Based in Knoxville, Tennessee – an area better known for country music than hard rock – 10 Years are a band a little out of step with their environment. But after a recent interview with guitarist Matt Wantland, what's clear is that the band members don’t even necessarily feel at home in the sometimes-confining expectations of the hard rock audience. After touring for a few months to support May’s Division – whose first single, “Beautiful,” has been a mainstay on rock radio for more than five months now – 10 Years took a much-needed brief break before preparing for its next road adventure as part of this summer’s Projekt Revolution. Calling from his home before Projekt Revolution got underway, Wantland discussed the rewards of writing “softer” songs, the band’s current clash with their label and why he never wants to end up like Wham!
How did you find out you guys were selected for the Projekt Revolution tour?
It was management. They were bugging our booking agent to get us on with the Linkin Park guys for a while. They had been trying to get to them, but finally our booking agent let them hear our new CD right before it came out, and they liked it.
Now that Division has been out for a little bit and you have some perspective, what do you think of it?
You know, usually I always kinda thought of us as more of a heavier band, but I want to say that after talking to fans and being out for a while and being able to step out of the actual writing and recording process of it, I think a lot of the strengths in this album come from some of the lighter textures, like “So Long, Good-bye,” where it’s just a piano over the top of a whole acoustic song. Or we have “Proud of You” at the end of the album, which is nothing but piano and [frontman] Jesse [Hasek] singing. To me, those are some of the strongest moments because they were a little more intimate. I like hard rock, but a lot of it can wash over you because it’s just one kind of mood. Some of our softer stuff actually stuck out for me more on this one, and it seems to be catching on to a lot of people as well.
Was there a worry of seeming “soft” by incorporating some ballads on Division?
There always is a little bit of worry any time you step outside of your box, especially in the genre where we kinda live with those harder rock fans. You know, they’re not easily forgiving about stuff like that. [laughs] I remember when we first had “Focus” for this record – it’s very acoustic-Zeppelin sounding. It’s got tablas, and it never really gets loud. It was very hard to see how our fans would accept it, but I think in the long run to be a progressive musician and to continue getting better, you have to step out and do things like that. It’s definitely scary, but we just had to go for it.
“Focus” was co-written by Dean DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots.
Yeah, that’s pretty much [drummer] Brian [Vodinh] and Dean’s concoction of music there.
Were you guys friends with Dean before this?
The engineer that did The Autumn Effect [the band’s last album], and also mixed both of our records [Ryan Williams] used to work for Brendan O’Brien for years – he’s the one who did all the Stone Temple Pilots records. So we had a mutual friend in him. He put Dean in contact with Brian, telling Dean about us. So Dean just called Brian one day and said he wanted to write some songs with him. It was completely random.
It’s funny, because you and STP don’t necessarily share similar sounds, but “Focus” is a sort of merging of your sensibilities.
You know, the funny thing is actually when we finally finished writing “Focus,” Dean was like, “You know, I might want to keep that.” [laughs] He really liked it. But, we said, “Well, we’re gonna put it on our record, so …” Playing with a guy like Dean DeLeo will help you leaps and bounds. He’s a phenomenal guitar player and songwriter. It helped us pull out the rest of our influences. We listen to everything, but on The Autumn Effect we were young and we were scared to step outside that box. The whole album was kinda monotone all the way through. We do listen to Zeppelin and we do listen to all these old things. And working with Dean, some of our other influences came out – it’s not like it wasn’t in us, we just hadn’t figured out how to put it out there yet.
The band is credited as a group for the songwriting on Division: Who does what on the songs?
Brian’s kind of the main songwriter – basically, what he’ll do is come in with a structure or outline of something. And then we just color all over it. It’s all relative to each song. Like “So Long, Good-bye,” it was a song that him and Jesse had – just a guitar and Jesse singing. I threw a piano part over the bridge to fill it out. And then with “Actions & Motives,” there was absolutely nothing there but a bass line and a rhythm track. I put all the guitars over the top of the whole thing.
Lyrically, the album is extremely dark and disillusioned.
I don’t think we set out to write the album intentionally that way. That’s where Jesse derives his inspiration from. He’s almost spiteful – he wants to point the finger at someone or something. It’s hard not to if you’re paying attention at all.
