KXM is one of those bands that only comes around once in a while, a super-group comprised of three incredibly talented musicians that just gel. Their third album ‘Circle of Dolls’ is just around the corner (out on Rat Pak Records September 13th) so we caught up with Ray Luzier this time around (we spoke to George for the last album and Dug for the debut so it was only fair) to talk about what just might be their best yet. We also get to backtrack through Ray’s career, ask about touring, talk Korn and find out what it’s like to be in the studio when these guys get together…
Ray: Hi Mark
Mark: Hi Ray, how are you?
Ray: Really good, great to talk to Australia! It’s a long night for you?
Mark: Or an early morning depending on how you look at it.
Ray: (laughs)
Mark: One things for certain though, it’s well worth saying up to talk KXM, ever since I heard ‘Circle of Dolls’ the new album I’ve not been able to put it down.
Ray: Thanks.
Mark: It’s one of those wonderful projects that really gives you something a little bit different and I guess that’s part of the point really?
Ray: Yeah, I mean we do these records very quickly George, Dug and I have many miles and a lot of experience doing records and tours and writing music, so the whole thing with all three KXM efforts was to write one song a day and then track the basic tracks by the evening, then move on to the next song. So we kept that format for all of them. We’d just go in with no riffs, ideas or anything. We’d write a song and by six or seven p.m. we’d track the drums, then George would do rhythm and Dug would lay bass down. Of course Dug’s lyrics and melodies and George’s leads are done at a later time. So for the most part it’s done very quickly.
Mark: And as I understand it the whole band came together originally because of your desire to just jam together?
Ray: Yeah, my son had a first birthday party eight years ago in Los Angeles, in my L.A. home and that’s where it all happened. George, Dug and I ended up in my little studio and George blurted out that this would make a great band and I thought, yeah but how would that ever happen? Our schedules are too busy. But the next thing you know it was born.
Mark: I do have to ask about that though, that must be one of the great frustrations when you have a wonderful project like this, the scheduling? It must be hard to get everything to fall in place to allow you to take this out on the road for people?
Ray: Yeah, it’s mostly my fault, and that’s because Korn is such a busy band you know. Up until a year or two ago we’d toured extensively, there are no ‘cycles’ for us, we just go, so a couple of years ago we started to take some time off before this tour we’re doing right now with Alice in Chains. Touring is one of those things that you have to prepare for – you need months for promotion, you need time for the band to prepare, so it’s hard for me to have that much time. So we definitely want to do it, you know it’s not out of the question, so I think it will happen in the next year or two but it’s just a matter of figuring out scheduling and we all three definitely want to make it all happen for sure. You know we’ve never played the songs live, the closest you can get to see KXM live is to watch me on YouTube playing to Dug and George at a drum festival (laughs).
Mark: (laughs)
Ray: I’ve played the parts live on several occasions and that’s the best taste you can get of it, you know.
Mark: It’s an interesting title for an album too ‘Circle of Dolls’, where did that name come from?
Ray: You know, we were going through album titles and George was in Downtown Los Angeles one day, I forget what he was doing, and as it is in LA there’s the whole gamut of society from extremely rich people to homeless people, and he saw what appeared to be this homeless guy doing this dance and there were a bunch of dolls around him. He was literally dancing in a circle of dolls. George just stopped and he couldn’t stop watching, so he came to the studio with that story and Dug said “You know that would make a great album title.”
Ray: Then we started going back and forth with artwork and various things – we had all these images around dolls, but I suggested we put our picture on the album cover because we’ve never done that yet and I was always a fan of seeing the band on their covers, it’s kind of old school, I guess not that many people care these days, but the old-schoolers kinda get it. So we got the photo and had Rat Pak’s artists do their thing to it and it turned out really good, the vinyl is really spectacular with a splattered turquoise and black vinyl – it really looks great.
Mark: And also available on cassette tape I understand?
Ray: (laughs) yeah even more old school man! I laughed at that.
Mark: It’s coming back so I hear, I’ll be dusting off my Walkman. Turning to you Ray, I think the first time I heard you, you were in Dave Lee Roth’s band?
Ray: Yeah I was in Dave’s band from about 1997 to 2005 and before that I was with Jake E Lee, the Ozzy Osborne guitar player around 1994, and that was my first official tour I guess you could say, we travelled around the States. We were gonna do a record but we got shelved before we got a chance to do that.
Mark: Like so many at that time.
Ray: Yeah. Then after Dave I was in a band called Army of Anyone with Robert and Dean DeLeo from Stone Temple Pilots and Richard (Patrick) from Filter. It was a great band but unfortunately it was short-lived. They were managed by the same management as Korn and that’s what led me to the Korn gig. October is almost 13 years for me with Korn, that’s crazy.
Mark: I loved Army of Anyone, it’s such a shame you didn’t do more, but hey, that led you to Korn.
Ray: Yeah it’s a shame we were kind of the guineapigs on The Firm records and they didn’t really know what they were doing, and when you’re the first band on any label and they’re still trying to get their stuff together, so I think if the business side had been handled better there would have been many records from Army of Anyone. But I guess that’s the side of the business none of the public know about. But I still get people bringing the Army of Anyone record to Korn ‘Meet and greets’ and saying “What happened – one record wasn’t enough!”
Mark: (laughs) I do have to agree, I’d be one of those guys.
Ray: (laughs) I’ll sign it.
Mark: This album from KXM is quite a bit darker than the other two, I played it a few times to get into that mind space and I do think it brings a little extra to the sound, I wondered if you agreed and if so why is that?
Ray: Someone said that the other day, and I don’t really know, it’s not like we sat down and had a meeting and said “Let’s make this one poppier and this one darker or whatever.” I think it just came out that way, and obviously musicians are a big ball of emotions as it is, we’re like big babies. So when you’re going through something personal I think it definitely reflects in the music you’re writing and at the time Dug was going through some personal stuff with his family and I don’t know if that affected the lyrics or just the way we wrote things but it kinda ended up that way with no intention. There was no real reason, that’s just the way it happened.
Mark: So take us inside the studio Ray, what’s it like on that first day when you get together?
Ray: It’s funny, we have a lot of laughs and you couldn’t get three more different personalities in a room, you know we definitely respect each other’s musicianship and each other’s careers and all of that, but we’re really different people. Like we’ll go out for lunch or something and just the stuff we say and talk about is really funny. Sometimes it gets scary, I’ve got together with brilliant musicians in the past and I’ve been so excited about writing with them or collaborating and then you get in the studio with them and you find that “Wow, we don’t get along musically” and that’s OK. There are certain people that just don’t mesh and that doesn’t mean that they’re bad or your bad, It’s like any relationship – you just don’t get along with that person. But when Dug, George and I just stepped in there and we wrote that very first song, it was a song called ‘Love’ off the first record. It just started with a groove and it was so bizarre how…we were just looking at each other because we had no idea what to expect, you know, it was like being 20 years old, it’s a strange place to be in and you’re just hoping that you’re gonna get along, and there was nothing forced and that was the beauty about it. There was no “Oh God I hope we can come up with something” it just came – riffs and grooves – everything was just flying everywhere, and so much that we had to just step back and Chris Carter and I, our producer, engineer and mixer, he was saying “Wow you guys are getting kinda crazy with parts why don’t we just take this part that would work better with this other song” and he just started doing that, because we need those outside ears. But yeah, it turns out that we got along, in fact for the last one when we did ‘Scatterbrain’ George even said the first day in the studio “What are we doing?” and we all went “I don’t know” we had no idea! (laughs) And I had this groove that I’d had for a while, the start to “Breakout” one of our videos. And I just started playing that groove and George started out with the riff, and Dug the monster was acing the bass notes and there it was!
Mark: It’s a great new record and it starts out with the wonderful ‘War of Words’ which for me was the perfect place to start and had me from the off, but it’s an album that takes you on a journey and I think that’s one of the great things about the album. I guess that must be part of the fun of starting with a blank slate and working so quickly – you never know where you’re going to end up?
Ray: Sure, and it’s hard to put orders together on records, I’m really weird about putting the order together. I put it together for ‘Circle of Dolls’ – we all turned our sequences in and “Wow” they didn’t match at all, it was so bizarre how different they were and then the phone calls started ”How can you start the album with this?”, “What do you mean we end with this?” And I said “Hey guys let me do this tempo-wise, emotion-wise.” I mean let’s face it a lot of people these days don’t listen to an entire record anymore and it’s really sad because, I’m a fan from back in the day when you put a record on it takes you on a journey, and I wanna feel that, you know. So the one thing we all agreed on was to open the record with ‘War of Words’ and to end with ‘The Border’ so we kinda had the bookends, and we went from there.
Mark: I think you nailed it Ray, I am one of those old school guys who does listen to albums from start to finish and I think this one flows absolutely beautifully.
Well our time has flown by Ray, thank you so much for talking to us today, you take care.
Ray: I appreciate it Mark, thank you.
Mark: Hopefully we’ll get to see you down here again soon with your other band Korn?
Ray: Yes, it’s been too long I think the last time was at Soundwave. We always love to play there and we’re past due. All the best man, goodbye.
