Project Description

Interview with

DAVE BRENNER

From

THEORY (Of A Deadman)

by AMY SMITH

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With their sixth studio album, Wake Up Call, Canada’sTheory (Of a Deadman) hit the reset button, diving into a new sound, a new approach, even a new location. The more melodic, intimate style that defines the project is a bold move for one of the leading rock bands in the world.

“Complacency is such a disease when you’re in a band,” says the bands singer and guitarist, Tyler Connolly“People are so afraid to progress, but you have to change—you can’t just write the same song over and over. So when I saw where this record was going, I said to the other guys, ‘We’re in a car and it’s going off a cliff. Do you want to jump out or ride it to the bottom?’’

Since forming in British Columbia in 2001, Theory have placed nine songs in the Top 10 on the US rock charts, including the Number One hits“Bad Girlfriend,” “Lowlife,” “So Happy,”and“Angel.” To celebrate the success of Wake Up Call and the heavy radio play of the lead single Rx (Medicate)The Canadian Rock Powerhouse are headed to Australia forthe VERY FIRST TIME!

AMNplify’s Amy Smith caught up with guitarist, Dave Brenner, to discuss the new sound, touring and fighting against the stigma of addiction.

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Hi Dave, How are you?

Hi Amy, I’m good. How are you doing?

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To be honest with you man, I’m still waking up! It’s very early here.

First thing in the morning, that’s a tough one! I appreciate you getting up early to chat with me.

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Thanks to you too, for taking the time to chat with me!

My pleasure, I’ve been having a pretty relaxed day, it’s nice. I’m at home now, we’re not on tour.

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Where in the world are you calling from today?

I live in Chattanooga Tennesee. The east part of the United States. We’re from the north west, you know, we’re from Canada. I live now in quite a different part of the country from where I was born and raised.

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Nice!

I saw that, earlier this year, Rx (Medicate) was certified gold! Congratulations, that song seems to be making quite the impact!

Yeah, it’s crazy! We were getting updates saying the song is number one streaming in Paris, France. All these weird numbers that, for us, are just weird numbers. I was like Paris France, What? But yeah, that song, I don’t know what it was, maybe lyrical content? It really just connected with people. We were getting people at radio stations saying “We’re getting phone calls to the radio station about this song and we don’t get called anymore!” So, it’s cool to hear stuff like that. I think this whole record, for us, we feel like we have something special and Rx was just the beginning for us.

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Rx does tackle quite a serious issue. The thing that I find very impressive is, not only do you talk the talk, but you walk the walk. I noticed that the band partnered with Shatterproof. (ED: Shatterproof is a national non-profit organization dedicated to ending the devastation addiction causes families)

Yeah, we did that almost right away. As soon as we knew the label wanted to use Rx as a single. We said “OK what can we do with the video and what can we do with the song that’s gonna connect with people?” So, the label and ourselves we all did some research and really liked what Shatterproof is about, so it seemed like a great partnership. And they’ve been great and we’ve been working hard to try and make money for them. So far, it’s been a great partnership.

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Great work! I heard that, at the merch booth at your live shows, you have pads for people to write down their stories. What happens with these stories?

Yeah. They get collected and we read them and they get sent to the label and people at the label read them. We’ve posted some of them. I think that it was meant to get people talking. It was actually three or four days before anybody actually posted a single story on the board. I dunno man. It’s intimidating you know? You don’t wanna go write such a personal thing and go and post It up at a merch booth.

I wrote one myself and I don’t actually have a personal connection to any drug addiction or abuse. But, I just checked my musical connection and some of my favourite bands. My absolute favourite band, which is Alice in Chains, and of course the battle that Layne Staley, from Alice in Chains, fought and eventually lost. So, I wrote on one of these pads and just said that this is something that can affect everybody. Sometimes you don’t even have to know the person personally, but they can affect your path.

I’m a really big mental health advocate and I really encourage communication and talking. I was like, man! I’m really excited about this! It was a really slow go at the start, but it was really cool to see people open up and share their story. I think that the more stories that started getting posted on the board, the more people were encouraged to add their story.

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I think that is fantastic work. The first step in recovery is often to start talking about your struggles, so it really is brilliant that you are involved in that.

Yeah, absolutely.

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Will these be available at the shows when you visit Australia later this month?

You know, I don’t know to tell you the truth! A lot of times when we do these overseas trips, they set up a ‘fly package’. Everything has been set up and ready to go.  When they do merchandise a lot of the times its not sent off because you have to leave stuff in town. So, I don’t actually know if they’ll be there to tell you the truth. We’ll have to take a look! That’s something that’s way above my pay grade (laughs). Either one of our crew guys packed it or they didn’t. I’m not sure.

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‘Wake up call’ is like a whole new era for the band, full of firsts! New name (kinda), new sound, new production and recording process. Did this feel like a natural progression for the band? Or did you go so far out of your comfort zones on purpose in search of something new?

It was almost a combination of the two.  I feel like there’s been this natural progression. With the last record, Savages, it was our heaviest record and I felt like we kinda pushed ourselves toward that when we did that record. The most well received song from that record is a song called Angel which is the mellowest track on that record! It, for me, was like a sign. Like, this is what our fans really, truly like from us. Looking back over the years, the songs that people really like from us are a lot of our ballads, a lot of our softer stuff. For a few records, we fought against that progression.

With this record, it was like, let’s go out of the country, let’s work with a whole new group of people, let’s experiment, let’s be open to things. It was really terrifying at times, to tell you the truth, because we were in uncharted territory. But, it was also exciting and fun to be working with excited musicians and production people. It was a really organic experience, and personally, something that I really craved in a studio experience.

So, I think that, as much as we took ourselves out of our comfort zones and pushed ourselves to make something different, what happened was such a cool, natural experience in the studio.

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Fantastic!

How do you feel about the fans reactions to all of these changes? Were you worried that it might be polarizing for some long-term fans?

I wouldn’t say that we were worried about it, but we expected it.  I’m a music fan too, so I can empathize with the fans! I have favourite bands that I grew up with, that for me, a record of theirs means more to me than the rest of their records, for no other reason than it represents a specific time in my life. I’ve come to realize that that’s the way it is for our fans. For me, it was ‘Core’ by Stone Temple Pilots. No matter how many records came after it, this was the one record that stuck in my memory and will, for the rest of my life, be my favourite.

I think we take it with a grain of salt. We hope everybody loves it! In the end, we just know that we feel like that we created the best work of art that we’ve ever done. We’re super proud of it. We’ve had negative comments, of course. People are like “Where’s all the heavy guitars and stuff!?”. I don’t think that we lose sleep over that kind of thing. It is what it is. In the end, we’re super proud of what we think is the best record that we’ve ever made.

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With the new material being so sonically different from material in your back catalog, how have you been approaching live shows?

It’s actually coming together pretty easily, to tell you the truth. We’ve played about four or five new songs. What we’ve done is, we’ve brought a piano out on stage. In my mind, it’s really picked up the visual aspect of the show. It’s definitely picked up the audio aspect of the show with cool piano stuff! I think is just cool that people can see that we’re not just these guys that stand there with guitars. We love experimenting. We love hearing different things. We love putting piano back in the music. It’s really been easy to put songs together. In fact, we keep finding ourselves wanting to put more of the new stuff in, just cos it’s so much fun to play!

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Awesome!

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