CLUTCH's NEIL FALLON Says Playing Live Is 'The Only Exercise' He Gets All Day While On Tour

Shawn Wiseman of Rock All Photography recently conducted an interview with frontman Neil Fallon of Maryland rockers CLUTCH about the band's forthcoming "Book Of Bad Decisions" studio album. You can listen to the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On regularly conjuring up the live-show energy as CLUTCH's frontman:

Neil: "I have the good fortune of having three awesome guys onstage with me which makes it infinitely easier. The set is 90 minutes, so that's really the only exercise I get all day, so I save it up for then. There are days when, before the show, I maybe don't feel like I'm chomping at the bit, but I remind myself somewhere out there is someone who is seeing the band for the first time and you only get to make one good impression and there's somebody who is seeing the band for the hundredth time and you can't let those people down. The live experience, you don't get to redo that. You don't get to copy and paste something. It's one and done."

On making a CD copy or download of "Book Of Bad Decisions" available when fans purchase a ticket to the band's fall tour with SEVENDUST and TYLER BRYANT & THE SHAKEDOWN:

Neil: "They can get it either physical as a CD or downloaded. We own our own record label. Because of that, we have to think about things like this in a world of streaming and YouTube, which we all agree to ourselves when we allow our music on things like Spotify. But, there's so much out there and it's so easy to get lost in the shuffle. It's important to be able to keep your head above water and this is one way for us to do that. Hopefully, people will realize the ticket has a code on it and they can use it to get the copy of the record. If they already have a copy of the record, they can still get a copy from the ticket and give it to a friend."

On the story behind first single "Gimme The Keys":

Neil: "There is a legendary or was a legendary club in a cornfield in Lawrence, Kansas called The Outhouse and we were supposed to play at three o'clock in the afternoon and kept getting bumped and eventually played at 11 or midnight or something like that. There was only a handful of people in the audience, maybe one or two. All the other bands left. One of those bands had stolen a microphone and the security had decided we were the ones who stole it. They had been drinking all day, firing rifles into the corn and they decided they were going to use these rifles to extract this non-existence [Shure] SM57 microphone from us, which had a retail value of about 80 dollars, I'm sure. Because nothing happened, mortally there, it's a great story and it was a great way to have a first tour as kind of a baptism by fire. But I took a good deal of poetic license with it. Oddly enough, when I kind of shared that backstory of the song, the soundman from that gig got on some message board, just screaming bloody murder about this how we were a bunch of jerks all day long and we were entitled. You know what? We were jerks because we were supposed to play at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and we ended up getting rifles pointed in our faces, so no apologies; I'm sorry."

"Book Of Bad Decisions" will be released on September 7 via the group's own Weathermaker Music label. The disc was completed at Sputnik Sound studio in Nashville, Tennessee with producer Vance Powell. The album cover was designed by renowned photographer Dan Winters.

CLUTCH's fall 2018 "Book Of Bad Decisions Tour" with support from SEVENDUST and TYLER BRYANT & THE SHAKEDOWN will kick off September 18 in St. Paul, Minnesota and wrap October 28 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.