Interview: Devin Townsend

Canuck metal polymath Devin Townsend, aka Hevy Devy, is a regular visitor to Bristol, his most recent shows being sell-outs at the O2 Academy and at the Trinity on his solo acoustic tour. Bewilderingly prolific and restlessly creative, Devin works in a variety of genres from progressive metal to ambient music and even country (as half of the Casualties of Cool duo with Che Aimee Dorval). We caught up with him on the road somewhere in Europe as he prepares to return to the UK for a tour with the Devin Townsend Project in celebration of their recent Transcendence album. Its first date is his biggest ever Bristol show at the Colston Hall on March 12. Read on for his thoughts about being a loud, awkward dad, providing a “bizarre soundtrack to everybody’s social ineptitude” and his plans for a $10 million penis symphony.

Hey Devin, when you come to the UK you’re playing the entire Ocean Machine album in London. But what kind of show can we expect out here in the sticks?

The sticks? Well, I’ve been working on making this show comprehensive. I’ve been doing 25 years of this. The idea is to give people not only an idea of what the new record represents but also enough of the past stuff to draw them in. We go through all the records and try to take into consideration the songs that worked, the songs that are awkward, the songs that you thought would work and then didn’t, and what’s off the new record that works with an audience. Then you try to put together a set. I think this current one is pretty much the best set we’ve had. Ultimately, I’m trying to create an experience for people, so they come away from it with something. It’s kind of hit and miss whether or not that works. But this one I think is really good. So that’s what we’ll be doing in the sticks.

This is your biggest gig in Bristol. Previously you’ve played the Fleece, the Academy, the Bierkeller and the Trinity. Do you have any particular memories of any of those gigs, or does touring go by in a blur?

I remember it once I get there. There are some people in our touring party who are like, “Oh yeah, we’re going to that place tomorrow and across the street there’s a grocery store and backstage has got a square thing.” They have all the specifics mapped out. I rarely remember it until we get there. But I do remember Bristol in general has always been really cool for us.

You’ve said that your latest recording, Transcendence, was a deliberately positive album produced in response to a shitty world. But since it was released, the world’s just carried on getting shittier.

Well, strangely I didn’t have any illusions that my work was going to change that. [laughs]

Indeed. But how do you think that’s going to feed back into your music?

That’s an interesting question. I think a lot of the effort that goes into doing this now is to try and keep myself in a positive frame of mind. Yesterday was a really tangible example of that. We were playing in Prague, and from minute one it was a rotten day for everybody. There were a couple of things that had happened, and people had some personal things at home. It was an arm wrestle the whole day to try and turn the tide from everybody going downhill and taking each other with them to come out of it in a positive frame of mind. So I think how it’s changed since the record came out, with things getting progressively darker, is that you have to learn how to fight yourself in a lot of ways. Thankfully, I’m surrounded by a bunch of mentally strong people. Whether or not you’re making a tangible impact on anybody, the fact that you’re putting in the effort is all that’s important at this point, right?

The first time I saw you, you were singing with Steve Vai on the Sex & Religion tour back in 1993. I remember thinking this is either really not working or it’s way ahead of its time. How do you look back on that now?

I don’t think it worked. [Laughs]. But it worked in the sense that now I have a career based on it. So hooray! But I think that’s a great way to look at anything. If it’s not working you just say: “No, no, no, you don’t understand. It’s just way ahead of its time. We didn’t have a shitty gig and it wasn’t super-awkward and didn’t work at all. It was just so ahead of its time.” I’m actually going to use that in response to any criticism that I get from here on out. The Vai thing was pretty much in line with every other part of my career as well, man. Even in high school, I was supremely awkward. So now that I’ve made a career out of rationalising that awkwardness, perhaps it’s just enticing other people in to have a similar feeling about themselves. It can be a bizarre soundtrack to everybody’s social ineptitude.

At the same time, you’re in this unique position of having built a large and enormously loyal audience who seem happy to go along with just about everything you put out, whether it’s metal, dark country or ambient music. How did you manage that? Was there a plan?

No, and maybe that’s the reason. It’s certainly not to be provocative. I don’t sit at home and think, “You know what I could really challenge the audience with now – some sort of weird fucking folk thing!” I think the reason why the audience has been there is that when I go in a particular direction it’s a compulsion to do so. There are no other options. I have to follow this where it leads me. Ultimately, what I do is a way to articulate myself emotionally. And I’m the type of person who has never really been able to do that in any other way. So because I have an outlet for it musically, it’s only going to work for me if it’s honest.

I understand that, but why do you think your music has struck such a chord with such a large number of people?

Maybe it’s because [other musicians] are so full of shit that even though it’s not in line with the aesthetic of what people want to hear musically, it’s like “OK, whether or not I like this, at least it’s not consciously lying to me.” Maybe that’s it.

So people are responding to the honesty?

Maybe, but that sounds like I’m kind of patting myself on the back in a way that I don’t mean to. I don’t know, dude. I like the Woody Allen thing where you keep showing up and eventually you get a seat, right? [The actual Woody quote is: “80 percent of success is showing up”]

You’ve also reached the position in this country where you can sell out the Albert Hall and yet the mainstream media doesn’t even notice you.

Isn’t that great? That’s awesome. The idea of fame on the level of an Axl Rose or a James Hetfield or someone like that . . . I mean, I really enjoy going out and no one gives a fuck. That’s wonderful. I like to be able to live a relatively anonymous existence and then perform for the people who want to hear it. I heard a term the other day that I really dug and that’s ‘ambivert’, where you’re extroverted when the need is there and other times you’re hiding in a corner listening to hippy music. I think in a sense that’s a good definition of my career. When we get out and do our thing, it’s surprisingly popular in some places. But I can still function as a dad and a human being without ever being bothered. And that’s exactly what I was hoping for.

It sounds a little like Alice Cooper’s line about leaving his Alice persona on stage.

Well, yeah, but I don’t think it’s a character. I think it’s an exaggerated version of who I am and that’s why it works. The Ziltoid thing [that’s Ziltoid the coffee-loving alien, subject of two bizarre concept albums to date] is certainly a character, but when I get up on stage it’s not like I’m changing into a different person. It’s the same awkward dad. Just louder.

What an excellent description.

Yeah, well it’s true, man. [laughs] Maybe there’s something about that that people can relate to too, because it’s not like we’re trying to sell them a line. It’s saying, “I have no fucking clue. And here’s music that says that. Loudly.”

There’s a hard core in the audience who always shout for the early Strapping Young Lad stuff. I know you’ve said in the past that you don’t want to play that anymore. Then you go out and play it. How do you feel about it right now?

Well, we only did it in a couple of circumstances. We did it at Retinal [that’s the big Retinal Circus production]. We did it at a festival in Chile. And then every now and then I play it live on acoustic. Other than that, I decided not to play it at all. How do I feel about it? Well, I love Strapping. Strapping was a huge thing for me. It was my identity, unequivocally, for ten years. But I think the thing that’s really important for me to point out to people who say, “Well you say that, yet you don’t want to play it. Why’s that?” is that in a very different way to a band like Slayer or AC/DC or Iron Maiden, where they have their identity and keep refining it, and they can draw from a pool of things that are very easy to understand from their creative vantage point, for me music has always been the exhaust from the process of trying to figure out who the fuck I am at any particular period in time.

I will experience something and participate in it through writing about it, and once I’m finished I’m able to look back objectively and say, “Oh, well you were angry or you were upset or you were embarrassed or you were in love or whatever.” Because I’m so thick, I don’t feel that at the time I really understand it. So once I’ve finished, these records are like exhaust, or vomit. Then as you move on, you’re able to learn from those experiences and hopefully progress.

One thing that I’ve learned through Strapping is that whatever you put out you’re going to attract to you. When I was with Strapping, I was not sober and smoking a bunch of weed and doing a bunch of stupid things. I didn’t have kids. I think ultimately I didn’t understand my anger. So because I was afraid of confrontation in a really heavy and tangible way at that point, I was just trying to be heavier and angrier. The end result of that is that my whole life was full of it by the end of it. I was like, “Wow – everything’s ugly.” And that’s not what I want. Now more than ever, I don’t want that. I’m also not in any frame of mind where I have any desire whatsoever to be some kind of martyr for people. I’m not going to hurt myself for the sake of others, specifically psychologically. So I follow where my current frame of mind leads me to. If the end result of that is that people don’t give a shit, then that’s fine because ultimately what has sustained this audience is that I’m following it where I need to go.

How does it work creatively for you when you play so many different styles of music? Do you just wake up in the morning and say, “Right, I’m going to do a rock opera today” or “I’m going to do a country song”?

Well, because my life is so regimented now, with the management and the tours and the band, and I run a label and a touring company – I’m voted the least likely to be in business, yet here I am, right? – the parameters of doing my job are so stringent, man, that it’s like Fun Sponge Incorporated. 90% of what I do sucks the fun out of every aspect of it. So the way that I stay inspired is that I wait for my muse – in the cheesiest way ever – to say: “You know what would be fun right now?” Then I follow that. Luckily I’ve got a group of people who can get together and drink a bunch of coffee and say, “Wouldn’t it be funny if..?” Then we just do it. That’s how I keep it from turning into a monotonous dirge. Because touring life, man, as romantic as it may have seemed in the ’80s, is a fucking punishing 24-hours-a-day means of employment, especially in your mid-forties. So for me to do this, it has to be something that is (a) not toxic for me, hence the Strapping thing we talked about, and (b) it has to be interesting enough that it doesn’t feel like we’re just punching the clock in Dortmund. [laughs] You know what I mean?

Sure. You say you sit around and think ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if…’, and things like Ziltoid are certainly out-there. But have you ever come up with an idea which, on reflection, is just too silly to inflict on an audience?

Tonnes, man. My god, yeah. That’s when you bounce it off people and you say, ‘Hey guys, wouldn’t it be funny if…?’ and they go, ‘No. It really wouldn’t.’

Can’t you just forge ahead and do it anyway? You are, after all, the boss.

I try to. I’ve got this Vengaboys cover version with Anneke [frequent collaborator Anneke van Giersbergen, who played the Exchange last year] singing on it. But it’s going to cost a couple of grand to make the video with these sock puppets that end up mutilating themselves in an incredibly gory way. And I can’t get anybody to budge on that.

You obviously enjoy these theatrical productions, like the Retinal Circus, that seem to proceed on a wing and a prayer and look as though they could fall apart at any moment. Then there’s this fabled $10 million penis symphony that you’ve talked about. Is it ever going to happen?

Fuck, yeah! Manifest destiny, man. Yes sir, my $10m cock symphony is going to happen.

Has anyone actually offered to put up the $10m?

No, but I’ve got some movement from venture capitalists who are very interested. So I’m just going to keep at it until we do it. I’ve got nothing else if not tenacity, right? And yeah, things go by on a wing and a prayer. Someone asked me about this the other day. But we’re all gonna die, so what the fuck else are we going to do while we’re here? It doesn’t matter. We’re not curing cancer with this stuff. We get away with it, so we’ll just keep pushing it.

You’re disturbingly prolific. Do you ever worry about the terrible effect that you’re having on our wallets?

Well, I do. And I appreciate that. Which is one of the reasons why I don’t want to do another crowd-sourced project. But I think a lot of it in hindsight is that working so much helps me avoid thinking about real problems. So it’s probably going to slow down the more centred I get.

Read more: Metal & Prog picks: February 2017