DOWN Guitarist: 'We're Going To Go Backwards Even More Towards The Feeling Of The First Album'

ARTISTdirect.com editor Rick Florino recently conducted an interview with DOWN guitarist Pepper Keenan. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ARTISTdirect.com: It's been some time since "Over the Under" dropped. How have those songs changed on the road?

Keenan: They've evolved a little bit live. We change our set every night so we don't get too stuck on anything. If anything, those songs got faster. Maybe that's not a good thing [Laughs]. We keep an eye on everything, and we change the set up so much that the individual songs don't change too much. There are a couple of solos that change and we groove a little differently, but it's still fun to play them. That record came out two calendar years ago now, and we're still on the damn road. It's crazy. We just got back from Europe. We did seven or eight weeks over there, and our last show was in Tel Aviv, Israel. Then we came home and started ten days later.

ARTISTdirect.com: On "Over the Under", it felt like everything you'd been moving towards since "Nola" had come to fruition. Do you feel like that was the case?

Keenan: Yeah, I think that's true for the last record. On the new one, after touring so much, I think we're going to go backwards even more towards the feeling of the first album — the directness of it. I think we maybe won't spend as much time in "studio mode." We'll make it stripped down and go that route. The last two records have been pretty elegant with lots of parts and sounds to them. [On the next album] I think we're going to strip it down — AC/DC, RAMONES-style — and do what DOWN did on the first record for shits and giggles.

ARTISTdirect.com: Even a longer epic song like "Nothing In Return" still has that raw edge that "Nola" has though.

Keenan: Yeah, we play it live and it blows people minds. It's the last song we do, and people are like, "Oh my God, I can't believe they're playing it!" Believe me, I love writing songs like that. Believe me. The last few records have had pretty good content of that — like "Landing on the Mountains of Meggido" from "II". We're going to strip it down and kick it up a little bit. We've already got a pretty good arsenal of those types of epic songs. Now we need to write some more shit-kickers.

ARTISTdirect.com: Have you been writing new music on the road?

Keenan: We've got riffs here and there, and we keep lists of things. We're going to try to start really writing in the new year, like early January. Then we're going to try to have something out by the early summer.

ARTISTdirect.com: Does the road ever change?

Keenan: It changes, and it evolves. You play different places. Going to new places is always exciting. You get used to it, but you've got to keep your head straight. Don't get too far out there on powders and liquids, and you'll be fine [Laughs]. That shit'll kill you! It's funny because I just got to San Francisco. Even when CORROSION OF CONFORMITY was in a van starving to death, we'd head straight to Poncho Villa's Mexican Restaurant in the Mission. Now we're playing this big old joint with Down and I still do the exact same thing [Laughs]. I go to Poncho Villa's and get a seven dollar burrito.

Read the entire interview from ARTISTdirect.com.