’re able to take all of those old influences … what do you think of all those younger bands today that kinda fit into the box, do you think it’s an age thing or a generation thing… what do you think?

TS: Just the fact that we’re older and have been on tour for 20 years, we’ve just had a lot of time to hear different kinds of music and to really let that soak in, and to bring it out with our own. We originally started jamming live just because we were sick of playing our own songs and wanted something different, so I guess the whole sound kind of evolved with different types of music that we’d be listening to on tour, that those sounds would gradually creep into the live show.

MI: Is there anything that you listen to now that you thought you’d never listen to or that you’re just kinda surprised that you even like?

TS: You know what I’m actually surprised that I like? I totally missed out on them back in the 90’s. But we played two festivals with Faith No More. I thought they were awesome and I never really listened to them at all. I didn’t even give it a chance. I had no interest in listening to Faith No More.

MI: Really? They’re also kinda groundbreaking. I can see where that would work out. You have the same kinda, well, I don’t want to use the word unique again but you have that same “I ain’t going to fit into the box no matter what”, y’know?

TS: Yeah, I thought they were really great live.

MI: Speaking of jamming out, do you ever go with Zakk Wylde and jam out, because you have a serious reputation as a guitarist in your own right, so do you sit and show each other stuff, or whatever?

TS: You know what? We have been on tour with them for a month, and I have not hung out with him yet, so… he’s really busy, he has to do this whole huge meet and greet thing every day, and then you don’t see him ’til showtime. He’s a really busy guy. So the answer to that would be no.

MI: Alright, so back to jamming… something I noticed is that you guys seem to go pretty natural, you don’t really throw out a lot of effects, you just sound like a good ol’ stoner 70’s band sometimes. So how come? Why does that natural sound appeal to you vs. all of the tools and computer gadgets and everything that they have out there today?

TS: Well, I definitely use effects a lot when we’re jamming, for sure. But as far as that sound goes, as far as the guitar sound goes, I just like a big natural kind of guitar sound which a lot of 70’s amps have, that perfect tone, you know? You can just plug in a guitar, turn the amp up all the way and it sounds great. With the effects and all the gadgets and stuff, that’s something fun for playing around in your bedroom, but I think that once you get into a live situation, you need like a real loud amp as opposed to a big processed tone. That’s just my opinion.

MI: What about it speaks to you? Why? You have 100 bands out there cranking it with all the technical stuff, rocking it with their own thing, but there is something about it that appeals to you, y’know?

TS: It just sounds good. Early on we were into stuff like the Melvins, and stuff like (High on Fire) Matt Pike’s guitar tone kind of influenced me early on. Stuff like the Melvins, Sleep, Wino, the Obsessed and all that. It’s just a natural heavy guitar tone.

MI: So it’s like what you learned with, what you stuck with and what you like.

TS: Exactly.

MI: This is a little strange, but describe to me the anatomy of a jam. How does it work? What’s the feeling? How do you go with it?

TS: Well, with a lot of the songs that we play on this tour, we’ve jammed about a million times, and it’s just constantly changing, really. A lot of the times we’ll kind of like go off on one of the ends of our songs, the drum beat will change a little bit and then next thing you know we’re playing something that we never played before. But one of the main jams we did on this tour was “Cypress Grove” and that’s pretty much how it starts off. We do like the first two chords of that song and then it goes into a drum beat, and then Dan, our bass player will make up some totally different bass line out of the blue. And I’ll follow along with that for a little while, and then solo a little bit, and then we’ll come back into the solo. It’s not really rocket science or anything. There’s lots of 4s, lots of 8s. I mean, mostly with jamming you just have to be conscious of where the one is in the measure, and then just try to phrase it out and the 4/8 bars keep constantly changing, y’know.

MI: Cool! OK, and speaking of changing, you guys are going to be re-issuing a lot of your work in different formats, including vinyl. Why? What’s making you do it?

TS: Well, we just have the opportunity to do it. We’ve been on labels in the past that had absolutely no interest in putting out vinyl on a mass scale. So now that we own our own label and we got back the rights to our three DRT albums, we just have the opportunity to it and it’s something that’ll be cool. Looks cool, looks nice, and we’d figured we’d do it just because we can, because we own the rights to the albums.

MI: Why vinyl?

TS: It just looks cool. It just looks really nice. I mean, I’m not personally a huge vinyl collector, but I think it definitely looks cooler than buying a CD. At this point in the music industry, you may as well buy something with cool artwork as opposed to, I don’t know. You’re probably just going to download it anyway, so if people like it enough to buy it on vinyl then I appreciate that. I don’t know. It just looks awesome and we have the opportunity to do it, so we’re doing it.

MI: Speaking of artwork, I just wanted to know, this is a little random, but how come you chose Arabic style writing for your current logo? Why?

TS: Why did we choose Arabic style lettering for our logo?

MI: Yeah, like you know on the computer when they have these pre-made fonts, they’ll make it look like Hebrew or they’ll make it look like Japanese but it’s really English. So you did yours like Arabic. Was that intentional? Why?

TS: Well that logo was originally from our second album, and it was not supposed to look Arabic. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the cover of our second album, Clutch, it’s just kind of casting a shadow floating there over the moon? It’s not supposed to look Arabic, it’s supposed to look like it’s from outer space.

MI: Well yeah, now that I see it on that background (had Googled the cover artwork) it does look kinda sci-fi.

TS: That being said, our next album is just going to be a cover with – ah, I’m sorry, I was just going to tell a bad joke.

MI: Aw! Come on, tell me!

TS: Aaah it’s just going to be the Palestinian flag…

MI: Yeaah, yeah, wiseass. Go on. And getting into that, are you ever going to go? Would you ever go to Israel? What’s your feelings about that?

TS: Would I go there to play? Yeah, of course. We’d love to play Israel. That would be rad.

MI: That would be rad. So you’r not going to be the type who’s gonna be like (makes gimpy voice) “Raaaaa I don’t wanna go, there’s a war”…none of that shit, right?

TS: Ahh… no. Definitely not. I would love to go there. I’m sure it’s awesome. I figure if Opeth could go play Israel, we can, right?

MI: Yeah, why not? I don’t know… when they look at bands they try to figure out who will bring the most crowd because it costs a lot of money to bring you guys and then they have to charge for tickets, so if they’re not going to get enough of an audience they won’t bring them. I have no idea what you…

TS: Ah, it doesn’t cost that much…

MI: (correlates hooking Clutch up with Yishai of Raven Music and Rockpoint) Hey, I grew up in Jersey – why the hell did you want to write a song about the Pulaski Skyway?

TS; Well, we were recording in NJ at the time… we recorded three of our albums in NJ, in Dover… what’s right next to Dover?

MI: I don’t know… it’s not too close to the city… didn’t you guys do something in Electric Ladyland though?

TS: That was Elephant Riders. That was a long time ago. That was in the 90’s. In Jersey we did Pure Rock Fury, we did Glass Tyrants, mostly I guess in Weehawken and Hoboken.

MI: Hey… you guys are from Maryland and now you live in…North Carolina?

TS: I personally live in West Virginia and the rest of the band lives in Maryland.

MI: I knew it was one of those states. It’s like close to me, I’m in Pittsburgh.

TS: Cool.

MI: Why did you move out there?

TS: The band originally went and got a house to jam in out in West Virginia. It’s really not that far from Maryland. It’s like right on the border of Maryland. It was just considerably cheaper to live there than in Maryland. So we ended up with a house out there, we had a couple of different houses that we jammed in, but everyone ended up moving back to Maryland and I ended up staying in West Virginia. But I’ll probably end up moving back to Maryland soon.

MI: The only thing I know about West Virginia is that really nasty movie (Redemption) where they go “Squeal like a pig” and I didn’t even see it, I just know that line, is it like that or is it nice there?

TS: I would say it’s about half like that.

MI: Cause I remember coming out here the first time from NY, you see everyone has the crosses out here on their front lawn, and like it looks like the KKK is out here ready to burn them. I never saw this, cause I’m from NY. That’s what it’s like there?!

TS: Well, you may see a couple of Confederate flags, but I’ve never seen any KKK activity. However, I will say that I did get on two separate occasions, a flyer for a KKK meeting at my mailbox. It wasn’t actually in my mailbox – they obviously know they aren’t allowed to put anything in the mailbox, but it was like right next to my mailbox. So of course, I didn’t go to that. I would never.

MI: There’s this Israeli band called Aborted, well, they’re not Israeli, they’re Belgian, Israeli, I don’t know what. But there is an Israeli in the band. And the guy just posted this Jerry Springer KKK midget video clip, and you see these little midgets come out in KKK clothes and skull masks, carrying a rope, and it’s like “Dude you can’t even reach the tree, what are you doing?”

(more hooking up with Yishai talk)

TS: Did you come out to the NY or NJ show?

MI: Unfortunately I’m in Pittsburgh now, and I missed you, because the show freaking started at 6:00, and I’m Orthodox, so I don’t roll on Shabbos – I have to wait until three stars are up – I freaking missed you guys, I was so pissed off, you don’t even know. I was like “Who the hell schedules a Saturday night show starting at 6:00?” Because I’m from NY, to me, that’s an affront.

TS: Yeah, some of the shows hit pretty early.

MI: Yeah! So I want to catch you guys – do you have any plans for a headlining tour?

TS: We have nothing mapped out – we have five shows at the end of December, the closest one to you being Cleveland. We’re playing at the House of Blues up in Cleveland with Kylesa. They’re really cool, they just had an album come out today.

MI: Daath also came out today, or yesterday.

TS: Who?

MI: D – A – A – T – H

TS: Oh, I’ve heard of them.

MI: He(Eyal Levi)’s a really good guitarist, he gets into the progressive jazz stuff also? It’s BLACK. You guys are like two different animals. You’re like happy, stoner blues rock and they’re like ROOOooOOOoOOOOOOowr

TS: I definitely prefer the stoner doom side of metal as compared to stuff like that.

MI: What are you listening to now? What’s in your mp3 player (if you have one)?

TS: All of the classic stuff. A bunch of Allman Brothers. This terrible Australian comedy rapper named Shane Skills. He’s awesome. That’s pretty much all I listen to, at least currently.

MI: What, you take a band and kill it until you’re just out of the mood, and then you take another band until you kill that?

TS: Basically.

MI: I do that too.

TS: Yep, that’s the way I do it.

MI: Alright.

TS: See you in Cleveland!

MI: I don’t know where I am the next week. Hey, you never know, maybe I’ll see you in Israel.

TS: That would be awesome. Tell that dude we want to come to Israel.

MI: I shall!