Papa Roach has been together since 1993, how do you keep motivated making music every year? What keeps you in the game? I think it’s just about maintaining the drive and that passion for what we do, whether it’s writing songs or performing live. Even before we get into the studio and we actually have an idea, we’re just thinking how it is when you play the songs live, for example when you perform at those festivals in the UK and there’s thousands of people there and they’re jumping up and down! We’re super stoked just to see people getting into it and we try and write a song that makes people want to do that – that in its self is inspiring. I think real life trials and tribulations, shit that just happens to you – like a lot of personal things that are going on in Jacoby’s life – I think that’s when the music and the lyrics, and the story and reality collide, you’ve got a recipe for a good song and it’s our job just to tell the story and be real with it. We have the opportunity to make music for a living, so if we’re going to be making a loud-ass noise, then we better be saying something. If we just did it for all the wrong reasons, it just wouldn’t be right.
How did you go about deciding to record 'The Connection' in your hometown studio? Was it a little distracting for you, or was it more natural? I wouldn’t say it was really distracting. I think it was really conducive to the whole creativity, because not only did we not have the pressures of being in a thousand-dollar studio in which everyday we were getting charged, we were using our own gear and could do whatever we wanted to. If we wanted to just hang out and listen to music, or hang out with our friends and drink or go out to a bar and watch a band play and be inspired by that, then it was cool. We did that a lot, because we weren’t forcing it. When these songs came to us we knew that we’d hit our stride and then go from there. It was pretty long, we wrote a lot of music where we were like “this is cool, but it’s not great” and I think lyrically Jacoby was trying to find his place. He was searching for the right thing to connect with, he had a lot of personal substance abuse and relationship issues that he was dealing with and I think it was inevitable that at first he didn’t know what to write about, but when all that shit started to happen he was like “this is just going to be my therapy, I’m sorry guys, I can’t just think of some mysterious shit to write I’ve just got to write about my life right now, it’s what I do and what people connect with and we were like “yeah, fucking do it!”.
What was it like to work with James Michael and John Feldmann on 'The Connection' and what influence did they have on the recording process? James Michael did most of the record, with the exception of one or two songs that were added at the very last minute. He was like the fifth member, because he was a friend of ours first of all and I think that helped a lot, as he believed in us. He was very into the idea of us making our own record, in our own studio and he was the one guy who was willing to go in there and make it happen. From the initial conversation two years ago when we said “we bought this studio in downtown Sacramento, we just need to put the right gear in it and we want to do our own record” and he said “yeah, you guys should totally do it, you’re at this place in your career where you know what to do, you know what you like, and you should have total control to do that whilst saving a ton of money.” We were like “cool, do you want to come down and help us out?” he said absolutely, he was serious, and he lived in that studio with us for four or five months, and stuck by us until the end. He knows the band, he’s a fan, he’s a friend and he’s a great musician, and I think he bought out the best of keeping Papa Roach as Papa Roach along with the essence of the band. He also understood how we were trying to branch out, and he bought the best out of us in that way. We didn’t need a producer who was going to tell us “hey, this is how I make records and I’m going to put you through the same machine I put every band through”. Feldmann, was great to work with. He’s so fast and hyper, and I’ve never worked with anyone like that before, it’s hilarious, he’s so energetic and we worked so fast. I came in with the idea for a song and we threw up a click-track, a tempo, and we were like “let’s make a song we can jump to,” and John and I were jumping up and down, and then boom the music was done! He was like “cool, let’s get it done, what’s the song going to be about? Where are the vocals?” and I was like “holy shit, we just wrote a song in like one minute” and it was cool to have that, because the whole record was very laxidasical and the fact that we took our time and then once we got in with John, we could do something different. He just worked so fast, but it was cool, and he was entertaining.
What do you want 2013 to do for Papa Roach? I just want to tour the world and have everyone singing along to our music. I just want to have that connection with everybody and I want to make a lot of new fans. I think we have a great rock record on our hands and I just want everyone to acknowledge it and of course, I just want to have a good time!