After Sunflower Dead’s set on July 9th at Shiley Acres I had a chance to set down with vocalist Michael Del Pizzo about the current tour and the bands latest release, “It’s Time To Get Weird”. Following is the transcript of our conversation. You can see pictures from their performance HERE:
Side Stage Magazine: For those who don’t know who Sunflower Dead is, you’re a collection of artists that all were in other projects leading up to the creation of the band. Tell us how that came to be as well as your image and sound.
Michael Del Pizzo: It kind of was an idea that I had, I had seen Kiss for the first time in 2007 or 2008, I was never a huge Kiss fan, I thought they were ok or whatever, but I walked out of their going I get it. I want to entertain people, I don’t want to be the angry guy, I don’t want to do that, I want to entertain people. So me and my lead guitarist Jaboo, had been playing together forever and we had an idea to go around to all the bands we knew in southern California and literally just started cherry picking the guys that we wanted. I wanted the rock stars, I didn’t want to drag anyone along. So I went to people and I said I know you’re a rock star and you’re a rock star so lets band together and I told them the idea that we wanted to entertain people. I didn’t know what we were going to do, but everybody was like, yeah let’s do something like makeup or something, let’s have a good time. We didn’t really play locally, we literally just wrote a record, and before we were going to record it my guitarist Jamie, who was in Droid who happened to be signed to James “Munky” Shaffer of Korn his label. He said, you know we need a band name that describes both the beauty and ugliness of what we’re doing. He said he kept hearing something with a tulip or a flower, and I said that’s interesting because I had lived on Sunflower Avenue at that time. I said years ago I wrote this short story called “The Sunflower Dead”, and I started telling him about these kids that had been murdered in a field with their eyes torn out and live sunflowers placed in their eye sockets. The kids come back from the grave, kind of like in the movie “The Crow” as undead vigilantes, so that was the basis of the story. So the guys were like, that’s pretty cool maybe we should be like that and look like those characters. Not sing about it, lyrically it has nothing to do with that story, but just kind of look like those characters, have fun with it, and everybody was down with it. We did our first photo shoot and we had this makeup artist who did a lot of horror movies in L.A., we had pictures of what we kind of wanted to look like and she did it, and when we saw it we were like that will work. It was very organic, not very planned, it was odd. You guys have two albums out now, the latest is “It’s Time to Get Weird” which features Jonathan Davis from Korn.
What was it like being able to work with someone like him?
It was easy, we asked Jon, Jamie has a good friendship with those guys, he’s known them since before they were Korn, he actually took guitar lessons from Munky. So he just called Jon up and said, hey you want to sing on our song? Jon was like yeah come down to my studio. So we went to Bakersfield California, I told Jon, you know I gave him the lyrics I said these are the melodies he was like alright cool and we started laying stuff down. Then we got to the chorus, he was like I really don’t want to sing that part, so I came up with another line and he was like that sounds great and that was the one we used. It was as easy as it could be, he was dead serious, he warmed up, you could tell he was anxious and getting ready, then he laid his vocals down. It was cool I stood next to him and I said what do you think about this or that and he was like yeah I’ll do this. Then we went back to his house in Bakersfield and hung out with his family.
So that album was released in late 2015, are you guys already working on the next album?
Yeah for sure, I have about eight songs written on my own. We all write, then come together and sit in a room and work on the songs together and make them Sunflower Dead. So I have about eight songs, but the thing is, for me I feel that for artist development is lacking so much today that for us to do each record we have to go work the record we’re on. We could go write song after song after song but that doesn’t mean you’ve grown. There was a big growth between our first and second records, so now we’re working this record on the road finally, and we’re learning what we want our third record to be and where it’s going to go. I have a pretty good idea of the direction of it, but we still have to grow some more and that’s just going to take more touring.
When you’re in the studio recording a new record, is radio play always something that is in the back of your minds?
Always, there’s no doubt it that we write songs for the radio. We are not heavy, anything that is heavy about us is just a by-product of our personalities. It’s not meant to be heavy, my goal is just to write great songs, to work with great producers, and songwriters. That’s the goal, to write great songs. At the end of the day if we were going to try to be heavy, we would be completely different.
As far as getting your music out there, what are your thoughts on sites like Pandora or Spotify?
I just don’t know, I see both sides of the argument, I get paychecks all the time from them, but then I’m like they’re nothing. All I know is this, regardless of where the music industry sits, or what new technology comes out, I’m going to be doing music. So it’s kind of just like fuck it, it is what it is. In the ’70’s, ’80’s, and ’90’s, it’s not like it was the glory days, record deals sucked, bands got screwed, but they got taken care of, there was more money coming in. Yes I believe you need a foundation for a business, but it’s not like the music business was ever really good.
So what would be your recommendations and advice for bands trying to break out and emerge in the music industry?
I would say this, it comes down to want and need. If you want to get up on that stage because you think it’s cool, you think it would be fun to be on a tour bus, don’t do it, go get a job. If you need music regardless whether the industry sucks or not if you just need to do it, or you have to do it to survive, then it’s for you. That’s all I can say, as far as breaking on to the scene, you have to develop, no label is going to come and develop you anymore. It doesn’t exist, so you have to develop yourself and constantly be looking at what you’re doing and making it better. You have to be asking yourself if it’s reacting and if it’s not reacting how can we get it to react. That’s the only thing that I can say we’re doing. We’re constantly re-evaluating, going ok that didn’t work, let’s do this, let’s make this better. It seems like every notch we turn it more and more people get interested. We’re doing our development on our own.
Speaking of getting up on stage, you guys have been out on the Hellpop 2016 tour with In This Moment and Hellyeah. How are the fans reacting to Sunflower Dead?
This probably has been the best tour we have ever done. We’re going on early and the shows have been packed. The fans are acting phenomenal, we can see it in the social media numbers, the views, the downloads, and the album sales. It’s great, I love this tour, the bands are phenomenal, the crews are phenomenal, its just been really easy.
You guys toured earlier with Avatar, and a separate run with Hellyeah, so what’s lined up after the Hellpop tour?
We have the second leg of Hellpop in August, and then I believe in October we will go out with Mushroomhead. We will be main support for them, I’m pretty sure it’s a done deal, we’re just waiting to get the routing. I know we are going to radio with a third single. If we do a video or not, I don’t know. Videos are kind of sketchy, they’re awesome but what’s the payoff.
Right the days of MTV and Headbangers Ball are gone.
Right and the videos I want to do, to get our image across is very difficult. I feel we finally got it right on our last video, the animated video with Jonathan Davis, so now I’m like for a third video for this album it really has to be something cool and special that will really make us come across great. I don’t know if it’s worth it to spend that money.
Earlier you mentioned you had eight songs written, when do you think the third album could come out?
It just depends on how the third single does. We could tour this record all the way thru 2017 or we could go do a new record in the fall, it just all depends.
Ok well that sounds great. We will be looking for more tour dates of you guys out on the road, as well as the third single from “It’s Time To Get Wierd”. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.
Awesome, you’re welcome.
