Sound Off with Matt Pinfield

Episode Number: 208

Episode Title: Nickelback

Description: One of today's biggest rock bands from Canada sits down with Matt to talk about their career, major success, and newest release, All The Right Reasons. Chad Kroeger and Ryan Peake give insight on their music, which blends into a seamless force of rousing choruses, gear-grinding riffs, brassy rhythms and what audiences find to be irresistible melodies. Between the platinum success and the sold-out tours, the band seems to keep their feet on the ground as witnessed from this chat with Matt.

Transcript:
Welcome to Sound Off, I'm Matt Pinfield. Tonight I'm coming to you from the Mohican Sun Casino on Connecticut and my guests are Chad Kroeger and Ryan Peake from Nickelback. Guys great to have you here. Good to see you. Good to see you again Chad, Ryan. Really happy to see you. Last time we were together we were doing the World Premier together for The Long Road which we had done um, I guess radio and television in L.A. That's right. A great time. So good to see you guys and we had a lot of fun and I remember your first U.S. TV appearance was on farmclub.com and That's right. It was great, you did Leader, Men and Breathe and it was a great performance then. We were so nervous. That time too. That was a big deal. That was great. Yeah and you couldn't tell by any means that you guys were nervous. You really came off. It was awesome. I came up to you afterwards and I said guys Breathe was so great, I was really excited that night. And you know and the rest has been absolutely a whirlwind bunch of years since that all took place and uh, so let's talk about, we should start by mentioning the new album, All The Right Reasons. Great record, doing extremely well for you guys. I love that you came up with the title, I think that is All The Right Reasons, that is the reason that everybody should be in music. Tell me a bit about the title. That's true. You know you look around the music business and when you're a fan of a band, a real fan of a band and you go out and you get there 15th album, sometimes there is a little less love put into that 15th record than there was going into the 5th you know and it seems like some bands stick around for the wrong reasons you know instead of just being in it because you want to, because you love making music, because it feels just as good as it did that first time you hooked up with the boys in the first place. If that feeling is gone, (shhoop) stop making music. It is not worth it, right? Speaking of hooking up with the boys in the first place, let's talk about how you guys all ended up coming together originally because you did an independent record first. How did you guys meet, how old were you when that all took place? I don't want to say that. (laughing) god we have been talking about how long we have been together too, it is amazing we don't really look at how long we have been together. I moved to the same town as these guys did in Hannah, Alberta. What year was that? I moved in 87, so you know I got with those guys as I was warming up to the people a year or two after that. That's right, cause I was in grade 7 and you were in grade 8 and you don't hang out with the guys in grade 7 when your in grade 8 you know what I'm sayin. It all started when I got my first guitar. Yeah but in that town, it is all about um, you know when you get a band together you start jamming with people, uh, all the sudden all the musicians are kind of like little beacons in town because you kind of, everybody wants to know who else plays and the town was 3000 people, its not like it took long, right. We would jam on my deck out on the farm and literally the guy on the other end of town would say wholly s# it you guys are pretty loud because I'm hearing you by the museum on the other side of town. That is how big the town was right? So, uh I have known him since then and he has known Mike for longer than me. I have known my brother Mike for awhile. For a very long time of course. and you have your new drummer too which is really cool. We do. Daniel Adair. Tell me about Daniel. How did you guys end up hooking up with Daniel. When I used to go out on the road when we were touring The State, I had a buddy of mine, his name is Dave and uh, Dave would watch my house when I was gone. I was single at the time and uh, Dave was supposed to make sure that nothing got wrecked, nothing got broken, no parties took place while I wasn't at home, yeah right. but Dave also played in a band and Dave asked me if it was cool if they could jam in the basement and I said yeah that's fine. I had my drum set up there. So I said yeah the drummer can use my drums, no big deal and it turns out that drummer was Daniel Adair. And he was jamming with my buddy Dave, so Dan used to jam on my drums while we were touring The State record so I have known him for a long, long time. And then he hooked with 3 Doors for a little while but they didn't put him in the band. You know and then we asked hey would you like to be in a band, be in the band with us and uh, when that position was available he said he would love to. Right, so it just feels great right? I mean you have really been enjoying this tour and the process of making the new record as well. Our tour manager Chief his wife grew up uh, four houses away from Daniel. It's 6 degrees of separation no matter what. Absolutely. That's great. Now lets go back to when you were starting out. What was making that first record like? Because I mean you know you guys were definitely, you are song craftsman. You write great songs, no question about it. What was it like in the early periods. Fast. Was it really? Was it because of the amount of money you had at the time. Because we didn't have enough money. It was like hurry up, we don't have any more time to work on this song, let's move on. But the guitars were out of tune, like yeah, (pauses) well they're pretty close. We'll fix that in the mix. We'll fix it in the mix. We'll fix that in the mix and uh, we'll go on, like yeah right, but it was all throw and go. I mean that is the way it was, that is the way it is for a lot of bands and that, I don't think there is anything wrong with that because that is kind of a snapshot of where we were. You do the best you can in the amount of time. I know you hated it but I think that is kind of a snapshot and a lot of people still like those old albums for what they are. I mean that is what they are. You don't ever get to get exactly what you want. You have to get a big piece of that or your going to lose sleep every night. 7 songs, recorded and mixed in 2 days. Right, exactly. Just like kind of like they used to do it years ago And all rookies too. It is not like we had been doing this. Oh yeah, All rookies Far from pros. That's right. That was interesting. But it was, ah it was fun, it was good studio experience at that time we were pretty jazzed about it. That was crazy. Oh go ahead I'm sorry. Ah I was just going to say we would be sitting there and one guy would be like okay how does your guitar part go, well it goes like this, he goes well okay, just play it back one more time, and you would be like okay it goes like, you would be like That's the take. Tick, tick, tick, well it goes like this and he's like perfect, pan that one over to the right, how does your guitar part go and Ryan would be like well my guitar part goes like this, he is like just do it one more time, click. Pan you over here. There! Stereo guitars boys. That's you know Send it to radio. Now I know why you have your own studio yourself now. No price, you can do it as long as you want which is great. Now by the time you got to The State, how did the Roadrunner deal come about. How did you end up signing with them. Well we actually had uh, we took some of those songs that we really fell in love with from Curb or sorry from the demo and we put them on an album called Curb and um, we just, it just was a constant uphill climb. Things were always moving up so we knew that as long as we were always making progress, that things would be okay and uh, we just kept scraping together money. We would borrow money from parents and grandparents and relatives and we would make some money on shows and we went to the bank and Ryan had pretty good credit. That is always helpful. You know what it is funny, I just talked to my parents out on the road here and they just surprised me on the road and she reminded me, my mom gave us 5 grand to get the first Oh, does she want it back? Yeah exactly. The first pressing of the album so we could actually, we were like we got the album recorded and tapped out, we can't actually physically get it made now. Of course. And we have one really good CD. It is amazing. I just forgot about that. and it is like we had a lot of yeah through credit or scraping money or some people would actually believe in us. Borrowed 25,000 from the bank Yeah. And you know we would play gigs and then we would try and, there was just always one more thing that you need, right. Once it is all done, okay now we have to tour it, now we have to get a van, now we have to get a trailer, we got to put gas in the van, we got to put food in our mouths and uh, god it just never stops but neither did we.

Welcome back to Sound Off, it's Matt Pinfield. I'm here right now with Chad and Ryan of Nickelback. Tell me about the making of Silver Side Up, I mean we are getting into that, without a question, so many hits in that record. We uh, How You Remind Me is, will go down in history as one of the classic, one of the great classic rock songs of all time besides the fact that Can you just say that one more time? (laughing) It's true. It will go down in history as one of the great classic rock songs of all time, I believe. It is the all time. That's good. Of all time. No, but think about that, it is true because not only did it change the way radio was at the time because it broke every record, it was #1 in every format which was unbelievable, at the time was unheard of. Sure you could be #1 in active and alterative but to actually across the board AAA and you know top 40, you know it just blew the doors off everything else. It took on such a life of it's own and the song still holds up. It really does and uh, at the time when you are recording a song like that and the song was on that record, did you feel it in your heart. Did you know the impact that it was going to have or did it just feel good to you at the moment, what was the thing? We had been on the road for 14 months straight We had seen what it looked like when you rushed an album because we made uh, we made The State in three weeks so we were really going to take our time with Silver Side Up. We were going to take 6 weeks. (all laughing) We were going 5-1/2. Really take our time with this one, really gonna you know make sure everything was the way we wanted it and uh, we got in there and we just started demoning stuff first off, we went through some preproduction. Made sure that, and we never really had done preproduction before like sit down and make sure like everybody knows exactly what they are doing before you even go in and record, you know really have your ducks in a row and uh, we went in and just started banging out these tunes. And um, things really started coming to life and when we sent the songs to Roadrunner and they heard How You Remind Me, they flipped, they really snapped and we were sitting back. I remember Mike wanting to fight tooth and nail, he was like, no. Never Again, has got to be the first single. We are coming out with a rock song, big rock song first. I was like, I don't care, I was glad that somebody says we have a single at all. I was just tickled. Yeah. and they were like no, guys trust us on this one, we'll definitely, Never Again will be a single but we are going to go out with How You Remind Me first. So How You Remind Me comes out and uh That was pretty much our handshake to the world. Absolutely and the world it was because I mean it was a worldwide smash, across the board smash. And Never Again got to be single after all anyway, you know what I mean which is the cool thing. Hero came out at the same time as Too Bad. Now let's talk about when Too Bad came out from the album as well and then you did with Jocee Scott, you worked on the Hero track from Spiderman from the first one, that was also a big, big hit for you guys. How was that things were just kind of really going crazy at that point in time because like you said How You Remind Me was doing all the things that it was doing, it was taking on a life of its own and it really turned into a monster and it was fun for us to just sit back and watch the song do what it did because nothing could stop that song. At the time, we had no idea how to do it again, we are like God, we have got to write a song as good as that one, but we have to write a song better than that one. And then the side thing came up where um, Lee R. Cohen called and asked if I would do a song with Jocee Scott. And so I said I have this little thing that is kind of kicking around in my back pocket. I will play it and see if everybody likes it and uh Jocee and I jumped into the studio and recorded it and sent it off, the next thing year you know, there is Hero. The theme song from Spiderman which is cool. and then going up against Too Bad, so now we have Hero and Too Bad you know competing against each other and then Never Again comes out off that record and you know we were just blown away. And there were a lot of people standing around with their arms crossed going okay, you had a big record, lots of people have big records, let's see you do it again. You know and then we made it to The Long Road. Which is one of those things I have to say, people whenever you have success on your own and your not championed by the critics it is something they think they created, they love to take swings at you and what I love about you is Yeah but no critic ever created Nickelback. (all laughing) Well you know listen the critics didn't create credence for Zeppelin either, they did their own thing and they were mad about those bands too when they came out in the day, so, you know you are in good company, but you know I gotta say you guys always come back swinging. It is like you know what, all right, check this out and you come back Long Road, more great songs and that was again the last record domestically it sold 6 million and sold even more worldwide on Silver Side Up and then Long Road did great too. How was that process going back into the studio. Was that, did you feel the pressure to have that repeated. Once again, we thought to ourselves, okay, we did six weeks on Silver Side Up and Silver Side Up did well for us and now we really are going to take our time. (laughing) Now what do we do? Eight weeks? No. we actually did three months with that one. Which we actually thought at that point we were pissing away a lot of time. We would be like looking out the window you know maybe we better three months isn't that long to make a record but we thought that was an eternity. but that was the first time that we said to the label, okay, I think we can do this on our own. You have to trust us this time. And so they let us make our own record and uh, we came out with Someday and did real well for us and then kind of had the same problem because I did the song with Santana, so now we have the Santana song going up against some day at the time. That is the trouble a lot of people would like to have but I need to tell you that is cool but it is still like your watching going well I really don't want this but you know Wonderful problem to have. And uh, I'm really proud of that record. That was the first time where the four of us were going to get in there and steer the ship and us see what it felt like and I thought the production on that record was really good. You really did a good job and again, you had time to do things in your own studio and start to record. Have fun with everything, every little diddy we wanted to try, we could try anything we wanted because nobody was standing behind us, the label wasn't going guys, guys, hurry up And after that early experience of having them use you like test the leads for splitting stereo that was probably one of the first things you wanted to invest in was getting and building your won studio so you could have that opportunity. We would have lots of raw sounding records, I wanted to try and have a perfect sounding record and we still are a long ways away from that but and then you know we toured that one, went all over the place, um and then it was time to make, then it was going to be time to take a long extended break. I think that was the game plan. Because you originally thought you were going to do that. I want to just step to the side for a minute and talk about the other stuff that you guys have gotten involved in, like Default who you of course helped out and got a deal and Wasting My Time was a #1 single for them and then you worked with Thornaly the guy from Big Wreck and I love that So Far So Good song, I thought that was a great track. Tell me was that a thing too, getting involved in producing and writing, was it kind of a fun way to help out a friends or was it like an exercise. I have very few addictions in this life but just hanging out in the studio is one of them. I cannot get out of the studio. And uh, just sitting there creating all the time. I could sit in the studio for a ridiculous amount of time. It is just so much fun.

Welcome back to Sound Off. I'm Matt Pinfield as I said before I'm sitting here with Chad and Ryan of Nickelback. Now Ryan tell me a bit about the time off thing, I know Chad we talked about it, you guys really aren't comfortable taking too much time off. You love to record, you love to write. What was it like when you finally got done touring for The Long Road. Did you feel like a fish out of water going back home. Well, uh, at my point in my life, you do for a little bit obviously , you get completely conditioned to being on the road and sleeping next to a generator and uh, you know you need a generator running in your bed for awhile to shake the bed to go to sleep. You have to go to a cheap hotel that has one of those vibrating beds. Exactly. Drop the quarter in. So bizarre. Uh, so you go downstairs and the first thing you do you walk downstairs and ask where catering is, it is not there. Uh, or it is not ready for you. It is your house, your looking for food services in your living room. Yeah exactly, oh it is in the fridge, that is where it is okay. So, I mean that is a little odd but for me personally, I've got the I have a family at home so for me I was busy for awhile that it was hard for me to kind of even get back to the zone to pick up a guitar. I was kind of like at that point, we were all kind of let's put the guitar down uh, this guy here was you know, we're taking a year off. Everybody we are taking a year off. Nine days after we got back, yeah I'm down playing, yeah I have some stuff we should try demo some stuff working on some stuff in the studio, c'mon let's try and get some stuff together, click. And um, so we are like okay, I mean I can't help it, have a problem. Yeah I know. It is a good problem to have I think. It is great. It is absolutely but it I mean it is different, it is really different when he is probably recording with other bands as opposed to getting us together because it is different in our band and it has always, I think the results are good when we go in the studio and come out with something because the dynamics are really different in this band, I think. It may not always be easy because everybody is different. He is always like (snapping fingers) he is firing on all pistons all the time. He is just like boom, boom, boom and everybody else in the band has you know a family as well and other responsibilities to think of about during the daytime but um, yeah we were happy once we got back in the studio and finally got everybody in the same head space. We wrote damn hear the whole album, I mean he came up with the major ideas of the songs, but damn near the whole album was written in the studio which isn't typically what we do. We typically what we do we said for Silver Side Up we had, we did preproduction. Right. And The Long Road we had stuff done but we did preproduction in the studio. This time around we didn't even have the songs done so it was writing the songs, kind of producing it It was pretty good ideas. Yeah we had some pretty good ideas. And kind of changing courses and stuff and Oh, a lot of that. A lot of that. Gutting songs Cause we are so now at the point where it is just like the chorus isn't popping, the chorus isn't doing this explosive thing when you get to it, it's just like (breathing) you know it has to do the thing. So we would sit there and like, damn it! It is about being honest about what you write. All right let's get rid of this chorus, let's try another chorus you know we are just snip and cutting you know it is like okay, write a new chorus, record a new chorus, stick it in there, play it for a few people and they are like, it's good. Is it great. No, it's not great but it is really good. And were like okay, we are going to do it again until you say it's great. Until it passes that Lipman's test. Absolutely. So we would, crazy. 7 months of that. Yeah now on this record too you had great guests, let's talk about some of the people. Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top, tell me how he got all hooked up and played on a couple tracks on the record. We met Billy in Pueblo, Colorado and uh, we were playing some shows, I think it was a State Fair and uh, they were playing the night after us and Billy came down to the show and he said he was a big Nickelback fan and I was blown away because I'm a huge ZZ Top fan and uh, it was a lot of fun just hanging out with him. We swapped phone numbers and he said he would like to do some recording some time. So when we got around to the point where we were recording the song Follow You Home where it was like okay, time for the guitar solos, Chad you got your guitar solo ready, and I'm just like, hmmmm Hold on a second. Hey uh, Billy what are you doing, it's Chad from Nickelback. You know do you want to, you feel like laying down a guitar solo on our new record. He's like I'm in L.A. I got two days off, I'm like I'm on the next plane. Boom away we go and uh, headed down to a studio in uh, L.A. called the Chop Shop run by a good friend of mine and uh, Billy comes in and just starts laying down these great guitar parts right. He could tell cause when we all started laughing. You know when he was playing cause we were like a bunch of school kids. He would do something that was classic Billy Gibbons you know where we are just like, that was awesome. We all started laughing. He is like oh you like that, you like that, roll that back one more time, roll it back. I know what your looking for now. You know and then he would play this other thing and you know we would start laughing. We got four or five passes from him and we are like, that's great. And we got him to do this vocal thing in a song called Rockstar. Right. Where it is like we took his voice and we wanted him to speak really low, you know and get right down there and start, we wanted him to kind of sound like the devil and you know that was really cool. Yeah that is great. Now also on the record, I know you became friends with the Pantera guys and you know Vinny Paul and Dimebag Darryl very just one of the biggest tragedies and the loss of Darryl to all rock fans and to people that love the band. It is amazing how you wrote side of a bullet to your reaction emotionally that you had to that tragedy to the death, to the murder of Darryl but it is even more incredible the whole way that Vinny gave you guys some guitar parts of that and just tell me a bit about that. I mean that was Vinny actually wanted to play the drums on it. When I first called him, he is like Chad I want you to do something for me, I want you to write a song for my brother, I said well that is funny because I got a riff and I want to play it for you and I played it over the phone for him, he goes well let me play the drums on it and I'm like okay we have drums sitting there already but if you want to play the drums, I'm sure Daniel wont mind and we sent it down to him, if I can add something or take it in a different direction or I can do something to improve the song, then I would love to lay down the drums and that was what we wanted too, and so he got it and listened to it, called us back and said you know what I think your drummer did an amazing job, I don't think I can add anything to it. I think it is fantastic and I'm a huge fan of this song. And I said well we would love to get some guitar parts from Darryl just jamming you know a bunch of outtakes and stuff and they sent us over some boatloads of material to go over and we pieced together this solo and now I hear it and it sounds like and feels like he was right there when we were doing it and it was incredible. It is a great song, great subject matter and Side Of A Bullet love it and I know we are all very sad about that. Just getting a phone call that night about Darryl being shot which was just insane. It was frozen in time for, so insane and shocking. Just wrong and sad, absolutely you know. Great song. Now one last questions guys cause I know you got to get out and play tonight but Photograph, people love the song so much. Tell me about the subject matter and the writing of that track, I mean was it about kind of high school growing up, what was Yeah, I I got this riff you know and I was playing it on the guitar and I was just letting the last two strings on the guitar ring open. I gave it this orchestral sound, I just started off in E and I started moving around and these chords sounded so pretty and I just go this pattern going and I just started moving around and around and I kind of got this melody going and just the same way I always do and then all of the sudden this line, I you know when you start filling in the humming, your doing the (singing) And then you actually start putting words in there all of the sudden look at this photograph just spilled right out of my mouth and I was like, that is really interesting, where can we go with this and so, I wrote down, look at this photograph, every time I do it makes me laugh, and I started thinking about this picture of Joey and I, he is my best friend in the whole world and there is this picture of the two of us from two New Year's ago You and Joey. We are just messy, messy One of those nights. and uh, he has got this thing on his head, I think it was a champagne holder or something but the picture sat around my house for a couple years and anytime someone would pick it up it sits on my desk in my office and anytime somebody pick up that picture, everybody kind of chuckles or giggles or something because there is just this natural we are both just we have these big natural s# it eating grins on our faces and it is just a great, great shot. You will see it tonight because we put it up on the big screen and I just thought where the hell am I going with this? I'm talking about this photograph and then the next thing that came out of my mind and this is where I grew up. I was like wow that doesn't make sense at all, I got you know but then you know and this is where I went to school, you know and Kim is the first girl I kissed and remember the old arcade and there were a lot of lines we actually took out you know Mr. Barker delivered bread, do you remember that one? Uh huh. There were so many lines just from growing up, uh, and we started piecing this all together and it sounded like a trip down memory lane. I wasn't quite sure how we were going to do it, but once we got to the point in the chorus where it was every memory of looking out the back door, um. I had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor. it was like aw now it is all coming together, all these memories are all about somebody who is reliving their past, they have cracked open that photo album and they are like, I wonder what those friends are doing you know and all the pictures started coming together and everybody started getting the goose bumps all over the place and you know the song while we were in there it just started exploding and we fell in love with the song. We played it for the label, we played that and Far Away and something else for the label and the label was like they were all leaning towards this other song. It is a good song, it is good but this other song is much better. I think that would be a good song to lead off with and we were all standing with our jaws on the floor like are you guys serious, are you sure? We sent all the material off when it was all finished two weeks later they called back, no hands down, Photograph is the first single. Yeah. We are like ahh. Absolutely. And of course it paid off. It is a great track. People reacted to it and really took it to heart. I'm glad. I'm just so, so thankful that the people that did fall in love with that song, you know loved it as much as we did because just writing it and being there for the creative process of telling the story and trying to take everyone else with me on this journey down memory lane we got to take that many people with is. It is really cool. Guys, I want to thank you for coming to do Sound Off tonight. Chad a pleasure as always, good to see you man. Ryan good to see you too as well. Guys all the best and you can catch Nickelback out on the road on tour of course and get the album All The Right Reasons. I'm Matt Pinfield, you have been watching Sound Off. Have a great night.

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