Lajon Witherspoon of Sevendust

Before their New Year’s Eve shows at home in Atlanta’s Masquerade, QRO talked with Lajon Williams of Sevendust....
Lajon Williams of Sevendust : Q&A

Lajon Williams of Sevendust : Q&A

Before their New Year’s Eve shows at home in Atlanta’s Masquerade, QRO talked with Lajon Witherspoon of Sevendust. In the conversation, the singer discussed the upcoming shows & spring tour, relearning songs, new record All I See Is War, getting back to real life, keeping it all fresh, never thinking he’d still be doing this, going “Home”, and more…

 

 

QRO: How did this set of three New Year’s Eve shows come about?

Lajon Witherspoon: We got a call from Masquerade, the people in Atlanta, and said they wanted us to come down and do the three shows, and we thought, ‘What a good idea.’ Maybe we thought that might be too many shows, but somehow it made sense to do two nights of deep cuts, and then have a day off, and then go into the New Year’s with the Home album.

It’s gonna be a great time. All the family is get to be there, we’ll all stay in houses, and have a good time.

QRO: Do you feel any extra pressure, playing in front of a hometown crowd? Like you said, there’s gonna be friends & family…

LW: I feel pressure by learning the Home album. I only have to learn a few songs, but…

The pressure is me being in California, then flying home, then having a day before Christmas, and then driving to Atlanta. That’s the only pressure. And I just got back from the U.K.

Other than that, I feel great.

QRO: Wow, you’ve been everywhere…

LW: Yeah, I feel like I’m on a continuous tour until after the New Year’s, and then we’ll take a break. I’m trying to focus right now.

It made sense to do two nights of deep cuts, and then have a day off, and then go into the New Year’s with the Home album.

QRO: Why did you decide to do Home in its entirety on New Year’s Eve?

LW: After the new year, it will be the twentieth year of that album, so it’s a good story.

QRO: And you will literally be playing it ‘at Home’…

LW: Yes, at “Home”! That’s what I wrote that song, “I’m home!” Leave it to me. I wrote that song about coming back to Atlanta…

QRO: What’s it like, playing The Masquerade? Did you grow up going to shows there?

LW: The original Masquerade, of course.

This will be the second time, because we did our twentieth anniversary of our other album, we did at The Masquerade, so that was the first time we played the new Masquerade.

The old Masquerade was called the ‘Excelsior Mill’. This is the new one.

It’s still great. The underground Atlanta, it’s great, a beautiful venue. Everyone comes out, it’s still great. It still has the vibe of the Masquerade, because you still see some of the same cats that worked at the old one.

 

Yes, at “Home”! That’s what I wrote that song, “I’m home!” Leave it to me. I wrote that song about coming back to Atlanta…

QRO: You’ve also got a big tour coming up in February. Are you itching to get back on the road?

LW: I look forward to this tour because it’s with Tremonti, and we’ve not been able to tour with him, so he’s a good friend, family, so we’re looking forward to touring with that cat.

And the Cane Hill guys, that are on our label. It’s gonna be fun.

QRO: Then you’re playing Australia & New Zealand in March & April. How is touring Down Under?

LW: We’ll be going back to New Zealand and Australia. I can’t wait to get back to all those great places.

QRO: Do you get to see much of the countries, or is it just, ‘hurry up and head to your next destination’?

LW: When we were in the U.K., that was kind of ‘hurrying up,’ but we still get to take some days, and walk around.

A lot of time in Australia, we have to fly everyday, because the places are so far away. But it’s so beautiful. Last time we were there, we got to have an off day in Gold Coast Australia, Surfer’s Paradise, which I would love to take my family and live there for the rest of my life.

I look forward to going back to Australia. And what’s even cooler, it’s not that long since we’ve been there. So it’s gonna be a really good energy.

We were away from the U.K. for eleven years, so it was really good to get back there. So we won’t be doing that again, with this new organization that we have backing us.

QRO: It is summer down there…

LW: Yes, it is summer in Australia, but the time we get there, it’ll probably be cold…

 

It wasn’t like a producer, [Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette] was like a sixth band member.

QRO: How was making All I See Is War?

LW: It was great. We got to work with (Michael) ‘Elvis’ Baskette, a producer that I’ve been wanting to work with us for years, a good friend of ours. Finally take the time – it wasn’t like a producer, it was like a sixth band member. Really came in and really took over, and police the band in a great way. We were the first band to live in his mansion, in his house. It was incredible; we had a great time.

QRO: How did it compare to making prior records?

LW: I feel like we’re older, wiser. We hadn’t been on the road for a year-and-a-half; we were able to daddies & husbands to our wives, fathers, and then write an album. I think we were more focused on what needed to be. You know what I mean?

What do you write about when all you see is a tour bus, and a show every night? At the end of the day, after you do that for so many years, I think the creativity kind of lends to writing more about things that are not real, if that makes sense?

You have to go to a wedding. It’s not a nice thing to say, but I had to go to my grandfather’s funeral. Those things in life inspire you, too. If you’re on the road and you don’t get to experience those things, you know what I mean?

To me, that year-and-a-half off, we were able to get back to life, to write an album. Stuff that we needed. I needed my wife to yell at me to take the trash out…

I needed my wife to yell at me to take the trash out…

QRO: [laughs] I read that you had done a lot of songs for All, and had to leave a lot out of the new record. Do you have plans for any of those extra songs?

LW: We probably wrote about sixty or so songs. We’ll always just have those songs in the back catalog. You can always pick and chose, pull verses and choruses. There’s always good music there, so we’re excited about that.

Like I said, that whole year-and-a-half off, that we wanted to write in the studio, it was a good building block for us all. And it’s like these times that we’re taking off now, it’s good to be with family and stuff. You experience things and you have ideas – you go in your studio and you lay ‘em down.

QRO: Have you ever done any of those unreleased songs live, maybe surprise the audience with something they’ve never heard before?

LW: Every once in a while we’ll do something crazy, and bust a song in there that people hadn’t heard. I think we’ll be doing that on this next tour, for sure.

QRO: For the shows in Atlanta, not New Year’s Eve but the other two, you said, “deep cuts”…

LW: A lot of old songs that people hadn’t heard in a long time. And some songs that we probably wouldn’t want to play, but other people wanna hear.

QRO: You said that you were relearning some songs from Home – are there other songs that you’re relearning?

LW: Oh yeah – I have to learn a lot of songs. [laughs]

We’ve written over two hundred songs, and that album is twenty years old, so I don’t know what I was writing about back then, and why I was writing it. Some of ‘em sound cool, and some of ‘em, I’m like, ‘Oh my god! We have to do that…’ [laughs]

But it’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be great, and I’m gonna be excited about it.

We might play one song, get to the first chorus, and say, “We’ll never do that song, ever,” and we never do it again.

QRO: With so many records & songs, how do you make a set list?

LW: It’s hard. We laugh at each other, and we might play one song, get to the first chorus, and say, “We’ll never do that song, ever,” and we never do it again.

What a blessing. You can never take for granted being able to have a career, to being able to have that many songs, to be able to pick and choose. What a blessing it is. It’s exciting.

QRO: Do you try to get something from each album, or at least spread it out, what you play?

LW: Yeah, we try to spread it out, try to give everybody something that they like. We try to give them a twenty-year span – no, it’s almost twenty-five years now. So we try to put everything in there.

QRO: Do you get requests for songs that you just don’t remember?

LW: Oh, absolutely.

We could probably get through half of a song that we haven’t played in twenty years, but the bridge or something, you might not remember, unless you listen to it. It only takes a YouTube video and you can relearn it. [laughs]

QRO: You’ve been making music for about twenty-five years. How do you keep it fresh, recording & touring?

LW: It’s my job. It’s the job I’ve been blessed to do, and I wouldn’t want to do anything else. Been very blessed to tour the world and do music, so, that’s kind of what I do. That’s in me.

I would feel weird doing anything else. I can be a daddy and a husband… [laughs]

QRO: When it all started, way back in the nineties, did you think that you would still be doing it now?

LW: I had no idea I would still be doing this right now. Absolutely not.

I would have never thought that we would be at the 58th Grammys, me sitting behind Stevie Wonder…

 

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