The Used

Before The Used took the stage as part of third annual Taste Of Chaos tour, bassist Jeph Howard took the time to join me at a grand piano in the basement of the venue and talk to me about the tour, the upcoming record (Lies For The Liars – May 22nd), their videos and their drummer situation. Thanks a lot to Jeph for talking to me again and to Laura for setting it all up.

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Bobby: Starting with the basics, this is the second last show for the The Taste Of Chaos, how has the tour been?

Jeph: The tour has been awesome. It’s a lot different from the first one but not a bad different; just a good different. They both have their good qualities about them and this one has been one of the funnest tours we’ve been on in years. The mood, as far as the band goes, this is the best mood I’ve ever seen all of us in together at one time. It’s great. We feel stronger than we ever have, we feel better than we ever have, we feel more ready for whatever.

Bobby: Has there been any really memorable moment from the tour or just overall good?

Jeph: You know, I have to say that there’s a couple shows that, to me, stuck out as the best shows that we’ve played in years. The Toronto show; that was incredible, the vibe, everything about it. The kids were incredible. New York show. All the places that people always scare you about like “you better play good here, this one really counts.” But we take every show like “that’s the show that’s going to be the best show on the tour.” We try to do it that way. But lucky enough, the best ones were the biggest places. New York, California, Detroit, even home in Utah, that was a great show and like I said, Toronto. Last night was awesome. Oh, where was it last night? I can’t remember actually… It was one of the smaller shows, it was only like two thousand, twenty-five hundred kids.

Bobby: Was it in Saskatchewan?

Jeph: Yes, it was. Saskatoon. The crowd was crazy. Every kid there was just happy to be there and ready for the show and just excited about it. It was awesome.

Bobby: Like you just said you were on Taste Of Chaos two years ago, you’re on it this year and I’m assuming you’ll do it again in future years. You said that there were different qualities both times you were on it, if you could change one thing about Taste Of Chaos for future years, what would you change about it?

Jeph: I wouldn’t schedule so many shows together. Some of the shows are five in a row and back in the day when we first started out we used to play months in a row which is cool for everybody in the band except for singers. You can’t scream and sing that much for a month and not let your voice get fucked up. Now Bert’s voice has kind of gone through all the rip aparts, you know what I mean? His voice is a little weak right now because we haven’t been touring for a while, so playing five or six in a row, it just kind of rips on his voice. To me, it’s nicer when he’s ready for the show and he’s more prepared. When he’s like “alright, I can do this. I know I can do this.” It’s all about him being confident. Even when he thinks his voice sounds bad, it sounds great. I think it sounds fucking awesome but I’d rather him be confident about it.

Bobby: You guys kicked off the inaugural tour for this, is it cool seeing it becoming a yearly event now three years later?

Jeph: It’s awesome. We kind of wanted to start a winter Warped tour and that’s kind of what it turned out to be. Warped Tour’s cool and all but it’s outside in the sun and that’s no fun. Watching bands outside is not like watching a real concert – unless it’s like outside at night, that’s a totally different thing. You need lights, you know what I mean? You need like a real show. Going to see bands in the daytime when it’s dirty and sunny and everybody’s too hot to really care what’s going on – that’s kind of a bummer. At least for me, that’s kind of a bummer. It’s just not the real experience of going to a concert. So this is like the same kind of thing as Warped Tour but with all the fun stuff added back to it.

Bobby: Last year it was announced that Branden was no longer the drummer for The Used. Was that a long time coming or more a sudden thing?

Jeph: It really is what it is. We kind of all felt like we were going in different directions. So it sort of just worked out that way at the time right before this record. Luckily enough, we had our friend Dan who is a friend of ours, he’s played in bands that we’ve played with before, we took his bands on tour with us before and he’s a really good friend of ours and actually one of the better drummers that we’ve ever known and being able to play with him now and have him in our band now is like a dream come true.

Bobby: Okay, so now is Dan the official Used drummer?

Jeph: Hell yeah.

Bobby: Okay, ‘cause last I heard it was still up in the air.

Jeph: Dan is [the new drummer]. Dan’s a fucking awesome genius. He brings so much to our band as far as personality and caring, just so much to our band. He makes us feel stronger than we ever have.

Bobby: So it’s a lot of fun touring with him now?

Jeph: Oh yeah, it’s great.

Bobby: You also had Dean Butterworth of Good Charlotte record drums on the upcoming record, how was that? What was it like working with him?

Jeph: It was cool because in the studio we had two drummers. We had Dean and we had Dan. A lot of the stuff we would write with Dan and the stuff that we didn’t write with Dan we would write with Dean, you know what I mean? So we had the choice either way. Some songs would be better with Dan, some songs would be better with Dean. Dan didn’t actually record on the record but he wrote a lot of the drum parts and a lot of the songs came through jamming through Dan. A bunch of the b-sides, Dan recorded like four b-sides I think. It just worked out that none of them made it on the record which kind of sucks for him because he put so much time into it. But things happen for a reason.

Bobby: How did you get in touch with Dean? How did you end up getting him in the studio to record the drums with you?

Jeph: He’s really good friends with John Feldman.

Bobby: Did not having Branden really affect the writing process? Like you said you had two different drummers writing, did that have a big effect?

Jeph: It definitely affected it because he was a member from the beginning. It really just made things different, that’s all it really did. I wouldn’t say it affected it bad at all, not at all; it just made it different which is a good thing. It’s good to have a change every once in a while.

Bobby: So your new album, “Lies For The Liars”, comes out May 22nd. Can you tell us anything about it? Other than you had two drummers.

Jeph: It’s a fucking rock record. We wrote forty songs and we ended up recording twenty of them. We’re only putting eleven of them on this record which means we have nine other songs that didn’t make it. It’s not because they’re bad songs, actually, half of those nine songs I like fucking more than anything we’ve ever done. Same with the record. Half of the record songs I like more than anything we’ve ever done. The rest sort of fit the vibe as the record goes, you know what I mean? The songs that didn’t make the record didn’t really fit the vibe and we didn’t want clashing songs, so it was sort of hard. We didn’t want clashing songs that sort of felt weird going into each other. So it worked out. What songs went on the record were the songs that were supposed to go on the record. I think it’s the best thing we’ve ever done, everyone agrees. We give it to our crew to listen to, like “tell us, give us thoughts.” Because our crew’s our family. Like “crew” to me seems like a bad word. They’re more than that to us, they mean everything to us. Their opinions, everything about it. If it wasn’t…I’m skipping over to our crew, but if it wasn’t for our crew, we would sound horrible. We wouldn’t sound good live. It matters so much, all the guys behind the scenes that are making everything perfect.

Bobby: Without them, everything just falls apart.

Jeph: It would be trash. You know what I mean? I don’t know, I have respect for all of our crew, more respect than I can even say.

Bobby: Like you said you had nine songs that didn’t make the album. I’ve read that you have plans to release the nine songs on two EPs, one in August and one in December. Is that true?

Jeph: That’s the plan right now.

Bobby: When will we know for sure? Like do you have any other information on it or is it just a plan right now?

Jeph: It’s just a plan right now. First comes first is just May 22nd, and then…Wait till you see the artwork for this record, it’s the most genius artwork I’ve ever seen. I don’t mean that cocky at all. I mean that confident. Alex Pardee, he did the artwork again. He did the last record artwork and the DVD artwork. This is a step beyond anything he’s ever done before into like a whole new world that I can’t even describe how awesome this artwork is. It’s worth buying the CD just for the artwork. If I saw it on the shelf, I would buy it just for that.

Bobby: Yeah, a lot of times you can get a CD and the artwork can make it so much better. Although, I remember in “In Love And Death” there was a typo in it. Will there be any more typos in this artwork?

Jeph: Where was there a typo?

Bobby: Oh, I forget what song it is, but you spell it with a “ph” on the back cover and a “f” in the booklet. (** The song I’m referring to is “Lunacy Fringe” which is spelt “Lunacy Phringe” in the booklet. **)

Jeph: Really? For what?

Bobby: Just a song title. I can’t remember what song it is though.

Jeph: Oh cool. I bet it’s just one of those things that got loss because Bert gives the lyrics to Alex and then Alex gets the lyrics from there and then the label looks over the lyrics – just one of those things so that the label sees what’s going on. When the lyrics are getting written in the book we could still be in the studio and Bert could still be writing the song and so when they get the final, final version – because they get like six different drafts of the lyrics probably – he probably just forget to change one of them or something. It’s cool that you noticed that though.

>Bobby: You said the artwork is cool. What is the theme of the artwork and does it go hand-in-hand with the lyrical theme of the album? I was going to ask what the lyrical theme of the album is going to be.

Jeph: I think it’s more pointing fingers back at yourself, less “all of you.” It’s more Bert opening up more than he ever has. Bert has a talent for lyrics and coming up with great poetry and stuff like that; and the way he comes about it he can just kind of keep it open so people can take it the way they want to take it. Which, to me, that’s really important. We could write a song about this piano right now and how sad we are that it’s out of tune but to somebody else it could be about their mother that they haven’t seen in like ten years and they had a fight, something weird like that. But it matters more that that person took it as their mother. It doesn’t matter that Bert wrote about a piano or something like that. The thing is though that Bert’s not writing about pianos. He’s writing about real emotional problems and things that have happened to him. Lyrically, this record is the biggest step forward, as far as Bert goes, that I’ve ever seen. Like just being around all of it and getting the lyrics and fitting it together with what I know about his life is just really cool for me.

Bobby: Other than Dean, did you have any guest appearances on the record?

Jeph: We were supposed to. There’s this guy named Cage, he’s a hip-hop dude. He’s one of the fucking awesomemest rappers, like he’s awesome. We were supposed to do a song with him and we were supposed to have him on the record a couple different times and shit got fucked up and at the last minute there was just no time. We were running out of time. He lives in New York and we were in L.A. recording, we weren’t living there, we were just recording there, and it’s like across [the country], you know what I mean? So it’s just like “fuuuuccck”. We couldn’t get which song to have him work on then we were running out of time and it just kind of ended up that it didn’t work out which bums me out a lot because I would have loved to have him on it.

Bobby: The first single, “The Bird & The Worm”, throughout it all there’s a lot of hidden effects like violin, creaking doors, and barely audible whispers. Will there be lots of little effects hidden throughout the entire album?

Jeph: There’s always that stuff. There’s always background stuff that you just kind of notice, you have to put on headphones for it but every song we’ve ever done always has hidden background shit in it. There’s like stuff of just Bert talking about things that could go along with the song, you know what I mean, that’s really hidden in there but it just adds this vibe to it. Yeah, this record’s gonna be awesome. We just did a video for “The Bird & The Worm” too actually.

Bobby: Yeah, Dixon was just saying that but there was actually a rumor that Zack Snyder, the director of 300, was going to write a storyline for “The Bird & The Worm.” Did he?

Jeph: I think he did. He wrote a treatment. But we ended up going with somebody else. Someone from 300 was actually editing “Bird & The Worm” though, so it ended up that somebody from that film was actually working on that somehow. I can’t remember who but I didn’t actually realize that until ten minutes ago when somebody else said something about that. I was like “oh, right on!” But we went with a director, her name’s Lisa Mann and she’s a fucking genius. She’s a genius, like I don’t know why she’s not doing bigger stuff right now. She should be in the movies, that’s what she should be doing. But the reason we went with her is that we watch some of her videos, she’s out of Toronto. She’s done a Jackalope, that band before, and she’s done some other band’s videos before. We flew her out, we were in New Orleans, we flew her out for a day and we just hung out all day and we just talked. We were just like “we want you to do the treatment and we want you to do the video but first we just want to meet you and for you to get a vibe of what kind of people we are and where we’re coming from so you can see from there.” I think it’s the best thing we’ve ever done. A lot of our videos don’t turn out really well; we have bad luck with videos, pretty bad luck.

Bobby: The “All That I’ve Got Video” is amazing though.

Jeph: That one worked out, but it was supposed to be a lot better, but it kind of got fucked up still, it was supposed to be a lot better.

Bobby: It still turned out pretty good.

Jeph: It still turned out pretty good. That’s the only good, well, “Buried Myself Alive” is alright too. But things happen and they get fucked up. But this video – perfect. It’s gonna be the best video we’ve ever, ever done. Again, I don’t mean that cocky at all. Not at all. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, the vibe, the energy, the energy everybody had… Bert, like his parts, I wouldn’t be surprised if he started doing some acting in the future because of this. He just has that kind of energy, like the way he can do things and the way he can actually change himself like that. It’s gonna be really cool. I’m really excited about it.

Bobby: When is it going to be released? When are we going to see it?

Jeph: Pretty soon. We just filmed it like two days ago. We just finished but it should be ready for people to see in like three weeks, maybe less than that.

Bobby: I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Jeph: It’s gonna be cool. If it turns out, like the editing is what really matters and the guy that’s editing it is like a genius, so I think we’re pretty set.

Bobby: In March you guys released “Berth”, your second CD/DVD combo. What made you release another CD/DVD combo? I mean, you have two CDs out and two DVDs. Will you release another DVD once “Lies for the Liars” is out?

Jeph: Yep. Most of the DVDs are just kind of thank yous. The second one is more of a thank you to Canadian fans actually because Vancouver is where we filmed it. Every time we come here we’ve gotten lots of love from everybody and it’s one of those things that’s like “let’s film a live concert here and then put it out and give back to people.” We actually had a thing that we were going to do that was “a day in the life of,” so cameras followed each person around for a whole day. We had problems though. One of the dudes that had footage disappeared. Did you hear about that? Nobody’s seen him since still.

Bobby: That delayed it for like a year right?

Jeph: It delayed it for a while yeah. But instead we were like “fuck it. We have a bunch of good footage that is better than that.” The shit that we had that was saved up from our friend who’s a videographer was better than all that footage combined. I think it’s a more personal DVD than the first one. The first one is kind of getting to know us as a band and where we came from and this one is more like “here’s who we are, this is it, this is what we do. We’re just people.”

Bobby: What made you pick Vancouver to film the live concert?

Jeph: It was either Vancouver, I think, or Toronto is what we were shooting for and Vancouver just had a better… the room sounded better. So it was like “let’s film it in that room because it’s gonna sound better and it will probably look better” because of the angles and everything they wanted to get with the cameras. So it was more of a default because of that.

Bobby: Okay, I guess just one more question. When you were growing up, whose posted did you have on your wall?

Jeph: It was probably Nintendo Power posters that I had on my walls *laughs* I’m not kidding. I had a lot of Nintendo Power posters. What bands did I have? I definitely had Green Day posters. I’m gonna say Weezer poster. I had the Blue Album poster, I know I had that. I don’t know. It’s hard to remember. I can’t really remember, it’s mostly Nintendo posters though.

Bobby: Nintendo’s always good. My friends just downloaded these emulators for their laptops so they have every single Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Sega games ever released.

Jeph: Oh yeah, I had that for a while too.

Bobby: So, suffice to say they’re failing a lot of their classes right now…

Jeph: But it’s worth it. It’s worth it.

Bobby: I guess that’s about it. Thanks a lot. Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Jeph: This year is gonna rock for The Used. I know it. We’ve got so much coming out, we’ve got so much that we’re gonna do and we’re not afraid to do it this year.