SLIPKNOT's CLOWN Discusses DIRTY LITTLE RABBITS Side Project

Midwest Excess recenty conducted an interview with SLIPKNOT percussionist M. Shawn Crahan and Stella Katsoudas of Crahan's side project DIRTY LITTLE RABBITS. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Midwest Excess: Shawn, you've been through a couple of other singers, and then you came across Stella. What was it about her that you knew that that was who you wanted to bring into the band?

Shawn: Well, I'd been searching a long time to bring what I feel my art is to fruition, to like bring it to reality. It's been a real challenge, because I haven't really been able to find people that I feel believe in the art as passionately and romantically as I do. I've known Stella for a long, long time, and you know, when the music became time to be really, really serious…and really get everything together, I just took a little time to really pan out my thoughts, left and right, both hemispheres, and figure out what I thought was right. It was strange because Stella came up, but like the minute it did come up, you know, it was a little frightening because then it was kind of like a new Mario Bros. level, you know? You're glad you were going to do it, but it was a little frightening that it might end quickly because of what you don't know. That's what excites me, is the challenge and not knowing. Stella and I have been friends for a long time. She's the shit, and I only work with people that I feel are crazy and fighters, mainly. This band is a super group, but it's all fighters. We're all kind of like reclusive, a little bit, in our own way. We all love music, so we've socially kind of gotten together where we're socially not happening. We're kind of like having a lot of fun together. So, that's what it is with Stella. I think it's just the romanticness of the dream and what can be and what people think cannot be. I like returning to where I was, and pulling from a lot of energy that was real. I don't know, it's kind of destiny, you know. We met a long time ago, for whatever reasons we thought, and here, we end up doing this. It might have been all preparation to do this.

Midwest Excess: Shawn, as you see it, what is the future of DIRTY LITTLE RABBITS?

Shawn: Take over the world. I mean, I believe in the song and I believe the world is getting worse, and not better as we all feel it. I don't feel like wrath, and I don't feel like gluttony, and I don't feel like greed and all these things that were what seems like a decade ago. I feel like, disappointment, and I feel like the future is to shed as much light on that disappointment for humans as possible, through… I believe one of the greatest gifts, at least for me in my life, is music and art. I think our future is to spread the good word. As funny or as stupid as that may sound, we're here just to throw down a rock show. A lot of people tonight were…you can just see it. They come out and they hoard into these places to forget and to live and to become numb to a world that is un-relentless, because of our selves. I'm much older than I was when I started, and I want to start here because I feel like being here at this level is maybe the first step to the acknowledgement of the disappointment. By me stepping down from the stigma people think is, which is really just man made shit. So I'm down to this to try and spread some hope, and maybe some change. I think that's what we're doing. Maybe spread some hope and some change and grab a hold of the whirlwind and never look back.

Midwest Excess: Any plans for an album release?

Shawn: I'll tell everybody the way it is, right now. I'm so against the record industry, and I'm so against the way they will do it that this band will not be stopped. This band is a band of the people, and we will have as much fun and do what we are doing right now, and pay to play, as long as it takes to actually feel, and earn the right, to have that right of passage. Right of passage only means that you spend a little more money, you spend a little more time, you have a little more sacrifice and you go out and make it a business. Your business happens to be your dream, your art form, your love. You have to treat it like a business. We're just going to play right know. I've got some really high hopes for some really big tours. We're bidding tours right now. Rock tours this summer. I'd like to get on a tour this summer. I'd like to go to Europe this summer for a festival or two. Big wish lists. I would say early fall, late summer, might hit a record. I'd say we get it out before SLIPKNOT hits the studio, and then probably tour as long as we could. I have every intention of going back and doing SLIPKNOT stuff. This band is really big to me. It's very serious. It's taken my whole life to get to this. I've waited a very long time to get this love out of my heart, and this pain out of my soul. So, we plan on a full-length. We plan on the whole thing. Anything you can imagine, I am envisioning for this. It just takes time, and we're not going to push it this time. I'm not going to go in like a baby band and get everything taken from me. I don't necessarily need anything. We've got all we want. We've got a car. We've got a trailer and we've got each other. We've got good friends that let us stay on the floor and feed us, and it's good. We've got those all around the world, and if we don't have them yet, we'll get them soon enough. I don't mind, as long as the people don't touch too much.

Read the entire interview at Midwest Excess.