Five months after our last meet up, it is during their new travel to the capital city, a couple of hours before their visit on the set of “Une Dose 2 Metal” and on the eve of their intense show at Le Trianon, that RockUrLife’s team had the opportunity to chat with two individuals as nice as they are sincere, Jacoby Shaddix (vocals) and Jerry Horton (guitar), about an major element of a musician’s existence: touring life, and its advantages, drawbacks, and lessons.
First, how are you?
Jacoby: Good.
Jerry: Good.
Jacoby(screams): IT’S ALL GOOD!
You’re back in Paris for a few interviews, a TV show and a concert. How does it feel to be back here?
Jacoby: It’s awesome. We’re glad to be back. We have a couple days off this time, which is a good opportunity to trip around the city, even though we spend a few hours with the press today. Another reason why we’re stoked is because the show is sold-out tomorrow, so it’s going to be banging! I’m sure it’s going to be a great gig.
Also, the Trianon is magnificent.
Jacoby: Oh yes, it’s beautiful! I saw the Deftones there and thought it was a great venue. The sound is good too.
It seems like your relationship with France has improved so far, which comes as a surprise if we consider the fact you wouldn’t tour very often here a few years ago. Olivier [Garnier, Replica Promotion] even told us there will be a French tour. How did this drastic change happen?
Jacoby: Yes that’s right, we try to focus on making a career here. We have a bunch of offers from promoters. I think it was eight, if I’m not mistaken. I don’t know if we will do all of these shows, but this is good news. It feels awesome to be able to come back to France, there’s a lot of fans that have been missing us apparently. Olivier has played a big role in helping us achieving this goal. He’s been a great partner with us. He knows everybody in the business. :laughs: When we’ve had that little schedule problem at the Hellfest, we asked him “Why are we playing so early man?”. And Olivier simply went like: “OK, let me fix this.”, before making a couple phone calls. He is a fan, and it’s cool to work with somebody that respects and enjoys our music. The fans have been great to us. We’ve done a couple of shows at Le Trabendo, and everytime we’d go off stage we’d tell ourselves we should definitely come back.
Jerry: We finally realized that we needed to put in more effort and more work to rebuild this area. Like you said, we used to come here a lot a long time ago, for example at the Elysée Montmartre before it burnt and we stopped coming. It is mostly because of the label. They basically just stopped working our music here. The touring part of it went down and we were given no choice but to not go there anymore. Then, we got hooked up with Olivier, and finally had a support system here thanks to him. As soon as we knew that people cared here, we knew we wanted to give it a go again. The ultimate goal being not play only in Paris, but in other French cities.
Talking about shows in Paris, you have another show coming up at the Olympia. Is there a specific reason why you picked up this venue?
Jacoby: That’s the classic rock venue in Paris! We’ve known about that place for a bit of time, so booking a show there was the next step for us. I’ve never been there, I’ve just seen on DVD of bands performing in that venue, but it’s something like 120 years old, and it’s a beautiful theatre. It’s just about the building, really.
Good choice. I’m amazed by the amount of great venues in this city.
Jerry: You are correct!
We swear we’re not trying to promote Paris though.
Jacoby and Jerry: (laughs)
Jacoby: No, you’re right. We should go down there!
Talking about touring, do you have in mind some tours that went wrong?
Jerry: There’s one in particular. It was in the United States, with Jet.
Jacoby: Oh yeah! That was terrible. It was our worst tour ever. Our management told us we got to do this, but it was just the wrong mix of bands. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got respect for the band Jet, they’re a good band, great players and nice songs. But the fans just didn’t want to see the show. For us, we have very open minds when it comes to music, but not always the fanbase does have that same view.
We’ve never heard of this tour, when did it take place?
Jacoby: I guess it was 5 years ago. We’re trying to block that from our memory. Thanks for bringing that shit up. (laughs)
Well, you’ve made it safe! What do you usually do when you’re off tour? Do you have any passion other than making music?
Jerry: Just family time.
Jacoby: It is important to get some quality family time indeed, as far as other creative outlets that we have. Directing the music videos for the band is something that I really enjoyed doing. Also, I’ve got a clothing line that I’ve released last year called Lovers Are Lunatics. It’s always a delicate act trying to balance all of that with family, but it’s just how creative life is. It’s the reason why we’re in this band: to create. As we get older, we still have a lot of love for the band, which is the center piece, but we’ve got to maintain our creativity through different ways. Jerry is a great photographer. I don’t know if you’ve seen this guy’s stuff, but he kicks ass.
Unfortunately we’ve never seen some of it.
Jerry: That’s something that I do mostly on tour, because there’s not so many cool spots to see where I live, and it’s family time when I’m home. I post every once in a while. We’ve even talked about putting out a book someday. I’ve also been a longtime car aficionado. They call me Jerry “The Hard Roll” Horton. (laughs)
Like you said, you’ve got a clothing line. Can you tell us more about it?
Jacoby: A couple of years ago, I was inspired from a friend of mine that used to design our stage clothes over the course of the years. I didn’t feel the need to start a side project, but I wanted to do something out of the band that was still creative and would not get in the way of what we were doing with Papa Roach. And this clothing line was born from that. It’s about passion. When you’re in love with something and you’re convicted, you’re going into the end of the earth for it. Passion speaks to me: I’ve been with Papa Roach for over 20 years and I’m fully tattooed. I’m in a commitment, and Lovers Are Lunatics is just another representation of that.
20 years of being a band, indeed. Does it feel like all those years have passed?
Jerry: Yes and no. Being in a band allows a person to remain forever young through rock n’roll. (laughs) But then also, I’ve been in this band for half my life. We’ve had a lot of experiences; sometimes it seems like we’ve started a lifetime ago, sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.
Jacoby: We get to meet people at Meet & Greets that are 17 years old, which means we started the band before they were even born. That’s when you go “Holy fuck!”. We’ve started this band as teenagers and now we’ve grown into men. We’ve been growing together through all of it, had our ups and downs, started having families, got kids. The dynamic is always changing, but when we get into the studio and make music, we still feel the same passion.
Would you say there were days when you felt uninspired, thinking you’ve been doing this for too long and wanting to quit? Or has that creative spark always been there?
Jerry: We’ve always looked at this band as a career band. I can’t speak for everybody else, but I’ve never grown tired of the creative process within Papa Roach. I’ve never told myself “I don’t like this thing anymore”. There are some times where things on the business side get frustrating and you get tired from travelling that much, but like Jacoby said, we love creating.
Was there something specific you realized about yourself during the process of making “F.E.A.R.“?
Jacoby : There’s a darkness inside of me that can ruin my life if I don’t hold onto a sort of spiritual humility. I am my own darkness; the habits, the routines. All of that realization comes from growing up a little bit and trying to do the right thing to be a better person, to live a life that’s respectable instead of being a fuck up. The person that everybody sees of me on stage is not always representative of who I see myself as. It’s been a constant struggle, but a good fight.
On a lighter note now: a few months ago, we published a top 5 of our favourite albums of 2014. What were some of your favorite albums of 2014?
Jacoby: I don’t even know if I’ve liked 5 records from 2014. (laughs)
Jerry: Slipknot’s “.5: The Gray Chapter” was great.
Jacoby: Yes, Slipknot was definitely one of them. “Restoring Force” by Of Mice & Men as well. Did Bring Me The Horizon’s “Sempiternal” come out in 2014? And Arctic Monkeys’ “AM“? Shit, it was 2013. I guess that’s all for 2014. (laughs) Oh no, there’s also Phantogram’s “Voices”. I really liked that record. Have you heard it?
No I haven’t.
Jacoby: It’s awesome. What about Nothing More? There you go, that’s another good one. It’s one of those albums that I’ve bought recently.
Have you listened to Architects’ latest release?
Jacoby: Oh yes! Jerry loves that band. They have some heavy ass fucking riffs. We’ve got 4 albums, I guess that’s enough. (laughs)
Let’s conclude with the same question we asked you last time. Our website is called “RockUrLife”, so what rocks your life in 2015?
Jacoby: Being on tour to support our new album “F.E.A.R.”, no doubt. It’s awesome being on the road, mostly with a new record. We’ve just done a tour in America with Seether, packing houses all over the United States. People are coming out wanting to support our music. You know, everytime you come up with a record, it could be either you’re going up or you’re going down again. Our band is in a really good place now, we’re happy and blessed to see more people coming to our shows.
Jerry: Same goes for me.
Thank you for your time! See you very soon.
Jerry: Thank you!
Jacoby: Thanks, see you at the show my friend!
Website: paparoach.com
