DOWN guitarist Kirk Windstein has given another update on the band’s new music currently in the works
In a recent conversation with Concrete Spew, DOWN‘s guitarist Kirk Windstein delved into the creative direction of the new music currently in the works with his bandmates. This heavy metal powerhouse, known for their enduring legacy, has been quiet on the release front since the unveiling of the “Down IV – Part Two” EP back in May 2014.
Kirk said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It just sounds like DOWN. I mean, it sounds refreshing because we haven’t done it in so long, gotten together with me and the guys and done it in — fuck — 12 years or something. So it sounds like DOWN, I think, to me, it sounds more old-school DOWN. And the reason I say that is I think we got to a point where… Like, the ‘NOLA’ record is so simple, and it just wrote itself; it was so simple.
“And that’s how this is coming about, which is great. We’re not overthinking it. We’re not trying to make things too complex. Phillip‘s [Anselmo, DOWN singer] not trying to write so many lyrics and things. We just kind of got away — I hate to say ‘got away’, ’cause anything we do is DOWN, but, to me, we kind of got a little bit… We needed to go back and look at each other and just go, ‘Let’s just get in a room and do it like we did from the beginning.’ And that’s what it feels like to me. It’s very magical. The ideas and the working together, just bounce off of one another, it’s a natural thing.”
Windstein added that DOWN has “seven songs” written “right now,” but said that he had yet to hear them with lead vocals yet “because I was on tour with CROWBAR in the U.K. and Ireland. And so Phil and [his wife] Kate had [a get-together] over at the house and on the property where the studio is and all while we were on tour. And everybody got to hear it with vocals, except me, and I haven’t heard it.
“So I guess I’m gonna have to try to make a trip over there. But Pepper [Keenan, DOWN guitarist] also built kind of a home studio thing in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. He’s got like a beach house out there — well, really two that are next door to one another. And I talked to him about that right before we left. So we wanna do guitar solos, at least demo ’em or whatever, have ideas, and what we call sweetie tracks, which is little licks and things between vocal lines. So in order to do that, we’re gonna have to get have the vocals, ’cause nobody’s got the tracks with Phil‘s vocals except Phil.”
Back in October, Kirk Windstein joined Scott Penfold on the Loaded Radio Podcast and discussed DOWN‘s songwriting process, saying: “When you have five guys — well, Phil, of course, will be kind of out of the picture for now but me, Pepper, Jimmy and Pat — in a room together, when you’ve got all these guys writing riffs off of each other… And that’s the way I like to write — I like to write spontaneously off the cuff. I don’t like to [go], ‘Okay, this is my new song. Boom. Here y’all go,’ or whatever.
“I like to write off the cuff, on the spot. I feel what the other guys are giving me vibe-wise and whatnot. And that, to me, is a winning formula. It really is.”
Regarding how long he thinks DOWN can keep going, Kirk said: “When we got DOWN together in 1991, that was the first demo tape. We wrote ‘Bury Me In Smoke’, ‘Temptation’s Wings’ and ‘Losing All’ in a day. We recorded it. Phil sang. We mixed it off on a four-track or some shit, and that was it. Phil flew back to Texas and Pepper flew back to North Carolina with C.O.C.
“So when we got together, we always joked, but it’s no longer a joke that this is the kind of band we can grow old with. It doesn’t matter what we look like. We can be fat. We can be bald. We’re not attracting 18-year-old girls. If they wanna be a fan of the music, great. If you’re a [Taylor Swift] fan, hey, more power to you. It’s all good. Whatever.
“But that was not our intention. And it’s kind of ironic or whatever that it’s kind of come full circle where we see ourselves going, ‘Hey, guys, we’re closing in on mid-50s to 60s. This is a band that we can actually do and kill it and then retire with it maybe.'”
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