A grimly glamorous ghoul who first slithered from the cobwebbed shadows of Charlotte, North Carolina, in the early 90s, Wednesday 13 has firmly established himself as the world’s premier purveyor of balls-out horror punk insanity. With a vivid and vile imagination that has endeared him to countless fans of riff-driven macabre over the last two decades, he has been one of rock’s most prolific protagonists, spreading his credo of grave-robbing rock ‘n’ roll and Hallowe’en debauchery around the globe and unleashing a seemingly endless stream of blood-spattered albums and EPs.
His latest album “Condolences” is full of signature Wednesday 13 stuff with hints of early material mixed with some dark and heavier progressions, with a tour to Australia coming at the end of April following an acoustic solo run in 2017, there was much to talk about as we catch up with the ghoulish frontman himself.
Andrew: So how’s your year been so far?
Wednesday 13: It’s been very good for me. Been off tour since November so we had a few months to kinda relax and recharge the batteries and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing so it’s been a very good time off. But I can say that we’re all ready to get back on the road, it’s been a little too long so we’ll be back in Australia doing what we do.
Andrew: Just before we get to the Australian tour, what do you like to do in your spare time to relax?
Wednesday 13: Lately my new kick at the beginning of this year is really just excercising. I excercise about 4 hours a day, collectively through out the day. I live next to this huge mountain here in Los Angeles and it has all these trails so when I’m home I just switch my rock n roll hours off and I go to bed before midnight and I’m up early and I go hike mountains so that’s sort of been my fun thing to do. I used to do it a long time ago but I just got back into it really heavy since the beginning of the year so that’s pretty much what I do and when I’m not doing that I love watching old 80’s movies that I grew up on and collecting memorabillia and toys of that same era. I’m pretty much a pop culture nerd so everything from little G.I. Joe toys to Freddy Krueger and Leatherface is my life.
Andrew: Freddy Krueger I haven’t seen those movies in years! Did you ever watch that last one they did, the new remake?
Wednesday 13: Yeah I saw the new one, I liked it! Again not having Robert Englund as Freddy was blasphemous, I get it but I did like the character of the guy that plays Freddy – I can’t think of his name right now, Jackie Earle Haley I think was his name? I love that actor because he’s been in everything from the Warriors and everything from the 80’s, I loved him as Rorschach in The Watchmen so he already had this cool, evil deameanour and when I heard he was Freddy I was like, ‘Perfect!’ It had this Melrose Place / 90210 Hollywood kind of cast but I did like that guy playing it. I thought it was done well, I didn’t hate it.
Andrew: Yeah it wasn’t too bad. I did a hear a rumour that Robert Englund was going to reprise his old role again in a new movie.
Wednesday 13: That’s what I heard so good! If he doesn’t want to do it I want to throw my hat into the ring, I would love to play Freddy Krueger. I got his look, I got his laugh, I can do it!
Andrew: [laughs] That would be great! Have you ever been in a horror movie like a cameo role or anything like that?
Wednesday 13: We’ve had a couple of songs for some soundtracks like we were on the Freddy vs Jason soundtrack and they remade Night Of The Demons and we’re in that for a bit but as far as making a cameo, no I haven’t. I don’t really have any desire to be an actor or act as me, put me as a monster or a zombie or guy getting run over by a car, I’m your man.
Andrew: Well it’s great to see you coming back to Australia, we are excited. I know you were here not too long ago when you came and did the acoustic tour, how did that tour go for you?
Wednesday 13: It was great! The acoustic thing is a whole different bag of tricks compared to what we’re bringing with this new tour with the full band. The acoustic thing is something I put together several years ago of this idea of having a sort of evening with Wednesday 13 where I can play songs from everything from the past 20 something years, tell some stories and make it just this cool little intimate thing and that’s exactly what it was. I think the fans loved it, we had a blast. A lot of people told me that was their favorite show because it was a combination of the whole history and it was personal and I could answer questions and talk to people. I think that was something that a band like Slipknot could not do because they are too huge, I mean I guess they could do it in a tiny setting if they wanted to but for me and on the level that I am and what I do, that worked out perfect. It also works out in between doing full band tours because there’s only so many places you can tour all the time that welcome us, I wish we could tour everywhere around the world non-stop but we don’t get to do that as much as I want. So whenever we gotta put the brakes on this full band touring wearing a territory out, I can do the acoustic thing which is a totally different animal and that’s how it’s kind of worked out. So I was really glad we were able to bring that to Australia because it went over great but this time we’re coming back with no acoustic guitars, it’s going to be loud and your ears are going to be bleeding so I apologise in advance!
Andrew: [laughs] No need to apologise, rock n roll is meant to be loud and heavy! This tour is obviously supporting the new album “Condolences” which was out last year and I remember loving that album and for whatever reason that may be, it reminded me a lot of the early Wednesday 13 stuff. Was that the intention at all?
Wednesday 13: Great! Well that’s odd you say that, well not odd but what you just said I hear that a lot but I also hear the opposite like, ‘This sounds nothing like what you have done, this is heavy metal garbage. What have you done, you’ve lost your roots’, blah blah blah and I’m like, ‘What?’ I’ve heard that a couple of times, not a lot but a lot of people didn’t get it. For me I feel this is the same way as what you said, that record is a combination of the old stuff as well as us leaning toward where we are now. I think it’s a perfect combination, it wasn’t anything intentional like, ‘Oh let’s go back to the old sound’. It was nothing like that at all, we literally just wrote songs and then some songs I would be like, ‘Oh cool that sounds like it could be on that record’. That’s a good thing, I’ve always found with me that anything I try to plan or go, ‘We’re going to go do it like this’, it always goes bad and goes wrong. So we just let it come out how it comes out and that natural way that it comes out is how it is and that’s how this record turned out. I knew it was going to be heavier but it wasn’t intentional, we just wrote songs and it turned out to be a heavier, darker record. To me I think it holds up to the first album, it’s just another chapter in the Wednesday legacy.
Andrew: Yeah it’s weird that some people would say it sounds nothing like you guys because I’m hearing a lot of Transylvania, Fang Bang and maybe a little of the Calling All Corpses album. It’s got a lot of that groove and heaviness to it, do you feel that there is a progression from those older albums?
Wednesday 13: There’s definitely a big progression between the new stuff and the old stuff and I say that only because the first 3 or 4 albums up to Calling All Corpses, I pretty much played everything on the record except for the drums. On Transylvania I played all the bass, all guitars, on the second I did all the guitars and on the third one and I did most of the guitars on Calling All Corpses and that’s when the band kind of formed in and started playing on that. So for me when I listen back on stuff I can definitely hear a musical ability better because they are far better musicians than I am [laughs]. They can perform these parts better but one of my favorite things to do is when we play live, the band I have now when we go back and revisit a song from like Fang Bang or something, the way it sounds to me is just bigger and better than it ever was. It’s never anything I look back on an old song and go, ‘Oh I hate that’, or anything. Every record I’m proud of and they are kind of like your children, as weird as it may be even though I’m not the kind of person writing about my personal life and things like that but a lot of those records reflect…like I can listen to Transylvania and I can tell you exactly what was going on in my life during that recording, Fang Bang I can tell you so it’s almost like memory books where you can look at and go, ‘Cool!’ Sometimes they are good memories and bad memories all mixed in there but that’s kind of how I do my records. “Condolences”, when I look at that record, that really sums up what we were going through so some people don’t get to see that side of it. But for me I look back on it all and every record is different and I love that they are different.
Andrew: I guess the true test for new songs is the live show and how they play out to the fans, how are the fans responding to it and how are they fitting along with the older ones?
Wednesday 13: They fit perfect. Every time you make a record you always hope the fans are going to like it and there are certain songs whenever you start recording when in the studio and in the past I’ve always gone, ‘Oh man that song live is going to be awesome, that song is going to be fun live’. And so when we started touring last year on this record we were playing I think 6 songs or about half the new album and it just seemed that the fans were reacting to the new songs just as well as old ones, even if they didn’t know them by the second chorus they had their fists in the air and were singing the chorus because it was a new record to them. So yeah the reaction has been good and it seems like the old songs are already classics, they know them all the way through so that’s a good thing.
Andrew: Definitely, that’s great to hear! Anyway congratulations on the new album, as I said I loved it and look forward to seeing these songs live in Australia. We will see you April, thanks for your time, really appreciate it!
Wednesday 13: Awesome man, thank you so much. See you next month!
Tour Dates
Thursday 26th April – Brisbane, The Triffid 18+
Friday 27th April – Sydney, Manning Bar 18+
Saturday 28th April – Melbourne, Corner Hotel 18+
Sunday 29th April – Wellington, Valhalla 18+
Tickets On sale now
Destroy All Lines
