Interview with Drummer Wayne Noon of Project Resurrect
By Mick Michaels
COSMICK VIEW: Hello, Wayne! Welcome to The Cosmick View. Thank you for taking some time out of your day to chat with me, it's greatly appreciated.
Wayne Noon: Hey Mick! Thank you for having interest in Project Resurrect. Usually I’m the one asking the questions with my own podcast, so it’s fun being on the other side once in a while.
CV: Given so many major changes over the last decade, do you believe the music industry is a practicable and stable enough environment for new artists to even consider making it a valid career choice? Can a level of sustainable success really be achieved in your opinion?
WN: As far as new bands making it in today’s climate, a few years ago I’d probably say no, but from talking to bands on my own podcast, Rat Salad Review (shameless plug), I’m starting to change my mind on that a bit. I still think it is very tough cause just about everyone and their mother is in a band or wants to start a band and there’s only so much room out there. Everyone wants to be the next Metallica but we haven’t seen that yet. I think though, with the rise of Bandcamp, that can give an artist just starting out today, an opportunity to get their name out there. The thing I like about Bandcamp, yes they take a portion of your sales, 10% I believe, but the rest is income. If you can really put in the work on social media, keep new content coming on a somewhat regular rotation, whether that’s just posting a picture of the band recording or a snippet of your music, jokes whatever. If you can get that rolling, get the whole band involved, team up with other bands, get a good PR guy like Ben from Online Metal Promo (another shameless plug), you can generate an interest in your band that will drive people to your Bandcamp, website whatever, and hopefully create an income.
Just a few weeks ago I had Trevor William Church from the band Haunt on a podcast I do with Timo Tolkki (ex guitarist from Stratovarius). He was on a record label but decided to take a risk, leave the label and go on his own. Went straight to Bandcamp and has had nothing but success. Now, he releases a lot of stuff in a year between CDs, records, T-Shirts etc. but he puts in the work, it’s his job. So yes it can happen, you just have to devote your time to it.
WN: When I started playing music with my older band,
Phoenix Reign back around 1999/2000, streaming music didn’t exist. I actually
still used cassettes as well as CDs, cause the singer we had at the time would
make me mix tapes of bands I’ve never heard of before. This was the time
Napster was huge too. Before anyone thinks I illegally download music, I don’t,
haha! I actually prefer physical media, but of course I would use Napster to
find more of these bands my friend would give me and that just sent me down a
rabbit hole. Now forget it, there’s just so many ways to find new music and
bands it’s overwhelming but in a good way.
CV: How do you see your music separating itself from your peers and avoiding just being another cog in the wheel?
WN: This is actually a tough question because we aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel and unfortunately, yeah we will probably be that cog in the wheel, haha…but honestly I’m ok with that. The whole point of doing Project Resurrect was to make music like we used to love. They didn’t have to be these long complicated songs, I didn’t want to do an 80 minute album worth of songs where half of them would probably be filler. So, when Pete and I started to come up with songs we agreed to just keep it simple like things were done in the 70’s and 80’s. When you go back and listen to those older albums, most of them aren’t longer than 40 minutes. What happens when the album is done and it’s good? You want to go back and listen to it. Actually around the start of the 2000’s I noticed bands albums were getting longer and longer and by the 6th song in I’m starting to get bored and when I see there’s like 10 more songs left, I’ll need a break. I missed hearing those shorter albums. It leaves you wanting more and I think fairly recently I do see bands kind of going back to that like Ghost. I’m a big Ghost fan and I can listen to those albums a few times in one day because the songs are catchy and I don’t need to plan out a whole day to listen to it. Which is exactly how I wanted our album to be short and to the point and if people like it that much, they’ll go back and listen to it again cause it didn’t exhaust them.
Our favorite bands are Helloween, Iron Maiden, Judas
Priest, Metallica…Pete is a fan of the Scorpions, so you’ll hear all those
influences in our songs. With the production we found a great guy, Alex Repetti
(AlexRepetti.com if anyone needs any mixing or mastering for their band) who is
into more of the modern sounding stuff, so when he got a hold of our music he
added some personal touches to it that really gave our songs a new life and a
more modern sound which worked out great. Cause, a lot of bands are going back
to the raw retro 70’s type sound and I like that and it was kind of the idea we
had at first but when Alex worked his magic I think we created the best of both
worlds between that classic heavy metal sound with a modern production. We’re
also old and have families so the days of being a rock star are behind us and
we want to just have fun releasing music and if people like it, awesome.
CV: Has the industry’s many changes affected how you write music? Has it influenced your songwriting style in any drastic form?
WN: No, I really don’t care what today’s “cool” thing is cause a lot of the times it’s not what I think is “cool”. Do I like a lot of newer bands? Of course, but you cannot distinguish one band from another. They’re all using the same drum and guitar plug ins, a lot of the times you can’t even distinguish one song from another and I wanted to completely avoid that. I don’t like to follow trends…you have to do what you like or it won’t work. I’ve had people tell me, “why don’t you play country music,” or this or that…”that’s where the money is.” I always say no cause that’s not me and the music would suffer because of it.
CV: Has digital technology led the way for almost anyone to be a musical artist in your opinion?
WN: Yes of course. You’re talking to that person now, haha! With my old band we actually went into a studio and recorded an album only to have it come out sounding, let’s just say, not how I liked it. When we started Project Resurrect, money was an issue and I remember we spent a lot of money recording that Phoenix Reign album and we just could not do it between 2 people in Project Resurrect. It just wasn’t possible, so Pete suggested for me to get an interface and we record from home. At the time I had no clue what he was talking about but when he showed me what an interface was, I bought a new computer he helped me set it up, etc. I was like damn, I guess we’re really making an album now, haha!
Would it be cool to go to a studio? Yeah but it’s costly and like I said earlier we both have families so it’s so much easier to just do everything at our leisure from home.
CV: Has music in general been broken into too many sub-genres? Why do think there are so many classifications of music types? Can this be confusing for an artist who is looking to build a brand? As well, can it be confusing for the fans?
WN: I hate sub-genres. To me it’s just Rock or Metal. Why there are so many of them, I have no idea but whoever started that needs to pay, haha! It just complicates things. I also look at music differently I guess because I am a musician. I don’t like a band because they are, just to make up some crazy new sub-sub-genre, symphonic progressive death doom metal. I like them because I like the music.
CV: How would you define “iconic” when it comes to being an artist or musician? What do you think makes an artist iconic?
WN: To me iconic would be someone who started something and everyone wanted to copy that…for instance Black Sabbath. If they never happened, would heavy metal sound like it does today? I’m not the biggest Black Sabbath fan, but of course I like them. I own all the albums, I like all eras of the band as well. Toni Iommi, Geezer Butler, Ozzy and Bill Ward are all iconic figures because they created something everyone wanted to try to do.
CV: Who would you consider to be a modern day “rock star?” And is being a “rock star” something to aspire to?
WN: That’s a tough one cause like I mentioned earlier, I do like a lot of newer bands but there hasn’t been that new Metallica yet and who knows if we’ll ever see that…but just to pull someone off the top of my head, maybe Tobias Forge (Papa Emeritus) from Ghost. Yeah he hides behind the Papa Emeritus mask but he’s another one that pretty much does it all when it comes to his music. Whether that’s something to aspire to become I don’t know. It’s not for me. Maybe when I was younger and didn’t know much about the behind the scenes stuff…sure but now, no. I also never liked to be the center of attention and still don’t.
CV: Does music need to have a message to convey to the world for it to be worth listening to in your opinion?
WN: Not at all…which is what I like about music so
much. You can write about anything. Actually the song “Ride or Die” off our
album “False Reality” is about riding a bike, haha! When we were trying out
singers for the band, the last guy we had we thought he was it, but we are all
new at writing lyrics and we sucked. He would always tell us about his bike
riding excursions how he would be all pissed off and angry when he got to the
trail cause he had to get in this like mad man mindset, haha! The music seemed
like it would work perfect for it too and so I asked him to describe to me the
moment from when he woke up, to the moment he was done riding. I just wrote a
song out of it and it worked. Unfortunately, he didn’t stay with us but he’s
since heard the album and liked the song.
Music can be about anything it just depends on how you write it and how
interesting you can make it.
CV: What's next for you? What can fans expect to see coming?
WN: Right now as far as Project Resurrect stuff, we just released a new video for the song “Keep Moving On”. We all just shot some video of ourselves playing the songs at home and then a friend of mine who is a wrestler got a bunch of his friends and students together and recorded some matches and training sessions etc. so I put it all together and it came out pretty cool. I tried to have it tell somewhat of a story which is no matter how hard things seem to be just keep going and it’ll get better. Of course it doesn’t end that way at the end of the video but it’s all in good fun.
I’d like to make some more videos. The plan was to do one for every song but it’s a lot of work and I pretty much handle that stuff myself so we’ll see what happens. I know I want to do at least one more.
As for new music…I’m hoping to be working on something maybe by the latest early 2023. Sooner would be awesome but I think 2023 is more realistic, but we’ll see. Otherwise I have my podcast like I mentioned earlier, Rat Salad Review. We also started working on cover songs. One of my co hosts is a guitarist. We’ve been friends for over 20 years and we talked about working on music together…so with some of the guests we’ve had on the show we’ve released a few cover songs from Alice Cooper, Def Leppard, Kiss, Stratovarius and Van Halen. That’s been fun and we have a few more coming, but we’re also going to work on original music as well. So, we’ll see what happens.
CV: Thank you again Wayne for spending some time talking and sharing with our readers. It was a pleasure. I wish you all the best and continued success.
WN: Again, thank you. This was fun. There were some tough questions there and you made me think.
Check out Project Resurrect at:
Project Resurrect Bandcamp: www.ProjectResurrect.Bandcamp.com
Rat Salad Review: www.RatSaladReview.com
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