Interview with Snowy Shaw

At the conclusion of Therion’s 20th Anniversary Tour, we caught up with Snowy Shaw to recap on what he’d been up to since our last interview in 2005 and his forthcoming plans

We were hoping to catch up with you in London when you were due to be helping the Deathstars out on their European tour with Korn. What happened?

Don’t get me wrong here, I’d love to do it, I like the style of the band and the direction both visually and musically but, I simply had to pull out and I’ll tell you the story.

They asked me to tour Europe with them in January and February 2007, which I unfortunately couldn’t because I was already booked to tour Europe with Therion at the same time. Then later on, they got back to me and asked if I could do the Korn tour with them in January-March 2008, which I said I would love to do and probably could if we could agree on the money and all. But, the thing is, I had been touring constantly since they asked me the first time and it meant that I would get home from the last Therion tour on Xmas Eve and we’d be starting rehearsal in Stockholm on the 4th of January and go straight out on tour until March.

Just getting all the practical things sorted out with all my equipment during those fucking holidays when the whole fucking planet seems to shut off. Well I felt sorry for pulling out on such short notice and I suggested several replacements. But for me there just wasn’t anytime to fix it all and we couldn’t seem to come to an agreement until mid December and at that point it was already kinda late to organize and order everything it would need.

New drum cases, drumheads, 200 pairs of my signature sticks shipped from the US and getting a full set of cymbals from my new full endorsement deal with Istanbul cymbals, which by the way hasn’t still arrived,..hmm weird, arranging for a loan kit in Stockholm, shipping all my stuff out to London on the 2nd of January and learning the set and the songs of course would never work.

On top of it all, on Xmas Eve I came “home” to an ice-cold, really messy, half renovated house under construction with everything packed up in boxes with sawdust, tools, nails and shit all over from the church organ and stage props I had built in a rush during the 2 week break between the US tour and the 20th Anniversary Therion tour. With tons of piled up bills, paperwork for Snowy Shaw Productions, contracts, delayed payments, insurance papers from the robbery incident in San Francisco, ..blah blah blah!

Well, I had been away for a long time and I really needed to take care of things and sort of my life. I turned down every job offer and locked myself in just to fix everything. It’s the 3rd of February today and there are still loads of things to take care of. So, I think it was a very wise decision to pull out otherwise I’d be a nervous wreck.

It certainly sounded like a busy 2007. Being robbed can’t have helped, what happened?

It surely caused a lot of stress and turmoil for me personally and for the band.

After touring all over South America for a month, we entered the US and right after we had checked into our Hotel in this bad ghetto area in San Francisco, Tinder or thunderloin or whatever it’s called, we went across the street to Taco Bell. As we sat down to eat, I put my jacket and shoulder-bag on the chair and some junkies started talking to us when they heard us speak Swedish. They asked if we were in a band and so on. Once we finished, I stood up and put on my jacket, not realizing my bag wasn’t there until I was back at the hotel 5 minutes later. So I ran back and talked to the staff and the security guard at the door who suggested I go check out the neighbourhood for the funky guys he’d noticed take off. I went back and got all the volunteers from the band and the crew and we went on search. The thing is unfortunately I had very important stuff in there that would jeopardize if not the whole tour, then at least my involvement , which was the reason I didn’t leave it at the funky hotel in the first place, but luckily I left my laptop there. Anyway I had my passport with US and Japanese visas etc., my mobile phone, in-ear monitor system, 800 Euros, iPod, keys and condoms ha ha!

Well, we all went around for about an hour, then we gave up and I reported it at the Police station down the street. But as I was walking back to the hotel I thought to myself, fuck I won’t give up so easily and thought I should give it one last shot and almost immediately in a dark alley I ran into the two guys from Taco Bell going through my bag and ended up in a fight with them. But while I was wrestling one on the ground , the other took off with my bag and my guy managed to knee me in the balls,..and that was it. The whole thing was really stupid I admit that, but I should consider myself lucky to get out of it alive. I got away with basically just a black eye , bloody knuckles and some stomach ache.

Then followed lots and lots of trouble trying to fix new visas and a temporary passport. The Swedish embassy in Frisco was really helpful and because of their input I managed to get a new Japanese visa in LA just a few days later in time for our trip there for a one off show. Normally getting those visas is a big tiresome procedure. The problem is you can’t apply for a US visa in America, you have to be abroad. So I had to stay in Tokyo while the rest of the band flew back to LA to continue the US tour and I would meet up along the road if I got a new US visa in Tokyo, otherwise I would have to end the tour right there and fly home to Sweden. But I put my mind to it and hoped to somehow fly out and hook up with the rest in Denver or Chicago a few days later. It was real disaster and I felt totally stranded, like Tom Hanks in Terminal, without any mobile phone, Itinerary, the time difference that made info by e-mail difficult, so there were big ass gaps in the information on where I would be going.

Oh shit, but you made it somehow without missing any shows?

Yeah, like I said, I aimed to make it to the Denver show, but had no more detailed info besides Denver itself. I only had the tour manager’s German cell number and that couldn’t be reached from US payphones. But I managed to figure out what venue we would be playing and took a cab there.

I went for the two night-liners parked in the back of the venue, thinking at least one of them belonged to Therion, but they both belonged to The Polyphonic Spree that were playing that night and if possible have even more people on stage than Therion! But all of a sudden everything felt way better. I had made it to the venue before Therion so I sat down and had a few cold beers and watched a band I had been curious about for a long time and they were just as great as I had hoped and expected.

The club owner informed me Therion would be coming in later at night but after The Polyphonic Spree had left the space for our bus. I made friends with the bartender and her boyfriend, which later turned out to be a good thing cause when the club closed at 2 and the Therion touring party still hadn’t arrived, we went for a midnight snack and a beer and when we returned to the club and Therion still hadn’t showed up, we went back to their place and I ended up crashing on the sofa at these nice peoples house. I’m real grateful for their hospitality, they saved my ass that night. It’s pretty hard checking into a hotel at 3 in the morning, if you can find one to begin with. I should send them something if I only had an address or a name.

Thomas Vikström was really relieved when I showed up at noon, he had been trying to memorize all my lyrics in case I wouldn’t show up.

What a saga! Let’s catch up on what else has been happening since 2005, when we last hooked up for an interview. Then you were still drumming for Dream Evil and now you are singing for Therion. To complete our timeline since then, care to tell us the gory details of your split with Dream Evil and how you came to hook up with Therion?

The gory details, yeah! (laughs)

If I may I wanna start off on the positive side, as in Therion. The drummer Petter Karlsson and I had a mutual friend who used to play guitar in my band many years ago and Petter liked those demos and since I never really found a singer I just sang myself just to get the ideas down on tape and he really liked that and he was also a big fan of Notre Dame. Therion decided to skip having a 5 piece male choir and an opera soprano and instead use 2 male singers and 2 female who would handle it all. Mats was already in the band and the other guy would have to be a quite versatile singer, who would be a compliment to Mats’ voice and change his voice around quite a bit. Petter thought of me, which I am grateful for, and suggested it to band leader Christofer, who liked what he heard. So I recorded my vocals for the latest album, Gothic Kabbalah, in August 2006, about 6 months after I had had enough of Dream Evil and decided it was time for me to fuck off.

We really had a lot of fun in Dream Evil, but after a while it started not being so much fun anymore. I figured if we get this kind of response and if you want success, relatively easy in my book, what if we put our minds to it and make a real effort. So I wrote the Book of Heavy Metal which we had a hit with, the song, the album, the video and that newfound and well needed image. I had very much to do with all that, cheered on by Patric Ullaeus, of Revolver Film Company, who did the video and would later become our Bill Aucoin-like manager.

It sold very well and I thought we had found the formula and should continue and develop in that direction. So I really tried hard to make something good out of all the potential, opportunities and qualities that we had, but it took me a while to realize you can’t really change people. To use a Swedish expression, “You can’t teach an old dog how to sit”. They were never gonna change, so I figured either I have to change and adapt to their level, or else I’m just wasting my time and energy here.

There are no hard feelings. I just took my songs and ideas and said bye-bye. I think they are probably pretty content now with the less ambitious level and with the way things are now when all members having normal day jobs, families and so on. But they asked me to write songs for their next album, so maybe they miss me a little...

Obviously singing isn’t what you were primarily known for, other than with Notre Dame, but you seem to be really settled in the role with Therion. Certainly, I seemed to detect a leap in your confidence from the London show in January last year to the one in December. Have you had any formal lessons and how do you feel to have grown with the role?

No, no formal training, but like you say I have probably grown with the role in Therion and as a frontman in general. That’s what lots of touring does to you I guess. One gets a lot of routine and there’s no better way to learn.

I was fairly green to it all apart from a handful of Notre Dame shows, but I love it and it feels like my true element and I think I’m gonna be pretty good at it.

On the Gothic Kabbalah tour you were sharing the stage with Mats Levén, whilst the last tour saw you with Thomas Vikström. How was it working with those guys and did the switch have any effect on your own performance?

I love them both, great singers with eons of experience. The only difference really that I can think of, is that we changed the songs around a little. So that some of the songs that Mats used to do, I would now do, while Thomas does some of the stuff that I used to. All because of what fits best for the individual voices.

Basically in Therion I represent the metal/rock guy, while Thomas is the opera guy, or something like that

Of course on the recent Anniversary tour you also shared the stage with the legendary Messiah Marcolin which we witnessed in London. There were previous connections as you obviously played with Messiah in Memento Mori, and Thomas Vikström replaced Messiah in Candlemass. Whose idea was it to invite Messiah, how was the material he sang on chosen and how was it generally?

It was great. Understandably Christofer really wanted to make a big fucking grand show for the 20th Anniversary with tons of old members and guests. For some reason he wanted to include Messiah as a guest-star on a song or two, although Messiah has never been involved previously, but I too thought it would be great idea and contacted him. His operatic voice and broad vibrato, not to mention his monk persona, fit perfectly with Therion’s musical concept and theatrical touch for this tour. It was a pleasure having him on board for a handful of shows. I really like the guy and I admire him as a stage character. In my opinion he’s one of the best frontmen in the world. He’s a natural just like Bruce Dickinson. Besides singing one of the songs in the Kali Yuga trilogy, just for the fun of it we just threw in as the last encore the classic Mercyful Fate tune Black Funeral, which has always been one of my personal favourites, that Messiah and I made a duet of.. ha ha. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, it’s like one big inbred family and everyone’s connected to each other somehow.

Aside from your vocals, I believe you’ve had a key input with the clothing and stage shows?

Yeah, that’s right. I originally designed pink crotchless bathing suits for everyone, but for some reason they said they weren’t comfortable in that…

But seriously, yes I do work as a designer and stage-show maker etc., on the side of my music, and I did that for Therion yes. Annoyingly, we never seem to be able to bring the full production over to England. So what you see is a very scaled down version of it. The clothes I draw and designed, but not everyone wanted to go as far as I like to do and of course they have a say in it. It’s a step in the right direction anyway. The stage on the other hand is to a great extent all my doing, but in some cases I work it all out and try to make Christofer’s wishes come true. The choreography is basically something us singers figure out together and better gradually as we go along. It can be real tricky, being so many people on stage. Who does what and when and where? One’s gotta be flexible and quickly be able to adapt when suddenly playing smaller stages where the production, as in stage props can’t fit, and what is essential to performing the show and what we have gotten used to can’t be used..like the shows we’ve done in England for example.

As we’ve established, 2007 has been a busy year of touring with Therion for you. How was the experience and were there any particular high points (aside from sharing beers with Johan and I)?

Funnily that was the absolute highlight, to drink beers with you guys backstage and the groupies,..ha ha!

Touring all over South America was a really great experience and a first for me, it was truly awesome. Therion is pretty big there so it was a lot of fun of course. We also went to play at Loud Park Festival in Tokyo, which was the first time for them and proved to be a good thing branching out to new territories.

Christofer Johnsson is like the Rafa Benitez of metal with his squad rotation. I understand he’s planning a break for Therion. Do you know whether you’ll have a role when he gets back to work?

Yeah, Christofer has decided to take a well deserved sabbatical year and recharge his batteries, which I think is a good call so that he doesn’t forget the reason why he started out playing music in the first place. He’s been managing the band and all the business more or less on his own for the last few years now, but there’s gonna be management involved once we/they start thinking about making a new album and a new tour.

If I’m gonna be included for the future? I think and hope so, but a lot can happen in a year or two, you’ll never know, I might be singing with Dimmu Borgir or started my own disco metal band or perhaps even this fantastic album I’m currently working on with this new glamrock-punk-metal band hits it really big and I can’t time away from doing that, who knows?

What can you reveal about the glamrock-punk-metal project?

Well, at this point I prefer not to reveal too much about it, but I can say this much. We call it XXX, as in triple x, and currently me and guitarist/engineer X are finishing up the recording that we’ve been working on off and on for some time during breaks and I’ve been writing on tours as well.

We go into mix with Andy La Rocque in his brand new studio in about 3 weeks, and I feel it’s gonna be really fucking great album, I can just feel it in my gut.

In a similar sphere of music you’ve been helping out the Swedish band Loud’N’Nasty, who bill themselves as “The Return Of Rock’n’Roll Decadence”. Are you a fully fledged member of this outfit and what is the plan?

They say that about themselves? Ha ha ha!.

Well, they are real good guys and real good friends of mine and initially I thought I could help them a little, though they’ve struggled for almost 10 years without getting anywhere and I thought they deserved a chance. So among other things, I ended up producing a 3 song single with them and told them to get rid of their not so good drummer and then I played the drums on the songs.

We mixed it with Kee Marcello and it was released in Sweden only on some smaller Swedish label. I later also brought my bass playing friend to the ranks, so that the singer could better concentrate on his singing and for a little while things worked just fine …then along came the return of the decadence ha ha ha!.

You mentioned “other things” When we last spoke, you were hoping to put a project together with Mats Levén called S&M, schedules permitting. Has anything happened with this?

Not that much really, our busy schedules haven’t permitted it, like you said that I had said earlier on.

What happened is that we wrote a bunch of great songs together and recorded some rough demos in my old house. Then Mats took the files and worked very much with it on his own while I was busy doing other stuff. He did a terrific job and it sounds great.

Honestly, I think the best way, since it seems to be a higher priority for him, would be to drop the “S” in the name and to do a solo album with the material. I’m sure he’ll get a good deal with a decent record label for it and I’d gladly help out in any way I can for my great dear friend.

I’ve been meaning to bring this up with him, but there has never been the right time and place. I’ll try to do it within the next few days.

Last May you were laying down drums for an unnamed project for a CD called “Opera Diabolicus” which Andy La Rocque was due to mix. What’s the story?

Yeah, I dropped the guys a mail last week asking if they died or what the fuck is happening?

I thought the album would be released by now. It’s not like there ’s any big mystery or secrecy surrounding this project and it is no longer unnamed. I persuaded them to use the album title as the band name instead. The album was finished 6-8 months ago and Andy’s mix turned out really, really good.

Besides myself it features some guest appearances from members of bands like Dragonland, Dreamland, Blue Oyster Cult or whatever. First they hired me to do some vocals on the self financed album about 18 months ago and they used programmed drums on it, until they realized it didn’t work out in the mix. So the very last thing that was recorded was my drum tracks, when in most normal cases it is the first thing you record for logical reasons. Anyway, it’s a great album in a classic style if you’re into King Diamond, Candlemass, Memento Mori, Notre Dame and I hope it will be available in the stores before summer.

I also read you were playing with Metal Für Alle with Kriss Göbel (ex-Falconer), Michael Åberg (ex-Nostradamus). Is this just a fun covers project?

Yes it is. Easy money too of course. You surely are well informed on every little piss thing I do, I’m impressed. In contrast to most musicians I’ve somehow managed to stay away from the covers thing all my life and pretty much thought of it as some sort of prostitution but Kriss does this a lot, and he called me to once to fill in for their double booked drummer and to my surprise I had a really great time.

I just showed up unrehearsed and played classics for 2-3 hours. I didn’t even know what songs we were supposed to be playing, Kriss would just call out things like The Trooper!!! and we just played it on the spot. I always loved to jam but those occasions are unfortunately rare and very far in between these days. Anyway, they called me again and I sat in for them another time, and they thought it was so much more fun playing with me and easier too. So we decided that we should try to do this more often whenever we weren’t doing stuff and formed a new concept of a cover band doing, as the name suggests if you know your German, “Metal for Everyone” from 4 decades or so. From Deep Purple to Rammstein. But since I’ve been so extremely busy touring there was no time to play more than 1 or 2 gigs last year.

Hehe, Bloodstock Open Air had a covers band on in the beer tent after the mainstage closed. You guys should get your asses over and do that.

Yeah that’d be awesome.. you fix us up there and we show up!

We’ve talked about your musical side but you’ve also got your photographic and design company Snowy Shaw Productions. You told us a little about this in our very first interview. How is this going?

Well, again I’ve been too busy touring but it’s going OK, although I had to turn down the projects I couldn’t reschedule due to the lack of time.

I designed and manufactured the whole stage set for Therion. Everything from backdrops to fences, bridges and flags and for this last year’s 2nd European 20th anniversary tour, the Church organ, headstock, specially designed risers and so on.

I did work for Hardcore Superstar last year, photos, Illustrations and artwork designs and I even got a gold record for the single.

Continuing the DIY ethic, your last Notre Dame record came out on your own label White Trash Records. How did the experience of self releasing the album turn out and any plans to use this route for any more of your projects?

Yeah, I just might or actually I’m pretty sure I will since I’m gonna do some stuff on my own starting this year, without going further into detail at this point. That is unless I’ll be getting offers that are too good to refuse, which in this day and age is highly unlikely I’d say.(laughs).

First of all, I did release the Notre Dame live album - Creepshow Freakshow Peepshow, which I think is a great album that captures one of Notre Dame’s best moments, but still, I released it for the fans and to close a chapter in my life.

It’s difficult trying to sell and promote, especially a live album, to new uninitiated distributors for a band that won’t play live anymore because they don’t exist, and most of them didn’t know it ever existed to begin with.

I may have lost some money on it, but fuck that, I was never in it for the money and never will be. I guess I learned a little from that experience too. I mean, It’s not like I ever had a secret dream or anything to start my own record company or any company for that matter..

It’s nothing I enjoy doing at all. I’d love for someone to take care of all the boring business stuff so that I could just be a big kid and play around making music and be creative in every way, but one gotta do what one gotta do, simple as that!

Well you certainly can’t be accused of sitting around doing nothing! Thanks for catching up with us and we look forward to seeing, and hearing, what Snowy Shaw gets up to in 2008!

Thank you Dave, it was a pleasure as always.. see you around


LINKS:
Snowy Shaw