INTERVIEW: SCOTT STEVENS from THE EXIES – August 2024

According to a recent press release: “The Exies, formed in 1997 and named in homage to John Lennon’s shortened term for the 1960s art students in Hamburg that called themselves “the existentialists”, had a prosperous journey, peaking with 2003’s Inertia and 2004’s Head For The Door. Both albums were released by Virgin Records and combined, sold more than 500,000 copies. In 2007, The Exies put out their third full-length, A Modern Way Of Living With The Truth, before disbanding three years later. Despite frontman Scott Stevens’ pivot to songwriting for others, amassing significant accolades and contributions to over 40 million album sales, the band’s 2010 dissolution left him longing for closure. This yearning and finding himself at a loose end in the beginning days of the pandemic, Stevens began to write and soon realized that new The Exies songs were materializing before him it just started to unfold happen without him realizing. The first of which, “Spirits High” was released in 2023 and achieved significant success at rock radio. “For What It’s Worth” is the next step in the new era of the band. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for more coming from The Exies soon.” I grabbed some phone time with Scott to discuss new music, reunion, The Machine Shop, and more…

Scott: How are you doing, man?

Todd: Good brother. Good. So glad you could take some time out, because 2024 is an interesting twist for you. You’re not just writing hits for everybody. Now, you’re dropping your own music again. This EP is killer.

Scott: Oh, thank you so much, man. That really means a lot. Thank you. I worked very hard on it, but it wasn’t easy to make.

Todd: How different was it for you to shift from the days when you had a band, shifted to writing, including a ton of hits for different artists, and then transitioning back and did your own. The whole process itself has changed so much in the last few years. How hard was it for you to make the transition again back to recording your own stuff?

Scott: Well, it happened organically. I didn’t set out to ever do music for myself again. I was on a trajectory where I was writing and producing for others. I paid my dues just writing and writing and writing in the beginning and getting those songs out there. I think I wrote for two years trying to get songs in the marketplace, and I finally landed a cut or a side as they call it, on a Theory of a Deadman record, which then led me to Lzzy Hale and I Miss the Misery, and then that led me to Shinedown, and so forth. It’s a machine. These bands, some of them, can write on their own, and sometimes they want to just mix it up a little bit and they’ll do a co-write. I happened to be lucky enough to be in the circuit where there were six guys in Los Angeles who were writing with active rock groups. Sometimes you’d write a song that would get on a record, and sometimes you wouldn’t. When I finally established myself as a stop to write with when those bands were in LA, that became regular work. It wasn’t until COVID when we got shut down that nobody was coming to the house and there weren’t any more calendar writes set up. With nobody touring, in the beginning, nobody was really writing either, and it all just stopped. I found myself, as I always do. I get up in the morning and either I go to the guitar, or I go to the piano and I work for 15 or 20 minutes only, and I usually never go too far past that. That’s where all my ideas come from, right out of bed, have a cup of coffee, go to the piano, and then just hum around. I’m always thinking of titles and things like that. Just like writing for other bands, something started to happen, and I started to hear these little melodies and things and go, “Who’s that for? And what is that?” And before I knew it, I realized that those were for me, because I didn’t recognize it right away because I hadn’t done it in, I think 16 years, so it’s hard to recognize that you’re writing for your artist self after not doing it for so long. When I started to get into that and delve into it, it became more of a hobby. It became more of something like, “Let’s just see what happens.” There were no expectations. I wasn’t putting out a record. We weren’t playing any shows. It was COVID. We’re all locked down. It had been 15 years since the band had done anything anyway, so it just became fun and a challenge. I think that is the essence of why it worked the way that it did because I just truly followed my heart, and I studied what we had done in the past. I thought what would Dennis play on the drums here? What would David or Chris Skane play on the guitar? What would Freddy play on the bass? Analyzing my old songs and using those analytics to try to build new songs became how I spent my time. Before I knew it, I had eight or nine ideas that started to flesh themselves out one at a time. I never finished anything, like finished one and then went onto another one. There were always nine or 10 little ideas that I would poke at and finish a little piece of. Then a couple of years had gone by, and I finally finished this song called “Spirits High.” I realized that that had to be the first song that came out because it sounded like “Ugly,” which was a big radio hit for us back in the day, but it was different. Lyrically, it felt a little more immature yet familiar, and then became the work of tracking the vocals. Back to your question, it was the hardest thing I think I’ve ever done because I wasn’t singing for myself anymore. How do I get back into that voice that is the Exies singer? I quit on that song, I think, four or five times out of pure frustration. Just, “Fuck you. I’m not finishing this.” I wish it were a little bit more of a romantic, “Oh, it was easy,” but it wasn’t. It was so difficult. Every time I came back to it, there was a little bit of progression. Maybe there’s a lesson about life there, where you really want something, you got to dig for and you got to be patient for it too. It yielded a cool track, which then led me to finish these other five songs. They were all being done during that time too. “s.A.D” was near completion but wasn’t done. “Euphoria” came a year afterwards. “Closure” was the last one to be done. “The Hill” was, I think, close to being one of the first ideas, but just didn’t materialize towards the end as well. It took a long time, and it was a labor of love and a labor of hate at the same time. I don’t know what else to say about it other than that.

Todd: It almost sounds like the trajectory of your career… fighting, fighting, hitting your sweet spots, fighting some more, then hitting sweet spots. And here we are so many years later.

Scott: Sometimes you need somebody else to look at you and say something about how they perceive you in a few words, like you just did. I guess that’s how it is for me. I have these moments where I’m just fighting through life like the rest of us, and then I hit a song that puts me on a high, and then that wears off, and then you go back. It’s just always up and down, but life is this way.

Todd: My first exposure to you was on a live stage. Before I even knew the music, I got to see you at the world-famous Machine Shop in Flint, Michigan. That was my first exposure to Scott the performer before I knew who Scott the songwriter or the front man was. I still remember there was a sparkle in your eyes the minute you hit the stage. The minute you hit that stage, it was like you were a different animal. How were you able to bury that in the years you were writing and then bring it back? I would’ve loved to have been there at the Viper Room when you did the reunion show and you’ve got another show coming up. What was it like for you to do this writing and producing and being around it without hitting the stage?

Scott: Yeah, it all is the same kind of thing as writing for myself and singing for myself, performing with something that you just forget about when you’re writing music for everybody else. I’m in there working on, I don’t even know how many songs I’ve written with Lzzy Hale. Maybe 30 songs. Maybe a little more. I think I’ve got at least 20 on record. I would always visualize when I was writing with her. I would use her live show a lot as inspiration. Then when I worked with Jonny Hawkins, who’s a great front man from Nothing More, and then Brent Smith, who’s the master ringleader, and just being around that energy, I always just worked off that. I just didn’t see myself on stage anymore. I know when we started to rehearse for the Viper Room show, I think it’s the adage of riding a bike. Things just started to come back naturally. That sparkle in my eye… You forget everything because in that moment, that’s all there is. You have to be attentive and be in it. It’s a switch that just gets flipped, and I don’t know how it really works, the mechanism of how it works. My wife always said this too, she’s like, “You’re backstage with me. We’ll do a shot of Jägermeister or something, and then you’ll go on and play in front of 25,000 people.” And I was like, “I don’t have the answer to why it works. I just do it.” I can’t say that it’s easy because it never is. When you’re on stage, your brain, it’s always got to be one step ahead. You have to have the singing and the playing to be second nature so that you can make eye contact and think about what is coming or anticipate if something goes wrong. If you’re behind all that, it could be frightful, and you may not get out of it. Do you know what I mean? You may wait until the song either falls apart or it ends, and then you have to reset. It’s happened to me in front of many, many people where I just completely lost my place all the way until the end of the song. I haven’t had much practice in getting back on stage, so I’m doing that again now. When the Viper Room hit and we went on, it felt like a fish out of water. It felt like home. It worked and I just went with that feeling, and I’m sure hoping that that’s what takes us into The Machine Shop, which is our home away from home. I just love that place. I’m hoping that that’s the way it goes here too.

Todd: I’m sure it will. You hit on something that I was going to drive home. There is something special about you and Exies and The Machine Shop. What is it about that place specifically that made you even resonate with the emotion of, “That’s my home away from home?”

Scott: I think the things that make you feel comfortable start with people. Kevin was open to us, not that he should have judgment of us in any way. He’s just an all-around good guy. Minty is a good guy too. We just seem to be able to hit it off with them, which, when you have that open heart, anything I think is possible. And the fact that it was not too daunting of a place. It’s not too big. It’s a Goldilocks situation, that place, because it’s just right and it is a good size for people, for attendance. It has an amazing stage. It has volume, which is amazing for a rock show. You don’t want to blow everybody’s head off, but it has to rock, and that place rocks. If we played a show there where the attendance wasn’t great, the next time we came back, nobody held that over our heads. Then we’d play a show where we might sell it out and, of course, that was remembered. I think it’s just that easiness. Everybody there is on point, and it’s professional and it’s clean, and they have a built-in crowd. Here’s the thing, we were the first band to take a picture in the hallway. We were the ones to suggest the pictures in the hallway. I know Kevin announced that last year. I saw a post. We were the first band to do that. I feel like that’s such an honor to somebody. We just came up with that out of thin air. “Why don’t we go do it in the hallway back here?” But I can’t even remember why. We needed a promo shot and Minty wanted to take it, so we suggested there. The rest is history for so many bands. The funny thing about it is, when I look at the pictures, because I see us in the books, we don’t look like the typical band that plays at The Machine Shop. We don’t really fit completely into the niche box. We don’t have long beards, we don’t wear a spiked helmet, or some kind of chainsaw like Jesse or something. We don’t have a gimmick. I love that guys do that. I think it’s awesome. Would Slipknot be Slipknot without their gimmicks? And they’re freaking rad. It’s an unlikely pairing. That just goes to show you that sometimes weird experiments work. I don’t know how else to say it other than it started with them and the shows were always good. It just seemed like a refreshing little oasis for us in the middle of touring hell sometimes, because he treated us good. He fed us good. It was all about that. That’s a testament to whatever his MO is and how he wanted to run this club after all these years. It started with him, and every band I’ve ever worked with has played there, and everybody speaks highly of this place.

Todd: Like you said, you don’t fit that normal niche of what rolls through there, but in the same breath, you exactly fit in that keyhole, which is what makes it work.

Scott: It works. It’s wild. I don’t even know what to say about it. Chad (Nicefield) from Wilson and I talk about it a lot, because he and I work together all the time now. I look at them in the hallway and I’m like, “You guys look like a Machine Shop band.” We both have the same kind of fond memories.

Todd: Well, you’re bringing the show to the Machine Shop on November 9th. You’ve been able to kick the wheels a little bit with the Viper Room show. What’s your wish for this new material and how it blends with the old stuff? Are you looking for it to show growth or are you looking for it to just show that you’ve always had this… you’ve always been here, and you’re back?

Scott: Well, you always dream big when you’re creating, at least for me. When I’m writing in the room and you hear this chorus come back at you or this guitar riff or this drum beat, or whatever it might be, you can’t help but, at least I can’t help but put it in a live setting and, “Wow, this will be so sick when people hear this. And they’ll be able to move like this. And they’ll put their hands up on this lyric. And we’ll just have this connection and it’ll be…” That’s the same for me as it is when I’m working with any of the bands that I’ve worked with over the years. I always put that live element in there. After not doing music for so long, my expectation is that it feels like a continuation. Look, everything competes that’s released at any time. When I write for Chris Daughtry, and I’m producing his record right now, and I just finished Dorothy’s record and her new song, Mud, I took some chances on that record with her. And she and I talked about it, and she was open to it. And this album is killer. It’s so good. It’s got a little bit more of a newer flavor to it. Whereas I’m just trying to stay on the Exies’ path. I’m trying to stay with what made it work, what made it feel authentic, what makes my voice feel authentic, versus trying to do trap beats and things like that. I don’t think that that really works for my band. My hope is that people that liked us before will like this. If it gets some love and it gets out there… It’s on the radio. It’s in the early days, at the beginning. Who knows how high it will go up the chart. I have no expectations, I don’t know. We are getting some love from stations around the country. It’s a little surreal. I would love for it to kick off so that there would be a need enough for us to actually do a tour that mattered, just to go to the cities like Flint and go to Houston and go to Charlotte, North Carolina and go to Upstate New York and go to the places in Pittsburgh where we did well and have a good one last kind of thing, if it is truly the last. You never know. Something kicks off, you could do a reunion run every year, I suppose, if you wanted to. I know that we’re all having a blast doing it, and there aren’t really any expectations other than we just want to play and have a kick-ass time and just make people feel the nostalgia or, as I say now, the new nostalgia and see how far this freaking thing takes us, because it’s going to be up to the fans and it’s also going to take money to make things move. It just does in this world. It takes some investment to drive things. We can’t tour without a certain amount of a guarantee so that we can get to the place and play it, because we’re not on a bus and, really, we’re not fully supporting a record here. We’re just at the beginning, so we’re at baby steps and we’re just trying to figure it all out. That’s the truth. We’re just trying to figure it out. And this is the second show.

Photo credit: Jeff Mintline – MintyPics.com

Todd: Looking back over your career, what’s the one piece of advice you wish someone would’ve given you starting out, knowing what you know now?

Scott: I think that it’s just maybe that you’re going to hear “No” a lot, and you’re going to have to get used to the word no, and you’re going to have to get thick skin and treat it like a rubber bullet, because if you listen to what everybody says, you’ll never get anywhere. I don’t think that when I first started writing for myself or for whatever, the amount of no’s that I would hear, and I would have those moments where I just thought, well, that’s it. Every record label in Los Angeles saw us and passed on us, so how can I be doing music for a career if I can’t get a record deal? And knowing that only a couple of weeks later, we would play the Viper Room again and a guy would offer us an indie deal, which is the thing that changed my life. I think getting used to no, and then somebody just saying it’s a long game and you got to have patience, and you got to be resilient. I learned that along the way. I think had I known a little bit earlier, I might’ve made some decisions a little bit differently on single choices and to be stronger in the face of adversity when I had a set single and somebody from the label, might be the head of the label, came in and goes, “Nope, it’s not the single. It’s this single.” For me, to be able to fight back, because them choosing that single caused the end of that record cycle because it didn’t work. I think fighting for what I believed in and trusted in my gut was the advice that I really needed early on. But anything else, I don’t think I would change anything. For what it’s worth, that song’s all about that. And it’s not everything. It comes out how we want it to. But sometimes what happens is what you need for life experience. And when I look back on it, I know that at any given moment when I felt present, and I felt happy that I just did it the best that I could do it in that time. There was lots of down times as well, just like it is for any of us. You only see yourself in hindsight. It’s hard to see yourself as you’re living it and doing it. All that I’ve learned, this EP right now, I did it for all the right reasons, and that is that I did it independently and I did it with my heart. I didn’t let my head get in the way too much. I picked the songs that I wanted to come out, and I just followed what felt true. I think that I’ve ended up on my feet. No matter how far these songs go or how big they get or anything like that, it’s irrelevant because how all that happens to me isn’t up to me. I can only control what I’m doing, and I focus on the what and how. It’s not up to me. I feel like I did it right on this, and I’m proud of it, and it feels like an extension of what we had already done. That’s it. There’s the document of 2020 to 2022, late 2022, and 2023. That’s it. How does it hit you when you hear it?

Todd: I love the old stuff. I love the new stuff. It’s as if, other than some musical growth in your writing, but sonically, it’s the next step. It’s no different than the old stuff. Like you said, you can’t go throw it in a trap beat or a bunch of layered vocals or anything that isn’t you guys because it would wash away. For you to look back and remember where you started, what you loved in the beginning, and to be able to pick that back up and put your own stamp on it 100% with your own voice and, like you said, with Chris and Freddy, speaks volumes to how comfortable you are in your own musical skin.

Scott: Yeah, I think it’s funny that you say that. Wow, the world is just a trip because Freddy, when we finished the Viper Room show, he looked at me when the curtain closed and he put his hand on my shoulder and he goes, “That was awesome, man. Welcome back. And how cool…” He goes, “And you never sounded better.” And he goes, “And you never spoke to the crowd better than you did tonight in all the years we were a band.” And he said, “I think you’re finally comfortable in your skin.” Exactly what you just said. And I said, “Geez, I don’t ever look at it like that, but I suppose, as time goes on, we are who we are, man. You are who you are, and so am I, and so is Kevin, and so is Minty, and so is my wife.” And we figure out who we are as we go. I think The Exies in the beginning, we were in fight mode the whole time trying to prove ourselves, trying to get over that hill. We’d get close, and then it wouldn’t quite happen. And “Ugly” was a trajectory. I remember them saying, “It’s going to go number one,” and it hit number four, and that was as far as it was going to go. And I’ll take it all day long because a number four song, that was fine with me. And 40 million streams later, I’m okay with it. It’s fine. What’s different now is time. Time has changed everything for this band, and that is what I hope gets to flourish a little bit more. Somehow the miracles of the universe, whatever it is, that we figure out to get a shot, to just go out and be ourselves. And if there is some kind of positive redemption in that, some kind of life-fulfilling achievement, like, “Hell yeah, we had a slight comeback,” or “We did this,” or it wasn’t a full-on comeback, or whatever it was, how amazing would that be? Because it would also let others know that it’s just never too late to dream. When you think it’s over, it isn’t. We’ve already won by playing our first show, and it was a killer. We could stop right now and it’s already a win, but I think we’re all… It took one week, Todd, from the show when it ended for my bass player to email everybody. He says, “Well, I didn’t realize how I’ve missed playing with you guys and how I’ve missed playing those songs.” He was the one. He’s in Everclear and he’s got a full-time gig and they’re playing all the time, and the fact that Freddy was the first one to say that that was huge because he realized, “This is my band.” Because it’s his band with me. He and I started it. To want to play another show again, it’s a real gift.

Photo credit: Jeff Mintline – MintyPics.com

Todd: Well, you guys are the only two constants from start to finish, so that makes sense.

Scott: Dennis killed it, but he practices drums. You wouldn’t believe it. He’s got this kit set up in his garage. When I went over to his new house a few years back, I think, well, maybe 2019 before COVID, he has a drum set in his garage set up, and it’s on a little stage, he’s got lights, and he has a fog machine. I was like, “What? Who’s going to rock and roll fantasy camp every weekend? You are at your own house.” Who sets up fog machines? It’s freaking great. It really touched my heart because I will never forget it. I’m telling you about it five years later. And I’m like, “That’s cool.” Because even though he works a corporate job and he’s still in music, he still loved his drums, and he still loves to play. And he crushed it at the show. He was great. He is just a freaking beast. He’s not so fancy. He’s not doing all that stuff, he’s like Phil Rudd from ACDC. He’s just there. Sometimes you need a drummer that’s just there.

Toddstar: Absolutely. Somebody’s got to anchor the boat.

Scott: He does, man. He is the anchor. And Freddy is solid as hell. And Chris is the punk rock wild guitar player, and I’m just the rhythm singer.

Todd: Listen, man, before I cut you loose, I just want to know, thinking back on all the songs you’ve written… hit, not a hit, released, not released, just sitting in the back of your mind somewhere, we all have that one thing we want remembered about us. If you could pick a song title or a song lyric that you wanted as your epitaph, what would it be?

Scott: Well, that’s a tough one, man. I think I would have to give it up to my Shinedown song that I came in with, which was, “How Did You Love?” And I felt like when I came up with that concept, and I told Brent about it, I said… I got the idea from watching a documentary about Hitler. There was Hitler with his arm stretched out, and he had a sea of people pledging him. Nietzsche would say, “He’s had greatness.” I don’t know if I would say he’s great, but greatness, let’s just use that as these people that become these monumental figures throughout history. Here’s this one man who thinks he has the whole world, but he really has nothing. Ind in the end, it’s going to be how did he love himself and how did he treat others? Did people love him back? I think him putting a bullet in his own head proves my point, is that he was empty. I think that that lyric, I think that’s it. I think in the end, all the things that we create, did we love ourselves, did we give love, and did we receive it? Because there isn’t anything else at the end. Everything else comes out of our relationships and how we feel towards one another and how we feel about ourselves. I’m the one that brought it in. He and I finished it together. I knew he was the right voice for it. It was a number one song. They still play it to this day, so it will stand the test of time. That is the lyric right there. It’s funny because I’ll never forget the day that I was at my piano, like I said when we started this interview, and I was saying, “How do you love?” I was playing it on the piano, and my wife came out of the bathroom from upstairs and she goes, “What is that?” And I said, “I don’t know. I’m working on it right now.” And I said, “I got that idea from watching that thing, that documentary that we watched a couple of days ago.” I realized as I was talking to her, I was like, oh, it’s got to be past tense. It’s got to be, “How did you?” That’s the way to say it, even though it’s not the easiest way to sing it. “How do you love,” sings better. How did you love? How do you love? See, “How do you,” flows better. But it doesn’t work as good. Brent and I, I talked to him about that, and I just said, “Look, it’s going to take this extra beat when you’re singing it.” But he has a very enunciating, powerful voice, so he was able to grab that and make it work. And once I heard him sing it, I was like, “That’s it. That’s going to work.” So it was a special song right from its beginning, earliest beginnings. Sometimes that’s what happens with all the things I’ve been a part of. The biggest ones are the ones that just had this little extra shine to them. I don’t know how or why, but they just do. I’m grateful that I got to produce it. I’m grateful I got to produce the whole band in a studio on that song. I’d never done a project that big at that time. I was like, man, they put me in a hot seat. But it came out great.

Photo credit: Jeff Mintline – MintyPics.com

Todd: As always, you rose to the occasion.

Scott: Thank you, bro.

Todd: It looks like I will miss the Machine Shop show on November 9 due to a business trip, I wish you well, safe travels, and hopefully that just kicks everything in the ass, and we get a full proper tour out of this.

Scott: I sure hope so, Todd. Thank you so much.

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Category: Interviews