Home News SLIPKNOT Drummer JAY WEINBERG Discusses His Contribution To Latest Single ‘The Chapeltown Rag’

SLIPKNOT Drummer JAY WEINBERG Discusses His Contribution To Latest Single ‘The Chapeltown Rag’

slipknot jay weinberg, SLIPKNOT Drummer JAY WEINBERG Discusses His Contribution To Latest Single ‘The Chapeltown Rag’

SLIPKNOT drummer Jay Weinberg recently sat down with The Sailor Jerry podcast and discussed his involvement in the songwriting process for the band’s latest single, “The Chapeltown Rag”.

“Coming together with the idea of, like, ‘Great. We can’t play shows [due to the coronavirus pandemic]. Let’s make this new stuff.’ And ‘The Chapeltown Rag’ was born out of that,” he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “And to me, it’s such an exciting song. We’ve played it now twice on stage. And to me, that’s where songs really develop their legs.

“I often think it’s kind of ironic that you work really hard at making a song and recording it without being informed of how you’re gonna play it on a stage which is really, to me, where it starts its life,” he continued. “It’s incredibly backwards to me because it’s, like, the recorded version is the freshest that song is gonna be and then you start to put miles on it after the fact. It’s interesting to me. But now that we’ve played it on stage, I also find how it lives in that kind of environment as well. It’s amazing. I’m very happy with that, very proud of that. I feel like it’s probably, as far as my own playing within it, that song is a good example of, yeah, just trying to throw myself into every single note and thinking about every single note and the meaning behind it and the intent. You can listen to it on the surface and be, like, ‘What the fuck is this shit?’ It’s all over the place and it’s totally crazy chaotic. You can listen to it in that regard and that’s true, but that’s the very end of a very long process of hashing out every single note and me sitting next to [producer] Joe Barresi talking about this one snare note; it’s very important right here. [Laughs] That’s how deep…

“Now that I’m in this process, I’ve learned… My process of applying myself within making a new SLIPKNOT song happen, learning how to find those moments where I can be, like, ‘This is really important that I make this musical choice,’ or whatever, and doing that for a song. And then it ends up coming out totally crazy, like ‘The Chapeltown Rag’, but I can hear the intent in that. And that’s what makes me appreciate the creative process. You’re so in it, you’re so interweaved with it, but then it kind of comes out like that and you’re, like, ‘Wow. I’m so happy that we made these decisions. And yeah, it did lead us down this crazy wormhole but now we’re playing this live together and it all makes so much sense.’

“It’s one song of our newest creative adventure, but, to me, it’s a really rad way to show that character that I feel hasn’t necessarily come out — not for any intentional reason, that it hasn’t been in certain elements of ‘We Are Not Your Kind’ and ‘The Gray Chapter’, but the fact that it’s coming out now is super exciting,” Weinberg added. “And I think that’s because you just try to go deeper, you try to outperform yourself. It’s not with anybody else’s pressure of, like, ‘They’ve gotta be better. They’ve gotta do this.’ It’s, like, I wanna be better for myself. For the people I’m collaborating with, I wanna show that I’m better. And I think that that’s a good mindset as you go into just embarking on new musical territories, if you can just bring your ‘A’ game, you can make some stuff that you’re really proud of.”

The studio version of “The Chapeltown Rag” was released on November 5, 2021 and was produced by Joe Barresi.