John Baizley is a busy man. Not only is he the singer / guitarist / front man for American metal band Baroness but he is also a much renowned maker of album art. Naturally he does all of his own album covers but he has also worked with fellow metallers Kylesa, Black Tusk, and even Flight of the Conchords (he did the cover for I Told You I Was Freaky in 2009). He recently visited our country in a slightly different capacity: a solo artist. He joined the legendary Scott Kelly from Neurosis on his acoustic tour of the Antipodes.
On his first ever acoustic solo performance;
It was powerful, very powerful for me. Simply put, this is a side of music that has always interested me. It doesn’t come as easily to me as the loud rock thing does so this is something that I felt like I should start doing. More stripped down music is a heavy part of my listening diet, why should I exempt myself from playing that type of thing? It’s an experiment but I want to see this through. I wanna see this to the point where I am comfortable doing this.
On becoming a musician;
I mean I was a kid I listened to music, it appealed to me. I never ever assumed that I would become a musician it was just sort of a passion project for me at the beginning and people kept listening, and now here we are in Auckland talking to one another. Everyone dreams about it and it just so happens that I worked out well for me
On Georgia and its music scene;
I think it’s a variety of things. The region itself is a particularly powerful place, there is something going on there that influences and informs our music. The thing is that Georgia has a relatively small scene so we don’t have a lot of outside influence and we had to build what we have from the ground up without a strong scene prior to bands like Kylesa, Baroness, Black Tusk, Unpersons, Circle Takes The Square, Mastodon, you know? The bands that are there have to work really hard to get where they are. You gotta do it at the beginning, put in years and years and years of unpaid, painful, stress-inducing, life-threatening work before anybody listens. It’s not a place like New York or LA or Chicago where there is a crowd already there. We had to create our crowd, we had to create our music and it’s a very tight knit place.
On touring the world;
It surprises me that everybody wants me to come and play in their country. The type of music we play doesn’t seem to be a “sure thing” anywhere. I assume everything is a fad. You just try and ride the crest of the wave until it crashes. Some of us are left after all that and the best we can hope is that we are still around in five years when the style of music we play isn’t as popular as it is right now. Right now is a good time for bands like us.
On playing in New Zealand;
(Playing in Christchurch with Metallica) was awesome. There’s no two ways about it, it was a great tour we did. We had been to Australia already that year so it wasn’t like the region was a brand new place to us but NZ is a very different country. It is a beautiful place and the crowd here is similar to crowds in other fairly isolated places in that there is a real appreciation for anyone who takes the time to get down here because it’s not easy. It’s costly and difficult to do and it requires a whole lot of planning. You can’t just hop in a van and head down to Auckland, you know?
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