Jason: I heard the new single a couple of days ago on the radio and
Chris: Did you like it?

Jason: I like it a lot. How exciting is it -- I mean you mentioned the new teams ... but to just have a new single out and go back full tilt again.
Chris: It feels good man, because we're road dogs. This is our job, we love our job, we love being out here. Basically, we're pretty much the same as door-to-door salesmen; we got a new album coming out so we have to go door to door and wake people up, shake the tree.

Jason: How do you feel about the new single?
Chris: Oh I love it. We love it. I think it's going to work real well for Saliva; it's already worked real well. It's climbing the chart like nobodies business. It's just elbowing -- I don't want to sound cocky, but it’s just elbowing bands out of the way, but that's what it's all about. It's about getting as high as you can on there reaching ... getting your original point across to the fans and connecting with the fans. That’s why I love this album so much, Survival Of The Sickest is our truest. The representation of who Saliva is.

Jason: Your last record, Back Into Your System, was titled that to kind of let people know Saliva is back. This one, Survival Of The Sickest, is a statement you’re putting out as well. When you do that, you're obviously putting something out there for everybody to kind of throw at you.
Chris: Josey is really good at coming up with album titles, he’s come up with all the album titles so far, and he just nails it every time. He just has a natural gift for obviously lyric writing and writing music and singing and stuff, but this kid is just three for three when it comes to album titles. Survival Of The Sickest is more than just a way of life for Saliva, this is our flag we’re sticking in the ground this year. This is stuff that we’re… the stuff we have on this record is stuff that we’ve always been trying to say since the first time we went national and stuff like that. You live and learn a little bit, there’s no regrets -- I don’t regret anything and live in the past.You live and learn and you figure out that people who say they’re on your side and work for your best interest a lot of times really aren’t, so you find that out after two years and you get rid of them. Clean the house. Luckily you replace them with better people which, in our case, we did. I managed the band myself from like December until… For like five months. From last December on until five months.

Jason: Wow.
Chris: And I interviewed a lot of managers and a lot of lawyers and stuff like that, and I fired the ones that we needed to fire. I called them up myself and told them that their services were no longer needed and cut one or two people pretty good. The rest of them didn’t take it so good and I’m like ‘hey, nothing personal here, it’s just business’. I was professional so, if you don’t think I was you need to tell me right now otherwise this conversation is over, you know? So that’s how we feel this year; we’re not taking any shit and we’re not kissing ass anymore. We’re not worried about being PC, we’re not going to be… We’re not going out to just piss people off, we’re not going to be stupid, cocky, arrogant, like 'Oh, well, we're the best, blah blah blah, and if you don't like it ... It's not that kind of approach, but at the same time like we’re talking, your opinion is your opinion and that’s great, but if someone is trying to get over on Saliva or screw us out of our money or screw these guys, the rest of the band, out of their business, their daily businesses, then it’s not going to be good. We handle that shit now, we don't put up with no bullshit.

Jason: Obviously when you do that everyone is going to go out and start talking shit and there’s that kind of shit being talked about Saliva. You hear everything from ‘the label doesn’t want you’ to 'You owe this much money here, you owe that much money there.' It seems like the hot topic anymore is what's going on with your band. They always say that any press is good press, but I think that sometimes it can get frustrating to hear that shit. So what, if anything, that people are saying is true as far as Island records wise, your relationship with them?
Chris: The label relationship, actually, has never been better. I don’t know what you heard.

Jason: What we heard was that they were looking to drop you. That’s just what is being said.
Chris: That's just what's being said... In the industry?

Jason: On a couple of occasions.
Chris: On like websites? Or word of mouth?

Jason: One was probably from a former person who worked with you.
Chris: You know, before we… There was a time…

Jason: It wasn’t a long time ago, but it was…
Chris: I know the time you’re talking about and you know honestly? If we would have kept on that path of partying all the time and… We’ve still never given them less than gold, so they’ve always been ecstatic about that. But there was a time when we were starting to get a little out there. We woke up and we all got together and we don’t party or nothing, we don’t need to party to have a good time. We love each others company and we crack each other up constantly. Comedy is king on this bus, you know, the Comedy Channel…

Jason: Yeah
Chris: Larry David, and oh ...

Jason: Curb Your Enthusiasm!
Chris: Hahaha yeah But yeah there was a time when things got a little weird. I never heard that, at the time if you would have asked me that I would have been like ‘Yeah, maybe they are thinking about breaking apart’, but I’ve never heard that, and you can’t really believe a lot of stuff you hear anyway.

Jason: That’s why I’m asking you rather than writing it.
Chris: I’ve never heard it from them (Island Records). I’ve never got that vibe from them, but I will say if we did continue on the road we were on this time last year before, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were maybe looking—I don’t want to put words in their mouth, but it’s possible. I mean anything’s possible. But definitely this has been a 360 degree turn around from that.

Jason: And what was the defining moment that you got together as a band and said ‘you know, we gotta…’ Because I remember seeing you on the Kiss tour in Columbus and it was a bit…
Chris: Yeah. We’ve been on the road for like a year and a half straight and we were just burnt. We were burnt physically and we were burnt mentally. We had some really good nights and then we had some party days.

Jason: Because actually a couple of my friends took Josey out that night before where he…
Chris: Yeah, yeah. See, you got to cut those people off. They just want to get close to you, and they mean well ... But at the same time if they really meant well they wouldn't keep you out late at night, they wouldn’t let you be out chain smoking and doing stuff shouldn't be doing, and drinking, and all that, because that’s just really bad for your voice. All that’s behind us. We had a good time, but you know I took that tour late in the season. We’d been on the road for a year and a half and we were physically just toasted. And by the time we got on that tour we were starting to get mentally toasted But you couldn't pass it up, what are you going to do? It’s Kiss and Aerosmith. That's a once in a several lifetimes opportunity. So I had to do it, I had to take it just to see just so I could say hey to my kids or my grand-kids, I toured with Kiss and Aerosmith at the same time. We had a great time, and we're actually going to do August the 8th and August the 10th with Kiss in Shreveport and Little Rock, not necessarily in that order. So they’ve asked us back and we've got a strong single behind it and those days are in the past. I feel comfortable saying that it's just in the past and we learned about it. That’s the good thing about bands like Aerosmith that we strive to be like, longevity wise and career wise. They learn from their mistakes. You can tell the bands that don’t learn from their mistakes. They make mistakes and they never recover, and we’re at that point in our career where we're like, well, musically we're fine but spiritually and just physically and attitude wise and health wise, we were on the edge. We woke up you know, and thank God we woke up and we pulled it together. We really pulled it together and said ‘look, we have to… There’s been nobody minding the store, us or our old team. And once they get the impression that you’re not minding the store, you know, then they tend to not mind the store even more. That’s why I had to get rid of them; I had to clean house. I had to start all over. And that was part of the big regeneration. Everything is great now.

Jason: And do you see yourself being on the road as much as before? Do you think just being on the road was part of… I mean I would just think that anybody that was on the road that long would just go stir crazy. And start doing shit.
Chris: Yeah, it’s dangerous. It really is, because there’s no telling what kind of habits you come home with. You’re out here dude, you see what we do. We sit in the bus and we spend ninety-nine percent of our lives in a parking lot. And in some areas it is glamorous, but this is the reality of it right here. We work hard and a lot of times you just start getting cabin fever, that’s when you tend to start getting really bored and you turn to alcohol or something like that. But this year we’re all staying on each other’s backs so there’s not going to be any room for error in that area.

Jason: And you have the band Skillet opening up so I don’t think they’re going to let you get too out of control, either.
Chris: Haha. Oh, we still get down. But we don’t have to do drugs and alcohol to… And what I mean by drugs and alcohol is belligerent drinking and hard drugs. I’m not saying necessarily marijuana, but I’m not promoting it either. I don’t promote any sort of thing like that. It’s all about healthy, clean living and getting your house in order. Being able to look at someone in the eye when you’re talking to them and not being taken advantage of.

Jason: This sounds like a band that has really turned that corner and is going the other way. What do you see for the future with this band now that you didn’t see a year ago. Or can you even see what the future is going to be?
Chris: I think this is a lot better. I see things so much clearer and we’re making such better decisions now. I’m really proud of the band and the label is really proud of us. I mean, they’re more fired up now since we’ve made this turn around then they ever were. Even more before the Every Six Seconds... Before our first one. We had huge parties and hometown releases. They are really one hundred and twenty percent behind everything right now. They know it and they're feeling the new Saliva. They couldn’t be happier and it couldn’t be better. So that extends to us too ... the future is wide open. As long as we keep this course, which… there’s no way we can go back. There has to be a point in the rock and roll lifestyle where you have to—the music keeps us looking young, I like to say. But you have to grow up inside. You have to. You can’t sit around and do drugs and stuff like that, because the store has to be minded and everybody already has their hands out to begin with. You’re usually the last to get paid, if you get paid at all. You’re paying out so many people, if you’re not driving the car clearly, then the chances are good you’re going to wreck. I think the future is extremely wide open.

Jason: And personally, are you more excited now than you were when you first got signed?
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. We’re wiser and we’re more clear headed. We’re making better decisions. Images… tastes… You have to go through it. I like to say the first three years of a band breaking nationally are the most important years because you’re either going to make it out of that three year period or your not. And a lot of bands don't. Because they either get out there and discover: A, I'm fucked up and I can’t leave drugs alone, or B: our music isn’t that good, or C: our music is good, I'm not necessarily fucked up, but I hate touring. That’s out there. There’s bands that we’re surrounded by all the time that just hate to fucking tour. You can’t take yourself too seriously. Once you start believing your own hype, it’s over. I like to stay really grounded, I’m a Libra so… the scales and balance to me are everything, they’re really crucial. If I have to knock myself down every night once in a while, or knock the other guys down, they know I'll do it in a heart beat, without hurting anybody's feelings. You just keep each other grounded. People are like hot air balloons; they're constantly taking off towards the stratosphere and you have to pull them back down and say ‘no’. This is what we are, this is what we started out as, think of your fans first and foremost and if the song rocks us, then the chances are good it's going to rock them. And that’s just a simple formula we stick with.

Jason: VH1 is at some point going to do a Saliva: Behind The Music, and you got all the ingredients. You have everything going that there is. Is there anything that you’re ashamed of that you’ve done? Or do you just see it all as a learning process?
Chris: It’s always a learning process. Of course, everything happens for a reason. We’re at where we’re at for a reason. If we hadn't gotten a little squirrelly out there, a little burnt out a year and a half ago, then the chances are good that we might not be where we’re at right now. I don’t like to regret anything, I just take everything as a learning process. An educational vehicle. Would I change anything? Yeah, I would change the fact that we would have stayed more focused when we were on certain tours. But overall, it makes us who we are today, our mistakes and everything. You got to take the bad with the good. Everything can’t be just a bowl of cherries all the time.

Jason: You’re headlining now, you’re opening for Kiss later, I saw you at the Rolling Rock fair… Which do you prefer playing?
Chris: Like big crowds versus…?

Jason: Like big crowds versus opening or clubs which are strictly Saliva fans…?
Chris: We love radio festivals, we love gigs like this, too. We’re not hard to please. As long as there is a barricade and there’s an adequate PA and adequate security and it holds about fifteen hundred to three thousand people then, you know, whatever. Now that’s a great show, no matter who you are, that’s a great show. Because you’re close to the people, you can see their faces, you can damn near hear them singing the lyrics to the song you’re playing. We really love our fans. I like to be able to reach out and touch their hand every once in a while. On the other spectrum, we love the radio shows. The big outdoor festivals… The rock fests… Stuff like that. They’ve got such a wide audience and there’s a lot of people there to see other bands. Chances are good that you may be picking up new fans, you’re making new fans, so that’s always important.

Jason: You’re very active on stage. Any injuries ever?
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Jason: It doesn’t look like you ever pay attention to where you’re going.
Chris: Haha yeah, that’s part of the thing. It looks like I don't, but I ‘ve got everything mapped out in my head, actually. It’s almost like I have eyes in the back of my head, sometimes, I feel objects around me. When I’m on stage, I literally feel objects around me. It looks like I’m about to bust my ass or something, or get a little off balance, and I am getting off balance. I really am. But I have recovery techniques that take me out of it. As long as I play it off fine, that’s all that matters. But yeah, there’s some injuries. A lot of pulled muscles, hamstring, that’s not from playing thought. I'm playing a little bit back in the pocket more this year, you’ll notice. I’ve actually got a hernia right now...

Everyone: Whoa.
Chris: --a herniated belly-button. I have to get surgery for that on September the 17th. So I’m not getting... You won’t see me jumping around a whole lot right now. So if you see that and you’re like, 'Oh, well, Chris has done got lazy'. Don’t think that. It’s not a matter of lazy, there is a reason for it. We’re starting to get back in shape a little bit; we’re a little bit big right now. I know that.

Jason: That’s what happens when you get home.
Chris: Yeah. But I’m really, really proud. It takes us about a week or two or so to really get into full swing, to really start shedding some pounds. That’s natural, that’s normal. All bands go through that. Shake off the old home cooking, you know?

Jason: Get back to the road… Whatever the hell you eat.
Chris: Well I still get down. But I'm just approaching it at a different angle right now. I'm experimenting, right now, with my whole stage persona. I'll always want to get down, I'll never want to stand still in one spot. But I'm looking around a littler bit more, does that make any sense?

Jason: Yeah.
Chris: And you know what? I’ve found out that people love it as much, if not more…

Jason: Oh, if you look at them, they go nuts ...
Chris: Oh, they go crazy! Sometimes I used to think, 'God, I have to move, I have to do this, I have to constantly be going beginning to end.' Because we really want to give the people their money’s worth. Always going be a factor, it’s never going to change, and we’re extremely passionate on stage. Somebody else takes over. That’s not the Chris that’s sitting right here. That’s another Chris. And we stay in touch; I keep him close by, but that’s… I’m not the same person right here. I mean you look at us and our eyes change, there’s a different person, our face changes. I bring a little bit more of this Chris right here on stage with me, now, so.

Jason: Well I think that’s good. I think that’s…
Chris: And I’m playing better by doing that, too. So I’m not having to jump around as much. It’s a lot tighter, you’ll notice a difference, the playing is a lot better. It’s a lot more in the pocket. I’m hitting ...I'm not knocking as many notes, by doing three-sixties or one-eighties off of the drum risers, four foot drum risers. That shit is dangerous, man!

Jason: I wouldn’t do it, I’d be the most boring fucking person out there. I would like sit on the thing, the monitor, because I know I couldn't get hurt. Well, I'd probably lean back and fall off, but…
Chris: The beautiful thing is if I was like, I mean, if we were sitting right here and not playing or whatever, I’d probably couldn’t do half of that shit, you know, it wouldn’t be right. But as soon as we start playing our music it’s just all natural. It just happens. But I’ve been very fortunate, I haven’t had really no major injuries or anything like that. It’s all in the landing, haha. I’ve gone to skate shoes, back to skate shoes this year, and these shoes are really unforgiving, that’s why most of the tours I’ve worn running shoes. Not dorky looking running shoes, like, 'Hey, I'm going for a jog!' but cool, black... whatever… Something that… These ultimately are the coolest, any kind of skate shoes like we have, that’s what I really love, but they’re so heavy and flat bottomed.

Jason: Oh, they’re ridiculous. Walking my dog in them is a pain in the ass.
Chris: So you know what I’m talking about, dude. And I wear a size thirteen, dude, my feet are huge. I got a bunch of shoes at home, but my feet just get bigger, I don’t know if they’re still growing or something. I got shoes that are tens, tens and a half, that I’ve never worn, I never got around to it. But you know. Come up and hang out with us. You’re always family. You’re always going to be welcome in the Saliva camp.

Jason: I remember interviewing you on one of your first shows you played in Columbus, Ohio, the Blitz radio show, and just about every time… And to see what’s going on is really cool.
Chris: Absolutely. You've always got a home here. That's no question.

Jason: There are times when it was a little ... But it's good to see that the corner has been turned.
Chris: Yeah. We were fried dude! We were frazzled. This road is a mother fucker, you know, I’m not trying to cuss just for the sake of cussing, but there’s really no better way to say it: This road is a mother fucker. If you don’t watch your ass constantly and try to stay on your toes, it will break you down. There’s incredible song writers and incredibly intelligent artists out here that I’ve know that just get sent back home in a body bag, literally sometimes. But it chews them up and spits them out and send them home crying, ‘I don’t want to go back out there!'. I like to see us as an Aerosmith… I do see us as an Aerosmith ... second part answer to your future question ...I do see us as another Aerosmith, I really do, because the label told us a long time ago, 'It's not a foot race; it's a marathon. It’s for the long haul.' And if we come out each time selling gold or selling platinum, but yet we still have our contract and we're still adding fans steadily, then it’s only going to go up from there. Aerosmith did the same thing. Kiss is the same. They just stick at it. They get along fine. We never fight. This band does not fight. Even when we’re burned out, fucking up, we’re each other’s nerves, we still never fought, fist-fought, or anything like that.

Jason: Is that true?
Chris: Yeah. We don’t fight. We’ve never fist-fought. Never one of us got into any kind of altercation. But I do, I see us as an Aerosmith down the road. That’s what we’re striving for anyway. I really do see it now. Back on track, bigger and better than ever was before. This new album, Survival Of The Sickest, August 17th, that album… whew… man, dude. It is ... I know I’m biased in saying this and I’m trying to get all dramatic, but—that record is a mother fucker. It is a smoker. I listen to it every night, listening to it for a couple months now, still not burnt out. That’s all I’ve been listening to, because I love it. We can’t get enough of our own record. I know that sounds silly, but it’s true. It’s fucking true; it’s all true. If this album only sells ten copies, I’ll still sleep good at night knowing that we made an incredible rock record. There’s some really good stuff on there. It’s heavy. It’s not in mid-tempo land like last year. In my opinion, it’s heavier than the first one.

Jason: I would say the single is heavy.
Chris: Yeah. It's not heavy for the sake of being, 'Grrrrrr! I kicked your ass! Grrrr!' It's not that kind of heavy. It has moments of that kind of heavy, but it's not all, 'Grrr! We're Pantera! Grrrr!' It's not that kind of heavy. But it's very, very respectable and it's got the hooks and the melodic changes that Saliva is known for. It’s got hits, dude, hit. After hit. After hit. After hit. It's insane. You'll see what I'm saying.