Dev,

I've lurked quietly on the forum for many years, and finally had a few questions I think are worth asking.

You rightfully took-on a long list of interviews since the release of Ki, and presented a pretty clear vision of DTP- and your approach to future efforts.
I think I better understand your previous work because of your openly candid approach to interviews, and even your recent tour. It was obviously very raw and from the heart.

Since completing your tour, do you think you have remained on-target with balancing music, family, business, touring and friendships...with respect to your 'newly-refined values'?
Do you look back since Ziltoid and feel like you can measure the work you've done since? Not just musically, but in all aspects.

Lastly, I've always wondered if it is a conscious effort not to discuss family happenings in interviews or in public settings. I'm not encouraging it necessarily, but as a parent of a 3 year-old and infant (one named Devin), I think there's a level of pride and happiness that safely bleeds over into other facets of communication. I don't know if I've seen it, purposely or not.

I guess what I'm saying is that your fanbase lends itself to respecting your decisions, and would probably love to hear how the rest of your life is going. Not like family newsletters and crap, but if asked...

It's tough to articulate this point, but you've received so much praise for your lifestyle change and the musical products that have come after it...
Since you've proclaimed to some extent that there's more to life than musical cleverness, it'd be nice to hear more about those things, and how they've impacted your trade.

Thoughts?

V/R,
JM

[The Dev]

I'm good. Family is my private life. I'm grossly public about myself that I need to seperate from the 'fantasy' of what I do vs. the 'reality' of family, in laws, births, deaths, taxes, whatever...I'm actually a very private person. I don't like a lot of attention when not performing. I don't like going to shows or music stores because I find it awkward to have people recognize me when I just want to play some effects pedals or watch a band. I feel like the 'fans' that approach me often times have made assumptions about me that can be leveled if I'm in an antisocial mood. My music is based on pretty raw emotions, and I feel I owe it to the audience to be polite and as accomodating as I can when I'm in public, because when it's not 'work time', I want to be ignored. And in honesty, without being ignored, I feel like my desire to do what I do goes away VERY quickly.

When I play, or do a signing, or an acoustic show or what have you, there's my public time. Thats part of the job, to field questions and talk to the people who have supported me. When I'm at the lumber store buying drywall screws, I find it very difficult to be 'Devin Townsend'...in fact, I find it to be a great nusciance, as I can't stop or really help the musical output, it happens as a byproduct of life. And I understand very well that if people are connected to that output, then many times, talking to me or interacting is important, and for me to be the awkward antisocial misanthrope that I truly am most of the time, could really ruin someones day...so I have to make a time and place for it and get psyched.

But fortunately, touring affords me time to be available to folks.

So the tour was good, but relentless. After 3 years, there was some nights I was outside for 2 hours talking to people. And the hyperbole some folks throw at you can be taxing. I know myself the power of music and catharsis, so there's people whom the music has helped, but often, the assumptions are made that musicains (myself and other public figures) are 'heros' of some kind, and telling people the less than glamourous side of it is often NOT what they want to hear...some folks NEED you to be larger than life, and so to not ruin it for them, often you need to listen...and there was a lot of folks to listen to on this tour.

But I was ready, I was ready for Namm, I was ready for angry SYL fans, I was ready for confused friends, I was ready for inter band dynamics, I was ready to lose (invest?) 20k on the tour, I was ready for some crazy fans, I was ready for some cool fans. I was ready.

When the tour finished, I ate lots of junk food and slept a lot. Now we're rehearsing again.

There are some fans that often think that this life (musician) is easy, and whenever a musician complains that although it is great, it IS brutal, that I should 'get a real fucking job ...' and I have to tell you, this job is hard on my nerves, my family, my mind and my health...and having worked in dozens of restaraunts, the stainless steel factory, construction, 2 union jobs and as a producer, this job far and away is the hardest thing I do. Fortune rewards the resilient and the brave though (in theory...) so the past three years of confusion and personal change can in many ways be chalked up to 'learning to cope' with the strains of this job...

you CANNOT EVER believe the hyperbole people throw out...and I'll just say it, because it gets thrown around to the point where it has no value, but when someone calls you something that you're NOT (you know the terms...) you have no chance but to be exposed eventually as a socially awkward human who has managed to define his art by being arrogant, pigheaded, resilient, and good at Protools editing...people need heros, and people also need to go to hangings (Tiger Woods?) ...yeah, I quit drugs, drinking etc...but in a certain way...as a justification for my current frame of mind, those facts have been trumpeted everywhere, so now, if I ever DID have a glass of wine again...it could totally bum some person out that was using my musical metaphors as strength to carry on themselves... it's a pressure that typically has resulted in personal sabotage. Again, luckily, being aware of it now makes it easier to put in perspective, and I have found enough strength to persevere to this point.

If I had one beef on the tour it may be this:

Religion pisses me the fuck off. I believe in god, but again...as a metaphor for the sum of a natural laws and events. I believe in a god as a metaphor for everything...nature, math, something... I don't like people trying to get me into their club, whatever that may be. I am NOT a christian, OR satanist, or buddhist, or anything...I'm a little bit of it all. PLEASE don't pity me or try and convert me. I find that because my music is by nature questioning and observing, that there are a lot of folks that feel a need to 'discuss' that sort of shit with me, but really...I'm about 10 years past any interest in the subject. I much prefer funny things and beautiful things. Art, nature and music sumarize it more than an evening of sitting on a roof, smoking bannana peels and discussing wheather 'trees dream' ...there's some folks that either think they have the answer, or want to believe someone else does...and honestly, ANYONE who tells me (or you) they have 'the answer' should be given a WIDE fucking birth...if for nothing else than the headache and guilt that follows when you want to grab them by the shoulder and scream 'DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT YOU FUCKING FREAK! THERE. IS. NO. ANSWER.' condesention is a trip...and RELENTLESS condesention coupled with 'pity' makes me act in way I feel guilt towards later. (I don't know if thats a word...when I mean is 'condecending'...not an accumulation of moisture...ah you get it...)

...so yeah, there was a couple of those moments but overall...things are good.

My life goals are pretty simple:

1) Be cast adrift in a sea of boobies
2) rawk.

there, I said it.

My life goals are pretty simple:

1) Be cast adrift in a sea of boobies
2) rawk.

there, I said it.

I believe this explains a lot.

My life goals are pretty simple:

1) Be cast adrift in a sea of boobies
2) rawk.

seems close enough to The Answer to me.

That was a pretty clear explanation I think. Am intrigued to see how long before someone says it is an explanation of godlike genius.

The Tiger Woods thing is weird - I was pondering yesterday that the only reason he is being so pilloried for his infidelity is that he appears genuinely sorry and has shown contrition - if he had just laughed it off no-one would have given a toss (except his wife).

[djskrimp]

I just try to imagine, Dev, that you shop for groceries just like I do, and it puts it all in perspective.

Single ply, or double?

...and honestly, ANYONE who tells me (or you) they have 'the answer' should be given a WIDE fucking birth...if for nothing else than the headache and guilt that follows when you want to grab them by the shoulder and scream 'DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT YOU FUCKING FREAK! THERE. IS. NO. ANSWER.'

I decided, years ago, that anyone who claims to know anything for certain is either a fool or a liar. And anyone who says different is both.

Anyway, moving on...

I feel condescension when I'm *in* the situation Dev describes. Some poor deluded monkey simply repeating to me some shit that he heard satan-knows-where. It's kinda cute, really. So even if there is condescension in their tone, it's me who feels the condescension - when I'm in this situation. And when I'm in a hot SAUNA.

yep, the freakshow aspect of being a celebrity is bullshit. I would never even want that for myself.
I'm glad you endure it though cause i love your work and your show was awesome.

[The Dev]

yep, the freakshow aspect of being a celebrity is bullshit.

...fuckin' rights.

I get that Dev, having to always be that person you are on stage, or that person people think you are, is a taxing thing. You truly can't ever have your full self when a fan is there, and you have to always have to have that face at the ready should a fan see you. I think the important thing is that we as fans keep that in mind that you are just a normal human being which is something living on the other side of the music or the fame or what have you we don't see. Which really goes for anything fame-related.

As for religion, I personally am a practicing Catholic, but I totally get where your coming from. I don't claim to know all the answers, or really, any of them. How could I as a mere human being hope to even come to comprehending this endless cosmos that is the universe? I also don't claim to know anything more than anyone else, or be any closer to the truth or the answers than any other human being. I guess why I aspire to an organized religion is that, in Catholicism, I find what calls to me the most. It is what rings true in my heart, but whether or not its true in the greater sense I don't know. But for me, its solace, and its pulled me through the toughest times in my life-- I would be dead now if it wasn't for my faith and something beyond me that has reached out and pulled me from the brink. Inside of me I feel it is these things I believe in, but I always know that what I see and what I believe is, at the most, a glimpse into something greater. No one must share my beliefs, and it pisses me off so much when people who aspire to my religion or really any religion think the best way to share their religion is to shove it down other peoples throats and to say they have all the answers. It tarnishes what I see to be the majority of the religious who are like me and follow what they do but know how far away from the answers they are. What I respect about you Dev is unlike many people in the metal community especially (I think you know what groups I talk about) you are pissed at religion (as you should be because of those individuals who are so militant) but you don't hate us-- I mean, as far as I can tell. What I hate is when groups who are anti-religion simply spit all over it, which makes them no better then those who are militant within religion. It's this vicious cycle that will never end until the militant in both sides can come towards the middle, a healthy respect sort of thing.

Well, anyway, don't know if that makes any sense, but my two cents, I suppose.

getting along is all about tolerance and compromise. No one can ever own the world. The world actualy owns us because at any moment yellowstone could blow up or some cosmic event could wipe us out. It's pretty liberating when you realize we're all walking dead.
I'm off to go mountain biking!!!

I think a lot of the time people struggle to seperate out the fact that you're just a dude, from being 'THE Devin Townsend'. And not just you, anyone in the spotlight really - I know that for me, like djskrimp, I remind myself that you're 'just a dude' by telling myself you go grocery shopping like the rest of us, you take a crap like the rest of us, you scratch your balls like...uh, well...the male 'rest of us', etc.

It stops me personally from putting you up on that silly pedestal and expecting too much from you...because while I'm a fan, I never want to be one of THOSE fans. I try to put myself in your shoes & imagine what it would be like, so that if/when the time comes that I meet you, I can be respectful.

[The Dev]

sylkicks:

Of course I don't hate people because of their religion...I agree with the solace part, all your points are well received. I believe in a moral code, which many religions have going for them (don't murder, don't fuck your buddies spouse etc...) but it's the militant aspect of it all that keeps me away from adhering to any religion in particular...please understand I'm not 'anti-god' or even 'anti-christian' (or catholic, or anything...) it's just by the nature of my music I seem to (semi) constantly have representatives from lots of faiths (christian, jehovah's witness, satanic, athiest, buddhist etc...) that make all the rest of the good folks from any of those walks look ridiculous and frustrating by association. Please understand *that* as the root of my frustration. I love god, it's the fan club that bugs me.

sylkicks:
it's the fan club that bugs me.

The main reason I'm compulsively repelled from any form of religion.

This is kinda gay, but this is the first line in my response to one of those lame "25 questions" facebook things.

"1. I believe there is something beneficial to learn from ALL religions"

I hear ya Dev. Human decency precedes religion.
Somebody said that somewhere. I don't know who.

Having said that, I hope a religious debate doesn't start in this thread.