Q&A From the Glam Slam Metal Jam with Chip Znuff

By Kara Uhrlen

What is the industry’s perception of the band?

“We’re the underdogs, and we sort of like sitting there, I’m comfortable sitting as an underdog even though I feel were as strong as all the other bands out there.  We’ve already been on the hill before, we’ve tasted success, we’ve had hits, we’ve been on TV shows, and we’ve traveled all around the world.  We loved it so much in the beginning that after ’93, when we left Arista Records and we signed with an independent label, we’ve been running after that ever since to get to that point again, ‘cause we think that we know what to do this time even though we probably don’t.”

It seems like every tour you guys try to do falls apart before it happens, how did you end up here?

“This is the first tour that we’ve had, that we’ve been asked to be on in the last seven years.  We haven’t played any arenas or any sheds like this except for one-offs and two-offs with, you know, with Def Leppard, John Cougar Mellencamp, whoever’s nice enough to take us out and play with us….

Here we are now on our tenth album and we have this major tour, and the crowds have been coming out every night early, we play to three, four thousand people a night, and they love the band.  If they don’t know who we are, at the end of the night, we win them over usually.”

He says, “I run the asylum here.  There’s no road manager, there’s no road crew, it’s Donnie, Ricky, Monaco, and myself and a bus driver and one guy helping me as an assistant.  That’s it, where other guys have huge road crews and stuff. 

So what’ve done, we’ve asked the Poison people ‘cause they hand picked us for this tour, to give us a little hand, help us, to walk us through this boot camp again in case we’ve forgotten anything from the past.  But I think that at the end of the tour, Enuff Znuff will be back in business.  I never like to speak too soon, but I am an optimistic guy.  We’re back on tour, we’re back in business, and this tour if anything has helped elevate our perception, and maybe people take us a bit more seriously now because we’re playing arenas and sheds as opposed to playing clubs.”

He later added, “We’ve been fighting it this whole time, trying to let people know that we’re just a colorful band, not a glam band.  After eighteen years of fighting it here we are on the Glam Slam Metal Jam tour, so I guess we might as well embrace what we’re stuck with, but true musical fans will know when they see us that we’re not really a glam band, we’re a flamboyant rock band, like an Aerosmith...I’m not even sure these guys are glam anymore – I guess Poison is a little bit…”

You’ve released many album’s overseas before they’ve come out in the states, so you guys haven’t had much of a presence here lately, what have sales for the new album 10 been like?

“Every year we continually put out brand new albums throughout the year, every single year, we’re probably the only band that has done that, a fresh new release every single year, and consequently, when you make a record you have to go out and tour and support it and we haven’t been exactly the flavor of the month, we’ve certainly been the critics darlings, though and all the cool bands in the world like us…

It’s too early to tell right now what the album sales have been, but I know that we are selling records, and that’s good. I know we sell and scan records every week, and I don’t pay attention the numbers right now, because I have like ten jobs on this road tour…So it’s too early to answer your question, how our sales have been, but I think we’ll know within in time how well we’ve done and what this tour has done for us.”

Has the new album received much radio play?

“The independent label that we’re on now, Spitfire is really good, they seem to love the band.  They have much bigger groups on their roster, but we’re like the babies…I think we’ve lined our ducks up, obviously it’s going to take a blessing from the Good Lord, because it’s a tough business, and like I said before, we’re not the flavor of the month.

Even though I think our music is timeless, what radio is playing for everybody right now is either a little bit harder or much softer.  It’s really hard to get on radio stations unless you have a lot of money and a big budget behind you. But, I think we have a lot of friends that have come out of the woodwork and are helping us out.”

Do you prefer playing small venues with die-hard fans or the party crowd on this tour?

"I love the clubs, because they’re very intimate and close, just like me and you right here, sitting here.  It’s great to play to an audience, when everybody’s is right in your face – I love that, so does the band too, but I’d be lying to you if I’d say we wouldn’t rather be playing these places, because we reach way more people…”

This isn’t the first time you’ve toured with Poison.  How do you think you fit in with the Poison crowd?

“We sort of fit along the lines of Poison, I mean they’ve sold twenty-five thirty-million albums, they’re huge.  And we’re a little bit different of a band than them I think.  They’re like a Rock 101 school type band, they have all those smash hits and they’re all real simple, simplistic songs.  And if you listen to any of our music, I think, our lyrics and our songs, are a little more “smart.”  I don’t know if that’s the right word, I think we’re a little too smart sometimes. Our songs, it takes a little while to get used to them, because it’s not your average rock band songs.”

He adds, “Poison hand picked us for this tour, and they always loved our music, and I think their audience likes us, I really do.  And every night, we sell a ton of t-shirts – they don’t let us sell CDs at the shows, don’t ask me why, I don’t know, but we sell our merch., and a lot of people come out and want to see our band.  We’re here to enjoy the run this time, we’re not going to be f*cked up and doing things that are ridiculous like we’ve done in the past.”

Everybody’s always following our band because of what’s behind the scenes.  The bells and whistles so to speak for lack of a better term and I think we want people to hear our songs -- that’s what it’s about.  When you turn your radio on, and you put a CD in or put a record on a turntable, you don’t see hair and faces and sh!t, people shakin’ their as$es and smoke machines – you just hear a songs. That’s what we want to get across. 

Donnie and I, I think we write some good songs.  I’m playing with one of the best singers in music I think.  A lot of the guys, Steven Tyler and Robin Zander, they love Donnie, they love his voice, and I love his voice too, he’s such a good singer.  He write’s such good songs.  I think if we keep going, with slip through the cracks, and people will actually get a chance to take us for what we are, just a strong rock band that writes timeless songs.”

Though he does admit to listening to the newest Marilyn Manson album and other modern band’s like Radiohead and STP, he says “But most of the time on the tour bus, I’m listening to Pink Floyd all day, I got to be honest with you, Pink Floyd and Queen, I’m living in the past, sorry.  When we first came out on the scene, I’d never listened to Motley Crue or Poison or anything I wasn’t into them bands.  Nothings wrong with them, they had the look of the world and tons of chicks around them, make-up and lipstick and all the glitter, you know, flamboyant, which is stuff that we like with rock-n-roll too, we just didn’t listen to that kind of music.” 

We have a brand new album we’re working on in the studio right now in Chicago.  It’s a really a good record.  The working title is “Good Food, Good Meat, Good God, Let’s Eat.”  There’s like twelve songs on it.  Donnie has come up with some brilliant stuff.  These songs aren’t really radio songs a lot of the songs are like six, seven minutes long, they’re like “Bohemien Rhapsody,” and “We are the Champions” type-songs – strange – a couple of rockers, but for the most part, I don’t want to say a conceptual record, I can’t think of what I’d want to call it, but the whole record has a theme throughout – every songs goes together real nice like a record Pink Floyd would put out or Led Zeppelin in the old days. 

And then Little Steven Van Zant from Bruce Springsteen’s band wants to produce our next record too.  So we don’t know if we’re going to take this record and put it out later next year or at the end of this year, or if we’re just going to record a whole new album with little Steven…we haven’t made a decision yet, but I know that we’re recording new material and there will be another album out, and hopefully it won’t be a greatest hits or a best of, because we won’t endorse that.  Not unless there’s a lot of money behind it.”

The band’s Tweaked album was somewhat of a departure from the band’s typical sound.  I hear that it was originally part of a double album to be released in Europe or Japan or something?

“We recorded, Donnie and I, and Ricky, three piece – we record most of the albums – we recorded an album called Chip and Donnie that we released over in Japan and Europe, and at the same time we recorded that, we recorded Tweaked too.  It was really a terrible time for us during our careers.  We just lost our manager Herbie Herbert, he retired, our label wanted to give us a release, because we weren’t happy with them, and they weren’t happy with us for obvious reasons. 

So we had all these records, we had thirty-eight or forty songs to put out, and our management, right before he retired, Herbie said, ‘you guys are crazy you don’t put forty songs on an album, you can only put 73 minutes per CD’.  We wanted a double record, we wanted to show everyone, we had a lot of good songs, and quite frankly, we like the fans to have a lot of material to hold them over until the next release.  So Herbie, it was basically his brainstorm idea, he’s a smart guy, he used to manage Journey and Roxette and Mr. Big -- everything he touches is big except for us. And he said, ‘maybe it’s better off if you split it up.  Why don’t you and Donnie just do one record and just call it Chip and Donnie, and we’ll sell it to them over in Europe and Japan where we actually have a career, and we’ll figure out what we’ll do with it in the states.’

When Spitfire wanted to sign the band, we said, yeah we got a record for you, but we don’t want to call it Chip and Donnie, we want to call it Seven.  Cause we gave them Tweaked.  We broke the records up and gave them Tweaked and gave the other part of the country Chip and Donnie, and then we realized, ‘You know, it’s going to take a while to make another record, we just recorded forty f*cking songs’ (in a great studio where Smashing Pumpkins, STP, Wilco, and everybody records, we’re sneaking in there on janitors hours.) 

So, we broke the records up.  I love Tweaked by the way, we took the sad songs, the songs that we wrote during that time period and put them on the tweaked album, and the other songs that was poppy and felt good – songs about hope, and love, and just getting a chance, we put them together on a another record…We still had another twelve songs left over for another record too, they’re just in the can right now.  We wanted to put the best stuff out.  When we put records out, Donnie and I listen to them, and if it trips our trigger then we give it to you guys, otherwise you’re not going to hear it or see it unless your on the tour bus with us and I’m playing demos for you one night or something, ‘cause I just don’t want anybody to hear anything that’s not great out of us.  Really, at least we want it to be great and if it reaches our standards, then you’ll probably here it…” 

Surprising, he says they have 150 songs right now that they haven’t released.  Chip says, “Fans, by the hundreds are asking me, ‘Are you guys going to put out your demos’, cause some of that stuff’s on Napster and we will always endorse that…”

Catch Enuff Znuff on tour with Poison, but be sure to get there early.  They often hit the stage as early as 6 p.m.  Visit their official site www.enuffznuff.com for more info on the band.

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