DOWN's PEPPER KEENAN And KIRK WINDSTEIN On Playing And Writing Music Together

Alison Richter of GuitarWorld.com recently conducted an interview with DOWN guitarists Pepper Keenan and Kirk Windstein. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

GuitarWorld.com: How does the rest of the band factor into the riffs and melodies that you both come up with?

Keenan: Sometimes I try and write overly simple riffs or chord structures so that Kirk can have room to breathe and not be so structured by a technical riff. I think sometimes writing those riffs is a lot trickier than writing complicated, busy riffs, where you're filling in all the negative spaces. So I tend to think like that, in terms of the "classic song structure; you've heard it before" kind of deal. Kirk will come up with things, and sometimes we'll do variations on the same riff with Jimmy [Bower] changing the drumbeat. That's a pretty big DOWN trick too, where we hammer a riff into the ground and Jimmy does half time.

Windstein: I bring in riffs, but it's very seldom that anyone's riff is not tricked up a little bit by the other guy. Phil [Anselmo, vocals] is in charge of arranging the songs. As far as me writing with Pepper, a lot of times I have a riff and he says, "Why don't you do this," or he has a riff and I do all the harmonies. The thing we have is weird; it works great, but we're two completely different schools as far as guitar players and styles. We couldn't be more different from one another, but when we work together, it's magic. Certain things he does really well and certain things I do really well, but we understand one another and where we're both coming from as players because we've played together so long. The very incarnation of this thing was 1991, so it's been, like, 20 years. We've done quite a bit of touring all over the world and quite a bit of writing, so it works out great. It's like a symbiotic relationship in a way. It's totally different, but we gel, we feed off of one another's ideas, as do the other guys in the band. Everyone in the band plays guitar and writes riffs. In a lot of bands, one guy is the chief songwriter, but we get in there, throw around ideas, and if something clicks, we know it. Everybody puts their two cents in and we have what we think is a great final product.

GuitarWorld.com: What do the guitar parts and solos need to do within this band?

Keenan: When I play guitar with DOWN, I don't have to sing, so it allows me to do more complicated things that I might not do with C.O.C. That's the main difference. Sometimes there are pretty technical things going on when Phil's singing, so that's a different way to look at it.

Windstein: I think we're a throwback in a lot of ways, and one of the ways is, sure, we're all about the riff, but we're also about the songs, like, we all love THE BEATLES. We're trying to keep alive something that in my opinion seems to have gone away, which is concentrating on not just being heavy or loud or the fastest kick drum you can play or the craziest arpeggio you can do or whatever. We're trying to keep the spirit of the 1960s and 1970s and early 1980s rock and metal alive, which was really based around great songs. We're proud of the music we make because we feel we are keeping that spirit alive and flying the flag for the old-school bands that it seems like the newer generation of bands unfortunately haven't had the chance to experience.

GuitarWorld.com: What is the key to working successfully with another guitarist? It's easier said than done for some players.

Keenan: Kirk and I love the same type of music. We see things easily, we know who's got to do what solo and who's got to do what riff by just the way the riff is or the way the solo is. If we need a fast, articulate solo, it's going to be Kirk. If you need some David Gilmour melodic thing, it's me. If you need the Michael Schenker shit, it aint gonna be me! We know it and we like it like that. We play to each other's positive parts. It's not like we sit there and practice all different kinds of music. I work on my strengths and Kirk works on his. And between those two, we've pretty much got it covered.

Windstein: Right, and I think a lot of times it has to do with egos one thing Pepper and I don't have a problem with that a lot of guitar players do. We want to write great songs, have big riffs and make music that's like a throwback, but we don't have the egos. Some guys are so stuck on the solo that everything to them besides the solo is boring. They're just waiting for their solo. We're not those types of players. He does a lot more of the melodic kind of trippy stuff, the David Gilmour kind of approach, where I'm more and he'd be the first to say this if we have any fast solos, I do those. He does the weird effects and bendy stuff. It's just a different approach. I honestly couldn't imagine being in a band without two guitar players. I just couldn't. It seems to me that something's missing. I like the approach.

Read the entire interview from GuitarWorld.com.

"Superskum" (web site) has uploaded high-quality video footage of DOWN's September 6, 2011 performance at the Summit Music Hall in Denver, Colorado You can now watch the clips below.