
Interview // 2024-05-04
Black Tusk
The artwork, the energy, the name. It all drew me towards Black Tusk. A band that has recently grown from a three to a four-piece, from Savannah. A band that has created an album moving in a forward direction, grabbing the pieces, and putting them together in their lives and music as they go.
I got the opportunity to talk to Chris Scary Adams, guitarist, and Derek Lynch, bass player. Here is our conversation.
You just released your album, The Way Forward. I was going to ask what it is like the night before release, but you guys really made use of the night with your release show. What was it like to share the evening with others?
(The Audio was cut off at the beginning of the interview, leaving only a small portion of the answer to my first question. My apologies!)
The gist was that they didn't have a tonne of time to pratice and didn't know what the turnout would be like since Black Tusk hadn't been on the scene for quite a while.
Derek Lynch: It ebbs and flows, like do people even know who Black Tusk is in Savannah?
Does live performance produce anxiety or does it reduce anxiety?
CHRIS SCARY ADAMS: For me it relieves it. When I am playing live, it's the one zen moment, where nothing else in the world matters. All I care about is what's happening at that moment. I want to say that might be the only time that happens for me. I have so much anxiety and stress with everything in my life. That is the one place that I can literally be like, "I don't give a shit about anything else".
Derek: Same, I agree with that. You feel like right before you go on, you will have the jitters. Even though I have played hundreds of shows. You still have a bit of nervousness. Then you start playing and it all kind of melts away.
What was your worst performance and what did you learn from it?
Derek: I was in a band and we were like a cathartic punk band. Usually our singer would come over to me and pick me up on his shoulders and kind of carry me around the stage while I was playing the guitar. For whatever reason, on this particular night he decided he was going to try to lift me up on his shoulders by picking me up. He put my head through his knees and then he lifted me up. So, I just went tumbling back, just completely flat out on stage. That was the end of the set. It just completly killed the whole thing. It was like, "What just happened? Never talk about this show again."
He must have been talented to sing and have someone on his back.
Derek: Well the guitar was pressed into his back so I couldn't even play anyway.
SCARY: That is a really good question. There has been a lot of catastrophic shows. Previous bands singers falling off stages. You are just on stage, just holding your head in your hand like, "I can't believe this is happening right now". Every so often someone is too inebriated to actually continue the show and someone just walks off the stage, and you are like, "I guess that's it".
Derek: It is always something you did that makes for a bad show. It's never like played for one person. Somebody will be like that was a bad show, but if someone is there to watch and listen than it could be a good show.
I think the audience can come back from it more than you guys would performing.
SCARY: I don't think I have ever played a show where the badness of it was the audience.
Derek: It has always been the bands fault.
But I am sure they love you anyway.
The album reminds me of being young, being energized, and seizing the day. How do you maintain that energy? Or do you see it that way?
SCARY: Yeah, I feel like playing this kind of music kind of keeps you in that. You know we all have that youthful angst and agression. I feel like if you play music that is energetic and everything, it kind of keeps you young. It makes you want to keep playing that way. I have always been a fan of very fast music. You know fast drums and really aggressive bass and distorted guitars so you know it is just keeping it alive. You know you still see 60 year punk metal dudes at shows and they are just having the best time of their lives.
DEREK: You were talking about the album and I think it's more positive in a weird way. I feel like a lot of albums they are always dark and not necessarily negative, but there is like a brooding to them. I feel like this album is strangely more positive. It's like we are finding a balance, like in our lives now, like older guys on the music scene.
Get up and be motivated, like the name The Way Forward suggests, the idea that there is a way forward, we don't just shut everything down.
So you put out a few videos, Dance on Your Grave, Brushfire, and Breath of Life. Can you tell me about making them?
SCARY: Brushfire, the label just put together. It was more of a visualizer. We didn't really do anything for that one. Dance on Your Grave was pretty fun though cause we filmed that in the studio. In this studio where I am at and like it is where we recorded the record, in my house. It was fun to have everybody back. That video is just what we are like hanging out and making music together. That was a lot of fun. You know eating pizza and drinking beer, and staying up until 4 in the morning. It was great! Breath of Life was actually, our friend Alex, who Andrew was in a band with pre Black Tusk called Hammeredshit. She was the singer. She lives in New Orleans, and she put that video together. She was just like hey I want to do this. She put that video together for us and everything. Alex has been awesome. We love her to death. Anytime we got to New Orleans we stay with her. Ath who was originally on bass for Black Tusk and Andrew were in a band with her called Hammeredshit. And it was right when they broke up that James was coming out of a band called The Bricks. That's when Black tusk started.
It is kind of funny because I often don't like the look of a lot of guitars and that but I found in your video for Dance on Your Grave, I thought, "Did they get out their best-looking guitars and drums and everything for this video or is it the best-sounding ones too, you had in the video?"
DEREK: That's what we use. That's what we play with.
SCARY: The guitar I played in that video is one that I had recently just aquired. It's a dude in Miami that makes guitars, Pure Salem guitars. It showed up, and I was like man this guitar is great. Man I get to use it for the first time in this video, And it was awesome! Dereck plays that T40. The guitar Andrew plays, that is like his guitar he has toured with.
How did you get your nickname, Scary?
SCARY: It's not a great story but I was in high school.I have been "Scary" since I was 18 years old. It was a joke band and the drummer guitar player made up music and I would just scream Barry Manilow lyrics over it and we called in Scary Manilow. My backing band was Kill Your Mother Drink Her Blood. I thought that nickname would die after highschool and then I went to College, and I actually went to College with Allen and Brian. Allen was the original drummer and Brian was the guitar player for Baroness, on the Red Album. Baroness used to practice at our house and everything and they just started calling me "Scary". So I was like alright College thing. Then I moved to Savannah and I thought there is no way that anybody that would know. But Baroness had already told everybody that there friend "Scary" was coming. Everybody was like here is "Scary". Here I am 41 and people will ligitimately call me "Scary" and you learn to accept it.
DEREK: People meet him and they are like "You are not so scary".
That is what I was going to say, " You are not scary."
SCARY: That is what everyone says. You are not that scary.
DEREK: Do you think that made you who you are? You being nicer, softer.
SCARY: I am like popeye, "I am who I am."
Is there any other nicknames in the band that you care to share?
SCARY: We call Derek Baby D
DEREK: Yeah Baby D
Is it because you are new to the band?
DEREK: I am also the youngest. So, I google things for them. I know all the hip lingo. I can translate it for Andrew and James.
SCARY: You fact check us
If I was a fly on the wall during the creation process, what would I see? Is it serious, what's the pace, how does it come to be? What does it look like?
DEREK: We kind of take it in puzzle pieces, you know. It is like a big melting pot of ideas. Somebody will bring along, one idea, usually there is multiple. We kind of sift through those. Then we add upon that as we go, as a group usually is how we always do it. Because we want to always have everybodies imput and not just have one person come and kind of force their way with their vision specifically. That being said sometimes you do present things as two parts that are connected, and you can fight a little bit for it. This needs to go into that, trust me.
SCARY: To me that is best part of playing with other musicians. You come in with, "Hey I have an idea". Then you figure it out together, rather than being like, "This is what you are going to play this is what you are going to play". It's like, "Hey let's figure this out, let's write a song together", and it's more of a collaborative piece. I just saw an interview with Stewart Copeland talking about writing music and he said, "Yeah the Police was a lot more fun before Sting knew how to write a hit". They actually wrote songs before that and then it was like no here is the hit. Who cares, let's write songs together.
How did your passion for music start?
DEREK: From birth. I don't know, maybe it was the rythm of life or something, but yeah just listening to music at a very young age. Both of my parents were big into music. Dad was a musician. So they were always bopping around to different radio stations. So I gained an appreciation. you know I remember the very first time I wanted to play guitar musically was when I heard the guitar solo from Rock You Like A Hurricane, Scorpions. It was a bit like dawn of consiousness at 3 and 4 years old. And I was like that sound like lazer beams, like I want to do that. I was very young.
SCARY: Damn my parents never, my dad played bass through College and there was always guitars around but he never pushed it on me. I think it was when I was 14 I actually asked my dad to show me how to read tabs, you could get off the internet and everything. He was like they are just upside down. You just go from there. My dad had a 1968 P-Bass. That's what I learned on. So I learned playing bass and then once I learned about 4 track recording and started playing in bands when I was 15. I had regional shows when I was like 15 years old. I was like, "Dude this is awesome, I get to like travel, and play music to strangers. Great! What is better than that?" So then it was like I have to move out of town because the bands I was in were like, "Hey are we going to tour?" Okay. I am going to go and try something else.
DEREK: From the outside in it looked like freedom.
Agatha looks so different in each piece of artwork. What was she illustrating in this album to you?
SCARY: James had a very distinct vision that he kept us out of the loop on. So James discussed the artwork with Mercer directly and excluded us all. He had a very specific vision. So, we didn't even get to see it until it was done, which was aggravating a little bit. And a little bit like please don't let this suck. Mercer was doing it so I knew it was going to be good. So Agatha, what I have come to understand about this one is that it was kind of like the transformation of Agatha being a human to the tusk ridden person that she became. On the front she is a beautiful woman and then on the inside she turns into that.
I have liked all the artwork with the tusks, it is pretty cool how it has been worked into it.
SCARY: It has been cool to see the interpretation of Agatha from John Baizley, to Jeremy Clark, and now Brian Mercer. You know having different artists interpretations of it in time, so that is pretty neat.
I often go to music for different moods I have, when I am angry or excited. Is there a time you go to a specific song because you are in a certain mood?
DEREK: I almost feel like there could be a song for every mood, you know. I have your rainy cold day song like Porpoise Head. I would always go to. You know the leaves start turning and I used to start turning on Type O Negative, you know in October. I am not opposed, if I am in good mood too, I love Bossa Nova and Sérgio Mendes type music. I just put that on, open the windows and start cleaning.
SCARY: I think 2 records that I can put on anytime, any mood, Dio Holy Diver and Boston by Boston. You could be in a bad mood, and it turns you into a good mood. You could be like I am in the best mood and it puts you in a better mood. It's like this is just the best record. I put on Holy Diver the other day, and I sent a picture to Brian Mercer and I was like dude I am putting this on. And he said enjoy the next hour.
DEREK: Love that.
What was your favourite subject in school?
SCARY: Art and math. I actually really liked math. It made sense to me. It clicked. I liked science too. Biology is awesome.
DEREK: Yeah, I liked science too. I love psychology, biology, any of them were good. I passively like physics but I am not great at it.
SCARY: I hated physics.
Your most embarrassing phone app?
DEREK: Probably this game called fishdom, like a candy crush kind of game. The game mechanics of it, buying jewels and stuff is so bizzare.
SCARY: Pizza Hut app. I have way too much Pizza Hut.
DIY Music fail?
SCARY: A fail and success has been the building of the studio because for the first year I was like, "I shouldn't have done this". I put a lot of money in, it doesn't sound that good, But you know I am finally making bands sound good in here. I am getting better at what I do. I designed the studio. Andrew runs a construction company and so I was starting to frame the back wall. I was like if I do this all by myself this is going to take me months to do. So I was like, "Andrew get your dudes in here and do this in like a week". They came in, they did the framing and insulation and my dad and some other people came in and helped me do all the drywall. I did all the electrical, so this is a total DIY space. I would say it is just as much a success as a failure. I know what I would do differently if I had to do it again.
I heard you say before that you try not to be a perfectionist when you are working on the recordings, do you find you can do that for yourself, or is it more difficult with other bands?
SCARY: I feel like the people I record with, Black Tusk included, people overanalyze. To have somebody say, "Hey this is the sound let's go". It is kind of the mentality of analog recording back in the day. You know now you have so many digital options. You can say we can fiddle with this an redo it a thousand times. But if you just say, "Alright how was that take? Okay I feel good about it, let's move on. I feel good about the guitar sound. I feel good about the drums." You just commit and you move on. You don't overanalyze. You commit to the sound and you say, "This is going to be what it is". To me that is what recording is. It is a sonic footprint of the audio, or the sound that is coming out at that moment. It is going to sound different based on what you had for breakfast. You can do it a thousand times and it is going to sound different so it's like you know letting it be and moving on, and committing to the sound.
It is probably more relaxed for the musician too. You hear of people having such a stressful time recording because they are hammering it for so long, the same part.
SCARY: You can listen to the same part and go earblind. That's why it is good to take breaks, and you know I limit people to 8 hours a day. And say, "Alright let's break for the day, go home. Let's do it first thing in the morning, and see what we want to change". It's good to pace yourself and not push yourself hard. To me, people that record here say they have a good time. they leave here a lot faster than they think they would, with something they are very proud of.
If there were 25 hours in a day, what would you do with that extra hour?
DEREK: Write more music. You would let people record 9 hours Scary?
SCARY: Yeah, I would maybe give people an extra hour. I mean I do love hanging out here and I do love creating, but it's really fun when Derek comes out. We just get a little ridiculous and Derek brings all of these wacky instruments. I have like fly whistles and wierd shit. We just say hey what can we do with this weird sound. We have record players and we will out our hand on it to slow it down, synthesizers.
DEREK: You can hear the product of some of those sorts of nights on the new record. There is a lot of segways from song to song. That's with stuff we were goofing off with.
SCARY: Dereck and I just had a full day, of like let's just have fun in the studio. We will just lock ourselves in, shut everybody else out, and just have fun. Whatever comes out of it, comes out of it.
DEREK: Try to make the album flow together a little bit.
Leave some good memories of it.
Playlist Pick
After interviewing Black Tusk, I decided to add the song Harness to my playlist.

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