Interview - Brett Campbell of Pallbearer speaks with Mark Derricutt - October 2020

By: Mark Derricutt

Doom metal is not always about sorrow and gloom, but can often be an emotional journey of reflection and healing - Brett Campbell of Arkansas doom metallers Pallbearer talks to Mark Derricutt about their latest album Forgotten Days.

So great to talk to you this morning.

Oh, it was good to talk to you this evening.

So are you currently in Arkansas? That's where you're from?

Yep, I'm from the state. I was born in South Arkansas and then lived in Georgia for a couple of years and then spent my teen years in a suburb of Little Rock called Bryant.
Then I went to college in Conway, which is like 30 minutes north of here. That’s where I met Joe and Devin. So that's where we actually formed the band, but nobody knows where Conway, Arkansas is, people barely even know where Little Rock is so we just say we're from Little Rock, but yeah, I've lived here for a while now.

I know several bands from there, mostly more on the death metal and the things like Soul Embraced, Living Sacrifice, they're the kind of the bands that I grew up with. My doom influences were more Candlemass and the classic kind of doom, traditional doom, and then a coworker introduced me to a whole lot of the stoner doom and then out of nowhere I came across Pallbearer, at least it seemingly came out of nowhere.

It was kind of a mix between the two. It was a warmer, fuzzy kind of guitar tone that was kind of more on that stoner doom, sludgy kind of area, but your vocals were just so totally different than what I imagined that you'd get from a doom band. Kind of light and airy and ethereal and no kind of growls or uggs and ahhh. Was that kind of tone or that sound just natural to you when you were writing songs and thinking?

Yeah, that's just kind of how my voice is, I think more of our influences from like, I mean honestly, there's stuff where we're like straight up trying to do like Beach Boys type stuff , so I think some of our influences come from outside of that realm. Only in recent years have I got better at doing more aggressive, not like growls, but just even like more aggressive singing. I have a very clear sounding singing voice naturally. So that's just the way it worked out, plus that's kind of what we wanted to do anyway so it was a nice coincidence that that just happens to be my natural tone of voice.

It gives the band a nice differentiation point than every other band out there. That's one of the things that I kind of don't like about a lot of the stoner doom bands, which is that they all, after a while, start to sound very similar.

So much of it's just trying to do the Kyuss vocals, it's like, it's cool, but try something else, you know? Kyuss did that almost 30 years ago now so try something new.

The new album, I've been listening to it, Forgotten Days, this is a great record. I remember when the first single dropped and that album cover, the forums that I was in, people were just like, what the heck is this? Do I really want that as a poster or on a jacket or a shirt?

Yeah it would be kind of unusual.

It was like the whole kind of ghostly woman in the family. It was like, well, this is ghostly and weird. Then the video, that psychedelic space journey, I was not really sure what to make of it, but other than "this is awesome".

That's what we're going for, man. We kind of all like to throw people for a loop, you know, it's more fun. I mean, I'd rather people not know what to think then immediately understand what it is, cause to me, that means it's kind of boring or just generic, you know, if you immediately recognize something and you're like, Oh, this is this, this is that. It's like, well, you failed, you failed to be interesting. I think confusion, apprehension, that's kind of what we like, as long as you think it's cool, that's obviously the main goal is for people to enjoy it.

if your initial impression is, what is going on here? I think that's good.

It was interesting cause some of the comments that people were saying in some of the chat rooms I was in, they're like "that old lady, she kind of looks like the old lady from the first album cover", but in a different form and we've got the space journey, so it was kind of conjuring up images of a journey and then reflecting back. Then there's possibly some kind of time travel and weirdness looping backwards and forwards, I understand it's 10 years since the first album or so right.

Almost, the first album, 2012, so pretty close.

You've sung about it and it's been mentioned before, but it's about 10 years since your mother died.

It was Joe's mom.

Joe's mom, right, and part of the album was actually reflecting through and working through some of those feelings that he went through.

Yeah, I think most of, if not all of his songs are in some way, related to that happening or his like reckoning with it, he never really like came to terms with it, I think.
He spent the interim, I mean, she died in 2010, so right around when we put out our first demo. I think he felt like he spent the time since just kind of like running away from it and finding ways to just not deal with it. It was kind of just like this unspoken presence in his life that he never really was able to deal with. I guess he finally found the time of his life that he was able to reflect on it. I think most of his, I think all of his songs are in one way or another related to that.

So yeah, Sorrow And Extinction, our first album, isn't about that, it's more abstract feelings of like mortality. The band was formed under those circumstances, like his mother was dying whenever we started the band so that situation had an effect on the general tone, the feelings that went into the writing of the music, so his lyrical contributions to this album are kind of in a way thematically tied to like the conception of the band in a lot of ways.

So it's kind of like almost full circle. I guess that couldn't, in some respect, go back to my idea of time travel, of looping back to the beginning and dealing with things. I guess if there was ever a year to reflect on everything and deal with it, that's this year, and we've all had plenty of downtime and time to reflect on things, especially without touring.

Yeah, it's been a great year for reflection, there’s not much else to do.

How are you guys as a band and personally, have you been coping through the whole pandemic and stuff? Have lock-downs affected you along the way? I guess you've got the new album out, I don't know how much of that was recorded during downtime...

It was all done last year. Our first day of recording was November 1st of last year. So it's been, it's been finished for almost a year but we had to postpone everything because of obvious reasons, you know, but it was originally going to come out in the middle of the year, like early June or something like that, I think was the original plan in time for us to, you know, hit some of our festivals and hit the road, sounds like a completely different life now, you know, it's like the whole idea of doing festivals and touring, for months on end, that's just gone.
It seems like, how long will it be until anybody can do that kind of stuff again, at least, you know, probably another a year, at least. It all seems so it seems so different now.

I guess that's also even national shows. I mean, we've left our lock-downs and we're all on level one throughout the country so we've got local shows happening again, but no international artists are flying in. I don't think Live Nation are planning on really doing anything until mid to late next year and even then, I guess booking shows is all going to be in the future. It's like, you don't want to book every show on the same day, the same week. So, things are going to have to stagger and slowly come back together.

That's the real kicker cause it's not this like, okay, well it's safe to tour again, like every musician is going to be wanting to tour at the same time and there's only so many places. I mean, hell, like a lot of places are going to shut down because of this stuff, so that's another worry on top of the obvious, I mean we were full-time musicians, so that's how we make our living.

So aside from the fact that the financial fallout of not being able to tour for, I mean, you don't have a job for like two years, three years, how long is this going to go on? Like, I don't have any other, I haven't had a real quote unquote real job in like 10 years, you know?

So it's, my resume don't look great. You know, so I'm hoping I can. I'm open, maybe a pizza delivery or something is hiring, I'm going to have to do something.

Yeah, Uber driver or a.

My car is too old. You have to have a car that was made in the last 10 years. I'm a musician. I'm broke, man. I don't have nice things.

Well, your guitars sound good.

Oh yeah. I've got nice music equipment, but that's it. Man, the only reason I could be a full-time musician is because I live in Arkansas where it's really cheap to live. If I lived in, I mean, there's, I couldn't live anywhere else. I couldn't.

So as a full-time musician, what's actually more beneficial for you. Is it individual shows and going out on the road or Pallbearer or going to play Ozzfest and four or five other festivals, I suspect might actually work out possibly better now given that rather than having conflicts of shows. If you've got the 10 bands going into a day show that's going to the different cities. You're not going to have the conflicts, although you might have multiple stage conflicts, we've got Slipknot, we've got Slayer, we’ve got Judas Priest, and Anthrax, and PallBearer all on the same two days at different venues, so what if it works out better for you guys?

I hadn't thought about that man, that sort of thing might be more of a force in like the upcoming post COVID world. It would, that's a really good point. I wonder if that will be like the bigger package tour type things will be more of a thing. That's interesting. Like a touring festival. I don't know. I hadn't put any thought to that. You know, normally we just tour normal, you know, like the traditional way, two or three bands, and I like that. I mean, it's frustrating, man, because we were hoping that we would get a little more exposure, move up in the world a little bit and get to play longer sets and headline more often at bigger rooms and stuff. That seems like that was a dream for a different world but if we did end up on a big touring festival type situation, it's going to be probably a different story. You know, honestly, you can't really complain, if I can just play any show right now I'd be happy. I'll go play in the Walmart parking lot nearby.

I remember you guys came down to New Zealand in 2017 and I shot that show. I was at the Auckland show at Whammy Bar downstairs in this dark dingy, small little venue. I often think there's no way that you guys are making any money out of the show apart from just being here and having something to play. It’s great for us, but I struggle to see how that's going to be viable. I'm not even sure how it was available before, but in this new world, I'm not sure how that's going to be even more viable.

You'd be surprised, man. We were already playing Australia so flying to New Zealand isn't that much more expensive for plane tickets. Then if you play a good show, hopefully, I mean, I think we made a killing on merch. We sold so much of the stuff. Its just not a big venue and there's not a huge crowd, but I think everybody bought a pretty good deal of stuff so it's not like we're going to be buying a Bugatti or something anytime soon, but if we make any kind of profit on a show, then it's worth it. Part of music is, even if you don't make a killing on every show, there's some shows that kind of make up for it, or you play a festival and make a lot more money.
But being able to play to people around the world is great. Even if, like I say, if we're not making a killing on a show, it's absolutely worth it to go to New Zealand and play there because that's part of just being a musician. You go play for people. Its part of the work and it's part of the social aspect, the community aspect of music, it pulls people together and it's a great way to meet people around the world and I think that's a wonderful thing. I miss being able to see people from everywhere, a huge benefit to being a musician.

I think we're almost out of our allocated time, it's been great talking to you. I guess this is where I normally say it'd be great to see you at the next show when you're down here in a few weeks time, because usually these things are talking about the new tour, but I guess that's kind of all open and not even in a consideration yet. Is it?

Nope. As sad as that is it could be two years before we get down there. I mean, I hope that a miracle happens and there's just like some super effective vaccine that becomes available and we can just carry on like things were back in the day. It feels like a lifetime ago.

Well it's been great talking to you. I've got to make a move now, so I'll let you head on.

Sure thing I'm about to eat dinner here in a second. So it's good timing!

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