"I actually came up with a new drinking game when you listen to a TapRoot song, you have to drink every time I say 'me,' 'myself' or 'I.' You'll get l oaded just a few bars into the song!" "But there's no getting around the fact that the songs are very personal," Richards adds with a laugh. If I need to get something off my chest, I can do it through the music, and only good can come from that." "Music is my creative outlet, so it's the place where I get to vent and deal with the things that haunt me. "I'm just writing about the things we all feel inside," he says. That said, the singer is loathe to try and explain his introspective lyrics he'd rather let the so ngs speak for themselves. The songs on "WELCOME" offer a glimpse into Richards' most private thoughts, an often painful, always provocative expression of his demons and his doubts. "songs that would get stuck in people's heads." "I wanted to write songs that would last a long time," Richards says. Richards had the revelation that melodic strength was the ingredient by which those artists were able to create magic and was determined to bring a similar musical vision into his songwriting. He deserves props for making us search for the best music we had inside us."ĭriven by Wright's request, the band made a concerted effort to push the boundaries of modern hard rock by tapping into their diverse spectrum of inspirations from Deftones to David Bowie to Depeche Mode. The record would not be the same if he hadn't pushed us the way he did.
"When we came back and played the new songs to Toby, he was floored. At first our jaws hit the floor, because we thought we were ready to go, but it really sparked us to step outside ourselves and write music that was more honest and more fun to play. "Toby saw how much fun we had goofing around the studio," Richards says, "so he wanted us to relax and allow more of our true selves into the songs. Th e producer suggested they return home to Michigan for Christmas and take the time in order to try and unleash their true artistic selves.
TapRoot set out for Los Angeles' Cherokee Studios in November 2001, armed with close to 30 songs penned since the completion of "GIFT." But after a few weeks of pre-production, Wright judged the band to be too controlled, too studied in their approach. "'WELCOME' represents the first time that we've had to opportunity to go into the studio and experiment, to explore our so ngwriting and really create something that was uniquely TapRoot." "'GIFT' was the result of four years of writing songs and trying to get people on our side," says singer/guitarist Stephen Richards. Since their 1997 foundation, TapRoot have earned a passionate and faithful following among discerning hard rock loyalists via searing live performances as well as 2000's Velvet Hammer/ Atlantic debut, "GIFT." The album which features the Active Rock rad io hits "Again and Again" and "I" drew national acclaim from a variety of high-profile publications, including Rolling Stone, which praised the collection as "a short, sharp shock forty-three-and-a-half minutes of pure heartland heavy-rock rage." Produced by Toby Wright (Alice In Chains, Korn, Metallica) and mixed by Andy Wallace (Nirvana, Foo Fighters), the album captures TapRoot's extraordinary artistic growth on songs such as the provocative first single, "Poem," and the intricate "Mine," which jumpstarts the proceedings by introducing a trip-hop-inspired beat and three-part harmonies into the band's already unique sonic attack. Hailed by Rolling Stone as "the next contenders for the new-metal crown," TapRoot make their eagerly awaited return with the blistering "WELCOME." The 12-track collection finds the Ann Arbor-based quartet in a more reflective but no less aggressive frame of mind.