Location: Boogaloo / Zagreb / Croatia
Interview date: 08.02.2009
It’s 7:30 PM. We’ve walked through the doors of the Boogaloo club and settled into the soft cushions of the armchairs in the main hall. Of course, wandering around the hall at this hour, while the bands are doing their soundchecks, isn’t allowed for just anyone, but somehow we got waved through every single door. We’re waiting for Manni Schmidt, guitarist of Grave Digger, who’s playing the venue in Zagreb tonight. Grave Digger played Ljubljana the day before and are slowly closing in on the end of their three-week winter tour in support of the new studio album “Ballads of a Hangman“. After the Zagreb show (RockLine report HERE) they have just three gigs left before the tour wraps up.
About twenty minutes go by and the friendly guitarist shows up, kindly leads us to the “catering” on the first floor and orders us not to budge an inch left or right. He offers us drinks and food at the table where Thilo Hermann and Stefan Arnold of Grave Digger had been feasting in shifts, along with the members of the support bands Taletellers and Alestorm, and says to give him another 10 minutes or so to sort out his guitars.
RockLine: How’s the tour going, how are you feeling?
Manni: Not exactly the best, but not that bad either. Quite a few bands are out on tour right now just like Grave Digger, like Axel Rudi Pell, Edguy, Kreator, Saxon. Album sales are pretty weak at the moment. But just being on this tour feels really good again. We’ve got the new album out and the crowd reactions to it have been fantastic.
RockLine: I can’t get past this one, but at yesterday’s Grave Digger show in Ljubljana, you showed up on stage twice. The first time you went up on stage with the Slovenian band Lazy Bones (Lene kosti). It was a really interesting experience, you actually shocked us. How did that come about?
Manni: That ugly punk sitting across from me (looking at Milan Krušič, singer of Lene kosti, editor’s note.) who’s the singer, ha, ha, ha, ha…
Manni:… is a very good friend of mine. I always told him: “Hey Milan, get your Lazy Bones back together already.” Then last year he called me up and told me they’d reunited. I said: “Awesome! If we ever play Ljubljana again, we’ll put you on the bill as our opening act.” I did everything I could to make it happen. I talked to our promoter, our booking agent, basically everybody, and I went out of my way to make sure Lazy Bones got this chance. Quite a few bands were fighting for that slot in Ljubljana, but we turned them all down and told them that this time Lazy Bones would be opening for us in Ljubljana. When I was watching them from the front of the stage during their set, Milan impressed me so much, ha, ha, ha, ha…, that I joined them for one of the songs in their set.
RockLine: It felt phenomenal.
Manni: Yeah. The people in the crowd looked pretty surprised. Even both support bands on this tour, Alestorm and Taletellers, were shocked when I walked out on stage with Lazy Bones.
RockLine: And what did the Grave Digger guys say about that?
Manni: Oh,… everyone in Grave Digger knows Milan and his crazy metal family, ha, ha, ha… We’ve known each other for years. Yesterday was basically a family reunion for us. The whole band gathered in the pit and watched Lazy Bones play. And we had a really good time.
RockLine: You’ve just released your new studio album “Ballads Of A Hangman”. Stripped down to the bone again, with poisonous, forward-charging riffs …
Manni: Yes. That was our basic goal.
RockLine: How did the album develop? How did it come together?
Manni: The most important thing about the new album is that we brought in a new band member for the new songs, another guitarist. That’s Thilo Hermann. We’ve known each other for years. After the “Liberty Or Death” tour, we felt the need for a change. A need for something that would inspire us again. We thought of Thilo. I’ve known him since 1987. Of course, it had been many years since we last saw each other, so we had to ask around and work pretty hard to find out where the guy lives these days, what he’s doing, and what his phone number is. Then Chris (Chris Boltendahl, singer of Grave DIgger, editor’s note) called him up and asked: “Hey, are you maybe interested in joining the band and getting back into the music scene?” After Thilo left Running Wild in 2000, he got an apartment sorted, started a family, found a job, and so on… and he felt the urge to come back to music. The timing was right and he agreed. Thilo also had some fantastic ideas that we used for the new album. The two of us wrote the material for the new Grave Digger songs together. We pooled our ideas and it was fascinating to watch what grew out of it and how the songs developed. Thilo contributed a major share to our new album.
RockLine: So you trusted Thilo from the very start to hold his own on stage too, and having him join Grave Digger was pretty much a natural move?
Manni: Basically, yes. Totally automatic for us. He played three warm-up shows with us in Germany. That was two years ago. Then he played with us across South America, in New York… Then we started recording the album, and now here we are. With Thilo in the band, things work great.
RockLine: Manni, what inspired you as a kid to pick up a guitar and decide to become a guitarist?
Manni: Even as a kid I was always listening to the radio, turning the dial, searching for different stations and soaking up all kinds of music. But when I heard Status Quo for the first time, I was around 11 or 12, I said to myself: “Hey, I really like this stuff! These electric guitars and this energy.” Two years later I bought a guitar and tried to follow Status Quo songs by ear. That was thirty years ago, there was no internet back then, so basically I taught myself to play guitar. I hung out with friends, we’d get together, practice together, listen to records and try to catch by ear what they were playing and then play the same thing on our guitars. After Status Quo I discovered AC/DC, Scorpions, and then there was blues too, like Rory Galagher, Johnny Winter and so on… I look for inspiration in all kinds of music and don’t focus on just one direction. Even today I listen to lots of different music. On tour, when heavy metal is with you day after day, when you’re riding around between venues on the bus, lying in your bunk on the tour bus, I always put on music that relaxes me,…
RockLine: So you never run out of ideas for new riffs?
Manni: Never. Different ideas keep popping into my head all the time. At home I’m well prepared and I always jot these ideas down as they come.
RockLine: You and Chris work like the perfect couple driving Grave Digger forward.
Manni: We finish an album, release it, and once the tour has run its course, the circle closes. So we find ourselves back at the beginning. But I always have some new ideas up my sleeve that I pull out of my pocket, show to Chris, and everything happens very automatically. We don’t even stress about it much, because things between us go very spontaneously, especially when it comes to understanding what the other one means, what he’s hinting at and so on…
RockLine: Are there any differences between watching the home crowd in Germany from the stage and watching crowds in the rest of Europe and on other continents? How do different crowds react at Grave Digger shows?
Manni: Definitely. Just look at these two shows, Ljubljana and Zagreb today: at both places, people are overjoyed that we’ve come to play for them. In Germany, for example, when we show up in Bochum, where they have the Zeche club, or in Hamburg or Munich, you know, there are tons of shows by bands in our line of work. There’s one of those bands playing every day. There, only the real, die-hard fans of our band come to a Grave DIgger show, people who want to see only Grave Digger. Out here, outside Germany, all the heavy metal lovers come together in front of the stage and basically celebrate, it’s a kind of festival, a metal holiday, and that’s a really powerful feeling. But crowds do differ from venue to venue, depending on the mentality.
RockLine: Let’s go back to the new record “Ballads Of A Hangman” for a moment. It feels like you’ve stripped away the symphonic elements of its predecessor “Libery Or Death”. It sounds much more old-school. How do you see that?
Manni: You know, when we start writing songs, we don’t think about that at all. It’s the beginning of a process that develops very independently, nobody thinks much about how something has to sound. You don’t even really know what’s taking shape, you just follow your feelings while you write. Only after half a year, when this process of creating the first raw recordings is finished, can you look back for the first time at what you’ve created and make your own personal analysis. When we recorded “Liberty Or Death”, for example, we needed more guitars in certain places to get a fuller sound. In the opening track of that album, for example, some parts have eight or ten guitar tracks stacked on top of each other. All those guitars play slightly different melodies to get a bigger melodic effect, more harmony, but it’s not always worth overdoing it. It mustn’t become over-produced. The problem would be that we couldn’t recreate something like that on stage later. “Liberty Or Death” really had an interesting array of differently sounding guitar lines. From clean to crunchy to distorted,…. When we started on “Ballads Of A Hangman” and the writing process was done and it was time to record, we first sat down together and agreed that we wanted to keep the raw character. We arranged the soundscape of the individual instruments on the album the way Grave Digger would for a live show. Okay, we recorded a bit more vocals and mid-range guitars, but that was it. Nothing more. A few small touches, like a barely noticeable bit of keyboards in a few rare spots on the album. And if you asked me how the next album will sound, all I can tell you is that I have absolutely no idea.
RockLine: Do you have any plans to release a solo album at some point?
Manni: Ha, ha, ha… You really know everything, my brother. Besides Grave Digger, I also play in a band from Hamburg called Übergas. It’s a German band, the lyrics are in German. We don’t sound exactly like Panthera, but it’s a more modern-leaning kind of metal. As for me, I’m also writing songs for my own solo studio album, and the songs will be stylistically a kind of cross between blues rock and heavy metal. So we’ll see how it plays out. I have a couple of friends helping me with it. The only thing that isn’t settled yet is the whole business side of things. When the tour with Grave Digger wraps up, I’ll devote my time to finishing my solo studio album.
RockLine: Will you be singing on your studio album?
Manni: No, no. But I have a good friend who’s a very good singer and… We’ll see what happens.
RockLine: When I visited your official website, I noticed you have a special hobby. You’ve modified one of your Dean guitars, which you’re also using on the current Grave Digger tour.
Manni: Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, plain black guitars look terribly boring to me. I stripped every last bit of hardware off the body of this guitar, picked up some tools and made a few scratches, tattoos, and I stuck a Motorhead sticker on it too, ha, ha, ha…
RockLine: So all this activity alongside Grave Digger is your way of filling your time. I assume you’re a professional musician and make a living from music?
Manni: Yes. Well, I’m trying, ha, ha, ha…
RockLine: And do you plan to push Übergas, or the band that records your solo album, onto the road for a tour in the future?
Manni: Definitely. The whole Grave Digger thing doesn’t take as much of my time as it might seem. Apart from Grave Digger, all of us in the band are involved in a bunch of other things. Grave Digger traditionally focuses only on so-called “true heavy metal”. Like I said, I’m personally drawn to other genres too, and I think it’s very good for a musician to try his hand at lots of different musical areas.
RockLine: Is Grave Digger planning any festival shows this summer?
Manni: Definitely. The promoters are currently watching how our new album sells and how well this tour goes. Then they’ll decide how interesting we are to them. But we already have confirmed shows at some festivals this year. A few smaller ones in Germany and, for example, this year’s Gods Of Metal festival in Italy.
RockLine: You’ve only got three dates left. The Czech Republic, Belgium, and then Bulgaria. The order of your last two dates is especially fascinating. Will there be any trouble getting from Vosselar in Belgium to Sofia in Bulgaria in just one day?
Manni: You know, right now we’re all feeling like our batteries have run a bit low. The tour is nearing its end and that’s when we always feel a bit worn out. This time is no different. We’ll be flying to Sofia, so this situation isn’t anything new for Grave Digger. And we’re all just itching to get home to our families.
RockLine: Great. Well, that’s it. No more questions. Thanks for your valuable time, and I wish you a great show tonight in Zagreb and safe travels ahead.
Manni: Oh, thanks. And if you have any more questions, no problem, just send them by e-mail after I get back from the tour.
Heartfelt thanks to Milan Krušič of Lene kosti, who made the interview with Grave Digger possible for RockLine.
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