Achieving longevity in the music scene of today is much easier said than done, and to do so as a Christian rock band, is all the more challenging. With over 14 years in the industry, Skillet has defied the odds and continues to blow minds and break records. Their latest album, 2009’s Awake, was certified gold this past July, and with another of their albums also awarded the same title, 2006’s Comatose, the band has no shortages of awards and accolades to add to their career. John Cooper (Lead Vocals), along with his wife Korey Cooper (Back Vocals, Guitar, Keys), Ben Kasica (Guitar), and Jen Ledger (Drums, Back Vocals), round out the Grammy-nominated band that continually gets stronger with each album.
When you think of Christian music, or any religious music for that matter, what usually doesn’t come to mind is a hard-hitting, bone-crunching rock band that has toured with the likes of Shinedown, Seether, Breaking Benjamin, and Three Days Grace, but as we noted, Skillet defies the odds and makes no apologies for the electrifying music they create. As hard as the rock might be though, when you strip it down, the emotion and reality of Skillet’s lyrics are easy to relate to, and whether it’s a tough in-your-face rock song or a powerful and dramatic ballad, Skillet’s covered it all in their 14 years and thankfully show no signs of stopping anytime soon.
asapmusicblog.ca had the chance to sit down with lead vocalist John Cooper during the band’s short stay in Vancouver for the Rock the River West festival and talked with him about Canadian music, the WWE, touring, and much more! Enjoy!
asapmusicblog.ca: So like you [mentioned], this is your first time in Vancouver, but have you played in Canada before?
John Cooper: Oh yeah, definitely. We’ve played in Canada – I’d say a lot, a couple times a year, but never here. I’ve been to Vancouver because I’ve got a friend that’s a songwriter/producer that lives here called Brian Howes, and we write together. So I spent a few weeks here last year, and had a snowstorm, I think it was last December, it was a really bad snowstorm. I almost didn’t make it out back home, but anyways, it’s a really beautiful city.
A: Have you noticed any differences in the Canadian and American music scenes while you’ve been here?
J: I’ve probably not been around enough to notice. I kind of come in and out, we just kind of do our little show then [we’re] gone, so I probably can’t comment on that.
A: So our website mainly features Canadian artists, but when we heard you guys performing here, we jumped at the chance because we’ve been fans for a long time.
JC: Oh, that’s nice, thank you! That’s cool.
A: Are there any Canadian artists that you follow?
JC: Well, I think everybody loves Nickelback, I’m a big Nickelback fan. My wife actually, and myself, but her more than me – she’s a humongous Sarah McLachlan fan. I would say we both are, but she’s the one who introduced me to her. And believe it or not, I am a big Celine Dion fan, [the band] makes fun of me, but I love Celine Dion. It’s not my kind of genre, but I think she’s just amazing — her voice. It’s almost like something you have got to see, you know? Just to see that somebody can sing like that. There are a lot of other artists, I just all of a sudden can’t remember. Oh, Three Days Grace! I love Three Days Grace.
A: [They’re] one of my favourite bands!
JC: Yeah, Thousand Foot Krutch too.
A: And you guys have toured with those guys.
JC: Yeah, I knew all these bands would come to me once I remembered who was Canadian. We’ve toured with Thousand Foot Krutch, and we’ve played with them for the last eight years off and on.
A: You’ve been doing this for a long time now, close to 14 years, how has the music industry changed [during] that time?
JC: Yeah, about 14 years. It has changed, obviously bands don’t sell records like they used to, due to whatever – whether it’s piracy or singles sales, whatever that may be. I know when you used to talk about a band going platinum, it means a lot more now than it probably used to. Things like that have really changed, and it makes it a little bit harder to do it for a living. But on the other side of that, one of the great things on the music scene has been the accessibility to music on the internet. Bands like us have done very well because of other formats, avenues to get your music across. A band like Skillet, we don’t have a bunch of radio hits like Nickelback or somebody, but all the Myspace kids, all the iTunes people, are all like, ‘Oh check this out,’ and the accessibility to stuff on the net has really helped us, it’s just incredible marketing. It’s something that I think 10-12 years ago, I wouldn’t have dreamed of. It used to be like, ‘You gotta get your songs on the radio or you’re never going to sell any records,’ and now there’s other avenues, which is really good for bands like us. The internet [has] really helped us a lot.
A: And you guys have actually had your latest album, “Awake”, certified gold, so you guys have done really well.
JC: Yeah, in fact we have two gold records now, so really, that’s a shock. We’ve had some radio success – our song ‘Monster’ did really well, but it’s not like what I would say like a smash – there’s a difference between a radio hit and a smash, and it wasn’t a smash. It did well for us, and it’s almost certified gold, the single as well, so it’s done very well. We’re really good to our fans, we do a lot on the internet with our fans, with them being involved. We feed them a lot of information, and people feel in some way that we’re their – and it sounds cheesy – but kind of like they know us. That has also helped us, so we’ve done a good job at kind of doing that…what do they call that? Virally. See how I use these big words? [laughs] I read that somewhere.
A: You just talked about ‘Monster’, and that was the first song that I heard off the latest album, and I heard it with the WWE – they did a promo with it. Did you notice any difference in the fans that kind of came towards you after it was played in the WWE and the NFL too I believe?
JC: Yeah, I would definitely say that Skillet’s fan-base has always been really broad, and it keeps getting broader and broader. I would say we’ve definitely had those types of fans before, what I call the Affliction-crowds, but definitely when the WWE came out with ‘Monster’ and when the single came out, we definitely got more of those fans. It’s funny how our fan base has just expanded so much on all kinds of levels, like really young kids all of a sudden are really into Skillet, like young, young kids that love ‘Monster’ for some reason, or ‘Hero’, it captures their imagination in some kind of a way. So we’re getting a lot of that, but we’re also getting the hard-rock crowd…you know we played with Alice in Chains and Rob Zombie this year, and a lot of those people are really getting into Skillet, because we have some of those aspects in our music, yeah we have a metal side to us. And then the more we’ve incorporated the girl vocals, like on “Hero,” we have a lot more girl fans than we used to as well. So that’s the softer side of Skillet, almost the feminine side of us, that’s just kind of gone crazy. All these different avenues have opened up, so that’s pretty cool.
A: It’s funny, my 6 year-old brother is like in love with ‘Hero’ – that’s his favourite song.
JC: (Laughs) Really? That’s funny.
A: I told him I was coming here today, and he [asked], ‘Can I come with you?’
JC: Awww, that’s nice.
A: One of the things that you touched upon was that your fan-base was really broad. I guess you really haven’t had a lot of time to notice it, in Canada anyway, but there seems to be this figurative line that’s like if you’re gospel or Christian music, certain people only listen to it, and certain people don’t. I think with your band, with Skillet, for me anyways, when I found out about you guys, did not realize that you guys were a gospel band. So that line isn’t there, and people just connect to the lyrics and the music on this human level, which I think really gives you guys a boost. Does that impact you guys in the way that you write songs, or just are generally?
JC: That’s cool, yeah I would say that. Of course it’s the same thing with where we live in the States, you know, there definitely is ‘This is Christian music, and this is not…or this is rock music,’ and in the past we’ve had a lot of struggles with that, with people going, ‘Oh Skillet’s a Christian band, I don’t really know about it,’ and that’s finally going away now because “Monster” did so well. Funny enough, when “Monster” came out on the radio, I remember doing an interview with a radio station, and they were kind of making fun of the band, they didn’t play our music because it was too Christian, and I said, ‘Hey, it’s not too Christian for the WWE, it’s not too Christian for you,’ and the guy was like, ‘Well I guess you’re right.’ We still get a lot of that, but we do try to write songs that are not limited to a faith-based audience or a Christian audience, whatever that may be. Writing songs like you said, that are just about life, and issues that I think most everybody can relate to. And I’ve always said that in my interviews that we don’t want to be a band that sings only to Christian people, you don’t have to be a Christian to get our music. The Christian part is more about our lives than it is our songs, you hear “Monster” or “Hero,” and of course “Hero” could be about Jesus, or it could be about a fireman, Martin Luther King Jr., or whoever it might be. The Christian part of us is more like about our life message, backstage or even onstage, and that’s usually where we make the most impact, and we don’t have alcohol in our dressing room or we’re not with girls backstage, or whatever else, so those lines definitely exist. There are some bands like P.O.D that people just like a rock band, and find out later that they were a Christian or gospel band. Skillet’s been around for so long in the States, that everybody knows we’re a Christian band. So we had a lot of fighting to do, a lot of hurdles I guess, but we’ve finally overcome that.
A: Does that make it harder, having the gospel or Christian name tagged to the band?
JC: Definitely, oh yeah. People naturally judge the music before they hear it sometimes, because in their minds Christian music is not good, or it’s cheesy, or it’s not rock, it’s kind of like pretend. I always relate to like if the Jonas Brothers all of a sudden did a metal record, and then going and saying, ‘No, no I know it’s the Jonas Brothers, it’s kids music, but this record is like serious rock.’ And you’d be like, ‘I don’t care how serious rock it is, they’re not a real rock band,’ it’d kind of be like that. I’m not dissing the Jonas Brothers, but they you just have in your mind that’s what kids – Disney Kids – like, it’d be kind of like that. So in people’s minds, that’s a Christian band, that’s not real. So it has been difficult, we’ve missed some tours because people thought, ‘Oh it’s a Christian band, we don’t want to tour with a Christian band,’ and of course it’s reasonable, they don’t know what we’re like. I think they think we’re going to be like no fun, telling them ‘You can’t dress like that!’ You know, telling them how to live their lives, which we don’t really do. But now we’ve been on tour with Shinedown, Three Days Grace, and Breaking Benjamin, we’re going on tour with Papa Roach next month, so that’s finally going away.
A: As kind of the primary songwriter, is there a favourite track on the album for you?
JC: There’s a song on the record called, “It’s Not Me It’s You,” I don’t know why, but I think that’s my favourite song on the record. I don’t really know why, I just like it, I think it’s funny, it’s got a bit of a humorous side to it. What do people always say to people when they break up, they say the opposite, ‘It’s not you it’s me,’ so I decided to write a song called, ‘It’s Not Me It’s You.’ So it’s got that humorous side to it and it rocks.
A: You’ve got to have that humour to balance it out.
JC: (Laughs) Why not, you know?
A: You mentioned going on tour with Papa Roach next month, and so far I’ve seen your tour schedule, which has been just crazy into the next little while. What are your plans into 2011?
JC: Into 2011… well, we’re touring the rest of the year out. We’re on tour with Creed right now, we go out with Papa Roach next month for about 5 weeks, and in November we start another tour with a gospel artist called Toby Mac, we tour with him in November and December. Then in January, we’re taking our first trip – well we’ve been to Australia and New Zealand before – but we’ve never been to Japan. We’re doing all three of those countries, we’re going to do a festival in New Zealand, then a few shows in Australia, go to Japan for the first time and do some stuff there. So that’ll be the first time doing a real two-week overseas trip, in international venues. So I’m kind of excited and nervous and anxious.
A: It should be fun though!
JC: It would be kind of cool, right? I think our song’s done pretty well in Japan, is what I’ve been told, we’ll see. So that’ll be kind of cool so that’s what we’re going to do, and it’ll be a busy time.
A: You’ll have a bit of a culture shock, I stayed in Hong Kong for a little while. It was very weird getting used to everything, the customs are different, but you’ll love it.
JC: Oh man, that’s cool!
A: You mentioned doing a festival over there [New Zealand], and here [Rock the River West is another festival, you guys have played – I think you did Creation, Rock the Desert, Night of Joy, what’s the appeal with festivals?
JC: Festivals are awesome because there’s just so many people. It sounds like a dumb answer, but there’s just a lot of people. We’re never going to go and draw 30,000 people in a show on our own, so we’re able to be a part of something big like that. The idea is that all the bands come together, and the fans are coming not just to see the bands, they’re coming to an event. A lot of times they’re like family-oriented events, like Night of Joy (Disneyworld) you were mentioning, or Rock the Universe at Universal Studios, so it’s kind of a family thing, where a lot of people come that maybe wouldn’t normally come to see a Skillet show, but they like some of the other artists there, or their kids like us so they come. You get a chance to win over new fans, and honestly you make a big impact, on the mainstream side. Like the band Muse, they’re a band that up until recently had not done super amazing on the radio, but they sold a lot of records internationally, and a lot of times you’d hear people go, ‘Oh man, Muse played Lollapalooza, they took the whole stadium,’ you know it’s where rumours are started. It’s a funny way to say it but it’s almost like with films, if there’s like some big film festival for indie films…what’s that film festival called?
A: There’s the Toronto Film Festival?
JC: Yeah, sure whatever it may be, it’s like that you know. It’s like anybody that’s in the business knows about it, and that’s where the rumours are started, that ‘this is the new breakout star,’ or whatever. That’s not why I go, but you can make a really big impact, it’s very cool like that. All the different people coming, it’s cool to see so many different kinds of people. Typically at a Skillet show, I think there’s a broad fan-base but they’re all Skillet fans. Like doing this you have Urban music fans for instance like tonight, and Praise of Worship fans, all kinds of different ethnicities and genres. That’s really cool, it’s kind of like this melting pot, and it kind of feels like everybody’s coming together.
A: Do you have like a preference of like, you mentioned touring with Breaking Benjamin and Shinedown, like playing those bigger stadiums as opposed to festivals?
JC: I like all of it for different reasons you know what I mean? I like doing our own shows, and they say is it better playing for like, I don’t know how many people are here tonight 5000 people maybe, or is it better at one of your own shows for 1000 people? They’re just all really different, you know the festival things are good for the reasons I just said, but doing your own show, you know 1600 cap room and it’s sold out, that is really fun too because everybody is there to see you play. It’s intimate, you can see a lot of the people’s faces, you can hear them singing back to you, it’s a whole different kind of experience, so I don’t have a preference. Even like on the Creed tour right now, we’re opening up for Creed so it’s not our fan-base, we’re an opener and we don’t get a lot of stage room or whatever, but I’m just having a great time because we’re playing in front of new people.
