Shannon Larkin: We're going out of the country for three months. We're coming back in September and we have a great co-headliner for the shows who unfortunately I can't mention right now. It's going to be a great bill and we're going to have a great production budget that we can bring the biggest show we've ever brought out with all the video and pyro and a really cool stage design. It's always exciting to go out and play when you have a new record because as much as you love your band's songs it still gets boring after 280 shows in a year playing the same songs. It's nice to have all this new stuff. It will be so much fun to play live for the first year.
In addition to Godsmack you're also in a project with your former Ugly Kid Joe bandmate Whitfield Crane called Another Animal along with your Godsmack bandmates Robbie and Tony and former Godsmack guitarist Lee Richards. Do you guys have an album coming out soon?
Yeah. They're finishing the mix right now. My old pal Dave Fortman, who was also in Ugly Kid Joe with us, is mixing it. He's had a lot of success with Evanesence and Mudvayne and a bunch of other bands. We're excited about that. It's going to drop by September. We want to give enough time for the Godsmack record to breathe. We don't want to step on it in any way. That's our bread and butter. It was nice to make a record with Whit again and for the three of us Godsmackers it was nice to go in and not have so much pressure and eyes looking at us. The label never once looked at us and said a word to us about it. It was a feeling of freedom. We said we were going to produce it ourselves and the label didn't care because it's a side project. It feels like back when I first started a band. It was just five dudes jamming together and making as much noise as we could make.
What record label will it be on?
It will be on Godsmack's label, Universal. We went to them first and told them we were doing it. It's cool because we played it for the president of Universal. He came out to L.A. and we played him some new Godsmack stuff and then played three songs by Another Animal. It was the coolest thing. He looked up at our manager and said "let's do this."
You've worked with some big names over the years, like Glenn Tipton. The album you worked on with him ten years ago was just re-released.
It came out when I did it and was on Atlantic. It probably sold 30,000 copies and they stopped printing it. It was called Baptizm Of Fire and has been re-released with some bonus tracks. One of my road crew guys from Godsmack did a show with Judas Priest when we were on break. He met Glenn Tipton and he told him to tell Shannon I said hi. I haven't spoken to him since the day I recorded. He had really nice things to say. That was a huge thing for me. The first band that I ever saw at an arena concert was Judas Priest in 1981. I also had the opportunity to play with my idols Black Sabbath and Ozzy. There was one show where Mike Bordin (who was the band's drummer during the 1997 Ozzfest) had to go play with Faith No More, which was his main band at the time. I got the call from Sharon Osbourne and got to be in Black Sabbath for one day. It was rad.
More recently Godsmack went and played at Camp Pendleton for the Marines. We got a call that Ted Nugent was doing the Star Spangled Banner and wanted to jam with us. He said he was going to play "Cat Scratch Fever" for sure, but asked us what else we wanted to play. We said "Stranglehold!" It's like a 7 minute song. I learned "Cat Scratch Fever" when I was ten years old. So I'm looking up playing and seeing Ted Nugent in front of me. It was so surreal.
Weren't you in Candlebox for a brief time as well?
I was never actually in the band. I was in Amen at the time. I actually just talked to Casey Chaos yesterday. When we finished the Godsmack record I went into the studio and recorded 40 songs for the new Amen record in three days. Getting back to the story, my manager at the time also managed Candlebox. We had just finished an Amen record and Candlebox's drummer quit. They had two legs of their tour left at the time. My manager asked me if I was interested, and it turned out to be two six week tours. I was never actually in the band, I just toured with them. They were a great band.
Not too long ago my buddies Corey and Jim from Stone Sour called me. Their drummer was having personal problems at the time. They found a new drummer, Roy Mayorga, who recorded ten songs with them, but then had to go on the road with Sepultura. They had two more they wanted to record and called me. Just two weeks I went into Dave Grohl's studio and did a couple of songs with Stone Sour. So I'm keeping really busy.
