KTVU.com Interviews Metal Legend Scott "Wino" Weinrich

Few figures in underground metal over the past three decades have exerted the kind of influence that can be credited to doom legend Scott "Wino" Weinrich. From his early years on the DC punk scene, Weinrich went against the grain, playing a sludgy, Sabbath-influenced style of metal with his band The Obsessed at the beginning of the 1980s.

He would later move to Los Angeles to serve as lead singer for Saint Vitus, a like-minded outfit that was the antithesis of most of the hardcore groups being recorded by Black Flag founder Greg Ginn's seminal punk label SST. With Wino fronting the group through the rest of the decade, Saint Vitus recorded such doom landmarks as Born to Late, V and the powerful concert document Live (all of which have been reissued by SST and the noteworthy underground metal imprint, Southern Lord Records).

While Wino's place in history would have been assured even if he had retired from music after leaving Saint Vitus in 1991. Instead, he reformed The Obsessed for two classic albums (Lunar Womb for Hellhound Records and the group's only major label effort, 1994's The Church Within) before founding the bands Spirit Caravan and The Hidden Hand as well as making contributions to such groups as Place of Skulls and Dave Grohl's metal side project Probot.

2009 proved to be one of the busiest years yet for the veteran musician. In addition to releasing his first album under his own name recorded with Clutch drummer Jean-Paul Gaster (Punctuated Equilibrium on Southern Lord), Wino reunited with Saint Vitus for the band's first extensive tour in two decades and recorded the anticipated debut of the doom supergroup Shrinebuilder, which paired Weinrich with Om/Sleep bassist Al Cisneros, Neurosis principal Scott Kelly and Melvins drummer Dale Crover. KTVU.com spoke to Weinrich about his recent projects in advance of Saint Vitus playing its first Bay Area show with its classic line-up (minus original drummer Armando Acosta, who has been replaced by Henry Vasquez of the band Blood Of The Sun) since 1987.

KTVU.com You’ve had a particularly busy year between the Wino album, the Shrinebuilder debut and the Saint Vitus live gigs. Is it a challenge keeping the different aspects of your career and life balanced with so much going on?

Scott "Wino" Weinrich: The Shrinebuilder thing is actually really fun for me in a couple of ways. First of all it’s just different for me; This is a band where I’m not the sole lead singer. I’ve always been the singer in my bands. It’s interesting because everybody writes, everybody contributes and everybody sings. To me that’s just amazing. I’ve also never played in a two-guitar band before. It’s pretty cool. As a matter of fact, I think it’s one of the best times I’ve had in a band.

We just played a round of shows recently and it was a lot of fun. And that brings it home for me, because sometimes you can lose sight of why you do it and why you’re in it when you start to have hardships and drudgery and are struggling. People were really receptive and I think the songs came together really well live. So that was cool.

The Vitus thing is kind of a surprise because -- bottom line -- I never expected in a million years we’d have this resurgence of heavy rock, you know? Did anybody see this coming? Super heavy rock is back in vogue right now. I’m not complaining. Vitus did its first reunion in 2003. We played one show in Chicago and one show in Germany [the With Full Force Festival]. We almost sold out the venue in Chicago. It was just shy of 500 people. And I thought ‘Wow, people really wanted to see Vitus.’ And then we did another round of shows [on the East Coast] recently and we were drawing that many people and more.

I’m starting to see all these young kids in Vitus shirts. I guess most of what I’m hearing from people is ‘Hey, I never thought I’d get to see this band in my lifetime.’ And then the younger kids are saying ‘I never thought I’d get to see this band.’ It’s just amazing. I think it’s really cool.

KTVU.com The last time I saw you in San Francisco was with Hidden Hand almost three years ago. Do you recall how long it’s been since you’ve played in SF with Saint Vitus?

Weinrich: Man, in the Bay Area? Holy crap. This is a stretch, but I believe it was at a place called the Farm with the Mentors. In all seriousness, it might have been as long ago as ’87 maybe.

KTVU.com That’s the Farm’s era. I never went there but heard about it…

Weinrich: Let me tell you about that show. That show was the Mentors, Saint Vitus and a band whose had “preacher” or “preach” in their name, I can’t quite remember [Research revealed the other band was Lethal Gospel; not a bad memory for over 20 years down the road. You can see a flyer for the show here].

But at that very show, the Nazi skinheads were at their peak, at the height of their obnoxiousness. They tried to storm the venue. I remember standing at the top of the stairs watching the front door and there were a couple of rent-a-cops there. And the skinheads started storming their way in and it looked like they were going to get overrun.

But there was this one female security officer who pulled out her nightstick and just started busting bald heads. I’d never seen anything like it. She totally repelled the advance! It was incredible! [laughs] That was those days. It’s been a long time. A lot of things have changed. I’m hoping the reception we get in SF will be fantastic. We’re dying to play there. It should be great. I love the city too.

KTVU.com It seems like all the Saint Vitus concerts have focused on the classic era material since the initial reunion you did since 2003. Is there any talk about writing new material or recording together again?

Weinrich: We have and we are. We’re writing some stuff right now. Everybody’s pretty busy. I know I’ve been busy. The Wino band is pretty much on hiatus right now. So it looks like we’ll be doing some recording in the near future. The bottom line is we would like to do a new record. There’s talk about it. We’ve already been floating around a couple ideas. So yeah, somewhere down the line there will be a new Vitus record in the cards.

KTVU.com Any chance we’ll hear new material at this show or will you wait until its already in the can?

Weinrich: We really haven’t had all that much time to get together and do that. Vitus has a lot of material. We’ll play the gamut of stuff. People seem like right now they want to hear the older stuff. And since it’s been so long since we’ve played there, I think we’ll probably just be playing stuff from our catalog. But I think very soon, probably next year at this time, we should probably have some new stuff.

KTVU.com Given that you’re an accomplished guitarist, I’ve always thought it was unusual that you stuck with singing in Saint Vitus. Was the idea to just stick to the template of power trio with vocalist that the band started with?

Weinrich: The thing about it is there were some logistics involved too. To me, I feel really comfortable just singing in Saint Vitus and I think that it just ended up working out better. I played guitar on a couple of tunes back in the day. But for me to just sing seemed to be the way to go. And actually to be honest with you, I’m happy to do that because it’s a change for me. So I can just focus on the vocals and I don’t have to worry about anything else. Playing guitar is really intense, and then there are all the equipment and tuning issues. It’s nice for me to have a breather where I can just focus on my singing.

When I first joined Saint Vitus, I felt like that was when I really learned to sing. I no longer had a guitar to hide behind and I really had to focus on my voice and my delivery. My singing style developed and my technique got better. So I’m happy just to sing in this band. Chandler’s the king of noise, so that’s all we need.

KTVU.com I was sorry to hear about the passing of bassist Jon Blank in May. Do you have plans on more solo album work in the future?

Weinrich: I’m starting to think about that more now. I’m pretty sure Southern Lord and Greg [Anderson, co-founder of the Southern Lord label and member of modern doom bands Sunn O))) and Goatsnake] will be behind me whatever I decide. Jean-Paul is a fantastic drummer. Jon Blank’s passing was really sad, but the guy we got to replace him [Brian White, who played in the band Dog Fashion Disco] is amazing too. When the Wino band went on tour with Clutch this summer, we had some really great shows and we got some good responses for some of our newer tunes. I’d really like to record another record.

When Jon died, we were doing a month long tour supporting Clutch. So basically when he died I was unsure about what to do. And Jean Paul said ‘Why don’t you come on the bus with us and open up the tour acoustic?’ And I was pretty floored. That’s pretty daunting, to play acoustic for a Clutch show, you know?

But I went ahead and did it and that’s when I realized there might be something there. I’ve had people tell me they’d like to see an acoustic record. I thought about it for a while and now I’m leaning towards doing a combination of both. Some acoustic songs and some electric songs that we’ve worked up…I’m thinking that might be good. So that’s what I’m thinking about right now, but it could change.

KTVU.com That’s interesting, because in the research I was doing I came across an interview where you said the American roots of doom can be traced back to Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams. I'd hadn't heard any metal musicians make that connection before, but there's obvious a common thread there. I was going to ask if you ever contemplated stripping your music down to bare elements and recording an acoustic album; obviously you have.

Weinrich: Sort of, yeah. When people call me the godfather of doom, I’ll tell you the godfather of doom was Hank Williams. He’s the real godfather of doom [laughs]. I think if you look back to that music, there are a couple of Woody Guthrie songs that are unbelievably dark. And I recently discovered Townes Van Zant. He’s a more modern guy. I can’t sit there and listen to everything he’s done, but his life and whole trip was rather sad.

I’ve always been more attracted to the darker types of music. I’ve always been more attracted to melancholy, sadder -- for lack of a better word -- doom-y kind of stuff. And some of their music fits right in there. The music that I’m making today and that Saint Vitus has always made reflects the mood of the time. Now the United States and the world at large are kind of in a rough time. I think people need music that isn’t so happy and poppy, at least in my opinion. This kind of music fills that gap between your hip hop and your dance type stuff and your real sappy pop.

The hair metal bands have gone their way, and what’s stayed true? The real gut-level, heavy stuff and that’s where we’re at. The most important think to notice is we’ve never changed. We’ve always stayed true to our music and to ourselves. To me that’s the most important thing. I have stood by my art. That’s what it is. It’s my art and nobody’s going to f--k with my art and I’m not going to f-----g sell it to anybody.

There are times when I’ve doubted my lifestyle. There are times when I think to myself 'Man, you know, I never learned a trade.' Sometimes I think about how it would nice to have a more stable trip with a 9-to-5 or whatever. But when it come down to it, this is what I do. This is what I love. You've just got to keep going.

KTVU.com Punctuated Equilibrium has a lot of material that wouldn’t have sounded out of place with other bands, but the more outside guitar instrumentals were something of a departure. Something you’d not had the chance to do in the past?

Weinrich: I’ve always been into odd time signatures and Mahavishnu and really tricky jazz stuff. Jean Paul and I love that stuff and he can really play it. When you get a drummer who can count and really loves to play that kind of stuff, it’s just bomb. I’ve always embraced that kind of music.

KTVU.com The Shrinebuilder disc was one of my favorite albums of the year. It’s one of those things were you look at it and think it looks great on paper, but you wonder how it will translate…

Weinrich: I think a lot of people who were thinking about that too. I appreciate the fact that there was some cynicism as to what we could really do. Everybody’s saying ‘Oh it’s this doom supergroup blah blah blah,’ but the reality is what can you deliver? We knew that going into it. But one thing you have to understand about the band is there’s magic in it. Let me elaborate on that. There’s a couple of things that happened that made me think there’s something else going on here besides just us.

One of the things was just the way it all came together. I had the original idea and called up Al and said ‘Hey, do you want to do this project?’ He was psyched about it. We decided it would be me, Al and the drummer from Sleep and Om Chris Hakius and that was it. But Al is a real visionary; and he’s got this incredible way about him. He called me one day and said ‘Hey, how do you feel about getting Scott Kelly from Neurosis in the band on second guitar?’

It came to me by surprise but I wasn’t opposed to it at all. I didn’t know Scott as a person, but I liked Neurosis and Al had known him forever, the whole time he was growing up, and said he’d be perfect for this band. So when I heard that I said ‘Cool!’ Al knows what he’s talking about. Let’s give this a try.

So we got Scott Kelly in the band and right away there was a vibe. At that point in time we hadn’t played together yet. But just talking to him I suddenly realized how much we had in common. We didn’t know each other, but I swear he could be my brother. We pretty much led parallel lives when I spent a long time in LA and he was living in Oakland. It was pretty interesting. So the more we got to know each other, the more we realized how much we had in common. It was very enlightening.

Another good example; so we put the band together and we start trading files. We’d still never played together yet. First it was me an Al and Chris Hakius. Then Al said ‘Let’s get Scott’ and we got Scott on board. Then Hakius left and we were trying to figure out who the top guy we would choose if we could get any drummer we wanted. And the name that came up was Dale Crover. We all just kind of laughed and figured there was no way. He probably wouldn’t want to do it. But when we asked him he said ‘Yeah, I’d love to do it.’ And that was just incredible. We were so happy.

Then I flew out to California and me and Al and Dale got together. And man it was unbelievable. He just breathed fire into that stuff. So far we were still just working on a couple of tunes. Strange stuff started happening, like I’d bring a riff to the table and play it for Al and Al would go ‘Wow. That’s really great. I have another riff that might fit on there.’ And he’d bust it out and it would be just perfect. So the songs started taking shape by all of us collaborating.

Stay tuned for part 2 of KTVU.com's interview with Scott "Wino" Weinrich in which the musician offers more details on the creative process behind Shrinebuilder and discusses the influence local Maryland radio stations have had on his music.