{"id":4974,"date":"2012-04-10T00:00:09","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T00:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=4974"},"modified":"2012-12-25T22:27:59","modified_gmt":"2012-12-25T22:27:59","slug":"feature-taproot-04-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/feature-taproot-04-12\/","title":{"rendered":"TAPROOT – The Everlasting (April 2012) | Features \/ Interviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAPROOT – The Everlasting<\/strong><\/span>
\nAnthony Morgan<\/span>
\nApril 2012<\/span><\/p>\n

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Taproot (l-r): Mike DeWolf, Phil Lipscomb, Stephen Richards and Nick Fredell<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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Ann Arbor, Michigan-based outfit Taproot penned the compositions for April 2011 opus The Episodes<\/em> \u2013 their sixth studio full-length overall \u2013 in the middle of writing September 2008\u2019s Our Long Road Home<\/em> (studio album four). Taking a break from writing that effort, the quartet devised an idea for a concept album. The method was to author the story, break it into ten episodes, and then subsequently compose music to the actual lyrics. Roughly 15 days were devoted to this cause, and following this Our Long Road Home<\/em> was completed and released through Velvet Hammer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt like we weren\u2019t ready to come out with a concept album at the time,\u201d chuckles Mike DeWolf, guitarist and co-founder of Taproot. \u201cIt just felt right at this point though. We\u2019ve had this album sitting with us for a couple of years. We all loved it, and have always anticipated working on it. It then came time for album number six, and we went straight for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In christening the affair The Episodes<\/em>, Taproot were thinking of TV series\u2019 where installments arrive in the form of episodes. \u201cThat\u2019s how we broke it down,\u201d the axeman agrees. \u201cIt just stuck. The character wakes up, and he\u2019s going through an episode in life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike feels that the The Episodes<\/em> is an ambitious album. \u201cIt\u2019s totally different than anything we\u2019ve ever done,\u201d he reckons. \u201cAs far as how it came together, it came easily. We usually write all the music, and then comes the lyrics and what not. This was completely backwards, and a new way of writing for us. Writing the opposite way was a whole lot easier, for one (laughs). Usually the music comes fairly naturally for us, and then the lyrics take a bit more work and time. That\u2019s always the harder part. Stephen and I sat down together, wrote out the story, and broke it into ten parts, so the hard work was pretty much done beforehand. It was pretty easy after that. <\/p>\n

\u201cDoing it in the way that we did with all the lyrics first and then wrapping the music around that, it was no longer about coming up with a cool riff, or a cool beat. It was more what\u2019s gonna fit this type of mood and this vibe. It just opened so many doors up for us musically. It was totally exciting for us to do things this way and a whole lot of fun as well, which I think shows on the album.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Episodes<\/em> is a growing up, coming of age type saga. \u201cIt\u2019s about the choices a person makes in life, and how it affects them one way or the other,\u201d the Taproot co-founder divulges. \u201cIt has three main characters, and it just follows this life journey. The choices that we make in life are\u2026 choose your own kind of adventure outlook. You make one good or bad decision and that\u2019ll take you down a certain road, and another decision will take you down another road. It\u2019s stepping back out of the story, and looking at as well as listening to choices. The story is probably autobiographical, to some extent. When we are writing we put a little bit of ourselves in everything to some degree I would say for sure, but not to the extreme of the story I guess. The lyrics are fairly direct, but it\u2019s hard to say when you just helped write the story. It has one meaning to me, and a different meaning to Steve who also helped write the story.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt helps me look at my own life and the choices that I make though, and try to be the best person that I can be I guess. It\u2019s kind of left open to the imagination overall, and to interpretation. We\u2019re hoping that everyone can take their own meaning from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Episodes<\/em> is the third Taproot album to be produced by Tim Patalan, the others being Our Long Road Home<\/em> and Plead The Fifth<\/em> (May 2010) respectively. \u201cTim is awesome, and we\u2019re extremely lucky to have him,\u201d Mike enthuses. \u201cHe\u2019s 20 minutes down the road in Saline, Michigan out on a farm. It\u2019s a beautiful setting. It\u2019s pretty much a dream come true to have someone like that so close to home. Tim is a madman (laughs), and crazy to work with. We kind of pick away at the songs; instead of focusing on one thing and finishing it, we go back and forth. We\u2019re just always thinking of little ways to get to where we wanna be. He puts a whole lot of thought into every little aspect of things, so if we get stuck on something we\u2019ll just move on for a little while and come back to it. That\u2019s kind of a crazy way to work, but that allows for things to always be evolving up to the last minute. We have learned how to work with that, so we love Tim. He\u2019s awesome. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s also highly educated musically, so that\u2019s a major help. Working with someone who doesn\u2019t have that musical experience is a whole lot more pressure on the band I guess (laughs), because the producer can have ideas but they can\u2019t demonstrate for you or what not. Having Tim is just awesome. If he\u2019s not really into what we\u2019re doing, he can show us in a way that we understand. He plays pretty much every instrument; he has great equipment, and knowledge. Whenever we have any kind of problem, he\u2019s always got a solution. I\u2019m pretty sure he\u2019s one of the only producers we\u2019ve worked with that has this amount of musical capability especially. Each person brings their own kind of thing though, and we\u2019ve been blessed to work with a few really great producers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018No Surrender\u2019 was selected to be the inaugural single from The Episodes<\/em>, a music video being helmed by director Eric Richter. \u201c\u2018No Surrender\u2019 is track number two on the album,\u201d the songwriter notes. \u201cIn episode one (\u2018Good Morning\u2019), the main character wakes up in a really bad place in his life and decides he\u2019s gotta get the hell out of there, and run away and find something better. This is that little chapter of the story. We finished filming a music video for the song, and it\u2019s pretty cool I think. It has a little bit of performance, but it\u2019s mostly about the main character\u2019s journey and it kind of flashes back a little and forward a little. You see some other aspects of the story.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hoping and planning on doing hopefully at least three more, but the idea from the start was always to film the entire piece. We\u2019re trying to work to make that happen. We\u2019ve been really lucky with our record label Victory Records; they\u2019ve been really supportive of the idea and the concept. The video guy there helped us create the first video, and he was way into it. He\u2019s really cool. Hopefully it\u2019ll happen, but I\u2019m not sure. We\u2019re gonna do as much as we can with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike designed the cover artwork for The Episodes<\/em>, featuring a woman crying. Whether those tears are ones of joy or pain is open to debate. \u201cShe\u2019s a mother, and there\u2019s a son and a man,\u201d he comments. \u201cShe\u2019s an important part of the story. The album cover is open to interpretation, as is the story. I wanted someone to look at it and go \u2018What the hell is going on here? I wanna find out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In cutting the record, Taproot mainly used the equipment they perform live with. \u201cWe pretty much had everything written,\u201d the guitarist explains. \u201cWith Tim our producer in the studio though we just found appropriate equipment and whatever we needed to find the sounds. Another cool aspect to the story is we have a lot of sounds from the themes, so some of the themes will take place in a park and some are in a subway. We got some actual sounds from life, the outside, which were pre-recorded. That was really fun to experiment with as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Taproot (l-r): Stephen Richards, Phil Lipscomb, Nick Fredell and Mike DeWolf<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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On both sides of the spectrum, Mike feels The Episodes<\/em> features musical extremity. \u201cThe parts that are heavy are pretty ridiculously heavy, and I think we\u2019ve matured a bit with the softer end of things,\u201d he surmises. \u201cOverall I think it\u2019s put together pretty well. My guitar work was hectic, frantic, and exciting, for example. I think people will be able to enjoy what they\u2019re looking for because in my opinion, it\u2019s probably the best thing we\u2019ve ever done and possibly ever will. I\u2019m really excited about the whole thing. That\u2019s coming from me, a band member (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

As to whether Taproot will pen music or lyrics first in making future albums, the axeman is unsure. \u201cWe usually never know what\u2019s gonna happen until we start,\u201d he clarifies. \u201cI would think though that we could use some aspects from this. Even if not entirely another concept album or what have you, we\u2019ll definitely use some of the elements that we\u2019ve learnt and taken from this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Episodes<\/em> was released on April 10th, 2012 through Victory Records.<\/p>\n

Interview published in April 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TAPROOT – The Everlasting Anthony Morgan April 2012 Taproot (l-r): Mike DeWolf, Phil Lipscomb, Stephen Richards and Nick Fredell Ann Arbor, Michigan-based outfit Taproot penned the compositions for April 2011 opus The Episodes \u2013 their sixth studio full-length overall \u2013 in the middle of writing September 2008\u2019s Our Long Road Home (studio album four). Taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-taproot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4974"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8977,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4974\/revisions\/8977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}