LIZZY BORDEN Frontman: 'The New Show We've Put Together Is Absolutely Going To Be Fun'

Blasting-Zone.com recently conducted an in-depth interview with LIZZY BORDEN's namesake/frontman. Several excerpts follow:

Blasting-Zone.com: What was the main motivation behind the seven year gap between the release of "Deal With The Devil" and "Appointment With Death"?

Lizzy: "Well, when we did 'Deal With The Devil', which was in 2000, we toured for a couple of years off and on. In 2003, we ended up recording a LIZZY BORDEN record that took a little over a year, but in the end, it just didn't feel like a LIZZY BORDEN record, so we shelved it. So we wasted about a year and a half there. We didn't really wanna go right back in and do another LIZZY record, so we created a band called STARWOOD. I've always loved CHEAP TRICK and a lot of those bands from the '70s that had that hard rock 'n' roll vibe with a pop or commercial edge, so we created the band and did a record. We went to Japan, did a little bit of touring here and there and then we went back in to do another STARWOOD record. Right about the time we had finished it...I just had backing vocals to put on it and had to mix it so it would be done...we started wanting to do LIZZY BORDEN again. We ended up going out last summer with W.A.S.P., did that tour and then came back and started working on this record. This record took a little more time to make, but it needed the time to gel with our new guitar player and the whole thing."

Blasting-Zone.com: Is there any chance material from that shelved album will ultimately see the light of day? I'm sure there's a lot of fans out there that would love to hear it…

Lizzy: "No. I think we dismantled it, really. We were just disappointed because we had spent so much time on it. We had no direction, no nothin'. We just started messin' about in the studio and started coming up with different ideas. I think there's one song that ended up on 'Appointment With Death'… it was actually a piece of one of those songs. But I don't think you'll ever hear anything from it. It's just something that we left behind. We have hundreds and hundreds of different unfinished songs and finished songs just sitting around that we've recorded but never released, ya know? So you never know. We might do a box set one of these days where some of that stuff might appear. As a matter of fact, our old sound man just e-mailed me the other day sayin' that he has a live board recording of us in Japan. Little things like that pop out from time to time…little gems that we keep and hideaway so we can use them later on something."

Blasting-Zone.com: Once the touring in support of "Appointment With Death" officially begins, do you have any idea what type of set list you'll be working with?

Lizzy: "This is going to be the 'Appointment With Death' tour, so naturally, we'll be playing a lot of the new album, which I always do. There's a lot of bands that when they put out a new record, they only play two songs…and then you've got bands that only play the new record and don't play the old stuff. For us, we wanna do a little bit of both. We're there to entertain, but we're also there to show people that we have a new record out, so… We're playing one or two songs off of each record. Right now, the set list is around seventeen or eighteen songs (laughs). I don't know if that's gonna get whittled down or not. …The set might be just about right for a headlining show. I think it runs the gamut of giving everyone what they want and giving us what we wants as far as playing new material. It's so much fun for us to play new material, but at the same time, we realize people wanna hear all the old favorites, so we're there for everything. The new show we've put together is absolutely going to be fun. I think people are gonna love it."

Blasting-Zone.com: I'm assuming you'll once again be working with a variety of stage props…

Lizzy: "There's always going to be props. We have giant props that are coming for our headlining tour, which may not happen until next May because we're doing some fly-in shows…and then we're going straight to Europe, doing a mini European tour, which will end in the UK. That will take us to the end of the year. Then, in January, we might have the support slot for a major tour that's like four months long, so…if we do that, we won't be able to launch our headlining tour until next May. We're building the show right now and some of the bigger props we obviously can't take on the plane with us, so… Once we do finally get that thing out, it's gonna be great. There's so many great things that we're talking about and starting to build right now."

Blasting-Zone.com: Prior to the recording of (2005's) "Deal With The Devil", was there any doubt which label you'd be working with? Did you ever consider "shopping" the band to a few different labels?

Lizzy: "That was actually a newly signed deal. It was our first record on a new deal. The '90s were not good to us (laughs). We were floatin' around out there on our own without a label, so when it came time to do another record… I had been talking to (Metal Blade Records founder) Brian Slagel…went to a couple of hockey games and he was like, 'You know, you gotta do another LIZZY BORDEN record…', so that's how it came about. It was one of those things where I didn't know how we were gonna put out the next record and he said, 'Let's do it on Metal Blade…', so we ended up doin' it there. We didn't shop it (laughs). We've never really shopped. I think we tried once or twice and it just seemed like a nightmare (laughs). There's very few people who knew what they're doing. God knows what kind of band we would have turned into if someone kinda manipulated what we do. It probably would have been something horrific (laughs)."

Read the entire interview at Blasting-Zone.com.