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Written by Jessica Santiago Lopez at 2012-11-12 23:26:46


Interviews :: Wednesday 13 talks The Dixie Dead


Wednesday 13 was in the Netherlands again at the beginning of this month for an awesome show in Tivoli de Helling in Utrecht (A review of the show can be found here). A new EP, called ‘Spook & Destroy’, has recently been released and a brand new record, ‘The Dixie Dead’ is coming up in February 2013. I got the chance to sit down with Wednesday 13 again, to catch up about his upcoming release and his plans for next year. Because, if there is one thing you can count on when it comes to Wednesday 13 is that he never sits still.

It was obvious pretty quickly that Wednesday 13 was excited for the show later on in the evening. W13:I’m super excited. We just did sound check and it’s the best sound that we’ve had… It sounded so good to us on stage. Most of the times, what the audience hears is not what we hear. So on stage, we can’t hear drums or we can’t hear guitars. It’s just loud. But it sounded like a perfect headphone mix. So when I have a good sound check, after that I’m super excited. Plus I think tonight is going to be a packed crowd. The crowds in Holland are always crazy. And it’s the day after Halloween, so I think it will still be carrying on as if this is Halloween night.”

The band played a show the day before, on Halloween, in the UK. Something that must have been very special for the fans. I mean, seeing Wednesday 13 on Halloween night? I just had to ask about the show...
W13:It was great. It was like... once we started, it was already over with, but it was amazing. It was a packed and a sold out show in London and it was overwhelming for me. I’m not a guy that ever has sold out shows or things like that so, to hear something like that and see that many people there to see me…It makes me feel good for what I’ve been doing for all these years. Knowing that people relate to me, it feels like it’s been worthwhile for me to do what I do, you know. It’s been a long road, it still is a long road for me, but when I see that kind of support and my fans…it’s just humbling and overwhelming.
…and about if they did something special for Halloween…
W13:Well, it’s kind of weird. I’ve always been Halloween, every day. So, Halloween is cool, but it’s kind of every day for me, you know. Especially now that I tour. Before, when I was not in a band, Halloween was once a year. But now, I’ve created this realm of music with what I do and every day is Halloween. Every night everyone is dressed up. A bit more maybe on Halloween, but at the same time we didn’t really do anything special. It did feel special because it was Halloween night but, again, every day for us is kind of like Halloween so, haha, it was just another day almost for us. But for everyone else it was special because, you know... It was Halloween.

But there was something else that made the Halloween show special, it was also recorded. I of course wondered when that one is going to be released?
W13:We don’t have an exact day yet. We basically filmed it for a DVD because we knew it was going to be a great show and we wanted to have the footage. We also have the new record that is coming out in February and I don’t want to put it out right with it. I don’t want too many things coming out at the same time. So I’m thinking it will probably be around spring or something.Wednesday 13 liet verder weten dat de DVD niet alleen deze show zou bevatten. “ We’re also going to be filming stuff from our March tour, so we may combine the footage from last night with the footage from March and make a super DVD to put out, do something nice. I want to show behind the scenes and I want people to get to know me more, than just my music. I think that when people talk to me and see that I’m not that scary guy, that I have a sense of humor…I like to think that I’m an intelligent guy you know, haha. I’ve got a certain image to certain people and I think that if they see what we really do and see how hard we work and how much we believe in what we do…I guess it makes it easier for people to understand. So I want to do a proper DVD that shows that about us.”

So there's a new Wednesday 13 DVD coming somewhere next year, one which I am definitely looking forward to seeing, but of course the fans are also anxious to hear the new record ‘The Dixie Dead’. I was wondering if the new EP gave away something that we could expect for the new record as well?
W13:Yes and no. The maintrack “M.F.T.W”,  is a harder kind of edge track compared to ‘Calling All Corpses’. I’d say that is a good idea of where we’re going with the next record. But still it’s different. “Halloween 13-13” reminded me of my old days in Frankenstein Drag Queens, I liked the song and wanted to put it out, but I knew it wasn’t going to fit on the new album. The new album to me… I think it’s the best CD I have ever made. It’s a great combination of everything I have done over the years. It’s heavy, it’s still catchy and sing a long songs, it’s a full horror record.”
Wednesday 13 continues; “The album is going to look like a 1980’s horror movie. It’s a special way we did it. I’m more excited about that, then everything I can remember that I put out. We have some different sounds too that we’ve tried. There’s some really heavy stuff. Heavy for me, I don’t mean like Slayer heavy, haha. But for me it’s heavy. There’s a track on the record that reminds me of Black Sabbath and there’s one that reminds me of Ministry and Metallica. There are a lot of influences in there and it showcases my line-up that I have now. I didn’t play anything on the record but vocals and keyboard. It’s the first time I haven’t played guitar on a record. I wrote everything, but I let the band play it. So to me that definitely added something to it. I think I have a great band and my guitar player is amazing. The things he does and what he brought to the table…It’s the perfect record for me. I feel like it’s taken me 10 years to…Not that I didn’t like what I did before, but I feel like this is finally the one that we got where I wanted it to be. I’m super excited and I hope people will embrace it the same way. We’ll wait and find out in February.

On ‘Spook & Destroy’ we can also hear an acoustic version of “Curse of Me”, which is something many fans reacted to in a positive way. Will we hear more acoustic stuff like this in the future?
W13:I used to do that song acoustic live at the shows. And it sounded really different than the original version, because it was just me and an acoustic guitar. Everyone in the audience loved it, but then I stopped doing it for a few years because I did Murderdolls and things like that. When I came back to the Wednesday stuff, I heard people talk about when I was going to do it again. So when we were recording the EP I though, I should do a cool studio version. And even the studio version is a lot different than the live version. I wanted to make it really dark, really creepy. There’s a lot of different vocal tracks all together, but I wanted it to be like I was whispering in your ear and make the hair on your neck just stand up. I think it has a cool scary vibe to it.”
Wednesday 13 also said that he would like to make a dark acoustic record someday: “I don’t know when, maybe not next year haha, but I would like to make a record where I’d go back and do my songs acoustic. Make a dark acoustic record like “Curse of Me” and my other songs as well. I think that would be a cool idea. We even talked about doing an acoustic set one night, an unplugged version and tell stories about our songs. Like a real intimate evening kind of thing you know. I have so many ideas, I’m just trying to find the time to release and do all these things.

The band recently announced that they're coming back to the UK next year for a couple of shows. But Wednesday 13 did say that the rest of Europe will have to wait a little bit longer: We only did the Halloween show in the UK, but we knew we were coming back in March. The reason we’re not doing a full European run is because we’re trying to come back for the festivals and if we tour Europe that soon, we can’t do the festivals. Those are really important to us, because we can play in front of people that would normally never listen to us. Next year I’ll be trying to get my name out there as much as I can and the festivals is something I really need to do. So, fingers crossed we’ll do the festivals. If we don’t, we’ll come back for a full European run.  And we’ll include Holland with a couple of dates hopefully. Every time I come here it’s just one show, so we’ll try to do more next time.

So, a new album, DVD, touring and festival. Sounds like a pretty packed upcoming year for Wednesday 13. But as I said before, he's always full of ideas. Adding that 2013 is a special year for Wednesday 13 as well, beside of the fact that it'll be 2013, it will also be his 10th anniversary releasing material under that name. He must have something special planned.
W13:I haven’t done music videos for Wednesday since the ‘Fang Bang’ record. So we just filmed two videos before we came over here. In January we’re going to film, hopefully, two to three more videos, so we’ll have five music videos for the new album. I’m producing and directing all the videos and with doing that, people can see what a Wednesday video would look like through my eyes.

He also told me that he is working on his own movie, which he wants to release next year by Halloween. “I’m working on my first horror film, that I’m going to try to make and have released by Halloween next year. When I say that, everyone thinks “Theatre”. Nothing like that. I want to go back and do like, the 70’s style, grind house films. The dirty, scary, weird movies. Small budget, unknown actors and I have no desire to be in it. I’m writing it and I want to direct it and I think it’s only natural for me to do that. I’ve been making songs about horror movies since I was 15, so it’s only natural to do a movie now. I’ve always been involved in that. I used to take theatre class and I wrote scripts all the time in high school, so it’s not new to me. It will be new to actually go on and film it, but I have an audience now. Now, when I say  “Wednesday 13 is releasing a movie”, I already have an audience, whereas before  it would have been really hard for me to get my movies out. I think I’ve waited for the right time to do it. It’s going to be cool and that’s the next chapter, the next door I want to open for me. Getting in to making movies and making them the way I want to see them, because horror movies these days don’t do anything for me. I want to go back to that old style.
Those are my big plans for next year and hopefully it will do well and I’m really in to it.

So Wednesday 13 has a lot of stuff planned in the future, but first the new record ‘The Dixie Dead’ will be released in February. A record described by Wednesday as “Loud, Dark and Funny”. Based on what he has told us we can be sure that it is going to be a special record with a special feeling to it. One that fans and lovers of the genre won't want to miss. I know I won't miss it. Check out  www.wednesday-13.com for all the information about the band and 'The Dixie Dead'.




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