Interview: Witch Mountain’s Rob Wrong

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Witch Mountain formed in July 1997 from the rubble of Rob’s band Iommi Stubbs, which he describes as a “kind of a sludge band along the lines of Eyehategod” and with a lot if “fuckin’ internal bullshit”. Witch Mountain drummer Nate Carson was a fan of Stubbs and after a tour with Stubbs ended badly, Rob called him up and they started jamming. The rest of this long-running Portland, Oregon, band is history. Founder and guitarist Rob Wrong recently spoke to Sean McGeady about their three-week tour with Cough and how singer Uta Plotkin came into the fold after 12 years with a dude singer. The interview took place at Sound Control in Manchester, England. Witch Mountain were supported by Nomad, Bastard of the Skies and Ten Foot Wizard.

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Photos by Patrick Phillips.

How did things progress following you and Nate starting to jam, and how did Uta get involved?

Well, Uta came in a lot later. I sang for the first 12 years of Witch Mountain. Essentially, I went back and forth with Iommi Stubbs over the years, and juggled both bands. I was married at the time and I had a couple of kids. I kind of slowed down for three years, between 2002 and 2005. Then, my marriage was crumbling and I was like ‘OK, I need to do something that makes me happy.’ So I started playing with Nate again. We’d always had this desire to get a singer. I never sang because I wanted to sing; I always wanted to play guitar. I sang out of necessity.

Uta was interning at Nathan’s booking agency, Nanotear. He went to see her other band Aranya play, and the next day he phoned me up said I really needed to see this girl sing. We had a show lined up with Pentagram in the summer of 2009, and we asked her if she would learn one of our songs and just sing at the end of the set. She did, and she fucking killed it. It almost brought me to my knees in tears on stage.

The next day, I was talking to Nate, and we had this show lined up with Jucifer, who was one of Uta’s favourite bands, and we bribed her basically – we told her, “Hey, how about trying out our whole set and learning all of our music?” So she learned all of the stuff that I had written, because I’d written all the music and lyrics at that point, and we recorded South of Salem after that. She was in.

Then, the last album we recorded a year ago, Cauldron of the Wild, she actually got to do her own melody lines and vocal parts and harmonies, and write her own lyrics. So it’s loads different than the album before it. We’ve got a good thing going now and it’s really easy for us to write music.

What was the doom scene like back in 1997?

It was fuckin’ shit. Essentially, the band I was doing from ‘94 until ‘97, Iommi Stubbs, we were kind of the kings of that, but the problem was we had the same 20 or 30 people at every fuckin’ show. No one gave a crap about hard rock. No one gave a shit about doom. Witch Mountain kind of followed into that, you know. Stoner rock got really popular in the late ‘90s/early 2000s, but still, it was very discouraging. We went on tour with Spirit Caravan and Weedeater and Bongzilla and all these bands . . . for instance, Spirit Caravan, Wino is a fucking legend, and we’re touring with him in 2001 playing all these clubs and there’s like fucking 12 people there. It was embarrassing. I’d wear a Pentagram t-shirt and somebody would be like “who’s that?” and now Pentagram’s like the biggest fuckin’ band on the planet. But now it’s developed into something really cool and I’m glad it is what it is now because it was a struggle, and it was kind of like, ‘aw, man, why are we doing this? We’re only doing it because it’s a labour of love.’

Did you have any idea at that stage doom would ever become what it is now?

No. Not at all. Not at all. I mean, we were playing Stoner Hands of Doom and Emissions From The Monolith, and we were playing with really cool bands and people that we really admired and people that admired us. But I don’t think any of us imagined that it would actually come to fruition like it has.

What’s the metal scene like in Portland? Has that changed since?

It has changed a lot. In the last five years the metal scene in Portland is where it’s at. We’ve got bands like Agalloch, YOB, Holy Grove, Lord Dying, and, let me think for a second of other bands that we have that are really cool, like, Dark Skies, Danava, all these bands are just coming out of the woodwork. Yeah, it’s really incredible how it’s developed. Right now, Portland is kind of the place to be for metal in the States. A lot of people are moving there just to play metal. It’s good and it’s bad because you get all these copycat Kyuss and Black Sabbath-type bands and then you get the bands that have been around forever doing it. There’s a lot of people that mean well and they’re into it but they’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Then you’ve got bands that stand out, like Agalloch and YOB and Danava, I mean, those guys are like the fuckin’ shit. They’re playing this heavy, incredible, original, doomy music that I think can only be written in such a shitty environment. The weather there is similar to Manchester. It rains a lot, like, 200 days a year.

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Keep reading to find out if the doom scene is doomed.

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With doom exploding like it has, do you foresee it becoming saturated at all?

Well, of course. It happens. It happened with the grunge movement in the early ‘90s. Everybody was saying Portland’s going to be the next big grunge scene because Seattle was oversaturated. All these people were fuckin’ moving to the northwest in herds from all over the world, coming up from LA and Chicago and the east coast. I mean, that’s kind of a common cycle. It just fuckin’ happens. You can’t help it. But you always end up weeding out the shit. I think people are smart enough with the way the Internet revolution happened in the last 15 years, and the way it’s so easy to have access and to know what’s good and know what’s not good, that it’s natural to weeded out shitty copycat bands. People that are trying to jump on the bandwagon, so to speak.

Doom is being effected and embellished with a lot of other extreme elements. Doom is expanding in a way. But Witch Mountain stick to a traditional, almost bluesy sound.

Yes. I’m a disciple of Jimi Hendrix. Classic rock is what I probably listen to at the end of the day, more than anything. A lot of these bands just try to play loud and heavy and stuff, and we’ve always had this thing where we’ll just play whatever we want but it always naturally ends up being like this post-apocalyptic blues stuff which is more like Black Sabbath than any of these other bands. Black Sabbath in the most traditional sense was a very heavy blues band. I’m a blues player. I write a major chunk of the music. I write, like, 80% of the music. So I’m a blues man just portraying what I would feel like if there were zombies on the planet.

You’re a left handed guitarist playing a Strat.

Yeah. I like right-handed Strats played left-handed. It’s the most natural feeling guitar. When I was first getting into Jimi Hendrix when I was 14 or 15 I had no idea he was left-handed and I had no idea he played a Strat, but I understand why he naturally gravitated towards that. That’s kind of the reason why I did it. I’m a very traditional purist when it comes to tones, and sound. You can do a lot with a Strat and they’re very versatile. You can make a Strat sound like a Les Paul but you can’t make a Les Paul sound like a Strat. It’s just a fact.

It’s quite an uncommon guitar to see on stage at metal gigs.

I know and that’s how I got my sponsors with Lace Music, because they were like, “You are the black sheep in your crowd!” So it worked. I mean, it’s not like I’m doing it on purpose. I’m doing it because it works for me and you can get a fucking heavy sound out of a Strat. Jimi Hendrix proved that. Ritchie Blackmore proved that. Even Tony Iommi in the early days of Black Sabbath, his main guitar was a Stratocaster and it broke during the recording of the first album and he had this other guitar that was an SG.

These are your first European shows. How was Roadburn?

Roadburn was amazing. We built the whole tour around Roadburn, and we went in there with the attitude that we’re just going to fucking destroy everything in our paths, and it worked. We went up there and we started a little bit early so we could play a full hour and five minute set, and we just laid it down. By that time we’d already been playing for a couple of weeks so we were pretty lubricated and into the routine. I really enjoyed DesertFest, both Berlin and London too. Equally as good, the London one, to me, Roadburn and London were both my favourite shows so far. I think maybe because we used to be on Rage of Achilles which is a London label, people had been waiting to hear us forever, so the London crowd was off the hook. I signed a girl’s bong. She brought a bong for me to sign.

That’s got to be the weirdest thing you’ve ever signed?

She was waiting up front until we were done, and then she was gushing over me. She was like “will you please sign my bong?” and I’m like “fuck yeah, that’s a first, man”.

Has there been any discernible differences between the US. crowds you’re used to and the European/UK crowds? Anything noticeable, besides bong signing?

Well, I’ve been over here before with another band. We did some shows with Urge Overkill. The main thing I’ve noticed, first of all, no offense, but outside the UK. the hospitality is amazing. You’ll have this spread of food and then you’re eating and they’re like “oh, are you ready for your hot meal?” and there’s crates of beer and whiskey and shit. But the crowds themselves, it depends on where you’re at. We’ve had people rip down the fuckin’ walls in Lithuania, and the shows in Finland were off the hook. Sweden, the same thing. But then we played in Kiel, Germany, and the crowd was just standing there. But yet they enjoyed it. But then we play somewhere like Berlin where people were fuckin’ tearing down the walls, maybe because it was a festival. Paris, they fuckin’ loved us in Paris. Though the hospitality was shit there. But the crowds overall, people actually, I think, take more time to care. I think there’s a lot more metal fans in Europe, as a whole than there are per capita in the States because there’s a lot more shit shoved down people’s – Justin Bieber and crap like that. There’s a lot of bands that move to the UK. Jimi Hendrix came to the UK because he wasn’t getting respect. Monster Magnet actually moved to the UK to actually get some respect because they knew that the crowds here appreciate the music they’re playing a lot better.

Roadburn not only had a really strong doom representation but a really strong female representation, with quite a lot of female-fronted bands, Goat, Royal Thunder, Jess and the Ancient Ones. I know that’s an important thing to Witch Mountain. Nate was on the SXSW panel organised by Kim Kelly.

You know, we don’t look at it that way. We’ve had people say to us that they want to do an all-girl festival and we say no thanks. We were looking for a Dio to sing for our band and it just happened to be a girl. If it was a guy he’d be in there too. To us it’s not about that – it wasn’t like a gimmick. We got a lot of shit about that too. We get this female lead singer and we’re called Witch Mountain, we got some articles that were written about us supposedly jumping on this fucking bandwagon.

It’s quite easy. A lot of bands get accused of it being a gimmick.

Exactly, and we’re not that, and that’s the thing. We’re not tryin’ to fuckin’ make it big. None of us has any desire or inclination to be some huge rock star. We just want to play our fuckin’ music and feel good about it. If we get paid as much as our shitty jobs back home to do it then we’ll fuckin’ do it. We certainly didn’t get a female singer to fulfill some fuckin’ trendy prophecy that’s going on right now. It’s kind of discouraging because people think that. But if you actually take the time to listen to us, and really listen to the music, you can tell that we’re playing straight from the heart. We’re not doing cookie cutter Kyuss bullshit. We’re playing something that I feel like is really unique, and the kind of music we play is the kind of music that doesn’t exist exactly the way we’re doing it. We’re just playing music that we would personally like to hear.

Did you get to see many bands at Roadburn? Did you have the time?

Yeah. I saw Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. They were a little bit soft. They weren’t as brash and as rough as Vol. 1. But, fuck it, man. I got to see ‘em. I got to see The Pretty Things. They were fucking amazing. They’re one of my oldest favourite bands. I saw a little bit of Goat. I like them OK. I felt it was kind of like Ghost, a little bit contrived, but nonetheless, they put on a good show. Electric Wizard, who we had played shows with in the past, I got to see them play. I’ve never been a super huge Electric Wizard fan but they won me over with that show. According to most people that are huge fans, they didn’t think they played that well but I thought they were great. I thought they killed it. I think they’re a great live band. Dopethrone to me is one of the best fuckin’ records to come out in the last decade, or over a decade now.

High on Fire had their double headline slot too.

I love High on Fire. Me and Matt are old friends. I mean, one of the shows with Iommi Stubbs we played was opening for Sleep and Hawkwind back in ‘94. Matt’s a good guy. I got to actually hang out with him a little bit the next day after we played. He happened to be hanging around. Last time I saw him he was in pretty bad shape.

Have you had much chance to write new material recently or has the touring schedule been too heavy?

After we got back from the tour in June, I started working on – I’m always kind of like working on new demos. I use Garage Band. I’ve got an iPad with a dock and it’s got every kind of input and output on it. I demo stuff at home and basically it works like, I’ll have an idea and I have to go run into my office and record it and put it down, and then I’ll do another one and another one. So I have like, seven or eight ideas that are always working at the same time. Then I will eventually finish one and I’ll make an MP3 out of it and I’ll send it to Uta and Uta will come up with lyrics. She’ll listen to it and has an idea instantly, based on the music. The songwriting process has been really easy. Cauldron of the Wild went together really quick. I took a bag of mushrooms and wrote one of the songs in a day.

Which song was that?

“Shelter”. Everybody says it’s their favourite and I’m like, I literally fuckin’ kicked that out in nine hours, on mushrooms, because I was unemployed at the time. I was just fuckin’ drinking beer and I took a bunch of mushrooms, and at times the fuckin’ iPad was floating and the colours from Garage Band kept coming in and out. Then the next morning I woke up and thought for sure it had to be a piece of shit garbage. I did all the drums on a MIDI keyboard. Then I listened to it and was like, ‘holy fuck, I don’t remember doing that’. So, there might be some mushrooms in my future, to finish up some of these demos.

I think our current plan is to work through the summer and record all this stuff. Then we’ve got a US tour we’re doing and then we’re going to come back to Europe in November, and hopefully record all the new material in December after we’ve played it a few times. I think, every year or two if we can get a new album it’d be a good thing because we were so dormant for so long between most of our records.

So can we expect a new record sometime next year?

Yeah. I think that’s safe to say.

Has anything changed since Cauldron of the Wild came out?

It’s always developing. Now that Uta’s in the band, it’s freed me up to explore guitar a lot more, whereas I used to have to write stuff based on what I could sing and play at the same time. The material I was writing was still an aftermath of how I used to write. But the newer demos, I’m getting a little more complex. I think it’s getting developed more.

The last single that we did, I did a demo on the keyboard for viola, which Uta plays. So she did viola on our last song ‘Bloodhound’. She learned the parts. I think me and Neal [Munson, bass] are going to start doing harmonies to her melodies. The guitar is just getting a little bit more complex. It’s still simple ‘riffage’ but I’m playing more on the chord structures, if that makes any sense. I think you can expect it to be a little more developed. It’s still going to be in the same Witch Mountain tradition but, yeah.

I was watching videos online earlier. I actually thought the growling vocals came from one of you guys. I didn’t realise that was Uta as well.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s fucking scary. You ever seen the Twilight Zone movie with the thing on the wing of the plane? That’s what we say she sounds like.