Original KILLSWITCH ENGAGE Singer Discusses TIMES OF GRACE's Debut Tour In New Interview

On February 1, Greg Maki of Live-Metal.net conducted an interview with original KILLSWITCH ENGAGE vocalist Jesse Leach about TIMES OF GRACE, Jesse's new project with KILLSWITCH ENGAGE guitarist and producer extraordinaire Adam Dutkiewicz. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Live-Metal.net: First tour, first show — how are you feeling right now?

Jesse Leach: I feel great, man. Very excited. I can't wait to do this. It's gonna be so much fun.

Live-Metal.net: You're going out and headlining right away. Was there any doubt that you would do that from the start?

Jesse Leach: No. We kind of wanted to present it a certain way. We were offered some tours. But for us, with the visual aspects of the show and everything about it, we really just wanted to be able to do it on our own terms without any sort of things holding us back. We kept it small-scale and decided to do it this way. Your first impression as a band is important, so instead of us having to bend at all, we just wanted to come out totally legit, do it our own way. It's exciting.

Live-Metal.net: When you first started working with Adam on these songs a few years ago, did you envision it getting to this point, where it's become a full band and you're on tour?

Jesse Leach: It wasn't even a though in our minds when we started writing this record. This record was written without the thought of how we're gonna make money off it, if it's gonna sell, what's the record label gonna think — any of that stuff. No one really knew about it, and it was just a way for us to help us cope with what we were going through. The fact that the record's out and the fact that I'm sitting here on a tour bus talking to you is just absolutely mind-blowing for me. It still hasn't really set in yet.

Live-Metal.net: Can you tell me about the band you've put together. I know you've got Joel (Stroetzel) from KILLSWITCH. How did you choose these guys?

Jesse Leach: Joel was one of my picks from the early days when we started deciding that we were gonna actually form a band. That just sort of happened as a fluke. He was helping us out on a press tour, playing acoustic guitar for us at a gig we did in New York. It came up in conversation, and he was like, "Yeah, I'll do it." That solidified everything. I got really excited. The other guys — Daniel (Struble),the bass player, is an old friend of Adam's. He used to sing in a band called FIVE POINTE O. Someone I remember from my KILLSWITCH days. He's always been a really great dude. He's got a great voice, too. He does backups live, so not only does he play bass, but he adds a third voice to help with all the layers of vocals we have on our record. And then Dan (Gluszak) we found through our management, who just turned out to be an amazing drummer and a really sweet guy. So we've got a little family out here, and we all enjoyed our first night together on the bus. Vibes are great so far. We're all really excited. They're just capable musicians. It's not something where you have to sit there and show them the part over and over again. We gave them the CD, they learned the stuff, we had maybe five, six rehearsals, and then we're on tour. Very, very quickly it just happened.

Live-Metal.net: What's the set list like for this tour? Are you sticking just to the album?

Jesse Leach: Yeah, it's the record minus two songs. Midway through, there's a bit of an improvisational jam thing, which we thought would be interesting to add in 'cause none of our bands really have done that for the most part. With the whole visual show, it adds a whole other element to it. We've put some ambient-sounding music between songs, so there's really no real break in the sound, and there's not going to be any stage banter for the most part, just saying "thank you." It's not gonna be your typical metal show with the lead singer barking over the microphone and asking people how they're feeling. We wanted to consciously come out with something that was different, that was more of an experience — even down to the music that you here in between the bands. Playing in the club right now, it's stuff from my personal iTunes, my person collection, getting a different mixture of songs and sounds so you're not just getting bludgeoned with metal at a metal show. For us, it was the whole package, down to the way it's gonna be lit on stage — everything. All the little details, we sat and talked about, and it's happening. So it's very exciting.

Read the entire interview at Live-Metal.net.