The legendary Devin Townsend made big news last year with the breakup of the Devin Townsend Project in order to start heading in yet another direction, something of which many fans may be familiar with which has seen the career of Devin take his legion of fans on a wild and crazy ride. The release of his new solo album “Empath” may be his most ambitious work yet but no-one would expect anything less from one of the most creative minds in music today. We catch up with Devin himself ahead of his upcoming tour to Australia to chat about the new path, his latest work and what it means to be at this stage of his career.
Andrew: Hey Devin how you going?
Devin: Good buddy, how are you doing?
Andrew: Yeah doing very well! Thanks for your time man, really appreciated. So hows things?
Devin: I’ve been really good man, it’s been a really good year for me so far. Complicated, but really good.
Andrew: Sure obviously the new album “Empath” came out earlier this year and I remember when it came out and I listened to it, it’s such a crazy album but now that some time has passed, how do you still feel about those songs?
Devin: I feel like they’re crazier than they were back then. I was talking to a buddy of mine today who is much more a fan of the more simple type of music that I do and he’s like, ‘Man I can hear what you’re doing in there and I think it’s really cool but it’s just too much’, and my reaction to that is, ‘That’s where I was at man, that’s exactly where I was at. I needed to do that’. It’s what I feel compelled to do from album to album, is as much of a surprise to me as it is to the people who are listening and my obligation as a musician at this point is just to follow that. I’m mixing the 5.1 version of that now and it’s a pain in the dick in ways that I can’t even articulate, it’s 600 tracks worth of shit that has a one percent chance of feeling right to me and every track affects everything else, it’s a nightmare man.
It’s every bit as crazy to me as it was when it was being written but I’m more proud of it now even more than I was then because I feel like I had the balls to do it in the face of perhaps it not being the best or the most advisable career move. Like people thinking, ‘It would be great if he just made something more commercial, it would be great if he did something that was in line with what you have been working towards over the past few years’, and although I can appreciate that type of thinking, I’m just like, that’s not where I was man. I had to make the ideas that started coming to me that became a compulsion as all good ideas in my estimation do, was that. I remember one night starting to go through these demos of the Empath stuff and just thinking, ‘Oh man this is going to be a nightmare’, and it was! [laughs].
Andrew: [laughs] It’s a great album though and I think for some fans maybe, it’s probably one of those ones that just grows on you over time. What was the thinking behind the, I guess overall concept of the album? Was there something in particular that you were trying to achieve with it or was it letting it flow out organically out of you?
Devin: Well I guess it’s a combination of the two but as everything that I’ve done in my career has been, it’s almost like each record becomes like an essay about the past year or what I did on my summer vacation, you know what I mean? Now that I’m 47 years old man, it’s like this mid-life thing is a motherfucker, it’s super complicated. Kids turning into teenagers and parents getting older and relatives dying and wife going into menopause and your body changing, all this stuff that I never really had to contend with because I’ve never been at that age. The changes that are brought into my focus really became clear to me that I really need to spend some time sorting this out, these are not subtle life changes. These are like big things for me and in order for me to quantify them in ways that not only set myself up for the future in terms of a career but also psychologically was a healthy step for me.
It required me to really dig in to some of my, I guess fears, things that I’ve been holding on to and been afraid to sort of confront. Or conversely it forced me to sort of analyse certain truths that I guess I’ve held, artistically, personally, psychologically, that were unequivocal up to this point. Like you never question that, like if somebody is hyper-religious in some way, a lot of times people don’t question that. But what happens if you do? What happens if maybe it becomes clear to you that this doesn’t make sense to you as it once did and that sort of analysis that was far reaching in my personal life, it wasn’t just musically, it was like I said, personally, family, physically, mentally, financially, career-wise, psychologically. All these things that I think are fairly typical of people as they enter middle age, are frankly just really complex and so the reaction to those sorts of complex thoughts became clearly really complex music.
Andrew: Yeah and as someone who entered my 40’s a year ago I kind of identify with what you are saying and I think as you get older, you kind of appreciate things maybe a bit better now than what you did in your 30’s and 20’s. Does that have an impact on your music you make?
Devin: Oh yeah absolutely and even when it comes down to the production on this one, it’s I had to mix it myself. I mean is it the best sounding mix ever? It’s right for this record but it’s not in line with trying to make commercially acceptable, sort of digestible music. But that’s unfortunate I suppose for the trajectory of my career if that’s the direction I wanted to go, but it is absolutely essential for me if my role as a creator is to follow this path where it leads and I am exceptionally proud of, frankly having the balls to do it at this stage of my career.
Andrew: Yeah definitely and I kind of want to go back to something you said in a press release recently when it came out, which was you said you had gone back to your roots in terms of what your motivations were for making music. Does that relate to partly in maybe some of the stuff you had done in the past was maybe losing your way? What did you mean by that in terms of your roots?
Devin: Well I mean if I’m being perfectly clear, one of the things that at least compels me to keep creating music is the fact that I’m always dissatisfied with it. I never get it right and I think that artists in general, I’d be suspicious of people who claim they keep getting it right. Maybe you can get it right if you’re making digestible sort of pop music right, but for me I’m trying to follow like a vision that is ephemeral. It’s like you’re following a feeling rather than a set plan, like a test book plan. I think Empath acts as two things, one is exactly what I needed to do but on the other hand what I needed to do is analyse where I had been over the past 20 years. So when you listen through the record, there’s all these different styles. Some of it is real heavy, some of it is really progressive, some of it is orchestral, some of it is mellow, some of it is choral and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I felt like I needed to take stock of my past, understand what my relationship is with my past and then when I move on forward from here, I will be able to do so with the knowledge that I confronted some of these things.
One of the things I really confronted was heavy music, like I stopped making heavy music like Strapping (Young Lad) style music for a long time because I was afraid of it and you get to this point of like, man the more fear that I have over anything, the more those things start to become monsters. But as soon as you kind of shine a light on it, Ok look at this man, what are you afraid of? It becomes clear to me that, or it became clear to me that what I was afraid of was myself, like I didn’t trust myself. I thought that if I participated in something like that, that I would lose my way like I had done in the past. But simply by taking that risk, I realized that hey you’re not going to lose your way, you’re a different person now, know what I mean? You got your shit together and if there’s anything that I would of done this record over again for, was that. Because I think that I needed to test myself to see if I could trust myself and the answer to that is yeah I do, great! Next!
Andrew: Yeah definitely and next coming up is obviously the Australian tour which we are very excited to see you back in our country again. But this time it’s a bit different, it’s an evening with solo acoustic tour and it’s funny you touched on the heavier aspects that you had done in the past including Strapping Young Lad as I’ve been hearing some word that you might be busting out one or two Strapping Young Lad songs, is that true?
Devin: Yeah of course and this is another one of the things that occurred when working on Empath is that I realized that for years I feared Strapping too. I was like, ‘Oh I don’t want to go back to that, it’s dark, it’s negative, it’s all these things’. But what I realized through making Empath is that’s just part of being a human. My reasons for making Strapping Young Lad music back in the day was not because I was a rotten person, it was that I had a hard time articulating my discontent with a lot of things and that came out in this carthartic release of that type of energy. But what I needed to learn from Strapping I think, in the same way that I needed to learn with Empath, is that you have to be accountable for these things that you do. If you’re working with a medium like I do that has an emotional impact on people – which it clearly does, like anybody who is doing music at the level I’m working at…I mean we all impact people, that’s kind of part in parcel of doing this – and I think what I needed to learn about Strapping and why I needed to stand away from that sort of energy for a decade was, yes that energy is part of being a human, yes it’s a part of you and yes it’s something that you’ve learned to control and discipline with. Yet if you do it under the assumption that it’s not going to affect anybody, then you’re kind of playing with fire on a lot of levels in my opinion.
And so with Empath, although I went back into that type of music, it was with a different intention and as you can probably guess by our conversation here, I mean my musical trip is so connected to my emotional and artistic growth that it can seem really pretentious. Like when I hear myself say this stuff out loud, I’m just like, oh my god give me a break. But at the same time, one of the dubious parts about doing this is that you’re responsible to explain yourself. That’s what I mean by accountability, I didn’t realize when I was younger that you can put out something that just says horrible things but part in parcel of doing this type of genre is you’re going to do interviews for 6 months after that! People are going to be like, ‘Why did you do that?’ It’s just what happens and if you can show up and say I did it because of this, however pretentious you may feel it is, however pretentious the audience may feel that my answers are, if you can articulate it in a way that you can stand behind, then there’s your answer. Long gone are the days of me going I don’t know why I did this but also long gone are the days of me saying I’m embarrassed by my reasons, because I’m not, right? This is how I’m wired man.
Andrew: Yeah I understand when you do interviews that people will throw questions at you on why you did this and that but do you feel you don’t have to be, not accountable but you don’t have to respond to everything in terms of what you do musically? Because sometimes you do things that comes out of you musically that is quite personal, musically and lyrically I guess.
Devin: Sure yeah, I mean I’ve got a big mouth man, that’s my problem. When it comes to interviews, I get shit all the time from management to the label and everything from, you’re saying too much, you’re talking too much. But C’est la Vie man, I get asked questions and I say what I say. I try and be responsible enough that I don’t get too much into politics or religion or divisive topics that there’s no real answers on. But the function of my work is ultimately to try and give people a break from that shit anyway and so people ask me questions and I really feel like I don’t have anything to hide, it’s just I gotta be prepared for schools of people on Youtube commenting on how full of shit I am and be fine with that, which I am to be fair [laughs].
Andrew: [laughs] Look I don’t think you can go wrong with being honest, I think the way to tackle it is to be completely honest with everything that you do with music and with people and I don’t think you can go wrong with that. As long as it’s honest, it doesn’t matter if people like it or not.
Devin: No for sure but I think that there’s a caveat there, that I think you can delude yourself into thinking that what you are expressing under the guise of honesty is still a delusion, still like whatever the delusions rooted in like fear or ego or whatever and I’m still certainly guilty of that. But I guess the process of making these records and getting so deep into, where am I, why am I doing this, I gotta follow this, is ultimately so I can be more aware of when I’m full of shit and I think each record that goes by I’m a little closer to the goal and the reason why that goal is important to me on a pragmatic level is that if you’re telling exactly what you feel, you got nothing to hide man, you don’t have to defend yourself at that point.
Like if somebody is gay and they don’t admit it to themselves, they’re going to spend a lot of energy trying to protect that. I think it’s much easier to be like, just analyse it. I know for myself years ago it’s like, OK think about homosexuality, are you gay? It’s like, nope, OK. Alright, I thought about it and I’ve got no problems with it but as a result of thinking about it, I don’t have a hang up about it. I mean I don’t think I do but do you know what I mean? It’s like if somebody asked you for your opinion, you can say this is how I feel because I went there in my mind. Because you know…why don’t you eat meat? Why don’t you drink? Why do you do drugs? Whatever your thing is, as long as you can unequivocally state this is my truth, I think you’re good to go man. Also keeping in mind that truth is fluid, right.
Andrew: Yeah I totally agree, honesty is the way to go. I really appreciate your time, it’s exciting to see you back down in Australia again. Before I leave you, do you have any last words at all for the Aussie fans?
Devin: Yeah man, I love Australia. I can’t wait to get there again, I can’t wait to not be on that flight [laughs].
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah it’s a long flight!
Devin: Yeah I’m good with long things because I waffle on just in general right, so it suits my nature [laughs].
Andrew: [laughs] No worries, we will see you very soon, take care and hope you enjoy yourself when you are down here.
Devin: Alright thanks Andrew, talk to you soon.
AN EVENING WITH DEVIN TOWNSEND
AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
THORNBURY THEATRE, MELBOURNE
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 8
GOVERNOR HINDMARSH, ADELAIDE
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 10
OLD MUSEUM, BRISBANE
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 11
YORK THEATRE, SYDNEY
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 13
THORNBURY THEATRE, MELBOURNE
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 14
SOLD OUT
FREO SOCIAL, PERTH
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 15
TICKETS ON SALE NOW FROM TROUBADOUR-MUSIC.COM
ALSO INCLUDES FAN Q&A AFTER THE SHOW
