CLUTCH, the institution in heavy swingin' blues rock have been around since 1991. Nine albums and uncountable shows in their luggage, has made the Maryland quartet one of the most appreciated and consistent in their genre – even in northern Europe. CLUTCH shows in my home town Göteborg, Sweden, has been sold out every time for as long as I can remember. When CLUTCH came to play at local rock club Sticky Fingers on July 19:th – the only Swedish date on this leg of the tour – I jumped on their tour bus and had a nice chat with CLUTCH's laid back drummer Jean-Paul Gaster.

You’ve just started a new leg of the ongoing tour?
– Right. We started about four days ago. Prior to that, we were at home for about three weeks for some time off.

And now, we’re doing three more European shows before going back to the US?
– Yeah, we do Greece, then two shows in Italy, then we have one last one in London at the High Voltage festival.

…and then you’re touring Canada and the US throughout September to October. Does the tour end there?
– The tour never ends! (laughs) We’ll take some time off and then we might do some shows after Christmas. But for us, it’s not really about “end of the record”-cycle and then we start another record cycle. We never really operated that way. We try to write music the entire time, some times we’re better at that than other times, but we try to always be looking for the next record, but we never think of it as “this is the end of the ‘Strange Cousins From the West’ tour”.

The latest album “Strange Cousins From the West” was released a year ago. Is there a new album cookin’?
– We have some new riffs that we are putting together, we’ll also be recording some acoustic songs when we go home – that’s gonna be pretty fun! We recently got the chance to play at the Bonnaroo, which is a big festival in the States, and it’s a big deal because the States doesn’t really have many big festivals, and Bonnaroo is a really great one… so they asked us to do something special there, where we would play on a smaller stage – in addition to the regular show – and maybe we could do something more intimate. We thought about it and we figured “let’s try some songs in an acoustic way”, but at the some time we didn’t want to just play the songs with acoustic guitars because that’s pretty boring for us, so we kind of reworked it a little bit and thought about the dynamics that would be involved in making these things acoustic. It’s gonna be good – I think we’re gonna record those in September, and I don’t think it’s gonna be a full album worth of stuff, but there will be a few songs…

…so it’s all reworked previously recorded songs – not newly written ones?
– No, it’s reworked stuff, and maybe some covers too.

Have you decided on which producer to use on the next album?
– No,  we haven’t really thought about that much at all. We really need to get more music together and get a better idea of which direction we’re gonna go. This acoustic thing we’re doing now is becoming a little bit of a side track, an interesting experiment, so there will be a reaction to that and that’s what’s gonna be the next record. What direction it’s gonna go in, I don’t know.

Neil’s style of lyric writing is very much like storytelling. Where does his inspiration come from?
– Well, luckily, Neil writes all of our lyrics. My lyrics would’ve been terrible! (laughs) And Neil is really good at doing that. I think the interesting thing about Neil’s words is that they’re full of images, so you can close your eyes and listen to the riffs and your hear these words that he puts against these riffs and it makes for an odd pairing some times, and that’s what makes them interesting. There’s so many visuals happening you know, that’s what I can say about ‘em… I’m glad it’s not my job. (laughs)

You released “Strange Cousins…” on your own label, Weathermaker. And from what I understand, the label was started because the band got fed up with a struggle too many with your older labels. What’s it like being self-employed in the music business?
– It’s fantastic. It’s really great! Running a label on our own really takes a bit weight off our shoulders. Pretty much for the entire life of the band, there’s always been a struggle with labels, from the very, very beginning and up through the time with DRT. There was fights with them whether you could even put a record out, what direction the records needs to be in, what kind of studio you should record in, how many it’s going to sell, you know. All these things that don’t really have very much to do with making music. So, when you can take that out of the picture, it makes everything we do so much easier. It really makes it a lot more fun. We were having fun before, but now we’re really having fun!

The guy who’s the label manager at Weathermaker, was involved in DRT as well, right?
– He was. He worked at Atlantic as well. Jon Nardachone is a guy we have known for about 15 years, and we first met him when he was working at Atlantic. And he was actually instrumental in getting our first, self-titled album out – at the time it was released on East West. This is getting complicated… It was released on East West, which was a division of Atlantic. And as soon as that album came out, it was dead in the water, literally within a week, and our A & R rep was fired. And John, who was head of rock radio at Atlantic said, “look, I want to adopt this record and put it under Atlantic”, and that’s how we ended up signing to Atlantic. We were sort of adopted from a different branch of that company.  So he worked there for a while, we ended up leaving Atlantic, and John’s one of the few people that really is a music fan, and he really understands the band, and he’s a champion of it – he really feels it.

So, we went to DRT and they needed a radio guy, and coincidently, Jon Nardachone was out of a job, so he worked – again – with Clutch.  And now we have him running Weathermaker and it’s fantastic. He knows where we are coming from and he’s very realistic about the number of records we’re trying to sell here. You know, when you’re on a label like Atlantic, you have to sell like a quarter of a million for they to even look at you. So, he knows what kind of numbers we’re talking about, we don’t sell that many records, he gets excited about the ones we do sell.

How much is a typical sales figure for a Clutch album anyway?
– Uhm, the full length albums have all sold at least 100,000 each. “Strange Cousins..” are not there yet, but it will be. They all sell very regularly and very slowly, which is a cool thing about this band. It’s not an “over night success story”.

And all the legal hoopla with previous labels – is it all sorted out now?
– It’s sorted out now, it’s done with. Lawsuits are no fun at all – they are draining mentally and financially. But sometimes, that’s the only way you can do anything, you have to take matters into your own hands. It was a long struggle, but it was a great feeling to get those albums back, and being able to release them on out own label is pretty great.

Does the band own all publishing rights to the old albums now then?
– Not the ones that were released on major labels, pretty much up through “Pure Rock Fury” (2001), those are owned by major labels and I don’t see them getting rid of those records any time soon. Those are records that sell like 300 copies a week in the States. That’s 3,000 dollars a week – do the math…

And the distribution seems better now as well?
– Yeah. I think we made some good choices recently…

Clutch has played in Gothenburg several times (and all shows have been sold out). Did you have a chance to see the city?
– Yeah, actually we got into the city late last night, and I walked around down by the water, checked out the old ships and had some coffee – it was good!

So what are you listening to in the tour bus?
– Well, I don’t really listen to any heavy stuff. I listen to THE METERS, John Coltrane, Elvin Jones, Steely Dan, Jimi Hendrix, King Tubby. Stuff like that. Groove stuff, jazz stuff…

And as a drummer, who’s your main influences?
– As far as drummers go, for sure, Elvin Jones – one of my very favorite drummers in the world – for a lot of reasons. He was a very versatile player. He was a jazz drummer, but so much more than that. He really brought his own spirit, his own energy to the drums, and consequently changed the way people looked at the drums. And by the same token you had Tony Williams, who was doing a completely different approach, but he was equally as influential in drums, you know. These happened in the 60:ies, and for me, it was an interesting time because you had a lot of transition happening. There was jazz guys playing rock, there was rock guys who were trying to play jazz… and there was a lot of innovations that happened in drums throughout the 60:ies and it’s not just jazz drummers – you had rock drummers like, say Buddy Miles, for BAND OF GYPSYS, he had a very different way of playing than Mitch Mitchell did. I think that the energy that he brought to Jimi Hendrix’s rock music was pretty outstanding, and then you had guys like John Bonham, changing the face of drums… Ginger Baker and all those guys.

But I listen to a lot of older stuff too. I listen to a lot of New Orleans, second line marches and things like that – Zutty Singleton, he’s an old New Orleans drummer. That’s really where the drums started and you gotta pay attention to that stuff.

When you’re writing new songs, do they come together in jam sessions?
– Yeah! Some times it starts just out of the blue. Sometimes somebody will bring a riff over. Neil’s pretty good at coming over with stuff that sounds like a full song. He’ll do that a lot. So, it happens in a lot of ways. Sometimes it will be something that I was practicing that morning, some kind of concept, and for me the trick is to try to make the practice stuff into music. Because it’s great to sit there and shred, playing all your rudiments and stuff, but you gotta make it music. Oftentimes it will just be an experiment, like a concept I’ve been working on and I’ll just throw it out there and something will happen with that. It’s a very organic thing. There is no set way that it happens.

How do think you have developed as a drummer through the years?
– Well, hopefully, I have a better sense of tempo, and I think I’m a lot more cognizant of the quarter note these days – quarter note is king! So, I think about that a lot. I think about clave, 2–2 patterns and 2–3 patterns. These rhythms are prevalent throughout rock music, and sometimes it’s almost subliminal and you don’t really hear it. But I think about these kinds of phrasings a little more than I used to. I practice all the time and hopefully I’m getting a bit better. I still don’t know how to play the drums yet, but I hope to, one day. (laughs)

So, you practice regularly, even on tour?
– Yeah, I practice on a pad, almost constantly. For me it’s fun, I enjoy practicing. It’s important to me to challenge myself and try to always re-evaluate the way I play. And at the same time, this is a blessing. What I do here is very special, and I don’t take it for granted. There’s nothing worse than seeing guys that just don’t do anything all day, just sitting on the tour bus – they don’t even think about music, they don’t even listen to music, you know. They play video games all day. You know, I play drums man!

Are there any Swedish bands that you like in particular?
– Sure, good friends of us are in a band called KAMCHATKA. We’ve done a lot of shows with those guys. They are from Varberg. [They are) easily some of the finest players I’ve ever known. Thomas Andersson, he also plays guitar in KING HOBO, which is a project that I do together with Per Wiberg from OPETH. So, Per plays keyboards in this band. Thomas plays guitar, and a guy called Ulf Rockis from Stockholm plays bass. He also plays with SKY HIGH (Clas Yngström) and he’s kind of a session-guy, he’s very busy.

Sweden has great musicians! OPETH is great, we did shows with WITCHCRAFT – good band, GRAVEYARD I really like a lot – yeah, you’ve got some good bands here!

Yeah, we really do! Thanks for talking to us and good luck with the rest of the tour and all.
– Cool! We appreciate it, thanks man!

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