01. When did you start playing music and what had brought you to the music you play. Meaning the style that you currently like the most. I, personally, like Thirty Called Arson much and the Machinist.

I started playing guitar when I was 10, because my dad played guitar and I wanted to be like him. And I started my first punk rock band when I was 13. Over the next couple of years, I got into hardcore, and then eventually got into certain types of metal, although I've never really considered myself much of a metal guitarist. The stuff that made me wanna start Thirty Called Arson, basically was Pg99 and Converge. And on the last Thirty Called Arson tour we listened to a lot of Eyehategod and Neurosis (Times Of Grace, particularly), and we also got to play a few shows with Ed Gein on that tour, and they totally blew me away, so all of that wrapped up right there is kinda what I was feeling when we started Machinist. the music I'm doing now is really influenced by a lot of a songwriters from Texas and Oklahoma, Joe Ely, Billy Joe Shaver, Bob Childers, Steve Earle, as well as some bigger names like John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen, and a lot of the punk rock bands that I was into when I was younger, like The Clash, Social Distortion, Rancid, Bouncing Souls, etc. I've always tried to be a good songwriter, even when I played heavy music, and I think through the years from Thirty Called Arson to Machinist to Widow Song to now, with each step, I've just been gradually stripping away any extra shit in the music, until now, where it's just about the quality of the songs, and not much else.

02. Almost all the bands you have played in - broke up. Why? You have impacted the music scene much with your bands and people wonder why the bands were shot down.

Well Thirty Called Arson broke up because we had a totally ridiculous number of line-up changes in a really short amount of time. It kinda became apparent to us that it was gonna be hard to find anybody who would stick around long in that band, and we just got really sick of having to find new people, and teach them the songs and everything. So when our 4th drummer quit, we figured it was time to call it a day. And with Machinist, Thirty Called Arson had just broken up, and I think I was kinda just trying to figure out what I wanted to play, and it was sort of an experiment to see if that was it. And after a while I decided that it wasn't. and I know that's really unfair to the other guys in the band, and sometimes I feel like an asshole for it, but if I had kept playing in that band I would have been miserable, because musically, it wasn't what I wanted to do. And I think the fact that Machinist only wrote 4 songs, and played 10 shows before breaking up kinda just adds to people's perception of the band anyway. If we had stuck around longer, people probably wouldn't think machinist was that cool.

03. What are the bands in the US that you can mention? Do you have any favourite bands?

My favorite heavy bands right now are Workhorse and The Handshake Murders. Them arkansas boys don't fuck around.

04. What do you think about the heavy music scene of the USA/world? Do you know much about the European scene?

I don't know much about the european scene at all. and at this point, i don't really know much about the american scene either. I've got my constants that I like. I like Coliseum, Cursed, Converge, Crowbar, there was a band that Thirty Called Arson toured with called Angelville that I still listen to a lot, and I listen to Pantera, and Eyehategod. but I don't really keep up with any new stuff going on or anything like that.

05. What are your current plans for your music life?

Right now I play in a straight forward rock'n'roll band called John Moreland The Black Gold Band, which I really love doing, so I plan to take that as far as possible, and hopefully do that for the rest of my life. And at some point down the road, I'll probably start a hardcore band again for fun.

06. What do you do for living? Is it easy for a progressive and original bands in the US to survive touring all the time and not working full time jobs?

It's not easy at all to survive as a touring band with no other source of income. Your band's got to be a lot bigger than probably most people realize before you can actually do that.

07. In what music do you see the future of the scene?

I'm probably not the right person to answer this question.

08. What do you like to do besides just playing music?

I like to watch baseball. I like to watch sports in general. Um... that's really it, I guess. Other than that, music is pretty much always on my mind.

09. As I understood, now you are into more "light" music style. To me it seems like a regularity that musicians who earlier were into hardcore music, later trend to be playing more light music? For example - Hopesfall and 7 angels 7 plagues (now Misery Signals). What do you think about this observation?

Yeah, you do tend to see that a lot. I think most people would give you some bullshit answer, like they "grew up" or something. for me, I've just been gradually moving towards music where the main focus is on songwriting, because solid songwriting is what originally attracted me to music in the first place. So it just suits me more. I've never been interested in being able to shred on the guitar or anything, I've just always tried to take whatever was going on in my head and in my heart and turn it into something that people can listen to, first and foremost because it makes me feel good, and that's what I'm still doing.

10. What was your goal to start playing music? And what is your goal now? I understand that a true musician receives spiritual satisfaction from playing music, and, to your opinion - are you now more comercailly oriented? It is just that it is really hard for musicians to survive playing progressive music - I think that you would agree with me.

Well yeah, it's really hard for musicians to survive playing progressive music, but it's really hard for musicians to survive playing music, period. I didn't even think about goals when I started my first band, because I was 13, and I had an MxPx CD, and it just seemed like it'd be a lot of fun to start a punk rock band with my friends. My dream now is to make a living playing music. But it's to make a living playing the music that I wanna play, and doing it how I wanna do it. It's probably a pipe dream. So no, I'm not commercially oriented at all. I just do what I love to do, and I don't really give a shit about much past that. I think I'm more disgusted with modern mainstream society now than I was when I played hardcore. I don't really write stuff that sells. If someday it ever pays off financially, that'd be awesome, and I guess I'm hoping for that, but not counting on it. The music that I'm playing now gives me the most satisfaction of any music I've ever played, and I'm gonna do it for the rest of my life whether I ever make a dime at it or not. which up to this point I have not.

11. I understood that you work full time. Do you pay much attention to your music equipment, and maybe share your set with the people here in Russia that are interested in your sound preferences?

Well, I'm not too big of a gear freak, cause I've never had the money to be one, but I like Fender gear. I have a Fender Hot Rod Deville 2x12 Amp, and a Stratocaster with a telecaster deluxe neck on it that a  friend of my dad's gave to me. Before that I played a squire Stratocaster that my friend won in a contest. It was signed somewhere on the guitar by the band Ill Nino, but I guess it's been scratched off or something, because I've never seen the signature, and I don't particularly give a damn about Ill Nino anyway, so that's fine. And I don't use any pedals. I've never had expensive gear. In fact the stuff I have now is the first time I've ever really owned musical equiptment. in the past I've always just borrowed stuff from people. But the guitar/amp combination that I have right now is perfect for me, it's got just the right balance of twang, and toughness, but even if I still played heavy music, I would use fender. You can make Fender gear sound heavy as hell if you know what to do with it.

12. As I understood, you made all the material for Machnist? And the Thirty Called Arson? Why, to your opinion, the bands stopped playing without you?

I wrote about 80% of the music in both of those bands. There actually was a few months that i quit Thirty Called Arson, and they kept playing without me. I rejoined after a while, and we toured for a few more months, with a new drummer, named Luis. But then Luis quit. And me and Wayne were the guitar players, so we were the ones that kept having to teach people the songs over and over every time we had a line up change, which we were really sick of, so we both quit at the same time. And that just left the vocalist, Zach, so there wasn't really a band anymore. And Machinist had planned to keep going without me, and I don't really know why they didn't. But I don't think either band broke up prematurely. We were a bunch of kids, and we just gave it hell, and fucked as much shit up as possible, and then went out with a bang, and that seems pretty appropriate for a bunch of pissed off 18-21 year olds.

13. Have you ever thought about coming to Russia to play a show here? We would be more than happy to make a short reunion tour for the Machinist in Russia.

That's just a dream - but what you think? Haha I'd love to play in Russia, but I don't think Machinist is ever gonna play again. I don't think I could even play those songs anymore, if I wanted to. When I listen to them now, I have no idea what's going on, I can't remember how we played that shit to save my life.