DEVILDRIVER Frontman: It Bugs Me That PRESIDENT OBAMA Is Always Smiling At Everything

Steven K. of Swigged! recently conducted an interview with vocalist Dez Fafara of Santa Barbara, California's DEVILDRIVER. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Swigged!: The band recently released a new record which debuted in the Top 30 Billboard charts, a bit of an increase from the last one. When it comes to the days following a new release, does the band get caught up in all the numbers or do you simply sit back and let the cards lay as they fall?

Fafara: At this point I really don't get nervous because I've been in [the music business] for 13 years now, so I know what downloading has done. There are all these graphs and charts that everybody from the label uses to say sales in music have dropped 45 percent over the course of the last few years, so going up is definitely a huge deal. For me, as long as the music is getting out there. Our last record, "Pray for Villains", actually leaked about a month beforehand and I think I was the only one happy about it — I was actually excited to get it out there.

Swigged!: What do you think about kids downloading your music?

Fafara: Oh, whatever. As long as the music gets out there. Downloading is here — it's happening. The only thing I'm worried about is that I think it will kill underground art. I think it will kill blues, jazz, punk rock, [and] metal . Any of the stuff that's truly underground, if it can't be [viable] to tour and to do to it to support ones' livelihood, all you're going to get shoved down your throat are the mass-market, money hungry bands. Which is actually beginning to happen now, I believe.

Swigged!: A lot of labels today are using access to the artists as a marketing ploy to attract a wider audience. Do you think things such as Twitter, video blogs, or Facebook accounts diminish what the idea of a true "rock star" is, ideally speaking?

Fafara: I'm an "isolatoric hermit" of a human being, if you will. [Laughs] I do my job, shake hands when I can. As far as Twitter and things making it more personal, look, there's a Facebook page for me out there and it's not even mine. There's a MySpace account that isn't even mine. I'll occasionally send out blogs and it may seem old school, but I can only get so personal. The music and the lyrics should speak for themselves rather than all the rhetoric that's going on. You really want me to blog 30 times a week so you can know what restaurant I ate it? I mean, maybe some people want to know that, but I seriously don't think that's the case.

Swigged!: Obviously being on the road and living from show to show is an experience many people will never go through. But taking a step back, in a lot of ways you're just a normal American guy: you pay your taxes, love your family, etc. What sort of issues, as an American, are you most concerned with tackling?

Fafara: Well, I'm concerned just like everyone else is concerned. Half of my family is out of work right now, the country is in disrepair, completely. We need to do something about the health care system. Education too. I live in California and the first thing Arnold fucking Schwarzenegger did was cut our education budget, which he should have doubled. So I'm concerned with everything everyone else is concerned with, I just happen to only catch a shower every five or six days, never get a good meal, and rarely catch a full night of sleep. [Laughs] But that's like every other working man out there supporting his family. He's doing the same thing – working two jobs and thinking about the direction this country is heading. I'm real concerned with that. We used to be a shining light before President Bush. I don't know if the pieces will be picked up [under President Obama]. We're going to have to see. I mean, the first thing Obama did when he became president during the economic downturn was throw a $20 million party. Why not say, "Hey, everybody put on jeans. Let's have some people on the front lawn and kick back — show the American public we're not going to be wasteful." Instead, it's been a rock star fanfare and personally, it bugs me the man is always smiling at everything and is constantly in such a jovial mood. I'm looking for a hard-ass to put things in perspective. We'll have to see — I voted for the guy, so I hope things happen in this country.

Swigged!: On the subject of [Dez's former band] COAL CHAMBER, I believe it was written somewhere you left over musical differences. How do you keep everyone on the same page for DEVILDRIVER?

Fafara: In the beginning what I said about COAL CHAMBER is that I left because the musical direction wasn't happening. It was a misleading statement in the sense that I wasn't at the time going to put out there what really did happen. Now what really did happen was that the music AND friendship both went bad because they found methamphetamines. They found speed to be way more important than making music and being friends. So just at about the top of our game, I split. Keeping DEVILDRIVER together, we're a group of like-minded guys that all love to tour and all know exactly what our jobs are. There are five things that will mess up a band, so we stay away from those things on a hardcore basis. Specifically, those things are: drugs, alcohol, money, ego, or women like Yoko Ono.

Read the entire interview from Swigged!