Episode 15 - Kirk Windstein (Crowbar, DOWN)

Are you a late night uh uh reverb person?

No, I'm a morning reverb and and like sweet water and shit like that. Yeah. I usually I try to do that. I did order a Kemper with a good buzz. That was about four years ago. It was 2,700 bucks or some shit. I'm using it tonight. Is that right? I love I mean I love that in the quad cortex. I I just played the Aftershock Festival down, and I ran the quad cortex.

I came out of a Mesa like dual rectifier or whatever. And you come out of the return of the effects loop into the quad, which is a Wagner Uber Shaw that I have. That's my tone. Yeah. And dude, it sounds funny. I ran two orange cabinets. Sounds amazing. And see, Pepper's all against he's he wants me to be old school.

So after after the down, after the aftershock festival, he's like, uh the the tones were crushing tonight. I said, absolutely. And he's like, he's like, I said something when he goes, use a fucking quad cortex. I said, dude, it sounds amazing when it's powered by twos.

unknown Right.

It's it's when it's I got the power source 700, like you know, uh little um the dunk solid state thingy or whatever. It works, but it's nothing like you can crank the fuck out of here. How could it be, right? Exactly.

Hot vacuum tube, pumping a bunch of volume. Exactly. Uh welcome to the podcast, everybody. We can right we are right into it. We're nerding out uh Kirk. Thank you so much. Thank you all for having me, man. Um we were talking about essentially, I love how you just you don't really care how you get there.

As long as you get there sonically, you are willing to use it, would be fair to say, or try just about anything. Is that right? Absolutely. And uh you were just using the quad cortex into the effects return of a of a rectifier for for down.

Yes, and it sounded fucking amazing.

I saw clips and I was like, God, how the hell do you guys sound so good? And it is just such a consistent, I feel like you guys, I would dare to say, even get better. Although my favorite live tone ever is your your tone, download 2009. Oh, wow. I still watch that video. Wow. Over that was a really good uh was that orange?

Were you using orange?

Probably they were both on orange, I believe. Yeah, but we we got Pepper and I got with Orange in 2009. We went to the Nam show in Burbank or whatever it is, you know, and and the orange guys were like, oh, yeah, you recognize us, and fuck, you know, we we got them. I love them, but it's like I tell him with the quad too, I'm like, dude, it's overhead luggage under my seat, you know, and I bring a backpack.

I mean, I I literally left Friday morning, Pat and I, my bass player, plays him down as well, the crowbars bass player. We left Friday morning, landed Friday afternoon, went to the fucking hotel, got up, played the show Saturday, and then got up 7:15 Sunday morning, flew to Spokane and played that night with.

So I'm like, what do you want me to do? Fly a fucking, you know, right, uh guitar head or something. I mean, they you get the back line rental stuff at the festival. They're inconsistent though. But I mean, to the like the quad with tubes, it can't be.

Unfuck with um it's interesting. I've always I've always told people the audience doesn't matter, man. If the rifts are banging, yeah, and it's loud, you know, but the tone's great. The tone is gonna crush. Yes. Um, I want to keep talking about you, just are pretty fearless when it comes to gear. You famously like to use a metal zone as a boost.

Yes. With the gain down volume all the way up because it has an insane amount of output. Right. How did that come about?

Do you remember just actually me and when when Sammy Duay from Acid Bath was in Crowbar, he kind of we started fucking with overdrive pedals, and he kind of really kind of came. He's like, check this out. And um, I'm like, I tell everybody, because people are like, oh my god, it's the worst pedal ever.

I said, Yeah, but I'm not really using it. You know, the level's on 10, the drive's on zero, the EQ, I'm not touching. It's not engaging the EQ system part at all. And like kids bring me that metal zones to sign at the meet and greet and shit. And I'm like, you got the right settings? And he's like, I don't know.

I'll set it for him. I'd say, take a picture. Because it sounds like ass if you if you don't set it that way. Right. And as a clean boost like that, even our uh Reed who texts for, you know, he does the whole stage for COC, but he texts for Pepper mainly, but sometimes he's got to tech for me as well.

And we were doing the um tour we just did in August in early September with uh with Down. And I had a um tube screamer on there, as well as the metal zone. And he's like, Me and Cody, the monitor guy, we can't really tell which one sounds better. They both sound great. And that's what that's with the Randalls though.

I still have Fold State Randalls. Yes, the old hundreds, the RG100 ES gray carpet randles. I have nine of them.

Wow, not all of them are carpet, but all of them were the RG100 ES. I used to tour with two of those half stacks with the Jaguar speakers back then. Well, in the mid-2000s, you could I used to get them from eBay for like 170 bucks. They were giving them away. It was insane, but you could never find the foot switch.

I've never seen one of the foot switches. I don't use any.

So what I do is the clean channel goes on zero. Yep. And I have my own little way of setting it, and it just works. I mean, it's on every crowbar record. We have 12 records. That's the sound. Yep, that's it.

That's amazing. So you uh when Crowbar does uh like headline stuff, do you take out amps sometimes? Or do you like to kind of it just depends on the run and the specifics?

Randall, speaking of Randall, right now it's kind of like I have uh six of the new Randall cabs right now. No, but down, if it's not a fly date, I bring the Randall's Randall cabs. So I'm running um, but like on this, you know, it's like I mean, Dying Feet is headline, and they I mean they had they have, you know, like a nice light show and shit.

But even gear-wise, everybody's pretty much half stacks or a you know, so we're just running one cab each to and using camper. So use my quiet cortex as a backup, but I do have a Fryette 1200 watt uh all tube power amp. Problem is we did guitar solos on the new down record with Zach Wilde's EV loaded cabinets.

The Fryetics. Wow. The Fryette is so like these cat these cabs, and none of them I get I get the vintage 30s. It doesn't make a difference if it's Mesa, fucking Orange, you know, Marshall, Randall, whatever. Like the new Randalls have the vintage 30s in them and uh Celestion, but it doesn't make a difference.

The Fryette's just almost too much. But I think I'm gonna experiment one more time before I load up. I have a Mesa that's loaded with the EVs, the Zach Wilde stuff, which I never thought I would like. But with that Fryette, it it's the only thing that can handle it. Right. You know, because it's 600 watts of tubes per channel.

That's two channels. It can run four four twelves. Damn. It's like it's like I can't get a happy medium. It's kind of like it's kind of like it's just it's too much for the uh vintage 30 loaded castle. Of course, you know, but the EVs are super clean.

I mean, that's their whole thing.

That's why I didn't think I'd like it though. It was more when I was young, it was more of a PA speaker or something, you know. That's exactly right. And uh Celestians broke up, you know, to give you some more, you know, when to get to get the tubes hot and shit like that, you know.

I'm gonna have to, we're gonna have to maybe make a video about those and revisit those because I tried those maybe 20 years ago and I was like, ugh.

That's what I thought all it would be like. And I'm like, you can run the quad cortex like we had we had two cabinets, yeah, and we ran channel one, channel two, so 600 watts per side, but with with uh EVs at 300 watts, a speaker, so the cabinet can fucking handle 1200, you know.

Under what under what circumstances are you running all this though? Let's slow down for a studio. Yes, that was in the studio.

Only in the studio. Well, I want to do it live. I just gotta find another I gotta load another nature. Because I mean uh uh uh Eddie Mapp, our sound guy who does Pantera, he does everybody, you know. He did uh he does Evanescence, he did Papa Rooch, Stone Topolit, you name it, Black Label, he does as well.

Yeah, and Zach Sabbath. But um Eddie, Eddie was like, try let's let's run, let's let's try this Fryette, you know. So we did, and we were like, like my bass player was like, I'm sitting in the little area where I'm gonna be tracking solos, and I'm hitting some chords and shit. And Pat, my bass player, is like, dude, you have to come over here and hear and listen to this.

And I'm like, oh my god, this is like the greatest guitar tone I've ever heard. Yeah. And I was like, wow, it's insane. So I mean, I've I've got one mesa loaded with the four EVs, and I got another, I've actually got three, three more, but I'm gonna load another one because I only use the cabs on the ground.

Anything up top for me is a dummy, you know.

Yeah, well, I mean, it'll take your head off if you're gonna be able to do it. Right, right. Well, that's the problem. That's why I can't hear. Right.

All he hears four cabs, like two full stacks, you know. I'm like, shot. You know, I mean, everybody, I'm like, and you know, my poor wife, she's very patient about it, but people are talking, I'm like, dude, I can't hear. I mean, it's just I'm 61 years old now. I'm kind of like, it's too late to try to go any here or whatever, man.

You know, I can yeah, uh I keep them on the floor and I try to keep, you know, my monitors and shit at where I can hear it, but not like I'm not all about volume any longer.

Does tone searching for you ever does it ever end? Is it it's the fun of it, right? It's the the it's the fun of the hunt.

The eternal hunt for exactly hunt, eternal search, whatever you want to call it, for the best tones. So I try different shit all the fucking time.

Besides the Randalls, I mean, is there any other thing that you kind of always end up back to?

I mean, I do love the a good, freshly tubed Marshall JCM 800. My man. And I I use a metal zone with that with my setting, and it sounds like I'm telling you, it's it's it takes away all the you know, when you don't have the gain, there's no real, it doesn't add any gain, it just boosts like to me. I find with the pedals, it like tightens up everything a little bit.

Even with the drive on, like I'll do it too, scream it with the drive on like two, but it you turn it off and it just doesn't sound the same, you know.

Yeah, yeah. Uh how do you feel about amps? Modern amps have uh, in my opinion, have gone too far the other direction of making everything too tight and too everything. Whereas, you know, for me, I want to be I want to be the painter, so I want to be the one putting the pet on deciding how tight it is.

You know, I want that's what's great about the 800 or a rectifier, is like they're kind of a blank pallet, so you can go either way. Do you like uh uh a tight amp right away with no pedals at all? If I can find it.

If you can find it, see I have a tube screamer built into my quad cortex and my Kemper tone, which my Kemper is an angle with the fireball or whatever, and my my quad is uh is what I say what the fucking Ubershaw with Wagner. So those are two great amps. They are, but I still have the um the fucking uh 808 green or something.

Yeah, the green fucking tube screamer. Yeah. But I got the Maxen or whatever it's called, you know, uh version. I got both. I got a man, I got a fuckload of drive pedals and stuff. But you know, even with the tube screamer sounds great with JCM800, but the metal zone, I'm gonna try that. It's it's weird.

Are you I mean, as a tone seeker and trying new things, are is do you have any old things that you're precious about, or are you just kind of like eh, been there, done that?

No, I mean my first real app, I think was the what is it, JMP? Oh, yeah, 2204 or something? Yeah, okay. That was my first. My mom's co-signed for me to get a it was used ahead, but she co-signed for me to get two Marshall cabinets, so I had to have a Marshall Cabinet. Exactly. Uh it was cost me like $95 a month or something.

But I was working a full-time unloading truck fucking little job or whatever. But uh, but yeah, that was my first and uh but then when I discovered a JCM 800, I really did like it more. I know the JMP is more retro, but you know, and for some guys that works like with down, we're pretty clean on the tones, you know.

I actually use a local New Orleans guy that hand builds uh amps and cabinets, and they're all like I use the 81 Classic, which is his version of a hot rotted uh JCM 800.

Are those the purple colored amps?

Yes, the sonic sonic tone, it's called and the cabinets he builds himself. It's the birch, you know, 13 plot birch or whatever. Um he does his own Tulex work, everything. He's got he's and they I use that for all of my rhythm tracks on the down, and then we used the um the Fryette thing with the Zach Wild cabinets on um on the on the leads, you know.

What about uh you know pickups? I think you've used just about everything. You've used the active stuff, the passive stuff, invaders, emgs.

I'm back I'm back to passive and I and I use I use invaders, but also there's a guy from from Baton Rouge uh has a company called Corondolette pickups. And okay. He built Pepper and I his version of the Invader, and we were A B and he goes, Look, I'm gonna leave you guys alone. And he went out outside to call the wife or something, you know, and he's like, I'm gonna leave y'all alone to talk about it.

And I said, we would go on by, I said, I can't tell the difference. To me, it's uh his version is like a little less dirty, maybe, but it's uh it's it's great. So I'm using I got I got uh an invader and I got invaders in both of my uh solars, solar, whatever you call it, um, that I'm used to that take out with crowbar.

And then I have five explorers, I usually take four with down. They have everything from Gibson to Invaders, you know, but no more active. I just kind of one day I said, you know what? I love the MGs and I I really like the Fishman's. Same. Really, really good. Yep. But I'm like, you know what? I'm going back to square one.

It's it's not uh so I had a I had a signature fishman and I went back to Duncan's um only because like I come off the road, I was touring a bunch, and I wanted the consistency of the active, but then once I got in the studio, I'm like, oh, I want you know all these this variety, and maybe I want some more vintagey stuff, maybe I want some more P90s, right?

Right. Or you know, some beverage.

I have a Hamer uh double cutaway with uh uh P90 in it. It's an old one? The 80s or 90s? Uh it's I mean they're kind of trying to resurrect the company right now. It's the same thing with Randall.

Yeah, we just had the two new head, two of the new heads here.

See, I have two of the new heads. Yeah. And I really didn't have a chance to fool with them before we left for the down tour. Because I just got, you know, it's like the touring has not stopped. I mean, I'll go home for like, like I go home from this tour, we drive straight from Nashville to New Orleans.

Go home. And like I told, I told my wife, I said, all I want to do is shit in my own bathroom. Pet and kiss the door. With the door closed. Right. And I we don't even care at this point. But uh, I said, I want to see the puppies, and I said, I'm off. I gotta go get her. I'm we gotta go back to the rehearsal room, grab the stuff we need, and go straight to Anselmo's to Phil's, uh, and the tour bus will be leaving at seven.

So I come home, I'll probably get home at 10 in the morning, and I gotta be back on a tour bus at seven o'clock at night to go to uh Sick New World Dallas. Yeah. When I come home from that, I actually have I think like 11 days off, which is a lot for me right now. And uh so uh I got that time off, and then we fly over to Manchester, England to do our uh one festival show, and I come back on a Sunday, and then we're flying out Wednesday to do the two Slayer shows at the forum.

We're gonna rehearse Thursday at SIR and blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, that's sick. I mean, we're the first band, but I'm actually glad. It's it's Crowbar in order. Of course, Slayer. It's uh, you know, 40th anniversary of random blah, but it's Crowbar, Cavalera, Cannibal Corpse, and Slayer. But like we just we just went on, we just played up in Minnesota with Down, and it was Hate Breed, Suicidal, and Down, and then Slayer.

And it's like, we had a great set, but it's like, you know, I was I was telling doing an interview when we first got the the gigs, and I'm like, look, I'm we're really happy, and I'm, you know, I'm really proud. I really want to do it. And I said, but I'm not stupid. I mean, as I mean, and no disrespect to Cannibal Corpse or Cavallera, everybody loves them, you know.

And I said, but every motherfucker there for them two nights is for Slayer, you know. Of course. So I mean, I'm glad we're on first 30-minute set, you know. It's like, you know, you don't want to be on right before Slayer. But like Phil even said with with the show in Minnesota, he said, look, let's just do what we do.

He goes, yes, it's Slayer. And he goes, you know, yes, it's fucking killer. But this is not the fans of 40 years ago that, you know, turn it back, there you go, throw it. It's it's like, you know, it's a lot of younger kids that which is that's the best thing about everything is uh the kids at the show.

I mean, if y'all are coming tonight, I don't know, but it's it's ridiculous that how many young people, like 15, 16, yeah, into their 20s. Uh it's crowbar, it's crowbar. Um all I see is crowbar shirts. And I and they're singing, but they're passionate. They're singing along all songs. Yes. Soon as we start a song, they and the vocals come in, they start singing.

It's fucking insane.

Congratulations. Thank you. I've been waiting 36 years.

I was gonna ask. You know, I was gonna ask if you were aware that you know, crowbars having a real moment. Yes, big time. You guys are back. Like, I see I see young people or uh my daughter's friends, and they're you know, they'll be playing on their phones or something like that, and like I'll hear uh a fucking crowbar.

It's it's insane, and it's amazing. Yeah, like is that all the TikTok videos you made? Well, tick tick guys tick tock really helped. But I mean, last time I checked, we just started blowing up on like Spotify. Like we're at like 1.3 million monthly listeners. Good for you, man. And I'm like, unfortunately, you know, you make like 0.10 zeros, you know, whatever per fucking song, but otherwise I'd be rich, you know.

But still, it it's I was just talking to Evan from Biohazard, and uh, and he was he was like, bro, you know, y'all, y'all are so I'm so happy for y'all. Always love crowbar. Uh, we were on the phone call right before I texted you, or called you, whatever. And uh he said, he said, but you know, he goes, wow, he goes, y'all literally have like 10 times as many monthly listeners as Biohazard does.

But then again, it's you look at like down and stuff, it it's also about the downloads of the songs. Like, I mean, all of a sudden this song off of Sonic, Sonic X has in its purest form, it's 25 years old. It came out in fucking 2001. And it's like magically like, you know, this it's insane. That's the only shirt shirt they want.

It's and that, and there's a song on Time Hill's Nothing, uh called Embracing Emptiness. Those have the most, but repulsive in its splendid beauty, the song. Which was not a not a wasn't a single not a filler. It was just one I thought there was something special about it, even though it's very simple.

That's their song. And so of course we play it every night. And it went from like say a year ago ago, excuse me, from like, you know, two or three million uh downloads of it to over 20 million now. Wow. It's in it's fucking I'm like, how do you explain it? All we know is what that we don't know, Kirk.

Did I win the rock and roll lottery all of a sudden? Well, it's interesting because I was thinking on on the drive in, my entry point to you guys, and I'm sure a lot of people were uh Phil wearing the crowbar shirt in in the Unbroken video. Yeah, exactly. So in 1994, I'm at my Aunt Denise's house for Christmas, and Unbroken comes on and Love Pantera.

And I'm like, who the hell is Crowbar? Yep. And so, of course, like a million other people probably did. I went to the music store and asked for anything crowbar. Who's Crowbar? Yeah. That's a cool ass name. I'm gonna check him out. And that was kind of viral 1.0 in a way. I mean, that was so much exposure.

Did you guys notice or feel that when they came out?

And Pantera took us out. Obviously, yeah, you you toured, of course. I mean, not you know, the the longest and biggest was Far Beyond Driven because the the tour started like the day the record came out. The first week it was already platinum, and they had fucking the record company came. We were playing at Roseland in New York City, and uh record company came out and presented them with the plaques.

You know, this is like insane. No, it couldn't have come out. It must have come out like a few weeks before, but it had enough time to reach number one the first week. Yeah, debut a number of people. Sell a million, yeah. Yep, sell a million and get the plaques made and then bring them out to present to the band.

Because they thought it was gold and they were freaking out. And then the seller head person was like, it's platinum, boys.

Incredible. It's heavier than that. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's heavier than that.

Well, what were those tours like? I didn't see Pantera when they became a headliner, but I know that there are bands that are notoriously hard to open for ACDC Slayer Slayer and Motorhead.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they were like uh it was only like on like on Far Beyond Driven, it was just Pantera and Crowbar. Well, the thing that really helped was everybody knew that Phil especially, but even Dime loved Crowbar, you know, and me, and I hung out more with Dime than the five.

If they fuck with you than we probably fuck will fuck with.

Right. It's kind of like, you know, they if Phil like sitting there bringing him on tour, they must be okay. So we got we got good crowd response. Didn't do much in merch and stuff, but I mean, at that point we didn't care. We would just play in like real venues, you know. Of course. And uh it was great, man.

It really was.

Do you remember your live setup for any of those tours? Do you remember the guitar rig?

I had uh carpet covered RG100.

Or 800s, maybe? I had the uh no, I had back then I had the blue rack mountable Randalls. Yes, I had two of those and I ran four Mesa cabs.

Whoa!

With in in stereo, because I took the chorus and I'd set the chorus pedal where like the uh it would give it just a littlest bit to make it fat sounding, of course, like like kind of I took what would it be? Not the rate, maybe the depth or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put that on like zero. And I think the rate too, really.

But uh just to give it a little bit like a doubling effect. Exactly. Oh, was this the MXR flanger doubler that you were using?

No, no. Uh although I know they make a pedal now, and I'm kind of interested in checking it out. Yeah. No, Dime had one of those, but um, but he had the old rack mounted version. But but yeah, that's so I use that with like in fact on the broken glass record, Crowbar, uh Matt Thomas, the guitar player at the time, and I both we ran, we set up one rig with four Mesa cabinets, two of the rack mounted heads, and in stereo, and we mic'd like all four cabinets, and we each did two tracks of rhythm on stuff.

So it's very fat. Damn, you know.

Did you do that for a lot of uh a lot of stuff?

Uh that's the only album that we did it like that. Uh then I started getting in. Well, what happened was uh Jimmy Bauer borrowed my rack with the two rattleheads for this band liberated crew of clear light, and their trailer got broken into and they lost everything. So Jimmy called me up and I'm like, wow.

And he's like, but I I was on tour, but at the time I had already started eBaying and getting the fucking the old school Randalls, you know.

You were always gear hunting, yeah.

But I mean, dime turned me on to it, and I was like, wow, you know, yeah, and it was cheap, and like I find, I mean, I've been tuning to to B standard and drop A since 1988, and I find that it's hard. The tube amps break up a lot more than the solid state with that low, you know. And I don't like that, like I like a lot of the bands.

I mean, I love orange amplification, it's great stuff. And actually, they make my favorite cabinets, they really do. But a lot of like a lot of bands, I got I just call them orange bands, you know, like they show up because and you know they're stoner and they got the fuzz pedals and whatnot. But I'm I that's not my thing, you know.

I like more a little bit of a metalish tone, you know, but uh and then the older I get, the the more med I had, and the less uh gain I had, and the more learning, you know, exactly. But I mean you learn, you know, that mid-range is your friend, you know. When you try when you first start playing, doing the doing the smile smiley face is the worst thing ever, but everybody did it because it sounded good to you, but it doesn't cut through anything.

Also, Master of Puppets, yeah.

And Justice for all. Yeah, right even more extremely. Back in the day, you used correct me if I'm wrong, uh, a Charvel? Yep. I still have it. How did you get that to be standard with a Floyd nut? I I had a Kahler. Oh, was it a Kaler?

Okay, so it wasn't floating. It's actually a San Demas. Black made so sick. It's serial number like an early 80s 4073. Anything, uh I Googled it. I think anything like in the 5000 and below that has a San Demas, like the plate on the back to bolt the neck on is San Demas, California, whatever. So it's like an original before the Jackson merge and shit.

Oh wow. And I had a Seymour Duncan distortion in it. Where did you find that? Uh fucking rock and roll music was called store. It was like 600 and something bucks, brand new at the case. Because it's one pickup, one volume. It's so sick. The khler, and all I did is, I mean, I needed a a little bit of like dive bomb shit for like my cover bands and all.

And then once I quit doing all that shit, I just threw, I think I just threw it away. I unscrewed the bar. I don't need this anymore. Because the khler doesn't float like a float. So it was fine. And I'm telling that fucking guitar went from E standard to E flat to D to C sharp to C to B. And I finally got, I finally realized it because I'm taught by ear and I don't have any, I don't know any theory or any anything.

I just write what I think sounds good. But I was finally like, you know what? This B works really good because the A string is now an E. It makes a lot more sense.

It's essentially the bottom six of a seven string. Yeah. Essentially. Yes. That was so ahead of its time. No one was doing that. Does uh I don't know what screen gauge you use then or now, but it seems to be a slight it's not super crazy heavy cables or piano wire for for strings. It's comfortable. Um, I mean, I'm using 13 to 56.

Sometimes I throw a 60 on the bar. So it's 13, 17, a wound third string that's a 26, then I got a 36 and 46. Right now I got a 56, and I got to change strings. We're off tomorrow. I got to change strings in Berkeley. Uh, but we're only doing, we play like 35 minutes, so I'm like, it's a half of a real crowbar headline set, you know.

And I'm like, so I can get two shows equals one. And I'm not one of them everyday string guys. I don't like fresh, I don't like them too fresh. No.

I'm gonna show you something crazy after we're done here. I got a set of Iomie signature strings.

Oh my god.

Is it like two eights or something? Yes, it's they're crazy. Like, how on earth does he get away with that? I don't know.

I mean, I get aesthetic. Well, I mean, I'm gonna reading and uh I thought it was illegal. I think like K KK Downing and Glenn Tipton, one of them used eights, one of them used sevens. I've never even heard of a seven-gauge string.

Pretty sure Billy Gibbons.

Yeah, Billy. Well, Billy uh he barely touches the strings, is my understanding.

I guess, but he I he I read a thing or saw a thing, and uh I probably read it years ago. He started using that because he was CZ Top were opening for BB King. And BB King, like I think Billy might have asked BB, like, you you mind if I can I play Lucy a little bit? And he's like, Oh, these strings are really, really loose.

And at something like, you know, Billy let BB check it out, and he's like, son, you these damn strings are way too heavy, boy. You're doing it all wrong. Yeah, and he went from like fucking 12s or some shit down to like, you know, eight or something crazy, you know.

Right, they didn't have to work so hard, yeah.

I mean, and and I'm starting to find that too. Like with Down, we tune the C standard now. Uh and I'm using 11 to 56, but I'm kind of finding the 10, it's a little slinky, but you know, uh like the older we get, anyone that plays you, the main thing I notice that gets better, at least got better for me, is my vibrato and shit.

Because I'm not like a sit-around rip scale kind of guy, it's just not my thing, you know.

Does the string gauge do your strings or have they ever lended themselves to the wrist? Because I can't help but think of something like, you know, you couldn't play uh I feel the burning sun on super heavy strings, right? Like there's so much bending, but it's controlled and there is still a wow to it.

Yeah. And you can hear that you're hitting hard, but like, and the strings giving a little.

See, but I I hold my pick weird. I'm just so I just picked up, you know, a fucking guitar and taught myself how to play. Listen to your records. How do you hold your pick? I mean, now I kind of hold it properly, but like Matt Brunson, our other guitar player in Crowbar, he was like properly trained. He can sight read.

The whole yes, all of that shit. And Shane, our bass player for Crowbar, who before Pat came back, he put he plays with acid bath now. And he's a ripping guitarist. He's got a jazz degree from uh Sunday University. So he he's and he sans like Matt. He can like sight read, and you know, and Matt can play classical and do everything.

And uh no, no, no, no, you won't be needing any of that, sweetheart. Sean, Sean, Sean, Sean.

But I mean, for me, it's just like I just have an unorthodox style according to those two guys.

But you know, you started learning before there was an internet, and like when there was like a magazine and like a tablature. No, I held my guitar like a like a pencil when I learned. And then I uh you know, I saw pictures in magazines where they uses three fingers.

Wow, a lot of dudes do. I get it, but he's so he hits so hard, he'll hit the open E and it goes, Well, you know. I don't understand how how you do that or the Van Halen. What the hell? Well, I guess he that might have been for the tap. He taps with this thing. That's exactly right.

See, when I would tap in the 80s doing this shit, I wouldn't use my middle finger. Right. And uh, but yeah, it's kind of like it works for me, you know.

Wait a minute, let's back it up. What were you doing in the 80s? Talk to me. Because you now I'm starting to get a full picture here. You had a Charvel with a Kaler, you're talking about tapping.

I bet he had super poofy hair too. Yeah.

Oh, it wasn't poofy, but it was long, yeah, not anymore.

Um were you were you into like what what was your what was your flavor?

I mean, we did we were the only local band that we really did have uh, I believe good originals, but it was really influenced by like Maiden and Queen's Rack and shit like that. Uh but then we played like Modahead, Megadeth, Slayer, fucking uh, you know, a little bit of everything that probably some priests booking, yeah, of course.

I mean, see, but I was the original singer, so like priests, we could only really do like breaking the law and like running wild running wild or something because I couldn't hit Rob's notes. But then we got a singer that could, uh, and he's still in a local band, a couple of local bands. He's still, you know, he makes a good living doing the cover song thing, you know, all around mainly the nuance area, but you know, but anyway, uh we we had gotten him, but I mean we were doing, you know, like our booking agents, like, dude, look, I love Jethro Tall too, but you can't do a heavy version of local motor breath.

You know, he's like, the club want you to play rat. They want you to play Doc. And they want, and that's by that time, uh, we we were like, we're not doing it. So we found this one club that the club owner liked us, and we played that like twice a month, you know. And by that time I started getting into different shit as the later 80s came came about, and I was just like, you know what?

I'm not, I'm just I'm not doing this anymore. I want to write my own songs because about the greatest advice I ever got from my dad as far as music was one day I was sitting on the couch trying to do some, you know, kind of ripping solo or whatever, and I'm like, fuck. And I kept, you know, I kept like going, and my dad's like, son, what what the hell's wrong?

I said, I'm trying to do this solo and it's aggravating. I can't get it, you know, fast enough or clean enough or whatever. And he goes, Time out. Let me give you a piece of advice. He said, Great musicians are a dama dozen, there's one on every fucking street corner in every major city looking for work.

Great songwriters are few and far between. Concentrate on writing songs and you'll have a career.

And here you are 36 years later, you know.

Actually, that was in about 1985, so 40 years, you know, since but I started really doing that. And when we when Jim Jimmy Bauer and I actually st did start a crowbar together, just him on drums and me on guitar, because we were in a hardcore band called Shell Shock before that. It was like a punkish hardcore band.

But um and you know, we just started writing, me and Jim. And uh that's how it all got started, and that was like 89, what we call the slugs at the time. And then uh independent label out of Chicago got a hold of our tape, a video tape, and a thing that we had sent to uh a guy I went to high school with and actually played with with in a band, and uh he sent it to the guy with the indie label down the hall.

He was working for Relativity Records back then.

Whoa.

And uh it was in the same office. And then the guy called me one day. Well, actually, Paul, my friend from high school, called me, and he's like, Yeah, there's an indie label called Grindcore, which turned in the pavement down the hall, and they they love what you're doing, you know. And I'm like, Really?

And he goes, Yeah. So I'm like, all right. And then the guy called, he goes, Look, the only problem is uh the name The Slugs is already copyrighted, you know, but there's a band call out or whatever. I mean, I never heard of it anyway. But uh, so I called my friend Derek Como, who actually wrote a lot of the lyrics on the first on Obedience to Suffering as well.

And it was funny because he was the only black guy in our hardcore metal type, you know, scene, more of the hardcore type stuff and all. And he was real knowledgeable about everything. So he said, he actually lived in our rehearsal room for a little while, but he said, Um, I want to start a band, I want y'all uh to play.

And I said, he goes, You've heard of the the the Nazi skinhead band screwdriver, right? I'm like, yeah, he goes, I want to call the band Crowbar. And I said, Wow, that's a cool name. And he goes, Fuck those motherfuckers, they hate black people, I hate everybody. So he wrote all these really good lyricists, he wrote all these crazy fucking lyrics.

But uh I called up Derek. I had kind of lost touch, you know. We never even played a gig. And I said, Listen, man, I said, we're never gonna do anything with crowbar, the sideband. We're just something we do like after practice for like 30 minutes. We just fuck around with some like, you know, a few riffs.

I said, Do you mind if I steal the name? And he's like, No, please do, man. Go ahead and take it.

No shit.

So that's how it started out.

You send him a screen.

And the funny thing is, we were almost like looked upon as when we all shaved our heads. Well, I started doing that because my shit was falling out, you know. Right. We were looked upon, everybody in the band shaved their heads, and they thought we were like uh, you know, like white power coming from New Orleans and all that shit.

And I'm like, you wouldn't believe the real story. It was an anti-wite power band with a black singer that was fucking six three, 300 pounds, you know. It was an anti-power band. Right. Right.

But yeah, that's how we got the crowbar name, man. With your so your songwriting is so there's something for everyone, in my opinion, but the thing that I've gotten as a songwriter from you is hey man, there's no rush, baby. Like, it's okay. Like, of course, you guys have up more uptepo songs, but there is an overarching, there's a laid backness in your writing.

Is that ever intentional? Or is that is it just how you're feeling? Is it it's intentional?

I mean, it's like we do have the upbeat stuff, but like the D beat, or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, I call it Motorhead speed. Like that's a great description. The early thri other than the Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and you know, whatever. And what I was really into in in the early 80s, uh, Motorhead's one of my favorite bands ever.

And I'm like, there's no need to, to me, I was like, there's no need to go any faster than Motorhead. It's heavier that way. I'm not like a blast beat kind of guy and stuff, but that's just that's just my me. You know, that's what I enjoy. But I just try to write, like I told the guys in a band, I said, it's no coincidence that all of these songs that are popular now are the simple, three-riff, melodic vocal songs.

That's right. It's not the upbeat, more hardcore shit. Like a song like All I Had I Gave is like a forgotten thing now. I was literally just about to bring that in. They don't even know it. No, I'll be singing the first three songs. We we start out with uh and suffer is one off of Odd Fellas who go straight into Planets Glad, straight in, straight into I Feel of Burning Sun.

And then it's All I Had I Gave. And it's kind of like they're a little more subdued. Then we do to build a mountain, they go fucking berserk. Then we do Repulsive and It's Lended Beauty, which is like, you know, our fucking simple as it is, it's like the Bohemian Rhapsody uh carry on Wayward Sun for crowbar, you know.

It's like uh and I'm like, and then we do we end with the Cemetery Angels off of 701k, which has got the heavy breakdown at the end. Yeah, so we leave them with that heavy breakdown at the end.

So sick. Out of I don't want to keep it too long, and I know because I know you gotta go play a show and stuff, but do you have a favorite guitar tone of yours off of any of the crowbar albums? Probably Outfell's Rest.

Yeah, it's a little cleaner, and I this is right before I discovered the metal zone, but for some reason it doesn't work now. I had the regular um boss super distortion, the yellow pedal. And um for some somehow we just captured the the guitar tone. So good. Yeah, and it's so simple. Was it similar on Equilibrium as well?

That it would on Equilibrium, the production in general is just shitty. The thing that makes Oddfellows so good is we did the drums at Ultrasonic Studios, which is like back then, back in 1998, was like uh you know, $1,350 a day fucking thing. So we rehearsed it. Really, Jimmy and I did the whole record.

I did most most all the guitars. Sammy did a little bit, but uh we had Rehearsed it really well, and I went in and did a scratch track. And the guy, Dave Farrell, who was the head engineer there, um he got started with uh Studio in the Country and the Kansas left overture album speaking. No shit. Yeah.

And so he's an old school, he's in the 70s now. I still keep in touch a little bit here and there. Yeah, he'll check it on me, and you know, man, real proud of Ian Hog, really nice guy. But yeah, he was an old school guy, but he could tune the fucking drums really, really good. So we actually left when we got to the cheap studio, we had perfectly tuned Mike drum sound to work on.

And I just played the guitars and bass. You know, I do two guitars left, two guitars right, and played in the bass and the vocals. Right. And it was mainly me and Jim, you know, on that. But that guitar tune, I'm I was trying to, by then it was the head, the RG100 ES, not the rack. The rack had been stolen.

And Jimmy was like, Man, uh I gotta tell you something. He did he was and I'm on tour, and I'm like, what? And he goes, dude, our trailer got broken into and you ran a lamp's gone. And I went, okay. And that was a rag mountain. And I remember Pepper Keenan, I was talking to Pepper about something, and I told him, and and he goes, Well, what'd you do?

I said, I said, well, bro, I'm you know, I'm sorry. You know, y'all lost all that other shit too. And he goes, I said, Look, it's not your fault, you know. And Pepper's like, only in New Orleans, you know. Most people would be like, I'm gonna kill you, motherfucker. I don't I was just like, you know what?

By that time I had maybe like two, two of the uh RG100 ES heads, you know, and I'm like, eh, whatever, you know, I don't need it.

Ken's your brother, and I bet he felt awful. He did, you know. I'm sure he did.

Absolutely. Ken Susie has what I'm pretty sure it is. Is it? Is it the NAM? It's like a NAM prototype. It's the tube RG100 rack.

Have you seen this thing? I knew he was trying, he's a crowbar freak on stuff, on certain things. And I was, well, I love I love Ken and I was that's why he got me to go to Fishman, and I really do. I think Fishmen are better than the MG, you know. I do, yeah. But it sounds more, and the thing is, it's got the pull.

I got him in an Abanez Iceman, the Paul Stanley like PS10 or whatever. But like, okay, this is active. I pull it up, it's passive. I can't tell the difference. It might be with my shot of hearing, but I'm like, they sound that's my favorite active pickup for sure. Yeah, I agree. Is a fishman. I don't even know which.

I think I got the one moderns or something. The guys in uh Kill Switch. Oh, those are fantastic. Yeah, I think that's what I have. Yeah, yeah, those are fantastic.

But yeah, he has a super rare RG100 that he found locally up there in Boston. And he called me and he goes, like, dude, check this listing. I'm like, What do you think this is? I'm like, man, I I'm pretty sure that's an old NAM prototype. We asked Mike Fortin what it was, and he was pretty sure because he looked in the archives and couldn't even find a schematic for it.

Wow, but it works, it has its original tubes, and he's afraid to turn it on for any longer than like 10 minutes.

But it sounds insane because he was like, dude, I'm trying to recreate your early crowbar tone with this random. My was solid state, my two. Yeah, uh, they were solid state, just 100 watt, whatever. They were like what, two, three, yeah, two spaces, right? Something like that. Yeah. And uh, but I had this thing, Grady Champion, Donald Tech, you know.

Grady called me during COVID and he goes, Kirk, I'm gonna send you a picture of something, and I want, he goes, I'm very interested. And he sent it. It's a blue rack mountable, Randall, but it has chorus in it that you can run in stereo. I've never even turned it on because I don't have the foot switch for it.

And I got it for like 300 bucks, and I'm like, fuck it, I'm just gonna get it. I've never even had plugged it in, the light came on. I'm like, okay, it must work, you know. Uh and that that was in that was in like 2020, you know.

So most of these weird random things were made so when the century came out, they were in transition because they had been bought. Yeah, yeah. And there were so many things that were in flux and had been shown at NAM and then were just shelved and never seen again.

See, I have, I can't even think of the names of the two that I got sent, but I didn't have a chance.

Was it the RD 100, I believe, for the EF34 version?

No, one of them's a bit hotter, like more metal-ish tone in that. 45 maybe? Um I can't even think. Yeah. Because they're at Phil's. Yeah. I just said, you know what? Let me just take three of the fucking uh I'll just run three of the new Randall Cabs, which sound great with the selections, and I'll just all I'll do is run one head and just run the two bottoms.

I'll split it. If I found, I find that even though they're solid state, the RG100 ES sounds best at four ohms.

Interesting.

unknown Yeah.

I mean, there is a difference between but you know, by like with the Kempers and the quads, it doesn't matter. You know, it it's but uh these things I made in it 40 fucking years ago, you know. It's totally different. But I find that the four ohms, so I run like the Randall cabs I have, like I'm using it, and Matt's using one of mine, is that they're eight ohm cabs.

So you run two, you cut down to four. That's right. And I got my tone. So I just used my favorite. Me and Sammy Duay went, we spent a whole Saturday one day going through all of my Randall heads and deciding which ones sounded the best and which ones didn't. And uh, we actually during COVID, we did a Friday and a Saturday night at the place we usually usually play Southport Music Hall in New Orleans.

It's actually in Jefferson. You crawl, you you throw a rock across the railroad track behind a club and it's in Orleans.

Oh, okay.

Pepper lives like six blocks from that from there, you know. But um But anyway, so Sammy, we did they made it, it's a thousand caps. So they they during COVID, when they briefly opened up, we did uh 500 cap each day, and and we had uh we had Sammy get up and do the last six songs with three guitar players and talk about sound insane.

It was insane.

Yeah, yeah. So uh, you know, we we we ended with, I guess, like playing that's colliding some, but we did stuff on the records that he he played on that we were doing live when we were touring, you know. That's awesome. And um, yeah, it it's it was crazy, but it was great, man. You know, and that's so now, you know, like I just picked my number one fur head, and I had another fur head, then I had one of the new ones.

The ones at Diablo or something, yeah. And then the other one, I might be the one uh Diablo. I can't think of what it is. Yeah, those are the newest ones, yeah. Uh, but they're both, you know, all tube. I haven't had a chance to really fool with them, but Randall's trying to get me to kind of be the new face of Randall because pretty sick.

And maybe a signature, really.

They're I was pretty impressed. I liked the old ones too. They're essentially the same circuit but updated with the L34s. But I found them really tight and aggressive, and but like very full but not fizzy. I like that they weren't fizzy.

See, yeah, I don't care. Even though there's a weird high-end thing to those ORGs, there's a weird thing that you can't get rid of. The whistle. But see the see the way up my settings are very strange. I put my presence on ten. What? Yep, presence on ten, I put my mid on about four, treble on about four, uh base on about seven, and I run the game at about three o'clock, you know, like uh seven, eight, whatever.

Because like I said, I get I'm I'm liking it cleaner now. But like everybody's will look at it and go, why's your presence on 10? I'm like, because when I first got the Marshall JMP, I didn't even know what a presence lab was, you know. And I said, kind of sounds better when it's when the thing's up.

And then I later on found out that of course you get shelf. You had a lot of high and mid with the presents. So I dropped those down, keep the base up and keep the game at a good spot, and it sounds amazing. So I'm gonna have to get one of those heads from Phil's and experiment. I actually have time off after by like mid-December.

Yeah.

And I need to go out there and get uh get those heads and fool around with them at the rehearsal room. I'm I think I'm off till like early May.

Wow. Yes. What are you gonna do with that much time?

Work out, eat clean, cut down on this shit. And uh practice guitar, yeah. That's right. And practice guitar because it's been an extremely lucrative year. Probably the best I've ever had, but it's also, you know, that's the blessing of it, but the curse of it is the work. That's right. And the no time off, you know.

Yeah. I mean, uh I we did the down tour, had like four or five days off, and we left for this tour. Fuck, dude. Yeah, and this motherfucker, we left September 13th, and I get home uh October 23rd, and then I'm home for like the 10 days, then we do the Damn Nation Fest in Manchester, home for two days, do the Slayer weekend out here, come home on Sunday, and we got the Pantera Fest the next weekend in New Orleans.

Then I have to then I have Thanksgiving off, thank God. And then we go headline one of the days at the Denver uh Decibel Medal and Beer Fest, uh suicidal headlines while we do one. And then uh the next week I fly to Boston, the guys and Converge have like a uh festival thing up there. Yep. Uh shit, what is it?

Kurt and uh what's the fuck Holland? Um the singer, shit.

Can't remember his name. Shout out to Kurt.

Kurt Kurt Kurt, yeah, the guitar player, him, and uh geez, I can't believe I can't think of his name.

But it's been a long tour.

And it's been a long tour. Last night was our 15 down, 14 to go. So we're over the haul. Thank God. There you go.

Well, on that note, I'm gonna let you go, man. And thank you so much for hanging out. It has been an absolute pleasure to see you again. You too. Absolutely, brother. Everyone, link down below to all things Kirk, Crowbar, down. I'm even gonna link to Kingdom of Sorrow.

We're doing another one.

No, yeah, my man. Absolutely. Thank you ahead of time. I love those records. Yeah, we are. Thank you. All right, everybody. We'll see you later. Gonna do another one?

Yep. One more. Oh, does he? Yeah. Which is amazing because he knows every he's like

Episode 15 - Kirk Windstein (Crowbar, DOWN)

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