T3M: You're in the midst of you first headlining tour; how are things going so far?

RD: They're going good. It's been fun for us to be able to play a little bit longer. To see our name up on the marquee, it's been a trip.

T3M: I've been to a few of your shows, and I really enjoyed seeing you headline and play a longer set. You put a lot of energy into your performance; is there a particular song that you put a little more heart and soul into more than others?

RD: The right answer would be 'no'. It just depends. I think we go through phases. After playing a set, or playing a song for a while, and then adding a new song to the set, you bring a little bit different energy to it. I think for the most part, we go through phases.

Either one reinvents itself, or you add a new song, and that becomes something really fun to play. You start to anticipate it during the set. I think that's just a natural thing.

T3M: Like the song How Many Times?

RD: That's fun for me because it gives me a chance to play in a style that I usually play in. On tour with the boys it's a bit aggressive, and it gives me a chance to do something a little more delicate and vulnerable, which is where most of the songs start from. It's nice, after all the bashing, to get a chance to actually hear music, very simple.

T3M: Do you have any other new material in the works?

RD: Yeah, I've got a lot material. I consider myself more of a writer than a performer, or a band member, so I just write every day. I'm always working on something. It's just a matter of they way the world works that you can't promote it all the time. You spend most of you time showing people your last record.

T3M: We recently listened to the Live Sessions EP, and think it sounds great. Do you have any plans to return to the studio to record?

RD: We're hoping that we'll get to record and finish the record before the end of the year, and put it out in March of next year. That's my hope.

T3M: Who came up with the name 'The Burden'?

RD: To be honest, it was me and the label. Me, Jude, and Kiefer came up with it. We were doing something that we cared about. It was hard to properly hold, and show to people. It became kind of a burden for us, which is almost like a joke. It felt like anything that you cared about, on any level, it ends up becoming a burden, if you don't want to somehow destroy it. So, that's where it spawned from.

T3M: Have you experienced any interesting fan moments?

RD: When people say something has afflicted them... like dealing with disease, or people who have lost a loved one. Then they sit and tell you that somehow, in some small way, the record gave them some kind of chance to fall into something else, or gave them a little bit of relief on some level.

There was one guy who started a winery with his wife, and I guess they listened to the record while they were starting to ferment their wine. She ended up dying. He gave out the first batch of this wine to us, because that's all they played in the winery. That blew my mind.

There was a girl the other day that came up to us... she had cancer, and was beating it. In the hospital, it was one of the records she was listening to. That kind of stuff is absolutely mind blowing. It makes me glad that I took the time to be thoughtful in what I was saying.

T3M: Your answer to the question 'Which line of your own do you wish you'd never written (or are proud that you did)?' I've as being the line 'Don't fix me because I'm broken, I was that way from the start'. It's not clear if that's something you're proud of or wish you'd never written. Can you clarify?

RD: I'm glad I put it down. For me, it was about acceptance, which is hard for me to do sometimes, accept who you are. That was my way of saying it.

T3M: Some of your cited influences include John Hurt, Fred McDowell, and Doc Watson. Is their one musician that you enjoy listening to the most?

RD: You named three amazing individuals. I'll go through a period when it's nothing else but John Hurt. If I had it my way, I really wouldn't listen to much more.

And then someone else plays another record and I'll go 'oh god, that's so good'. Then I fall into that. I definitely go in phases. I can't compare them.

Any artist that I'm drawn to makes their own path, makes their own road, so it's totally theirs. There's no real comparing. I think they all stand pretty strongly on their own.

T3M: Is there someone that you consider a mentor, or that you are particularly thankful to for helping you along the way?

RD: Besides my record collection... there are a couple people that turned me onto stuff. There's a cat named Tom Boyle who really started my quest into the real primitive folk music. I was playing with it, but he really shined a light on a lot of that for me. I was thankful for that.

For the most part, I would attribute most of my 'thanks' to those who burned me... those people who were malicious towards me or wronged me in some way. Because, it's the only time when I truly was like 'I'm free', and I stood on my own. And was like 'I'm going to beat this'. I think those people in your life teach you more than someone giving you gifts could do.

For me it worked like that anyway. It's been the only time when I truly had the opportunity to realize that I'm on my own. They taught me not to be entitled to anything. I have to earn every little thing. That's been a lesson that I'm grateful for. And they taught me not to be pretentious. That's another lesson that I've embraced. So those are the people I'd thank the most.

T3M: The way you present yourself seems very humble. Do you think fame has affected you at all?

RD: That's the funny thing. I haven't really explored any real fame. I think I'm pretty unknown amongst pop-culture. Even in the music community, I don't think I'm that well-known. To be honest, I'm just still doing the same thing; I wake up, I write music, I read, I play, I work on whatever artifice I'm into at the time.

My emotions and my physical things have not changed. I haven't had a chance to lay up back at home long enough to really see if anything's kicked in yet.

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| 08.22.2007 | Interview by Kristen Pierson |