Staind's Facts and History,
as told by Mike Mushok,
guitarist
The band Staind has had the
current line-up since 11/24/95. We put out a self-released CD on 11/29/96.
The 1st CD party was an overwhelmingly great success with over 900 people
in attendance. We sold more than 200 CDs that night. During the next year,
we sold more than 2000 CDs while playing gigs throughout New England with
bands such as: Honkeyball, Shed, Kilgore, GWAR, Far and God Lives Under
Water.
The band's big break came
October 23, 1997 when Staind performed with the band Limp Bizkit at the
Webster Theater in Hartford, CT.
The story begins approximately
20 minutes before we were supposed to perform. Fred Durst, the singer for
Limp Bizkit, approached Aaron, our singer, and me with a copy of our CD
in his hand. Someone had given it to him, which was fine, except Fred thought
we were Satan worshippers due to the nature of our cover art. Of course
we weren't, but they tried to have us kicked off the bill. Fred and I exchanged
words. Then, he took our CD and threw it across the table; he wanted nothing
to do with us -so much for our big break. Well, at least until Fred saw
our show!
After our set, Fred approached
us and said we were the the best band he had seen in 2 years." Also, he
said that he was starting a production company and wanted to work with
us. We exchanged phone numbers and then went our separate ways.
At the time, we were in the
studio making a demo with 4 new songs. I tried to reach Fred, but I was
unsuccessful due to their busy touring schedule. I found out that Limp
Bizkit was opening for the Deftones outside of Boston, the night before
Thanksgiving 1997. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give
Fred a copy of our new tunes, so the band and I drove up to see the show.
We went to Limp Bizkit's
bus and knocked on the door, where we met up with DJ Lethal -Fred was busy
elsewhere. We gave Lee a couple of tapes with the new tunes, then went
to see the show (WHICH ROCKED). We tried to find Fred, but were not successful.
That night I went home and
went to bed. Around 2 a.m., my phone rang -it was Fred. He LOVED the new
songs and wanted us to go to Jacksonville, FL (Jax) to work with us on
our material. After a few phone conversations, we decided that we would
leave the day after X-mas. We would stay at Fred's house and play a show
with the Limp Bizkit at the Milkbar in Jax on January 4, 1998. We had a
gig the day after X-mas. After the show, we loaded the van and trailer
and headed to Jax
We almost made it, but our
van broke down 1000 feet from the Florida state line. We had it towed to
Fred's house and started work the very next day.
Fred played an integral part
in helping us to develop our sound. Aaron, our singer, has an amazing voice
and Fred helped to bring that out. We had a lot of screaming parts in our
songs. Fred said, "Man, you can sing, why don't you do that more?" The
trip was very productive because we reworked 4 of our songs and played
a KILLER sold out show in their hometown of Jax.
While there, Fred contacted
Jordan Schur, the President of Flip Records. Fred told Jordan about us
and within a week of leaving Jacksonville, we were on a plane to L.A. where
we met Jordan and recorded a 3 song sampler.
We recorded "A Flat," "Suffocate"
and one of Aaron's acoustic tracks "Black Rain" at Sound City Studios with
Fred and Lethal producing. By February 1998, we had signed to Flip Records.
Jordan did our project as a joint venture with Elektra Records in the Spring
of 1998.
During this time, we were
to play some shows with Limp Bizkit, Sevendust and Clutch -all of which
went great! In April, we went back to Jax and worked with Fred on some
more tunes.
By June of 1998, we were
working closely with our management company, The Firm, who also managed
Limp Bizkit, Ice Cube and Orgy. We were then able to persuade Terry Date
(The Deftones Pantera, Sound Garden, White Zombie) to produce our 1st album.
On August 1, 1998 (the day after we played the Warped Tour in Northampton,
MA) we flew to Seattle to record at Studio Litho (Pearl Jam's Studio.)
During early October, the album was mixed at Studio X (the old Bad Animals)
in Seattle.
This brings us to the present.
Currently, we are playing shows here and there, while we wait for the release
of our 1st major label release Dysfunction. The album is scheduled for
release on April 13th, 1999. Look for us to start touring with Kid Rock
in the Spring, and Limp Bizkit in the summer.
