Crave Magazine » Content » Interviews - 2008

Sound Off with Mudvayne's Chad Gray
By Carl Sundberg

I got an opportunity to talk with Chad Gray, frontman of both Mudvayne and the newest supergroup phenomenon, HELLYEAH. Gray is one of the hardest working artists in music, and his success is a testament to that. We got a chance to talk about Mudvayne's newest release, touring with HELLYEAH, and the state of music piracy.

Crave: You're a busy, busy man. How do you do it?
CG: I don't know dude, I'm a carnie. I might as well be spreading pixie dust all over the world. Always on the go, always moving. I feel like a sideshow, spinning plates on sticks, trying to balance 50 different things.

Crave: I can imagine, you've got a lot of things going on; HELLYEAH and Mudvayne are pretty huge.
CG: Mudvayne is holding its own, and it's a great thing to be able to step away from it and let it breathe. I still have people coming up to me asking when new material is coming out, they want new music and HELLYEAH is growing. It's exciting to be a part of it. When we first started it, I think in the back of your mind you just assume, with what Greg and I have done and what Vinnie has done, you just think it's going to blow up like a balloon, and you think it's gonna be this instant gratification, and instead it's been a lot of work.

Crave: You have a new record with Mudvayne; it's a B-sides and rarities. I read online that it's going to include fan-based artwork?
CG: We just wanted to make the whole thing fan-generated because it's for hardcore Mudvayne fans. It's something we wanted to do for our fans just to give them the stuff we had lying around on drives and in vaults. We let them pick the track listing and we pick the version of the track that they hear. We had a lot of art work that we've just accumulated that's been sent in to us, so it's to give back to those people that sat down to do something for Mudvayne. We're not trying to sell millions of records with this thing.

Crave: Do you have to get into a different headspace for HELLYEAH than you do for Mudvayne when you're writing?
CG: Yeah, Mudvayne is more calculated. To be able to keep your head wrapped around what's going on, you gotta look at it a certain way and give it a lot of attention, whereas HELLYEAH is more good time stuff. There are many emotions involved in the human spirit and living and being. I wanted to tap into different emotions. I put a lot of effort into lyric writing, and I put a lot of effort into the melody.

Crave: What's on horizon right now for you?
CG: I have a different idea that's new to the whole industry right now…expect something different from Mudvayne, something very innovative, something that's never been done before. The bitch of music now is that as tangible as music is, it's not. Like, there's a real fucking drum kit there and if you tried to steal it, you'd go to jail. There's a real guitar there, there's real things and real people and they're really working and creating something. And somewhere in that fucking thing, everything goes from this tangible thing being put together into this digital world to where people feel like, oh well it's right there, I can take it.

Crave: What's some of your ideas to bring that back?
CG: Now c'mon dude, people have been trying to figure this shit out forever. If I'm on to something, I'm not giving it up now! I'm not saying it's gonna change the face of anything, it might very well not. There's just something about the things that are going on right now that's fucked up. If I go into a 7-11 and I put one of those little five cent jawbreakers in my hand and walk out and somebody sees me do it, I would go to jail for shoplifting. You're talking about something that takes people shitloads of time and money to go in and put these records out, yet people quit looking at it like stealing, they just think it's the ok thing to do right now. So you have bands making money on touring because you can never recoup on the label side 'cause the label's losing money. I just want to look at people and say, 'If you like the shit, test it. Download a couple songs. And if you like it, fucking buy it. Fucking support it. Don't think for a second you're sticking it to the Man. Because at the end of the day the Man is going to stick it right up the artist's ass, and the actual people that are creating are getting pushed down further, like I got a fucking Ferrari in my garage or something. C'mon!

Crave: So piracy is definitely hurting the artist more than people are thinking.
CG: Think about this: Say for every record that is paid for, three are downloaded. I've sold 800,000 records or whatever it is, on Lost and Found, just that one record in particular. So you do the fucking math. So at 800,000 records sold, I get an 800,000-selling guarantee on the road. Now if I go on the road and it's charted that I've sold 2.4 million, I'm gonna get paid like a fucking 2.4 million selling artist, which is a lot of money.

Crave: So you're being hurt multiple ways, financially, from people illegally downloading.
CG: Absolutely. The worst part is you're being hurt by the people you care about. Music is art, and you have to do it for yourself, otherwise you're just going through the motions. I don't wanna just play in a band. I'm an artist.