mxdwn had an opportunity to chat with Christopher Hall of Stabbing Westward about Chasing Ghosts, the first new album from the band since they broke up in 2002. His approach to life—reflected in the new record—is influenced heavily by his new reality. Married for over a decade and now the father of two boys under 10, his life spills out in his music. The album’s sonic power propels the listener from the shallow to the deep end of the pool as the lyrics provide effortless emotion. By the end, it’s clear the ghosts that we are chasing live within ourselves. Stabbing lives up to its namesake by setting them free.
Hall begins the interview by comparing email interviews to live interviews.
Chris Hall: I think live interviews work better than via email. Email gives a lot of time to think of the answers. And sometimes they change so they’re never spontaneous, and also you don’t have any time to follow up. I think you get more of a conversation when you’re talking to me.
mxdwn: Talk to us about the impacts that fatherhood in the pandemic had on your music and how did the time with your kids change your approach to work? Are your kids musical?
CH: They’re too young to know yet. I discovered music in the fourth or fifth grade, I started to get into listening to the radio and singing along. I picked up my dad’s old trumpet, he taught me how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and I just kind of took off on my own from there. So my approach is to be kind of hands-off, let them figure out who they are and who they want to be. And just because I’m a musician, I don’t want to shove it on them. But I do have a studio in my house that has a bunch of vintage synths that have a million knobs and sliders. I’ll be working on a mix, and they’ll come in and just flip on a keyboard and start with whatever sound pops up, focus on making noise and turning knobs, and doing crazy things. Sometimes, I’m like “Oh My God, stop that!” and other times, I just start laughing and realize okay, the next 15 minutes are going to be spent making fun noises with them. I recorded my six-year-old when I had a microphone up one time. He came in and saw the microphone and he just started talking into it. It wasn’t hot, but he was making noises and I stopped doing what I was doing, turned up the mics, put up a drum beat, and he started, basically, rapping. I recorded him singing the Cock-a-Doodle-Doo song and layered a delay on it. And he was just laughing. He started going up really high and it came out like a screaming emo song. It was unbelievably funny, but at the same time, it was like musical and cool. I’m just gonna let them come to it on their own. My eight-year-old just finished book 5 of Harry Potter, so yes, it’s awesome. I mean, he’s in second grade and just finished a 400-500 page book. Which is just awesome.
mxdwn: In an interview, you said something that really struck me, which was the realization that nothing at all had changed after your first gold record. Was that an emotional letdown? You actually use the phrase, “I was still hemorrhaging girlfriends. I was still that loser, that long-haired loser.” I was like wow, what’s that about?
CH: I think that’s just a general lesson in life. That we set these weird little goals for ourselves. I think if I get that promotion or if I just get that car. We set these weird, random goals for ourselves, and when I’ve achieved that, I’m gonna be someone else. I’m gonna be better than I am now. If that’s your mindset, then you’re going to be constantly disappointed because unless you’re actually doing the hard work to change yourself, you’re not ever going to be anyone but who you are. And at the same time, why be like everyone else. I actually liked who I was in a weird sort of way? Yeah. Which is what I thought, that when I get that gold record and I’m a rock star, blah blah blah, then I’ll show all those kids from high school what I’ve done. They don’t even give a shit. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. I did this for me. You know, if you’re doing it so that you can make someone else see you, then you’ve failed your entire journey.
mxdwn: That’s so external and I liked that internal part of you. I think Chasing Ghosts speaks a lot to that.
CH: It does. That’s the theme of the record. It’s not literally ghosts. It’s chasing down (heavy sigh) all those things from the past, not chasing them down, but constantly chasing. Constantly trying to catch up with these things from your childhood, you know, your really early years. My wife makes fun of me because I’ll see something from the ’80s, from high school, that all the cool kids had. That I never had. We were a really dirt-poor family. I’m like Oh My God, a Members Only jacket—I have to have that. I’m gonna wear it and people will see that I’m cool. I’m going to wear an Izod, and it’s going to be so cool. I’m finally . . . Then, I’m like wait. Stop. What are you doing? I’ll see like an ’80s car, it’s like, I gottta get that Camaro so I can go to a KISS concert. It’s trying to make up for some things, I think.
mxdwn: That rolls into this question, I’m going to skip a couple because you just raised a really cool point about the internship you spoke about and you know, getting tacos and coffee. What was that all about? Do you find tasks like that give one a sense of humility? And was that better for you in a technical sense, or creative sense?
CH: I didn’t need a sense of humility, at that point. A lot of people asked how do you go from a rock star to that? It’s because he knows more than I do about the stuff that I want to know more about. So therefore I must humble myself and open my mind to this experience. And I’m gonna learn from this guy. And this is his process. It’s not just his process. Every producer or engineer’s process is to get somebody who does the dirty work around the studio. That eases their job. And then they slowly but surely teach you the stuff that they need to know. And if you whine and complain about sweeping the floor and wrapping the cables, then you’re not going to learn anything. And just do what needs to be done, keep your ears and eyes open all the time so that it becomes a valuable experience. For me, it was amazing. I loved it.
mxdwn: Yeah, I totally relate to that. You’ve spoken about that and it’s kind of the sense that back to the trenches is your now normal? Looking back, is that really just you staying true to your roots? You know, setting up your own gear, driving the van, finding your own Starbucks now. Do you have the hunger again, like like a lot of athletes and performers talk about
CH: No. We toured Brussels and traveled by very comfortable means, and I won’t travel by coach again. No, I don’t want to be in the trenches now, (laughing) because I’m fifty-something years old. For me, music right now is a passion, it’s not my livelihood. It’s a good feeling not to worry about the money part. It’s not my job.
mxdwn: Jack White speaks about that a lot. He calls it the “life-altering importance of creative independence.” Do you have that creative independence? Do you think it’s life-altering to be able to release when you want, write when you want, all that? Is that important to you?
CH: It is, but I don’t have it.
mxdwn: You don’t?
CH: No. I’m still part of a band, still part of a relationship. We all work in tandem. You don’t always get what you want. Sometimes you fight for something, and just end up losing because Walter’s a tenacious son of a bitch (much laughing). Sometimes I fantasize about walking into my studio and turning on the lights and writing a beautiful song. But I’m mixing an album for The Hunger. Actually, it’s finished, and now they’re signing with a label. And now I’m starting an album for another industrial band, and so I’m putting all of my creative efforts into other people, which is really fulfilling because when it’s your music, that becomes so intensely personal, and it’s like, painful. When it’s someone else’s music, I have weird objectivity, where I can hear the flaws, and I can hear the gems, polish the gems and cut out the flaws and not feel like I’m doing surgery on myself. When you write a song, the parts become so precious. You don’t want to cut any of them out. I’m making pain for someone else when I do that. But I’m doing it from a place of love and objectivity. And you asked me for my ears, these are my ears. I don’t like this part. I love this part. Let’s feature this part. Get rid of the part over here. And it’s always a little rough to get started on that stuff. But once you understand, that’s why you want me there. It’s Oh Wow, we got a song! There’s a lot of joy in that. Taking other people’s good ideas and turning them into really great ideas. I find a lot of satisfaction in that.
mxdwn: When I was listening to the new album, I can’t help but feel this deep sense of self-awareness, self-blame, and then self-healing. I know Walter is the music and you the words, but where are those feelings coming from? Both of you?
CH: No. The words are from me. We kind of split the music 50/50. He did half the record. I did half the record. Yeah, I’m married for over 10 years, we have two little kids and that’s my reality. And so, that’s where my words come from. I’m not going out to the clubs and dating 100 women or anything like that (laughter). That was actually, when I look back, the stuff that I wrote, that stuff is more shallow. Because it might seem exciting at the time. But now, life is real. This is real. This is my life. These are my two little people that I want to learn who they are. And to do that, it’s the most serious thing in my entire life that I’ll ever do. It’s to be a dad and be a husband. So the challenges of that is, that it’s a far deeper ocean to draw from than the shallowness of the clubs.
mxdwn: That makes so much sense and actually brings me to this question. You said in an interview about Walter – “Carves Mount Rushmore: No Sketch Needed.” That’s a huge compliment. It’s also an awesome title for an album or song.
CH: (laughing) It’s also a bit of an insult.
mxdwn: Okay, that too.
CH: He’ll write an idea, and being a producer, I see the good and the bad. Let’s start with the bad. That’s kind of what I do. And that’s what I did in my old band The Dreaming. We had a couple of really good writers and we would just toss out ideas, but everyone has a certain amount of respect, I suppose. They just liked how I could put all the different ideas together into a single song that seemed to have all the elements that you wanted. And I got really used to that role, being a producer. I went back and started working with Walter, understanding how to produce a record. I forgot that Walter was his own producer, the same way that Andy from Stabbing was his own producer and I was just the singer. And so when the band broke up, Walter stayed the same, but I grew into something else. And then when we got back together, he hadn’t recognized quite how much I had grown, and that caused a lot of friction and tension, but in a good way. I don’t think Ghosts changed from the moment I looked at the music. I sent it to him. He worked all of it into the most amazing thing. That’s great. What if we did this? What if we tried that, but I don’t think it changed from the weekend he wrote to the time it got cut.
mxdwn: Reading the lyrics feel like Ghosts is a bunch of love songs. Not maybe like being loved, but lost love. Yearning for love. The music is so powerful and strong, but the lyrics are so tender and almost vulnerable.
CH: That’s kind of what makes us such a weird band. We’re like, musically, one thing, and then lyrically, like Journey. The way that I write, it’s not very, quote, unquote, industrial. I have more in common with Depeche Mode.
mxdwn: You know, I got that vibe, too. Tobias Forge of Ghost talks about that. Like how they’re a Swedish Death Metal band with Abba lyrics and melodies.
CH: Oh, that’s funny (chuckling)
mxdwn: You reminded me of that when you described Stabbing as Skinny Puppy featuring Adele.
CH: Yeah. Yeah. (hearty laughter)
mxdwn: So if you could go back in time and change something you did to get where you are now, what would you do? And I just wrapped that around your comment you made about legacy and you didn’t want to be that? Was that intentional, so you didn’t have that regret?
CH: If I could go back in time and change one thing, I would go back and remind myself to enjoy the journey so much more. I look back on the six or eight years that we were in it, touring and making records and whatnot. There was so much negative energy between the guys in the band, so much ego, so much, just like taking it all for granted. Being in these crazy places and being around so many different bands and fans and people. And having tunnel vision, not seeing the beauty around me. Being so tired and so angry and so scared of my voice falling. Every day it was just like I was just so scared of losing my voice, I screamed so hard, I’m not trained to do that. So there’s just all this anxiety and stress all the time. And Walter looks back on those days and he’s just got so many great memories about it. I’m like where was I? Well, I was pissed off all the time. Always sitting somewhere in a corner, not talking because I was afraid of losing my voice. I was always angry. I kind of remember that. I wish I could just go back and enjoy it a bit more.
mxdwn: That’s a great, great lesson. That’s very important. The last question is just kind of a fun one. I ask musicians what five bandmates, living or dead, would you love to jam with for a session?
CH: Am I singing? (laughing)
mxdwn: Yeah, unless you don’t want to.
CH: No, I do. John Taylor would be my bass player, from Duran Duran. Martin Gore would be on keys, from Depeche Mode. Robert Smith (The Cure) would be playing guitar. And I’d either get Steve Perkins from Jane’s Addiction or whoever the drummer (Chris Sharrock) for Icicle Works’ first record was amazing. Oh, and I’d also get Daniel Ash too.
mxdwn: Hey, do you like Devo? Some of your music and comments make me think of them.
CH: I do. I do like Devo. My favorite from that era is Gary Numan. One of my favorite musicians of all time.
mxdwn: Oh, that’s awesome. I could monopolize your time for another hour, but I’m sure you’ve got things to do.
CH: I have to go to Costco.
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