Brandon Marshall: I'm here with Chad Gray from Hellyeah and Mudvayne. So 2007 has been a productive year for you, 2 CD releases, a DVD and a few tours. We have three weeks left in the year, what else do you have for us?

Chad Gray: Umm, I'm gonna go home and paint my house.

BM: Are you looking forward to some time off?

CG: Yes! I'm looking forward to going home and just chilling out for a bit.

BM: Now Mudvayne just released By the People, For the People, why don't you tell us about the concept behind it and how it came about.

CG: We just had a ton of music archived that was just basically sitting around so that was what inspired us to have the fans pick the tracks and we determined what version we would pick, we had live versions of stuff, we had demo versions of everything. This is for the hardcore Mudvayne fans, it's not just put out to sell copies and it's for the hardcore fans to just see what it's like, where the songs come from. It works out cool because it seems like the fans get that much closer to us and us kind of surrendering ourselves. It's not sonically perfect, there demos and live versions. As far as the artwork goes we had the fans pick that too. We had tons and tons of stock piled stuff like photos and stuff that kids would draw for us so that worked out. One of the biggest headaches for a record is just getting the artwork together. The kids were taking the time to do this so it was another good way for us to give back to our fans. We ran a contest for the cover and we found the cover that we wanted and everything else was up to the fans, everything. It was just a big collage of stuff from over the years.

BM: Wow, that's the ultimate fan appreciation letting them design and pick a CD like that. Really cool.

CG: Thanks, and I hope people realize that our people are more then fans, they are friends all over the world. I have met people on tour in 2001 that come to shows and I still talk to, so this is kind of our gift to them because we really appreciate everything that they have done for us.

BM: Now is Mudvayne going to do a proper release in '08?

CG: Yes! It's recorded, mixed and ready to go. We got gotta sit down and talk.

BM: Hellyeah debuted just over six months ago and have been going strong ever since. Was it a high pressure situation organizing, or because everyone already knew everyone was it more like friends hanging out?

CG: There was no pressure at all. We went in and wrote a record and we had no label support. We got together and there was some decent magic there and if it would have sucked then we would have not put it out.

BM: Speaking of record labels how come you didn't sign with Vinnie Paul's (Drummer for Hellyeah) label?

CG: We can't do that.

BM: Why is that, ethics?

CG: I'm still signed with Epic so we can't do that, but if we had it would have been great, we would have made all the money.

BM: So was it tough to try to get everybody in the same room at the same time?

 
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| 02.21.2008 | Interview by Brandon Marshall |