Tremonti on The Jasta Show podcast (Great In Depth Interview

[Jaredr24]

Mark was recently on a podcast with the singer for Hatebreed talking about a whole bunch of things really in depth and some things he's never talked about. He talks about his writing process, about the Tremonti crew, as well as the future of AB and also the state of Creed. Great interview!

Interview starts at 8:22

https://soundcloud.com/jameyjasta/episo ... k-tremonti

[AllC392Was]

Lots of info on this one... LOTS

[Jaredr24]

I never knew how his writing process actually was until this. I can't believe he can just go on his computer and look for a chorus in the key of D and have multiple options. Its like when he writes he's just piecing together a puzzle.

[Fish Tacos]

Awesome interview. Love how natural it flows without Q A Q A. Looks like we can put cookie monster vocals to bed after this one. Would love to get my hands on his laptop's library...

It was interesting to hear that they're still paying off the Wind-Up buyout. I would have expected with all their net worth that they wouldn't have set up a payment plan. From what I heard they had to buyout the remaining 4 albums from their 7 album contract. I can definitely see why they wanted to do Full Circle now.

[Them Bones]

Piece by piece like a puzzle, as opposed to full songs on Creed, ODR and Blackbird. No wonder most of the new songs lack feel.

[Jaredr24]

I didn't know how bad that whole Wind-Up contract buyout was either. AB could be doing so much better financial if it wasn't for the debt of that buyout looming over them.

[Ryan]

Piece by piece like a puzzle, as opposed to full songs on Creed, ODR and Blackbird. No wonder most of the new songs lack feel.

He said he's always written this way though. So I take it as even those songs are piece by piece.

[Andy92]

I always assumed that was his normal writing method as well. He lost that tape recorder years ago with ideas on it. I assumed he had lots of individual parts on his tape recorder, and now he uses his computer to store the ideas instead. Not sure where the idea came from that Mark just started writing this way over the past 5-10 years.

[Them Bones]

Piece by piece like a puzzle, as opposed to full songs on Creed, ODR and Blackbird. No wonder most of the new songs lack feel.

He said he's always written this way though. So I take it as even those songs are piece by piece.

You must be composing with Mark back in the Creed days.


Mark had clearly always suggested that he was a songwriter first. He was writing songs from the mindset of a songwriter cuz his technical guitar skills were limited. You can hear it well over his earlier work. The songs connected better, they would flow better(its subjective I guess). For the newer material, I've seen a lot of die hard AB fans admit that the flow of the songs could be better and well connected. I remember Mark suggesting how he would write full guitar parts around an initial idea(which could be a chorus riff, verse riff, verse melody or chorus melody). He'd design the entire song structure around a basic idea taking inputs from the rest of the band. Am sure he was jumbling ideas up, but you can very easily tell with the way the older songs flow that they were written as complete songs for the most part. These days its clear, random riffs in the same key are picked out of saved folders of 100s of riffs and jumbled to make into a song. And you can hear the disconnection. He is more of a guitar player these days, its obvious he is recording millions of riffs every month. "Progressive" is an over used word to make nonsense music sound "cool". AB/Tremonti, nothing progressive about these bands in the slightest. Porcupine Tree, now thats progressive.

But lets not start over this, its subjective. I remember him discussing a different approach to writing during his Creed days. Times change.

[Fish Tacos]

Don't forget though that prior to Blackbird, Tremonti wrote most of the songs by himself and he likely had less material to work with. I'll bet he would work against a riff over and over and play back the session on his cassette player and say "Hey, wait, what was that? That sounded good" and work with it until it became a bridge or chorus. These days, he has a much larger library, and he also gets pieces that Myles writes.

[Ryan]

Piece by piece like a puzzle, as opposed to full songs on Creed, ODR and Blackbird. No wonder most of the new songs lack feel.

He said he's always written this way though. So I take it as even those songs are piece by piece.

You must be composing with Mark back in the Creed days.


Mark had clearly always suggested that he was a songwriter first. He was writing songs from the mindset of a songwriter cuz his technical guitar skills were limited. You can hear it well over his earlier work. The songs connected better, they would flow better(its subjective I guess). For the newer material, I've seen a lot of die hard AB fans admit that the flow of the songs could be better and well connected. I remember Mark suggesting how he would write full guitar parts around an initial idea(which could be a chorus riff, verse riff, verse melody or chorus melody). He'd design the entire song structure around a basic idea taking inputs from the rest of the band. Am sure he was jumbling ideas up, but you can very easily tell with the way the older songs flow that they were written as complete songs for the most part. These days its clear, random riffs in the same key are picked out of saved folders of 100s of riffs and jumbled to make into a song. And you can hear the disconnection. He is more of a guitar player these days, its obvious he is recording millions of riffs every month. "Progressive" is an over used word to make nonsense music sound "cool". AB/Tremonti, nothing progressive about these bands in the slightest. Porcupine Tree, now thats progressive.

But lets not start over this, its subjective. I remember him discussing a different approach to writing during his Creed days. Times change.

Yeah, that must be it.

Sorry, you're right...as always, so let's just drop it.

He said he's written the same way since he was a kid and then explains how he does it. I don't understand how that can be subjective to you and you can not understand that.

[Andy92]

He needs a reason to justify why he likes Mark's older work more, and he's said this enough over the years that he believes it now.

[Them Bones]

Sure. Am sure Mark also used to love soloing since childhood and there are no recorded interviews where he has suggested he is not into solos and that solos are overrated. Am making all of it up.

[anguyen92]

Hmmm, something around 37:15 is really interesting, regarding the whole "Fortress being somewhat undertoured," where the Hatebreed guy said that he could do a 12 week tour with his band, but he would be miserable for 8 of those weeks, because he would miss spending time with his family while he is gone. Naturally, Mark feels the same way.

[chtimixeur]

Awesome interview indeed.
That's one of the first times where I hear Mark actually having a conversation, instead of reciting the same answers.
The part about Stapp around the 35th minute mark is also very interesting.

[abw1987]

Wow, I was actually blown away by this podcast. I feel like I've actually met the real Mark for the first time. In most interviews he's asked the usual questions, and whether it's the repetition or his introversion/shyness, his answers always seem canned. Here it's like he's having a conversation with a close friend, so he's a lot more relaxed and loose with his answers. It's great to hear him talk to someone who's passionate about hard rock and metal, rather than most interviewers whose jobs require them to be more like generalists. Great stuff throughout... I'd love to hear more like this going forward.

[chtimixeur]

So would I.
By the way, I guess it's also the first time he's kinda implied Slash was taking Myles away from AB a bit too much.

[Timotheus]

I loved the part about the songwriting police

[austin.]

Can't fast forward on iPhone. What's he say about Stapp?

[axlar]

Nice laid back interview.. Felt more like two friends chatting, though some questions seemed to come out of the blue.. It sure is delighting some one is interviewing with actual knowledge of the music world, which I think is the reason for the laid back feel of this interview.