Interview With Danny Carey + Jimmy Hayward of Legend of the Seagullmen

How did you two get to know each other? You go back a bit further than the formation of the band.

Jimmy Hayward: We’re buddies from the neighborhood.
Danny Carey: We live about 400 yards away from each other the way the crow flies. Friends of friends I guess. You came to one of my barbecues; I think that’s when we first hung out.
Jimmy: We’ve crossed paths for years and I think it was 10 years ago that we were like ET and Elliott sort of touching fingers and we’re like “Ouch.”

The idea of the Seagullmen originated with Doctor Dreyer. What was his initial vision when he started talking to you guys about the concept for the Legend of the Seagullmen?

Jimmy: I was already jamming with Danny, hanging out just being pals. I met Doctor through Brent Hinds. He came to my studio and was watching me record some other stuff and he brought this idea up that he had been messing around with for years. He said, “Man, do you want to do a nautical spaghetti western?” So I wrote the tune ["Ballad of the Deep Sea Diver"] and he and I jammed on that and it kind of went from there.

How has the concept morphed from the original ideation to what we’re going to hear in February when the album comes out?

Jimmy: I think it’s just more streamlined. The original idea that Doctor had – you know, he’s a pretty wild dude. He came up with all these crazy characters and this lore and it originated with him making these short films. It was kind of like an all around art project for him. We wrote the music and streamlined the idea and made it a little but more mysterious and whittled down the amount of characters from like 400 to… five.
Danny: He’s a little overboard on his lore. It’s constant inspiration coming out of this guy. He’s got his vision and that’s always appealed to me – a band that has a concise vision or direction that they’re going. Most bands don’t have that. It’s refreshing to be involved in a project that’s not fly by the seat of your pants or something, it’s got a focus.

Jimmy, you had to be attracted to this idea coming from the animation world and your work as a director. What do you have on the table as far as plans outside of music with Legend of the Seagullmen – are we going to see some crazy music videos? What’s going on with the live show?

Jimmy: We’re playing a quick show coming up with Primus, but that’s going to be all music. We have some pretty heavy duty stuff coming up that we’re going to be shooting in the new year. We’re going to debut it probably in February and we’re going to get pretty wild with the visual stuff. We’re planning on super cool stuff. Right now the focus is recording and releasing the record and then once that’s cooking we’re going to get pretty crazy with the video stuff. Once it evolves we’re start getting deeper into the visual component of the live show.

It seems like full immersion is something that’s popular lately. You look at what bands like Ghost and Avatar are doing and its so much more than music and a live show – there’s so much else to do around it. Is this the most exciting time for full scale music / art projects?

Danny: I think people are becoming a little bit more open to it now. It got pretty boring there the last few years or something. Well, like you said over the last four or five there’s been some bands to fill those gaps. It used to be that every band was like that. When I was a kid all the art rock bands had to have this image and all the visual stuff to go with it. It got a little dull for a while – not that the music part isn’t interesting – there’s plenty of jazz and things. It’s inspiring to be in a concept driven band – there’s so much to draw from visually.
Jimmy: Obviously what Tool does lends itself to that completely where they come from – they’ve been leading the charge for that for a long time. I come from punk rock.
Danny: That’s not boring at least they’ve got balls.

Let’s talk about “Curse of the Red Tide.” Have you ever experienced Red Tide in person? It’s horrendous.

Danny: I have not! It sounds like a fucking nutty thing.
Jimmy: Doctor grew up on the far East Coast and I grew up on the far West Coast and I’ve lived within five miles of the Pacific Ocean my whole life and he’s the same on the other side. I think that’s where we come together on tunes like “The Orca” and “Red Tide” – its things we either both experienced as kids and talked about later – it’s crazy what it’s like, there’s an advisory and you can’t eat anything.
Danny: Fuck, I had no idea man.
Jimmy: We kind of turned the Red Tide into a character.

Jimmy, coming from the film world – did that help prepare you for developing any kind structure or musical narrative?

Jimmy: Maybe. I think we kind of lend ourselves to that kind of stuff anyway. I think that’s where Danny and I meet on a lot of levels too in terms of big, sort of epic, cinematic musical stuff. I’ve worked with symphony orchestras so music in my movies and I’ve worked with composers so much. We’re just into musical storytelling and big, sweeping, epic shit and I think it lends itself to the sort of music we make. I think it’s an easy connection to make, but I think we work with scores so much - Danny even played on one of the scores in one of my last movies. We just take everything we’re doing and mix it all together.
Danny: You always kind of apply whatever you learn to projects. I played four years in the symphony when I was in college and four years when I was in high school so we all kind of have grandiose backgrounds.
Jimmy: Yup, grandiose backgrounds.

What did you go through playing around with tones to get watery effects? What was the creative environment in the studio on that end?

Jimmy: Well, I think even how wet Danny decides to mix his drum in some instances. I don’t mean like the literal interpretation of wet. Things like – in the “Orca” song, I make all the whale sounds with a whammy pedal and a Marshall head. We’re all analog all the time. Danny, I don’t know if you know, has one of the most epic analog synthesizer collections and Maddog plays the synths in the band and we use all these old tools to make a lot of these tones and sounds. Obviously, from the cinematic standpoint, I get the ship creaking and all that stuff, but we try to make all of it with instruments as much as we can. Like all the seagulls [imitates seagulls].
Danny: Fooled me! All the samples I pretty much just did myself. I didn’t want to sound like anybody else. You have your own palette.