Clutch Under Pressure: An Interview with Neil Fallon

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“Even if it’s a shitty show, it’s a unique show.” That’s what Neil Fallon, the lead singer and occasional guitarist for Maryland-based hard rockers Clutch, had to say before his band’s July 29 gig opening for Flogging Molly in Columbus, Ohio. It’s unlikely that he was attempting to predict anything, but paired with his comment that at outdoor shows “you deal with Mother Nature, and that’s the only difference, really,” he may as well have been an Old Testament prophet.

Clutch’s set was delayed by forty-five minutes, then interrupted halfway through and delayed another thirty after severe thunderstorms rocked the Lifestyle Communities Pavilion and made its onstage performers virtual lightning rods.

Despite the unfavourable circumstances, the quartet banged out a brilliant ten-song set which included staples like The Mob Goes Wild and 50,000 Unstoppable Watts alongside rarities like Subtle Hustle and Mercury. It was, in a word, incredible, but then, with Clutch, that’s become the norm. They left the stage after closing with a thrilling rendition of Struck Down from 2009′s Strange Cousins From The West, soaked from the rain but smiling, and leaving the audience much the same way.

Putting on a great show is integral to Clutch’s purpose as a band. They tour tirelessly, often spending as much as nine months out of the year on the road. Fallon said this kind of constant gigging is simply a part of playing rock n’ roll.

“I think that’s a band’s job, first and foremost. Live music has been around for thousands of years prior to records and CDs and videos. It’s a much more rewarding experience,” he said. “Once a record’s done, it’s kind of dead. You’ve mastered it, and that’s it. It’s a static thing.”

Directly linked to this philosophy is Fallon’s notion that Clutch albums exist to support the band’s touring, not the inverse of this that has come to dominate rock n’ roll thought. This also helps dictate setlist construction.

“ Once a record’s done, it’s kind of dead ”
- Neil Fallon

“When an album comes out like the last one, the setlist will be heavy with those songs, but then because we tour so much we get a little bit worn out on it, and I think the fans do too, and they want to hear old stuff again,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of songs to choose from.”

Setlist writing is another lost art of rock that Clutch absolutely dominates. The band has always prided itself on bringing out radically different sets over the course of a tour. The method for this is more systematic than one might think.

“We always go through alphabetical order by first names, so the first night Dan will do it, the second night it’s Jean-Paul, the third myself, and then Tim, and then we do it again. That way we don’t have to debate,” Fallon said. “There’s usually a laundry list of songs we can pull from. If I want to play a song we haven’t played in five years, a day ahead I’ll say ‘Let’s practice this for sound check.’”

Clutch would be busy enough if it was just their hectic touring schedule that they had to worry about. Not surprisingly, that isn’t the case. At the moment, the band is overseeing the re-release of new special editions of Blast Tyrant, Robot Hive/Exodus, and From Beale Street To Oblivion, preparing for the release of a new ale by acclaimed Colorado brewery New Belgium, and writing for their as-yet untitled forthcoming tenth studio album.

The re-releases come after a prolonged legal battle with Clutch’s former label, DRT Entertainment, an experience that served as the catalyst for their final, indefinite breakup with the world of record labels.

“They owed us a shitload of money, and they couldn’t pay us, so we got the masters,” Fallon said. “We would have started Weathermaker Music [the label run by the band and their management] regardless because it was only a three record deal, and even though it would have been nice to get that money, I think in the long run it’s better now to have those masters back in control.”

Fallon emphasized the importance of being independent from the external forces of record labels, but Clutch’s first major non-music project necessarily brought another company into the fold. Fortunately, that company is the excellent New Belgium Brewing who have enthusiastically paired with the band to put together a limited run of Clutch Dark Sour Ale, a potent beer with a label modeled after the Strange Cousins From The West artwork.

Clutch’s involvement in the brewing process isn’t in-name-only, either. “When we say the band did it, the band was at the brewery. We put the malts and the barley in the mill and the hops and the sugar and the whole thing,” Fallon explained. “We tasted it just a few weeks ago and I was floored. In some ways, I’m more nervous about this beer than I was the last record. Beer geeks are much more merciless than metal purists,” he added, only half-kidding.

With work mostly done on the reissues and beer collaboration, Clutch’s focus now turns to their next LP, one which remains largely shrouded in mystery and only has one known titled song, Newt Gingrich. The issue isn’t that the band is keeping secrets, though; it’s simply that they’ve been too busy to do much work on it. That changes this autumn.

“ Beer geeks are much more merciless than metal purists ”
- Neil Fallon

“We write music much quicker than I write lyrics. We’ve been doing so much touring it’s been hard for me to write. I need to be in my basement, sequestered from reality,” Fallon said. “But in the past month or so, things have finally started cooking again, and we’re going to take off pretty much the next three months to do some serious writing.”

The singer qualified the record’s delay even further, saying he likes “to concentrate it in very stressful bursts because I feel like if I have all the time in the world, I won’t get anything done.”

Given the band’s level of consistency and the effervescent looks of joy on the moisture-wrinkled faces of the fans at their Columbus show, it seems safe to say Fallon’s process won’t be held against him.

Photo(s): Andy Lye

Written by Brad Sanders
More: Interviews, Clutch