Mind Over Metal: I’m talking with Nate Hall from U.S. Christmas here. This is Matt Longo from Mind Over Metal, and I want to ask about the recording of this album because US Christmas has a lot of core members. You’ve got a lot of guests that were playing on this album and you hammered the thing out in a weekend, I understand? How did that whole thing come together?
Nate Hall: We got Sanford to come down here and it’s just the way it worked out. We knew we could do it in a weekend.
Mind Over Metal: So part of it was just that you have to do this by virtue of the fact that you have other jobs and lives, right?
Nate Hall: Yeah, every recording we’ve ever done has taken a couple days. We just have to have it done that way. We’re so used to it. An album with grit and range was what I wanted to do. Justin and BJ and Josh had been in the band for like a month when we recorded it, and Meg literally came in blind and did her parts. It was real quick.We did everything live. Most of the stuff you hear on that album are first takes. It was real easy. Sanford got everything right the first time.
Mind Over Metal: That’s cool.
Nate Hall: Yeah, he’s a good dude and I’ve known him for a long time. He knew what we were going for and he knew how to get it.
Mind Over Metal: Yeah, and that creates more of a spontaneous, live character to it as well so you don’t have to have a forced, contrived way to recreate this sound.
Nate Hall: Yeah. I would never want to do anything track by track. It just seems like it wouldn’t work for our band. We’ve got to do it live.
Mind Over Metal: I’m starting to delve more into your back catalogue, which has for some reason eluded me over the years. But the thing that was great when I first heard about you is that you were on Neurot, which is becoming one of the most consistent labels out there. I was wondering what the difference has been working with them in particular?
Nate Hall: Well, it was weird. The Russian label… RAIG really only happened about 6 months before Neurot and Scott [Kelly] actually heard the record that RAIG put out—called Salt the Wound—and he really liked it; Steve von Till really liked it. They wanted to put it out but we had the agreement with RAIG. It was pretty reasonable…but they had the rights to put it out right then. The Russian label was really good. It’s run by this dude named Igor and he’s a good dude. He was always real straight with us, you know? That was a great record for us, but Neurot has global distribution. It made it a lot easier for people to hear us. I didn’t have any complaints at all about RAIG. I’ve really been thankful for them because he went through the trouble to find our music and give us an offer. He had his eyes and ears open and that’s more than I can say for a lot of labels, you know? He goes out and finds what he wants to put out. Scott and those guys were kind of doing the same thing with Combat Music Radio. That’s how we got heard…
Mind Over Metal: Stateside?
Nate Hall: That’s how Scott heard it. I remember sitting with Matt and we were listening to “Return to Zero”, which was Scott’s show, and hearing our song come on there—it was really weird. A couple days later I got a call from Scott and worked it all out.
Mind Over Metal: Nice.
Nate Hall: Yeah, it all kind of happened real quick. The label has been really good to work with.
Mind Over Metal: Speaking of your album titles, I’ve got a quick question for you—Do you mean for all of your album titles to be these punchy, monosyllabic declarations like Run Thick in the Night and Salt the Wound and Eat the Low Dogs?
Nate Hall: Well, you know, Salt the Wound—John, who played bass in the band for a long time…I think that was his idea to call it that. Eat the Low Dogs, that was my idea, and Run Thick in the Night—those were things that just sort of repeated themselves in the songs. There were lines or ideas that were repeated throughout those albums. I just took the things that stood out to me the most. I didn’t do it intentionally but I do put a lot of thought into the words I write. I try to put as much effort into the words as I do into the guitar playing or the song writing.
Mind Over Metal: So do you usually write the music and then apply lyrics to it, or do you have words sort of lying around?
Nate Hall: Oh man, they just sort of come together. I let a lot of it come together naturally. I can’t really explain how it happens….you know? Good ideas cooking in my brain and it just happens sometimes. You can’t really force things. It doesn’t really work for me to do that. I could sit down and try to write something and it’s just not going to work. I get an idea in my head and I just play it and that’s the way all the good songs that we’ve written have come about. It’s something that’s going to continue to happen as long as I leave it alone.
Mind Over Metal: That’s interesting. I was actually talking with Steve von Till a couple weeks ago and I was asking him how he distinguishes his solo project music, and I really like that, for Harvestman, he said “plugging in my guitar spaceship and see where it goes”—so how does performing music feel to you, Nate?
Nate Hall: Well, it’s really, really enjoyable. I like it now as much as I ever have before. It’s something that I feel totally comfortable doing and it’s something that will always make me feel good. I’ve been really, really sick and played shows and felt better. Not great, you know, but better. You have to live to play and I’m going to play as long as I can walk. I’ve done some where I probably should have been in the hospital…something about it just recharges you. You sacrifice a lot. I feel like I’ve sacrificed a lot to play shows because it does drain you but you’re left over with a lot of….there’s a lot of energy that goes into it.
Mind Over Metal: It must drain a certain part of your energy but yet bolster another part of your energy.
Nate Hall: Exactly. It’s hard to explain. It feels almost like an electrical current in a way. It’s a powerful band and I can’t really describe the feeling because I’ve never played in any other band. This is the only band I’ve been in. I can’t perceive…well, I have played with other bands before but I’ve never felt that way.
Mind Over Metal: And that says a lot too, that this is “the” band, the band that you’ll probably compare against all others – the first real band. You guys aren’t exactly Metal, though you are on a label where there is heavier music. How do you describe your music to those who haven’t heard? Would you describe it differently to someone who might be into your music versus someone who may just be politely asking?
Nate Hall: I don’t know. I rarely find myself in a position where I have to describe it. Most of the people I deal with on a day to day basis don’t really know what I do, being in a band. A lot of them probably know I am or suspect I am or whatever…
Mind Over Metal: What is it you do on a daily basis?
Nate Hall: I live in a real small town where I grew up in North Carolina. I go to the grocery store or take care of my kids. I teach sometimes. I’ve been in school. I’ve been in grad school. I just got done.
Mind Over Metal: Congratulations. What did you major in? What was your focus?
Nate Hall: English.
Mind Over Metal: Cool. My girlfriend is getting her Master’s next year as well. Congratulations. That’s cool.
Nate Hall: (phone cuts out)
Mind Over Metal: Sweet! Got you back!
Nate Hall: Sorry man, I don’t know why that happened. It’s inexplicable…
Mind Over Metal: Hey, phones come and go sometimes, you know? What can you do? I lost my train of thought there. What the heck were we talking about?
Nate Hall: Oh, just my day to day…
Mind Over Metal: That’s right.
Nate Hall: Well, people ask sometimes, you know, and I can just say rock n’ roll if that satisfies them. I have some people….one of my relatives, you know, gets curious wondering what I’m doing
Mind Over Metal: Well it’s been a few years now. What has it been, 8 years now?
Nate Hall: Almost 10 years….Yeah, I can’t really lay it on them.
Mind Over Metal: (Laughs) What is it about it that makes you hold back though? Are they really not into heavy music at all?
Nate Hall: No, no…They’re really sweet, good people. I love them. Most of them are really religious, country people. They don’t have a lot of frame of reference for it. They like me and they’re happy to see that I’m travelling around and doing my thing and happy with it but I don’t know what they would think. I don’t want them to have that in their head. I don’t think it would be a very pleasant experience for them.
Mind Over Metal: So it’s kind of one of those things where it’s like “live and let live” without knowing much about it?
Nate Hall: Yeah, I give them a vague description. If I give them posters or art I think they might like it but I can’t imagine them listening to Eat the Low Dogs. I mean, that’s just a scary, dark record, you know?
Mind Over Metal: There’s a term or phrase that I’m looking for…”What they don’t know can’t hurt them.” There we go.
Nate Hall: Yeah.
Mind Over Metal: Now, trite as this may be, Nate, I’ve got to ask – What are the origins of the band name?
Nate Hall: It’s from the Sam Peckinpah movie from Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid. It’s a name that’s mentioned. For some reason we were watching or whatever and we pulled that name out. We weren’t really thinking that…we were in a trailer and didn’t have a lot of expectations that it would ever, you know?
Mind Over Metal: So it was kind of willy nilly? There was no “it’s reflective of the music” in some way, nothing like that?
Nate Hall: There was nothing to base it on at that point. We had the music but…I mean, it was pretty good. Even the first demo stuff we had was pretty cool, you know, but we didn’t know what was going to happen. More and more I’d been just calling the band USX because it’s just 3 letters and could mean anything.
Mind Over Metal: I was going to ask you about that [abbreviation] too because USC is the University of Southern California…USX actually used to be US Steel for about a decade, back in the 1990s. Which is kind of funny because that means USX, in both one way or another, is associated with metal—the production of metal.
Nate Hall: Kelly came up with that idea actually and I thought that was pretty cool. We’ve gone with that. Not trying to replace the name or anything but it’s a lot easier to simply put that down. Everybody sees it as a symbol (the Deer symbol from Low Dogs), a visual symbol that sums up a lot of the content of the band.
Mind Over Metal: USX could be like when you take the abbreviation of Christmas (which is Xmas)…I don’t know about you but I’ve referred to Christmas as Xmas the last few years, especially since that…do you watch Futurama at all by any chance?
Nate Hall: I’ve seen it. I’m not addicted to it like I am some shows but yeah, I know what you’re talking about.
Mind Over Metal: I was just going to say, there’s one episode where they refer to Christmas as Xmas because there’s this Robot Santa who’s been terrorizing for 1,000 years or something like that! Are you one to keep the Christ out of Christmas?
Nate Hall: No, man. I mean, in my core…I grew up in a very religious background, but to be honest with you, I never really lost it. I don’t think about things in the same way.
Mind Over Metal: How has religion changed for you over the years?
Nate Hall: It hasn’t really. I mean, the ceremonies and things I weren’t the cornerstone of anything—they were just sort of things that people do and it makes them happy and that’s cool. The basic principles of Christianity and really any other major religion I think are pretty solid: treat people good and try to be a good person and take care of your family. Treat others like you want to be treated. I can’t argue with that. I don’t see anything wrong or foolish about that. I don’t really intend anything to be blasphemous, you know? Being around a lot of metal dudes you see a lot of that used for shock value but I don’t really think there’s a lot of substance to a lot of stuff like that.
Mind Over Metal: Oh man, there’s a shit ton of bands like that. Bands that try to be horrifying in however many ways…
Nate Hall: And I love a lot of them…I love bands, you know? I love a lot of metal bands. I like a lot of black metal. I love Slayer, you know? And I understand it’s just some sort of propaganda. A lot of those bands really believe what they’re saying, and a lot of them like Slayer—it’s imagery.
Mind Over Metal: Exactly. Even if they don’t really believe in it, it still comes with the package and all of it together creates a better impact. Shit, if anyone knows that…you guys working with Josh Graham for example, who works with Neurosis—a total package. Impact is the way to go, in one way or another.
Nate Hall: Yeah, you know. I question things and I think you always should. I remember hearing a preacher when I was really young. He was the guy who had been in World War II, you know, he had been a fighter pilot, he was the dude who knew what he was talking about when it came to matters of life and death and important questions and he said “You should always question what you believe in.” He told that to the church congregation and some of them were like “What are you talking about?”…Of course you should question it! Why would you believe anything if you don’t question it? You shouldn’t just believe something because somebody tells you and I thought that was a really insightful thing that has always stuck with me. There’s a lot of people that I’ve met through some religious context that I think have said things that make a lot of sense. There’s a lot of hypocrisy and there’s a lot of wrong things that go on, but there’s a lot of right too, man. You have to take people one at a time. I don’t like people who paint an entire population with the same brush and generalize people. That’s just ignorant and it doesn’t work.
Mind Over Metal: Exactly. Well, you just did a mini-tour with Black Skies. You have a show coming up in November. Is there anything else planned for touring support of Run Thick In The Night?
Nate Hall: We’re going to do some shows in December. We’d like to tour Europe again. That was a good experience last time. We’re talking about that right now. It could happen if we want it to. Right now we’re just tapped out with the time we can take away from work and family.
Mind Over Metal: Right on.
Nate Hall: We did tours with Baroness & Weedeater. We just got back, really. That was more than a month. We did South by Southwest. We did Roadburn just a little over a year ago.
Mind Over Metal: Do you feel like there’s a good groundswell building behind you guys?
Nate Hall: Yeah. We’ve already recorded another album that we’re working on getting released right now. Neurot’s going to put out the CD.
Mind Over Metal: Really? Wow!
Nate Hall: It’s about a 40 minute song. It’s real cool.
Mind Over Metal: Yeah! I thought I heard something about that. What’s the name?
Nate Hall: “The Valley Path”.
Mind Over Metal: So it’s just going to released as one giant track?
Nate Hall: Yeah.
Mind Over Metal: Nice.
Nate Hall: It’s cool. I’m really proud of it. Everyone in the band feels real good about it. We sort of all got to work on it together. Matt had some good riffs that completed it, and everybody got to really think about it and put their thoughts and creative stamp on it. Run Thick In The Night was an album that was pretty much done before we went to the studio and this was one that we got to work on together. We’re talking about a live album and we’re writing the next album right now.
Mind Over Metal: So as of right now there’s 3 potential albums that could be coming out between this 40 minute song, a live album and another album afterwards? Badass.
Nate Hall: Oh yeah, man. So we’re just gonna…you know, touring’s hard. It’s hard for us. There’s so many of us. We’re older. We’ve got kids. We’ve got jobs. We’ve got the support from Neurot to do whatever we want.
Mind Over Metal: If you have that kind of label support and you’re willing to keep on churning out recorded material like this, or live versions of recorded material – if you can’t get out there to tour, just keep churning out music. That’s beautiful.
Nate Hall: Yeah, and touring…it’s an impossible way of life. That’s what Robbie Robertson says in “The Last Waltz” …The Band, you know? You can’t live like that. I can’t live like that. I don’t want to. I want to play shows. I do want to travel and play. I just can’t be on the road all the time. It’ll kill you. A lot of bands are on the road all the time. Baroness are on the road all the time and they make it work. They seem pretty happy.
Mind Over Metal: Exactly. I saw like-minded souls, [who probably influenced them]: Mastodon. I saw them on tour together; both of them, workhorses. But it doesn’t work for everybody, so it’s awesome that you were able to recognize that about the band and still be able to churn out as much creative output as you have.
Nate Hall: I’m looking long term. Years and years down the road. I’ve always wanted to make the band a long term thing. Burning yourself out and destroying your body in my eyes is not a good way to do that.
Mind Over Metal: So, I’ve almost opened another can of worms because you have other interviews you have to get to today, right?
Nate Hall: Yeah, it’s cool.
Mind Over Metal: How do you feel about how the musical distribution shift is happening nowadays? How is that affecting a band like US Christmas who’s on a smaller label like Neurot?
Nate Hall: Neurot has good distribution at home and abroad. I mean, it seems like a lot of people can hear it. People still it (laughs)…you know?
Mind Over Metal: But it seems there is a lot of focus on vinyl thought too I think…
Nate Hall: That helps. Because people are definitely going to buy that. They’ll buy two or three copies sometimes. And CD’s too, we still play CD’s. The vinyl though, we like it. It has a lot of lasting appeal. I think that that if people wouldn’t steal music so much it would definitely help. I mean, when Run Thick In the Night came out there were dozens of pages of people giving it away for free, and that sucks. I don’t really see why people go through so much trouble to do that. I buy records. We buy CD’s. I have never stolen a single song from the internet.
Mind Over Metal: Good for you. That’s awesome.
Nate Hall: I don’t think Matt has either. It’s not necessarily because I’m such an upstanding citizen. It’s really also because I’d have no idea how to do it even if I wanted to! You know?
Mind Over Metal: (Laughs)
Nate Hall: I’ll trade somebody a CD or whatever. We do that a lot. I have a lot of CD’s I haven’t paid for. We’re cool with people. You get stuff. That’s cool.
Mind Over Metal: It’s all about balance, really. I think that’s what it is. People are just sitting there and they’ll download discographies and not give a dime to the band. I mean, I’m not going to lie to you—I was looking for copies of “Run Thick In The Night before I got on the phone with you because I didn’t get the physical copy from Earsplit. They’re sending one to me soon. I was like “Shoot! I haven’t heard the album. I think I got one track from Last.fm, the first song.
Nate Hall: Oh really?
Mind Over Metal: Yeah, it’s on YouTube. That happens a lot nowadays. Folks will post a couple visual effects, but largely just the song, on YouTube. It’s good for people like me who are going to review it and talk to you…but by and large, I mean, 99.9 percent of people are just leeching without giving back, and you’ve got to give something back!
Nate Hall: Exactly. It’s cool if you’re going to buy it and you want to listen to it before it comes out – that’s cool.
Mind Over Metal: It’s all about intent, really. I mean, if your intent is just to build a massive mp3 library, your choices might be a bit skewed and maybe you should throw some of that money back. Alright man, well I have to let you go now and I want to say thanks so much, Nate for talking to me. This has been a great conversation. If you want more info on US Christmas go to http://www.myspace.com/uschristmas or neurotrecordings.com to purchase the albums.
Nate Hall: Yeah, thank you man!
Mind Over Metal:
Nate Hall: They could look us up on Facebook too.
Mind Over Metal: Oh, you guys are on Facebook too?
Nate Hall: Yeah, I forget the address or whatever but it’s not hard to find.
Mind Over Metal: Yeah, if you search for “US Christmas” on Facebook – it’s kind of where the tidal shift is happening nowadays anyways. Myspace is alright but I feel like a lot of folks are gravitating towards Facebook. And then they’ll gravitate towards something else and then something else…
Nate Hall: Yeah. And on and on.
Mind Over Metal: In our ever shifting musical environment. Alright Nate, thanks again. Can I ask you one last favor? Can you just say your name and that you’re listening to Mind Over Metal?
Nate Hall: No problem man. This is Nate from USX and you are listening to Mind Over Metal.
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