00:00You meet some of your heroes growing up and you expect them to be all rough and gruff and
00:06it's the opposite i think the more metal sometimes the nicer the the people are
00:16blackbird that's easy yeah blackbird would probably be the top of the heap i mean that's
00:21probably the song that took us longest to finish and i think in a lot of ways that song is
00:27probably
00:28the reason we're still here most important song of our career without a doubt it's so far above
00:32anything else we're going to name in this you know the other four songs because of the fact that
00:38we that was during a period where we didn't know where we were going we didn't know if we were
00:42going
00:43to get to make another record first record had nothing like it and nothing like it um and we
00:49really you know we were we were adamant about finishing that song but it was it was proving
00:54to be very difficult it just the parts weren't coming we just could not seem to seal the deal
00:58and i will never forget it as long as i lived that that afternoon when we finally it all it
01:04started it
01:04happened really quick i remember you had that that awesome guitar part at the beginning and i think we
01:09might have even had up to the dome and then we just couldn't figure out where to go from there
01:21we were so excited about that we had going so far yeah and then um with six eight songs sometimes
01:28it's
01:28tough courses are different approach it's tougher yeah and that afternoon when we finally got all the
01:34rest of the pieces put together and it came quick but it was it was a thing you dream of
01:39as a creative
01:40where you're like it's like the sky opens and all the you've been hitting your head against the wall
01:46and then finally it's like it just there's the door and you just open it you just walk in and
01:51there it
01:51is and i i get goosebumps even even even talking about it it was just such a it was such
01:58a rush so
01:59we finish and i we used to record everything on my little laptop just to document it so we went
02:05back
02:05to his house because i was basically living with them at the time and i went back and listened to
02:10the work that we did that day and i just called i said mark you gotta you gotta come check
02:15this out
02:15man and we both sat there and in the room i was staying in and we're just like i think
02:21that's when
02:21i knew i was like we we just broke through a major point in this band's evolution and and it's
02:28never
02:28been the same since well that you look at the opening track on the next record slip to the void
02:32and how
02:33spooky and mysterious that was you know that uh that wasn't going on on the first record either
02:38you know and and even even the whole blackbird record was pretty much written blackbird was the
02:44last song we wrote on that album um so the rest of the blackbird record was a little moodier i
02:50it's
02:50one of my favorite records we've ever done um but blackbird was really a the standout track of
02:55that record as far as being something different that we hadn't done before and from that moment on
03:00it's like how can we um keep opening doors creatively with with the band and uh yeah
03:07mental angus you know that was off the first record and that that song um i think more than anything
03:13just
03:13because you know once uh your buddy adam picked it up yeah use it you know that was that's that
03:21was the
03:21gateway drug for so many fans you know i think if you probably asked uh a certain percentage of our
03:27fan base how did you discover um altar bridge they would say metal angus through yeah you know
03:42i've found through life that when you meet these people that are tough guy like metal or like like
03:47like adam when he's uh on film you meet him off stage he's the nicest person you'll ever meet in
03:53your life he's a canadian usually canadians are really nice soft-spoken right um and i remember
03:59that when i was first touring over here in europe playing um uh with metal bands and you meet some
04:06of your heroes growing up and you expect them to be all rough and gruff and uh it's the opposite
04:12i think
04:13the more metal sometimes the nicer the the people are i'm trying to remember was um isolation did that
04:18did that go to was that like a kind of a raid yeah that might have been our first like
04:22we're talking about how we kind of shunned radio and and and and doing that but that was one that
04:28we
04:28had a six enough of a success in that it helped i guess expose people to the band a little
04:36bit more
04:44but you know that the whole radio thing being different than it used to be like it's not
04:48um having that number one song it still didn't outshine our other songs like a song like rise
04:54today that that never i don't know what it probably went to yeah yeah i think it did maybe maybe
04:59a top
04:5910 song or something yeah but that's a song that if we didn't play it at a show fans would
05:04probably
05:05think something was wrong with us i'll never forget um our agent at the time and we kind of had
05:11disappeared for a little bit and i think people were like oh are they gonna because they've been gone long
05:17enough are because i think the creed first creed reunion kind of happened i think i'd been doing
05:23stuff with slash at that point i'm trying to remember the exact timeline so i think some
05:27people were like thinking maybe we were left for dead at that point and then i remember our agent at
05:31the time was like we'd announced the tour and suddenly was selling really well and he i remember
05:36he said you know well i guess distance makes the heart grow fonder you know and i was like yeah
05:41i guess
05:42i was just i was totally surprised yeah right right that's one of my personal favorites
05:54for me that chorus is such a anthemic easy to sing it's funny because i it's early on when we
06:02started working together i remember mark would play some ideas that he had and it's how it works
06:09you know these writers you just kind of throw stuff back and forth and i remember he kind of
06:12played it in passing just like hey i've got this little thing yeah yeah and then they went on to
06:18me whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa what was that you're singing like that sounds like a beach place
06:22i was like i was like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa where i stopped to be like let's back up
06:26play that again
06:27and and uh i remember for me like the first pass of just hearing that idea um it was like
06:35that's a
06:36that's that's a big hook we gotta we gotta really hone in on that bad boy right there and once
06:42again
06:42i think there there's some i remember lyrically because it's a little bit of like because i knew
06:48the magnitude of i knew what that could be right so i remember i don't know if i ever told
06:54you this
06:55i must have rewritten that lyric
06:5920 times i mean i remember sitting at this little kitchen table at my at my house and just rewrite
07:06after rewrite after rewrite just beating beating it to a pulp and because i knew that that was going
07:12to be an important track um so um i'm happy with how it turned out and and there's it's one
07:20it's great
07:20we just played a show the other day we did an acoustic thing in germany it's a little at the
07:25like
07:25the ramones what do they call it place it's really cool it's like a ramones museum yeah it's really
07:29cool so we played the five songs we're supposed to play but then the handful of people that were
07:34there were like playing another song we're like what should we do and i for me i'm like well easy
07:39peasy let's just do rise because if even if we screw it up you know we haven't played in a
07:43while together
07:44they'll know the i can just sing yeah yeah no rise today and uh yeah it's just a it's a
07:50great it's a great
07:51uh song to to get you know the everybody's singing in the crowd and you can do talk about uh
07:58talk about
07:58in loving memory yeah so um i kind of consider those songs like almost like when when um a queen
08:03would have one song play right before the next i forget that there's the two of them that they do
08:07there's a few there's a few medleys that you hear on the radio i kind of think of watch over
08:11you and in loving memory because we always perform them together um as a as a mood in itself but
08:16in loving memory started uh that was on the first record the first time we used the open g tuning
08:29which turned into something that we've used a bunch over the years um i wrote that song about my
08:34mother and it was uh it was a tough one to write like um talking about writing lyrics i think
08:39i wrote
08:40enough lyrics for an entire record about that one but uh but we do that one live a lot it's
08:46great for
08:47for our uh set list to have dynamics and that's when we'll come out me and miles and we might
08:53change
08:53it up now but because we've done it so many times but miles will come up and he'll do watch
08:57over you
08:58by himself and then i'll come up and do in loving memory with him and that's uh yeah it's just
09:04a side
09:04of our songwriting that we like the singer songwriters stuff the emotional ballad that we loved uh
09:11listening to when we were younger and it's just a a side of the melodic sensibility that we like to
09:17keep intact for the band even if you hear some of these more metal leaning songs um we we're still
09:23saps for the melody every rocker has a soft side that's right
