By Therese McKeon

Michigan based Taproot rocked the U.S. from coast-to-coast on this summer's Ozzfest second stage. The good news is: they're not done with you yet! Shoutweb caught up with Taproot on their first post-Ozzfest tour date at the Webster Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut. Out with Papa Roach for the second time this year, it was obvious that the two closely-knit bands had missed each other. How could we tell? David Buckner (drums) from Papa Roach deciding to crash both our photo shoot and interview with Taproot. Needless to say, fun was had by all. We covered topics ranging from the media-hyped Fred Durst controversy to stage dives mishaps to figuring out new ways for staying in touch with fans.

Shoutweb: There is this little static, tapping thing at the start of "Again & Again".

Steve: (crumples paper into the recorder to simulate static)

Shoutweb: Oh no! We're breaking up Houston!

Steve: You mean, the little choppy thing?

Shoutweb: Yeah, what is that?

Steve: I call it the queefe.

All: (laughter)

Shoutweb: Can you spell that for me? (laughter)

Steve: q-u-e-e-f-e

All: (laughter)

Shoutweb: And what is that exactly?

Phil: That's like the static part at the beginning of the video.

Steve: It's on the drum machine but we actually thought of that in the studio. (Steve imitates the drum machine)

Shoutweb: (laughter)

Steve: (talks in the recorder) Girls laughing.

Shoutweb: So you guys are fresh off of Ozzfest. Tonight was *supposed* to be your first tour date on this leg. Can you tell me what happened?

Phil: Papa Roach hates us so they kicked us off the tour.

David: Don't fuckin' lie!

All: (laughter)

Phil: No, we had trouble getting our gear here.

Jarrod: We just played yesterday at Ozzfest on the other side of the country.

Phil: We're here but our equipment isn't. But that's okay, I get to go ruin their set tonight (pointing at David).

David: Steve's going to come sing "Broken Home" with us.

Shoutweb: Cool. You're back in a couple weeks on the 19th so it will be the same kids. You have to go out there and tease them a little to come to that show.

David: Woo-hoo.

Phil: Woo-hoo.

All: (laughter)

Shoutweb: (talks in the recorder) Interviewer gets flushed.

David: Hey, there's more where that came from.

Shoutweb: See ya later - woo-hoo. Now I can tell everyone that all the action is on Taproot's bus.

Phil: Really? Have you been on (hed)p.e.'s bus?

Shoutweb: So tell me about Ozzfest.

Steve: Well... Ozzy puts on this festival...

All: (laughter)

Jarrod: ...every summer...

Jarrod: But seriously, we played the second stage and it was a huge opportunity for us every day. We played in front of a couple thousand kids every day. We got to go over the whole country touring with some great bands. We got to meet a lot of our old school fans. It was cool. It was a lot of fun.

Shoutweb: Did you get to regions of the country that you hadn't reached yet that with Ozzfest you were able to get to?

Steve: Oh yeah.

Shoutweb: Any cities that stand out as great audiences?

Mike: Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Jarrod: Iowa.

Steve: Chicago was great.

Shoutweb: I was at the show in Camden, NJ.

Steve: Yeah, that was a great show.

Jarrod: We just played in San Bernadino, California. That was pretty cool.

Shoutweb: With that being the last date on the tour was there anything crazy that went down?

Steve: I took Reveille's set over and played drums on their last song.

Jarrod: The show before that we actually had a proposal on stage. A girl proposed to her boyfriend. Then later on Steve was starting "Emotional Times" which is a song that we do and all of the sudden the beginning of "Nookie" started playing. (The band breaks in the beginning beats of "Nookie") All the guys from Reveille came out. They had white T-shirts on that said, "I love Fred Durst" and "Fred Durst is God" and they all had red Yankees baseball caps on. They started spraying silly string all over us.

Shoutweb: Oh man. Not to go off on that one but... Steve, you actually thank Fred in the liner notes of this record.

Steve: Yeah.

Shoutweb: Is that something that is genuine or is that sarcastic?

Steve: (getting very serious) It's genuine. I mean, he showed us a lot of the good and a lot of the bad of the business.

Mike: We owe him a lot.

Steve: He helped us out a lot. He left me the message which is just one bad occurrence on his side. I don't know. He was a good friend for a while. I meant it. A lot of people think I didn't but... I guess they've talked to me before and know how sarcastic I am.

Shoutweb: Were you guys involved in putting the cover art together and the logo?

Steve: Mike does all the graphics stuff.

Mike: I did it when we were out on Slipknot. Actually I did five hundred thousand different ones and nobody agreed on any of them and I was pissed forever. Then this happened and it's all good. Whatever.

Jarrod: Mike had a digital camera and he was having different people take pictures of the band and stuff. He'd get on the computer and manipulate pictures and stuff. We were e-mailing stuff back and forth with our management trying to figure things out. So eventually, we all agreed on that.

Shoutweb: So what did you learn from that experience?

Mike: We have to sell enough of this album so that on the next one we can say, "Okay, this is what it is. Screw everyone else."

Steve: Yeah, I think we want a little more control next time.

Shoutweb: How are album sales going?

Steve: We're doing consistently 6,000 a week or something. We shipped 100,000 and sold over fifty so far so that's not too bad after two months.

Jarrod: It's cool. We can pretty much see that wherever we play, the sales go up in those places so it's good to see that we're definitely getting some love from people who see us live.

Phil: We're almost up to Papa Roach's first two weeks. (laughter)

All: (laughter)

Mike: It's like grassroots, being steady, and getting the real kids.

Phil: And not be on TRL every single day! (laughter)

David: Oh, damn. (laughter)

Phil: Do you know how bad this will look in print? (laughter)

All: (laughter)

David: We're going to start rumors - just watch.

Phil: Headline reads... "Taproot jealous of Papa Roach's fame!"

David: That's a Phil special.

Shoutweb: The title of the record is "The Gift". Can you explain that?

Steve: Mike and I were driving in L.A. kind of having a discussion about what we should call it. I was thinking of "Present", as in present day, for a title possibility. Just because our independent releases were all kind of in sequence. Then Mike came up with another meaning for present meaning a gift and then we came across that slogan that we used "Yesterday is history..." and so it just seemed to work out real well.

Shoutweb: You write all the lyrics?

Steve: Yes.

Shoutweb: There is definitely a spiritual theme here. Can you tell me about the lyrics a little?

Steve: It's just my own personal take on why things happen and how to take a negative and try to get a positive out of it. It's all real personal. It's all based around personal negative experiences pretty much. By the end of the song I try to have some closure, some positive message. I find a lot of kids can grab on to that.

Shoutweb: It's unique to be heavy but not be angry or violent.

Steve: Right.

Shoutweb: And to have a message and not be...

Steve: Cheesy.

Shoutweb: The photos on the album are from where?

Steve: They were just like, "Gotta finish it. There you go. You guys like this picture? No? Great, well it's on there!"

Jarrod: All the pictures are taken around Ann Arbor, Michigan. The back picture is in a parking garage. There's a poster that we have that's a picture from on top of another parking garage.

Phil: Where are cool places to take pictures in Ann Arbor... uh, I don't know.... parking garages? (laughter)

Shoutweb: This is a multimedia CD with an interview in the studio. Mike, did you have anything to do with that too?

Mike: The people from Streetwise put that together for us.

Shoutweb: Tell me about making the video for "Again & Again".

Jarrod: It took us thirteen hours or something like that. We were just sweaty messes by the end of the day. We did it in Long Beach in a big warehouse. It's basically just us playing on a stage in front of some kids.

Steve: And me on a dolly making faces in front of the camera. It's funny. You'll see me on stage and I'm all dry and normal and then you'll see me on the dolly trying to catch my breath.

Steve: It's trying to seem like people outdoors trying to get in to see us play. It's pretty convincing.

All: (laughter)

Shoutweb: I have seen the clips on MTV's web site.

Phil: There's this big silver thing.

Steve: It's a triangular set which makes it look like it goes way back down a long hallway.

Jarrod: There were these rectangular pieces of aluminum or something that were hanging down.

Phil: A-lu-men-ee-em?

Steve: A-lu-men-ee-em! Fargo.

Shoutweb: Are you looking forward to getting back to smaller venues after being on a tour like Ozzfest which plays huge places?

Steve: Yeah. Ozzfest was great but it was different.

Mike: Just playing at a different time every day was crazy.

Steve: We'd play at 10:15AM some days then later in the afternoon.

Mike: It will be nice to just get back on a schedule.

Phil: Sleep all day then play all night.

Jarrod: Instead of having to wake up a half hour before you play and not have time to get pumped up. At least you have the day to be around people and all that kind of stuff.

Steve: (let's out a huge burp into the recorder)

Phil: How do you spell that? (laughter)

Shoutweb: Were there any bands you got to see on Ozzfest that you looked forward to?

Steve: Incubus sounds good every day.

Phil: Reveille sounds good on the second stage. They're from Boston.

Steve: I don't know. Shuvel's cool.

Jarrod: We watched Kittie a lot.

Phil: We *washed* Kittie a lot? (laughter)

Steve: Meow.

Jarrod: They don't like water.

Shoutweb: I know there have been stage dives. Have there been any mishaps?

Steve: I sacrificed my lip in Boston. I had to go get six stitches in the emergency room.

Jarrod: All the way down. It was split wide open. It was sick. You could see the whole inside.

Steve: I was in the crowd singing and moshing at the same time. A hardcore kid smashed into me and hit my mouth. I almost lost three of my teeth.

Shoutweb: This was while you were on Ozzfest?

Phil: The first of the two days in Boston.

Steve: I like the off dates better where I can climb. Climbing is my new thing where I can go twenty-five feet into the balcony where you're not supposed to be and jumping on kids' heads.

Shoutweb: Everyone but Jarrod has some mobility on stage.

Steve: He tried it yesterday during Reveille!

All: (laughter)

Jarrod: It was terrible.

Shoutweb: Uh oh, this sounds like a story!

Jarrod: Jumped.

Phil: He was trying to. (laughter)

Steve: It was while I was drumming with Reveille. He came out and tried to stage dive. He hesitated - like I've done many times - like when he got there and realized just how far of a jump it was. He kind of stopped but then went anyway and didn't quite clear it.

Jarrod: I hit the barricade right there (shows the bottom of his shin). It's all swollen right there. Fuckin' hurt.

Phil: He didn't go up. He just went straight.

All: (laughter)

Shoutweb: Oh, no, a bellyflop into the crowd!

Steve: I don't know. Today on the plane was the funniest shit I've ever seen.

Shoutweb: The first thing I do when I am interviewing a band is to check out their web site.

Mike: It's out of date, I know, I know. I just updated it a couple days ago.

Shoutweb: I have to ask. Mike, are you an insomniac?

Mike: No but I used to be.

Shoutweb: I was just wondering because I read through the messages that you guys posts and it's always "sorry we haven't been here in a while" and "I'm so tired" or "I'm going to sleep now". It's obviously important to you that you keep in touch with your fans.

Mike: If they're going to be there for you then you have to be there for them. It's always going to be that way.

Shoutweb: How did you guys break out of Ann Arbor, Michigan? I know that there are a lot of Michigan bands. Did you have to travel to Detroit?

Steve: Yeah, and even then that was pointless. There's not much of a scene there at all.

Jarrod: The best thing that we did was Mike putting together the Internet site. He would spend hours a night and go on to different web sites and start talking about our band. We were burning our own CDs. Mike would bring all the artwork to Kinko’s. We would put them together ourselves and mail them out to kids. That has probably helped us more than even playing around in building our fan base not only number-wise but also geographically. We were able to reach out to a lot more people by using the Internet.

Shoutweb: You guys are going to be with Disturbed in a few weeks. You started out touring with Papa Roach in the Spring, right? And now you're back with them for a while.

David: (loud yell) Yeah!!!

Shoutweb: Is this relationship like a bad penny that keeps turning up? (laughter)

Jarrod: For the last month since we've known that we were coming out with them again we've been saying that to everyone, "After Ozzfest we're going out with Papa Roach again." So now that we're actually here it seems weird to be saying something else! We're really looking forward to it. We had a good time on the last tour so it's good to do at least two weeks with them. Hopefully we'll do more later.

Shoutweb: Then you are on a Disturbed, Liquid Gang, and Ultraspank tour. The big news was the announcement that you'll be out with Deftones and Incubus soon too.

All: Yeah.

Shoutweb: Is this because you guys plug them all the time? All I hear you guys saying is, "We LOVE Incubus!" How did that come about?

Steve: I don't know. It kind of just came to us. It was something we were going to shoot for. We heard that they were still looking for another opener so I got on the phone with our manager and said, "Dude, you have got to get that shit for us." I guess they had already gotten it and wanted to surprise us the next day. So he was like, "Uh... I'll get on it." It kind of just came to us through the buzz and Incubus.

Mike: I heard Chi is way into us.

Steve: Who knows.

Shoutweb: And I assume you're diggin' "White Pony?"

All: Hell, yeah.

Shoutweb: You guys were out with (hed)p.e. before too.

Steve: Yeah, and Slipknot.

Mike: A couple of days.

Steve: (imitating (hed)p.e.) Fuckin' faggots. (to David) Are they calling you faggots yet?

David: Yeah. We call each other faggots every day.

Steve: (imitating (hed)p.e.) You want some Jack & Coke, faggot?

David: (imitating (hed)p.e.) Let's deuce! Are we gonna deuce or what? Let's deuce! Jack & Coke buddy.

Phil: I love those guys, man.

David: We're a big family out here, dude. That's the way I see it... If you want my little comment...

Shoutweb: Those California bands stick together.

David: Yeah, but when we first hooked up with Taproot on our first tour. We both went out together and I don't know... we just made a connection. I think when you have real people who are doing something that is worthy of whatever... people connect with each other. We've made great connections with a lot of real people. We've known (hed) for a while. We hooked up with Taproot and we haven't known them so long but they're real guys and they're doing something great. Dude, we all need to stick together. If there is to be a movement of rock and roll then we need to have solidarity among the members of the movement, man.

Phil: Solidarity!

Shoutweb: Bring down the boy bands!

Steve: Yeah.

Shoutweb: Are you guys on the "Return of the Rock" tour?

Steve: I think we're contributing to the CD.

Jarrod: We'll be out with the Deftones until December 3rd or something.

Shoutweb: You guys are doing this date with Cypress Hill on October 3rd in California called the "Smoke Out." It is heavily rumored that a special guest appearance will be made by Fred Durst or Limp Bizkit. Do you have any comments on that?

Steve: We're just going to see what happens. Last I heard it seems like Fred's over it. We certainly don't have a problem with him whatsoever. I don't know. He might get out on stage and trash us because they're playing earlier than we are but we'll see. It's up to him. We're not going to do anything. I think it will be very uneventful. We're there to play a show and that's it. We're not going to worry about what they're doing. If they wanna be cool, that's cool and if not then we'll still be fine.

Shoutweb: I haven't heard your earlier records. How has your sound developed?

Steve: We went completely back and forth from hip-hop to heavy stuff. We saw a lot of people trying to do it and I considered a lot of it really cheesy. There are not too many bands that I considered doing it really well. The stuff that was influencing us at the time that we were writing for the new record was a little more melodic probably. We wanted to start writing around that. It just kind of naturally progressed that way.

Shoutweb: Did you come up with songs in the studio or did you have everything done when you went into record?

Steve: We worked up two or three just for the album that weren't done going into recording.

Jarrod: I thought it was nice to have time. We only have to do two or three songs a day. What we were used to was going into the studio for eight hours and we'd have this time booked to do the songs. It was nice to kind of be able to take your time with it and do three or four takes or whatever and decide on the best one. I thought it was cool like that.

Shoutweb: You guys have a lot of on-line street teams and fans on-line. Are you still trying to answer all your e-mail?

Mike: I'll go on there and comment on stuff. E-mail got ridiculously out of control. I wanted so bad to keep it up but it gets to be impossible.

Shoutweb: It's mathematically impossible. And as you grow it gets even worse. Kids get really pissed too if you don't answer.

Mike: We're trying to figure out something out with that.

Jarrod: We might have a little time to keep up on the bus but we can't e-mail from the bus so it's kind of like you only have a couple hours at the hotel when you're supposed to shower and eat. There really isn't time to sit down and answer e-mail while we're touring. We gotta figure something out.

David: There's a program where you can download them all and when you get on-line you can send them all out at once. We used to do the same thing too but then it got way out of hand. The thing that worked for us is that if you're just straight forward with the kids and tell them. I wrote a whole long thing on our messageboard, I was like "I know we were answering your e-mails before" and we were. We were checking all of them and sending them all out. If you're just straight forward with them and say, "Hey, look man, shit just hit the fan. There's like a million people trying to e-mail us. We're not going to be able to respond to everyone now." They appreciate that. It's cool. They understand that.

Shoutweb: You guys are still getting bombarded with e-mails though, huh?

Steve: Yeah.

David: I like getting e-mails from kids.

Shoutweb: Are you changing your set list from the songs you played on Ozzfest?

Steve: We know what songs are priorities for us to play.

Jarrod: We've already written a couple of new ones.

Steve: I've got a nice PSA80 recording thing that I hook up back here now. We start fuckin' around with ideas. Mike and I have four or five songs pretty much ready to go. We just gotta start learning them all together and playing them together. I think we're on the right track with the new material.

Shoutweb: Are you going to get to Europe anytime soon?

Jarrod: We possibly may do dates with Pitchshifter there.

Steve: We'll see.

Shoutweb: I hear you're going to Europe with Papa Roach!

David: Hey, don't start rumors! (laughter)

This interview was followed by each member recording a message for Shoutweb Radio. David Buckner’s included several introductions which are quite hilarious. For example, "This is David from TapRoach... ur... I mean, PapaRoot". For more love from Taproot visit our Taproot Artist Channel.