As a guitarist for the metal outfit Every Time I Die, Andy Williams has proven that his infectious riffs only rival his sense of humor. Just check out the videos for "The New Black" or "We’rewolf" to witness a few of the creatively wacky ideas that his New York-based band has conjured up over the years. Fans will get another dose of ETID this September with the release of their 5th studio album New Junk Aesthetic, which features such guest musicians as Greg Puciato of Dillinger Escape Plan and Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy. In their typical fashion, the members of ETID didn’t stew over the songs for months and months, and the end result is a product of the spontaneity that occurred during studio sessions.
Williams talked in-depth about those on-the-spot sessions during a recent interview with Ultimate-Guitar, and he was even more candid about his own evolution as a guitarist. Admitting that he downpicked all of his parts on
ETID’s first album and only recently decided to pick up an acoustic guitar,
Williams proves that even the most nontraditional methods can help you develop your skills as a guitarist.
UG: This has been quite a busy summer for Every Time I Die. One recent news item stated that the band held a “Shit Sale” this August. Did any guitars or amps go on the market?
Andy Williams: It was like everything across the board, but gear was the biggest part of it. We had a few amps for sale and a fair amount of guitars. There were like nine guitars for sale. I’m the guy in the band that is like a total weirdo collector guy! I’ll be constantly buying guitars, pedals, and shit. I finally got to the point where I had it in my head that I don’t need it anymore. It was the kick in the ass I needed.
Which guitars did you put up for sale?
I sold a 1974 Chet Atkins Super Axe. I got rid of two Hagstroms that I had, a Les Paul Custom. I had a Jay Turser Shark guitar that I got just as a joke. I sold a bunch. I think I had another Gretsch that I sold. There was a Fender Jazz bass.
I would imagine that this kind of sale, particularly one publicized by a well-known band, would be a huge draw.
Yeah. It was really weird because the first day was all kids just trying to hang with the band. We were selling our shirts and stuff like that. There was backstock of merch that we had. So kids came to hang with the band, and we played the new record just so people could hear the new record. It was cool, that first day was. Then whatever we didn’t sell the first day we put on Craigslist. Then you get all the weirdos coming out! Like, “Oh, you have an MXR5 Time delay from the early 80’s. Hmmm.” That same guy showed up and was there for two-and-a-half hours, walking around looking at every little thing. He asked questions about everything. Then he left with that MXR Time Delay that I had – and three clown masks! What are you going to use three clown masks for? I mean, that is scary!
Was the sale initiated to make a little extra cash or did you just want to have a clean slate as far as your equipment goes?
That’s exactly it. Everyone can use a couple dollars. It was more or less like, “Holy hell. Look at all this shit we have.” I didn’t want all that shit just hanging around my house. The place where we stored all this stuff, I was going through it and we put it in like half of a garage. It was a two-car garage. One half was for the car and the other one was for all our shit. We were just putting stuff in the back. When the back got full, we put it in front of that and then in front of that and then in front of that. When I was digging through it, I was finding guitars that I didn’t even realize that I had! It was like, “Oh, my God! I remember buying this. Why haven’t I touched it in eight years?” It was retarded.
And was most of it sold?
Pretty much all of it. We had more cabinets than Slayer! I don’t know where they came from! We had like five Marshall cabinets, Kustom cabinets. Then there were five 8x10s. We sold three Ampeg classic heads. I don’t know where the stuff came from. It was just collected over the years. There are just a few pieces left.
"We try to write music as a band."
We have a replacement. He’s not like a solid member. He’s just kind of helping us out. It’s this guy named Ryan, and he’s from Canada. He’s like a session guy in Canada, kind of like a hired gun. He’s a great guy, he’s hungry, he wants to be in a band, and he’s showing us that he wants to do it. It wasn’t like, “Oh, man. We need this guy. We need this guy. We need to ask this guy.” These dudes were coming to us and saying, “I want to play.” He plays like a monster. Everything that we want, that’s what he does. He’s really great. I thought it was going to be an uncomfortable thing. Like, “Oh, fuck. We’ve had a drummer that was great. It’s going to be hard to go on to anything else.” Ryan is a hell of a player, and he’s definitely stepping up and adding a little something. We’re not going to jump into anything. For now, it’s going slow. You have to live with the person, so he’s got to be a cool guy.
With the Mike thing – to be completely honest and I’m not talking shit – there are some dudes that meet a girl and then they can tour with a girlfriend or a wife or whatever. There are some guys that meet a girl and they shut down. That’s literally what happened. He met a girl, and she was the one. He wanted to pursue that. So whatever. I wish him the best, and everyone in the band does. I did an interview earlier today and the guy just kept prodding, wanting to get me to talk shit. I had played with Rat for 10 years. The guy is still my friend. It didn’t end on great terms, but there’s no ill will.
You have a new album coming out in September called New Junk Aesthetic, which features the same producer (Steve Evetts) as your last album The Big Dirty. How would you describe his approach? Does he let you take the reins or is he more hands-on?
He’s definitely hands-on, which is good. The cool part about it is this: You know there’s a good guy when you tell him to fuck off and he doesn’t get offended. He’ll come up with an idea, and if you don’t like it, we say “no.” He goes, “Okay, well let’s figure out another way.” That’s what a producer is supposed to do. A producer is supposed to make your songs better. He wasn’t changing songs at all. It wasn’t like it was, “Oh, let’s write a new part.” He was just like, “Maybe you should change the beat a little bit.” It’s basically like an outsider’s opinion. There was no ego involved, which was great. He would never go, “I worked on a Cure record. What do you know?” It was always like, “Okay, let’s make the best album we possibly can.”
Would you and Jordan usually work out all the guitar parts before heading into production? Did it ever just happen organically as you were in the studio?
It’s always like that. No joke. On that record we were spending two days at most on a song. That was it. We wouldn’t spend longer on that. If it took longer than two days, we were overthinking and that means the song was going to get stale. We would write a song in two days, record it, and move on.
Has that always been your method?
Yeah. Any member of this band will say that the worst recording this band has ever had was Gutter Phenomenon, and that was because we took six months to write that record. We were overthinking everything. It turned stale. There are great songs on that record, but almost all of the songs could be better. In my mind, when I listen to it, that’s a record I can’t listen to it because of the process. The songs just took too long to write. Hot Damn! took us a month to write. We sat down and said, “We’re going to write a record. Let’s go.” The same thing with The Big Dirty. We only gave ourselves two months to do it. We would write a song, demo it, and move on. There were times when we would write two songs in a day. We would practice for two hours and write two songs in a day.
Basically you’re going into the recording with bare bones. I remember the first song on the record, that song was the first song that we ever wrote for the record. It took us the first and second day to do it. We recorded it, and then we didn’t listen to it again until we went into the studio. In the middle of it, we went to Australia for a month. So we wrote for a month, went to Australia, and then wrote for a month. In that time we didn’t listen to it. Then we were like, “Okay, now I’m hearing this.” It was crazy. It’s organic because you’re creating on the spot. It’s kind of cool.
Is there one specific member who will come up with the bulk of the rhythm and/or lead parts?
It’s every which way. It’s definitely a fifty-fifty type of thing. He’ll come in with a riff, and I’ll rewrite it. I’ll come in with a riff, and he’ll rewrite it. We try to write music as a band.
Did you experiment with any new tunings on New Junk Aesthetic?
I definitely wanted to mess with tunings. Mike was definitely the guy in the band who was always insecure with trying new things. So it got to the point where we just wouldn’t even bring it up anymore. It was like, “Okay, let’s just stay with the same tuning, blah, blah, blah.” So we kind of got in the mode of just being at drop D. I kind of like it better because it’s more of a challenge. I’ve been playing in the band for 12 years, and I’ve used the same tuning. What haven’t I done with this tuning?
I never was a pedal guy. Up until last year, I used a Tube Screamer, a noise compressor, and a tuner – and that was it. So this year I was like, “I’m going to learn how to use a delay, this and this and this.” Now my pedalboard has got everything! I have a tremolo, which is something that I never thought I would have. I have a POG, which makes your guitar sounds like an electric piano. There’s a bunch of weird stuff. That’s what made my mind explode on this record! I hear things a little differently now. All of that shit that a producer would bring in, I was hearing now, which I never did before. I’d always have to have someone else go, “Oh, I think this would sound cool if there was a chorus behind it or something like that.”
Did you utilize a lot of these new pedals on the latest record?
The first song on the record, the only reason why I came up with that song, was because of this pedal called the Octave Clang by Death By Audio. I heard it and thought it was the greatest thing ever. I based the whole song on that pedal. It’s on the whole time. I had never used this stuff, and now I’m starting to get the hang of it. It’s making me want to write music. We haven’t even toured on this record, and I’m already ready to get moving. I already have a shitload of stuff written.
"The best thing about the band is we’ve always been fortunate."
The best thing about the band is we’ve always been fortunate. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this, but there is a “band’s band” and “fan’s band.” Mastodon used to be a band’s band, where every band worshiped that band. Then the kids were still on the fence about them. Now they’ve crossed that fence, and now everyone kind of respects them. We have been fortunate enough that we’ve never really had that fence up. It’s always been like a band’s band and a fan’s band. Even with the old records with Gerard from My Chemical Romance singing on a song, Daryl Palumbo sang on a song, and Dallas Green and all of the other guys. Howard from Killswitch sang on Last Night In Town. All of those dudes, they asked us if they could sing on the record. It was never like us going, “Hey, I need you to be on this part.” It was, “I’m going to be on your record.”
The funny thing was that Greg lives around the corner from the studio. We would work out together and he’d show up. One day we got back and he was like, “I’m going to sing on that song.” He pumps it out, and he’s out ten minutes later. Matt from The Bronx was the same thing. He was like, “Hey, can I come down and hang out in the studio?” He came down one day just to hang out. The UFC had come out with a video game, so we were all playing this game. Then he was like, “I think I’m going to do some vocals.”
The song with Pete, I think that Pete and Keith wrote the lyrics to that song together. We’ve been fortunate. When you listen to Crosby, Stills, and Nash, they always had dudes on their records. The Beatles always worked with other guys. It’s kind of cool. It’s not a pretentious thing. It’s kind of organic saying, “Hey, I really like hanging out with you and we’re doing this right now. Can you please come in and do this?” It’s not a matter of, “Well, let me just talk to my label real quick and make sure it’s cool.” There’s no suit bullshit. It’s always friends being friends and making music.
Do you ever sense competition among your peers? Or is there a fairly good sense of camaraderie?
I think with bands coming up now, I don’t think there’s very much camaraderie. When we were first starting out, there was us, Converge, Dillinger – all the bands that are around now. Converge was around a little bit longer than Dillinger, and Dillinger was around a little bit longer than us. When all of our bands hit, we were all together. We all hit at the same time. It was as easy as saying, “Hey, guys. Let’s make a phone call, where there is human interaction and you have to talk with someone and say: You guys are great guys. Let’s tour together.”
The next thing you know you’re in a black book and you’re booking that tour. You had to talk with people. You had to have 43 conversations in a day. Now it’s like, “I’ve got to send out some emails.” You don’t even connect anymore. Everything is a package tour. There’s no art in it anymore. It’s just, “I’m going to have fucked-up hair, I’m going to wear these clothes, and we’re just going to do what a 50-year-old man has to say that’s a good show.” It’s sad. Fortunately for us and Converge, it’s a very different situation. Epitaph are musicians that put records out. It’s great. Those dudes are t-shirt and jeans guys. They’re not suit guys, and it’s fucking awesome.
Could you sense that Epitaph would be a completely different label pretty much from the day you signed with them?
Yeah. This is exactly what they wanted. They said, “We want you guys to be Every Time I Die. We want to put your records out and help you.” It’s like, “What? We don’t have to do the stupid shit?” We’re going to do giveaways anyway because we want to be one with the people that like our band. You have to make that connection. That was the cool thing. Because we were on a label for nine years before that, it was like, “Okay, we know how it is.” It’s not like, “Oh, my God! We’re on Epitaph Records. I’m going to fucking buy a giraffe!” There was never any thought like that. It was like, “We’re on a new label. Let’s get to work.”
It’s awesome. They’re dorks! Brett Gurewitz, he’s going to read this and I hope he likes it, but the dude is a dork! He’s a nerd and it’s awesome! The guy plays World of Warcraft. I don’t know anything about that fucking game, but I know there are fucking trolls with axes. You know what he is? He is a fucking purple saber-tooth tiger on that game called Fluffy or something like that! He’s not like a fucking troll slayer or something like that. He’s a saber-tooth tiger named Fluffy. He’s the president of fucking Epitaph Records. He’s still obsessed about music. The guy is in his 40’s and he’s still stoked. Obviously he wants to make money. Everyone has to make money. To live, you need to make money. It’s great because he’s not bitter, and he’s not in that world where he just wants to make money. He wants to make art and he want to make money doing that, which is fucking awesome.
You have the Epitaph tour coming up with supporting acts Bring Me The Horizon, Architects, and Oh, Sleeper. Have you toured with any of those bands before?
Never. I mean, we did Warped Tour last year with Bring Me The Horizon. But the other bands, never. The singer of Architects was a guy helping out the show when we played in Bristol. That’s all the connection that we’ve had with those bands. I’m really excited about it. I hope a lot of kids come out.
When you first picked up a guitar, did you learn by ear? What methods did you use?
Drums got super-boring. I had a guitar. When drums got super-boring, I kind of plateaued and I couldn’t work through it. The guitar was just sitting in the corner of my house, and I started playing it. The week after I played it, I was in a band and bought a half-stack. The dudes from the band showed me where to put my fingers, and I played it. From then on, I was like, “Okay, that’s what a power chord is.” I just learned from there. I would hear something cool on a record and would be like, “How did he do that?” I have a pretty gnarly guitar collection. I have Fenders. I have Gibsons. I have a Gretsch guitar.
How many do you have now?
Probably like 12 after the sale. I can’t stand acoustic guitar. I’ve never owned one. I don’t know. I just don’t like them. I don’t like the way they sound. Having feedback and all that shit is how I learned to play. On acoustic guitar, there is no sustain, no noises – it’s just bling, bling, bling. I never got it. Yesterday one of my oldest friends, one that helped me how to play guitar, I was hanging out with him. I was like, “Let’s go gear shopping and see if we can buy some new pedals or whatever. Let’s see what’s out there.” We go out and I’m looking at acoustic guitars. He’s like, “Oh, man. This thing is great!” I was like, “If I bought an acoustic guitar, would it make me a better guitar player?” He said, “Yeah. If you fuck up, you’ll hear it. If you’re playing with gain and amp, it’s easier to hide a fuck-up than if you’re playing with an acoustic guitar.” So now, at the age of 32 and playing for 16 years, I’m ready to take the step into acoustic guitar. Here’s the only way I can explain it. At one point in time in my life, I hated tomatoes. I started eating them on sandwiches and then I started eating them on other things, and I now love tomatoes!
I admire the fact that you’re so candid about your feelings toward the acoustic guitar.
You can do way gnarlier things on an electric guitar than you can on an acoustic. If I can get good and master an acoustic guitar – well, not master it – but if I can get good, that means I can get way better on an electric guitar. Really how I learned how to play guitar was that I had a band that was a grind band ages ago. I just knew how to play fast, I knew how to do pinch harmonics, and I knew how to do dive bombs. I knew how to make all the crappy noises like Joe Satriani! That’s what I wanted to learn first. “How the hell did you do that thing? Cool! I’m going to learn how to do pinch harmonics.” That’s what I wanted to learn. Like a palm mute, where it sounds like guns going off. “Exodus did that so I’ve got to do that!”
So I learned all the other stuff, and then I worried about theory way last. If you listen to Last Night In Town and Hot Damn!, on those records I don’t crosspick at all. I just downpick everything. I had a breakdown in the middle on Hot Damn! because I didn’t know how to crosspick. There were just some little nuances that weren’t coming through with me playing all downpicking. I flipped out and was like, “Well, screw it. I’ll do the harder parts that I do, and you just do all the rhythms.” Everything that I played on Last Night In Town, that was downpicked.
"You can do way gnarlier things on an electric guitar than you can on an acoustic."
Yeah. Economics. It’s literally economics. I was getting tired. I could play so much better and easier if I just knew how to crosspick. What I would do is I would just sit in my room and go down the first, second, third, fourth, fifth fret. I would go all the way down from E to E. Then I would go all the way up. I would go all the way down to the 12th fret and then back up to the first fret. I would just keep doing it over and over again. Then I would do an up-pick, just up-picking everything.
I cannot stand bands like DragonForce or Yngwie Malmsteen. I just can’t get into it. Those dudes probably think about my band the same thing. Virtuoso guitar dudes are the epitome of what is awful in music. If there was a choice between Brooks & Dunn and a virtuoso guitar player, I would pick Brooks & Dunn. I learned this fucking neoclassical thing from Yngwie Malmsteen about crosspicking on a video that I watched. I remember doing it over and over again and thinking, “Oh, God. This is awful.” But it helped me big time. I have to tip my hat to Yngwie Malmsteen for helping me learn how to do that.
You took a unique path in learning the guitar. What advice would you give to someone starting out?
As soon as something gets stale, set it aside for a second and pick something else up. I remember wanting to learn a minor scale up and down. I was just at that point where I couldn’t crosspick a certain section of it. Again, it was just economics. I was so used to downpicking that my hand would get a little tired. What I did was I tried to learn jazz chords. So I listened to John McLaughlin or the Mahavishnu Orchestra. I would hear something that he was doing and then I would just find it. I would work on chord progressions, something that was really easy, and then I’d go back to it. Even though you have a goal or something you’re trying to do, it’s almost like a reset. Then it becomes interesting again. Anytime I’ve been caught on something like that, I just realize that it’s because I’m getting bored with it. As soon as you get your mind to rethink something else, within days you’ll hit it.
I remember buying a Guitar World that said, “Here’s Zakk Wylde’s sick pentatonic!” I was reading it from front to back and thinking, “Someday I’ll be able to do something close to this.” To this day, I have no idea. I’ve read a million things about pentatonic scale, and it doesn’t make sense to me. Then someone said, “You just wrote a lead riff in a pentatonic scale, and you have no idea what you’re doing.” I don’t know. Whatever method I’m using right now, I’m super-stoked on it because I’m not bored with the guitar. I’m still excited about playing the guitar. Every single time I pick up a guitar, I’m learning something different. It’s cool. It might be a slow progression, but at the same time I’m keeping my goals very simple. I’m not trying to do sweep arpeggios in a day.
I think the biggest thing for kids to learn is to find your own sound. Find what you’re comfortable with. You might want to play that virtuoso shit, but your body might not be able to do it. You might have little fingers or something like that. Find what you can do and expand on that, then move on from there.
Interview by Amy Kelly
Ultimate-Guitar.Com © 2009
/ my profile 
