– Male Boxx: Stone Sour’s Roy Mayorga Part 2
Photo: Demonoftheheavens
In case you missed Part 1 of the interview with Stone Sour’s drummer extraordinaire, Roy Mayorga, you can find that HERE. He was so generous with his time and excited to talk about his favorite artists we had to break the interview into two parts, much like Stone Sour’s latest album House of Gold & Bones Part 1 & 2. Here we continue our discussion with more focus on Stone Sour and what is next for them.
JY: Do you think Stone Sour will ever collaborate with women?
RM: I don’t know, this band is so new, this band is still learning to collaborate with each other, so maybe. The thing is I’ve only been in the band for 6-7 years now and it’s taken us to this point to really get to know each other as people and as friends to really collaborate well together. But who knows that’d be great I’d love to do something like that.
JY: How did you end up with Stone Sour? I know you were with Soulfly before.
RM: I got involved with Stone Sour through the producer at the time, producing their second album, Come What(ever) May, this guy Nick Raskulinecz, basically they needed a drummer to come in and play on the record. I didn’t know any of their songs and I didn’t know them, I knew Nick, so Nick got me involved, I learned their songs right then and there, tracked for four days and then they asked me to join the band in the following week or so.
JY: How would you change music now if you could?
RM: I just keep doing what I’m doing and go further and further and inspire others to. It’s a give and take thing, the more you get inspired the other people get inspired.
[his adorable daughter, Nico, walks in]
She actually just started singing kind of, to Taylor Swift “[I Knew You Were] Trouble,” she just started singing along to that. She gets into my synthesizers and stuff. Maybe she’ll be my little songwriting partner, my little synth girl.
JY: You’ve always been amazing to women but I’m always curious, did having a little girl change your view in how you look a the world and women in particular?
RM: I mean I’ve always had respect for women. It definitely made me even more compassionate to everything in the world. She is the most important thing to me, everything that I thought was really important before isn’t, she is the most important thing to me.
Oh, some more influences I’ve had are Siouxsie Sioux, Debbie Harry, Joan Jett people like that. Most of the women that I am inspired by, they all have the same attitude, basically “I don’t give a fuck, I’m gonna tell it like it is, whether you like it or not. This is who I am, fuck off.” And that to me speaks big time, that’s pretty much the attitude I look for in any artist whether it’s a woman or a man.
JY: You just released an album this year let’s talk about that.
RM: We actually released two records within six months of each other but we just released Part 2 to House of Gold & Bones. It’s a double concept album, basically the story of an individual coming through the crossroads of life trying to find himself and make himself a better person. Basically a “do I stay this way or do I keep moving forward and become a better person?” What we all go through. That’s the general synopsis, it’s more detailed than that, but better for people to go check it out.
JY: Why did you decide to do it as two parts?
RM: We had a lot of songs before there was even a story put to it, and the songs we had we were like we don’t want to just show this and that, so let’s make this record as long as it’s going to go, and it ended up being 24 songs. There’s a couple reasons we split it up. One, is that it’s a little bit to ask and individual to sit in front of their speakers for 2-2.5 hours and listen to this record. The attention span of people these days isn’t that much. So we figured make one at a time so people can take it in a little bit at a time and sit with it for a while. Kind of like with movies, you know, you make a part one and then you make a sequel, sometimes the sequel is not good sometimes they are great. But with this we didn’t just make one record and then go back and make the other, we made both of these records at the same time so that keeps the cohesiveness. It just worked out better that way even with the packaging.
We created this packaging where you can build a house out of both CD cases. A lot of thought went into this. Instead of putting out a record in a plastic jewel case or just a download. The whole art of record covers is kind of out the window.
Corey came up with that idea, when he showed us the proofs we were like wow this is cool and we can’t wait to see this manifest. I’m trying to get these put out on vinyl so you have a bigger case and can make a bigger house. I don’t know if that will ever happen, but hopefully this record will do well and we can make a limited version of it like a giant dollhouse.
We wanted to make something cool for someone to get rather than just a jewel case or buying it from iTunes, it’s cool though when we’ve done signings at FYE tents at some of these festivals we’ve had fans come up with both of these assembled, and it’s like wow there it is right there in front of me. At Rock on the Range we had a bunch of people come up with it like that and I just look over at Corey, and I’m like this is so cool! They’re like “oh no don’t sign there, sign the roof,” and I’m like ” okay this shingle or that shingle?”
The way the CD is set up, how involved it is reminds me of the old record covers in the 70s like Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti that had all the window cutouts in it or their pinwheel, trippy looking cover they had on Led Zeppelin III. No one makes shit like that anymore, it would be cool to see people start doing stuff with the cardboard on their CDs, maybe people will start buying CDs again. Or vinyl. Lately I’ve been getting back into the more warm sound of analog, and every CD I’ve had I’ve been re-buying them on vinyl; rock music especially, or any kind of music, sounds better on vinyl.
There’s something special about the fact that that wax is indented with these grooves and that sound physically goes through the needle into the wires and out your speakers, that to me is the coolest shit, it’s not ones and zeros, it’s actual physical vibration making these sounds. And as far as rock music on vinyl, guitars and snare drums just crunch way more. I’ll A/B it, I put on something like Ride the Lightning by Metallica the CD and then I’ll put the vinyl on, and the vinyl sounds better to me, because that’s how I remember it sounding, same thing with Zeppelin, same thing with Pink Floyd. It just gets cleaned up too much, those records need to be heard that way. Rock music in general.
A lot of music lacks that these days too, that raw energy that punch, everything is so perfect to the grid, Pro Tools and auto tuned and drums, and everything moves right to grid, right to the beat and everything is slammed, mixes are slammed to death on compression… and there is no dynamic or room to breathe on any of these songs.
I think that’s the problem with a lot of music these days. So when I get to hear something raw and punchy and cool like Jack White stuff, that speaks a lot to me. The shit he does with The Dead Weather or anything he does. I just wish Meg White would do something again. He’s got the singer from The Kills [Alison Mosshart] in the band, the project he does with her is unreal. That’s the kind of stuff I listen to when I’m not playing, or a lot of older electronic music like Tangerine Dream and soundtracks.
JY: Are you doing another headlining tour this year?
RM: I think we are taking a break after the tour in Europe in June. We will probably get together next January and start again. We’ve been going pretty solid for a while. I think the plan is once we get together we were going to put together a show with a little more theatrics in it, and more involved with production and with a set. We are thinking of doing both albums back to back only.
We are thinking about trying to build the house as we are playing—kind of like how Pink Floyd did The Wall—where they were building The Wall as the band was playing to the point where you cant see the band anymore. That’s an idea that’s been thrown around but not sure if its really going to happen or not. But the main plan is to play both records back to back. Maybe with a brief intermission.
Here are some more videos that Roy chose for you!