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Interview by DJ Johnson
February 2001
www.cosmik.com
It took the greatest thinker of the last century
(Einstein) and members of Blind Melon and Pearl Jam -- along with a talented
young singer named Chris Shinn -- to finally come up with The Unified Theory.
Okay, Einstein wasn't really involved in this
project. The rest of the story, however, is true. And here it is, as far
as we know it, up to now:
There once was a band called Blind Melon. They made more than a dent in the public consciousness and may have been headed for greatness until singer Shannon Hoon decided to try a higher dosage one day. They found him dead on the tour bus. That was the effective end of Blind Melon.
Pearl Jam exploded into everyone's living rooms via MTV with videos from half the songs on their TEN album. The drummer at that time was Dave Krusen. Pearl Jam continues -- God knows why -- but not with Dave.
The aforementioned, talented singer, Chris Shinn, moved to Seattle, hooked up with bassist Brad Smith and guitarist Christopher Thorn and started writing songs. Having a home studio helps. Write that down, aspiring musicians. Chris had an amazing little resume himself, which I don't want to give away because you'll read about it shortly, but let's just say he has a knack for writing songs. One day he banged out a particularly great song in just a few minutes. By the next day they needed a drummer to record it and Dave Krusen was brought in. The sparks sparked, the lightning lit and by the power vested in whoever it is who makes these decisions in the heavens, Unified Theory was a band.
And not just another alt.grumble.whiner band, either. A unique band with a full album. That means no filler. Something so rare I'm surprised it doesn't go straight to E-bay.
I caught up to Chris Shinn between concert dates and asked him a lot of annoying questions, several of which he'd probably answered way too many times. Know what? He's a pretty mellow guy. He answered them politely!
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Cosmik: I want to start... not exactly at the beginning of everything, but after you came west. You had a publishing deal of some kind? What were you doing exactly?
Shinn: I was young when I got that. I was 19 when I signed to Chrysalis music, and it was just a weird, freak accident. My manager sent the wrong tape to the wrong people. He sent my tape to the publishing people and sent someone else's tape to a bass player I was trying to hire, and Chrysalis freaked out and loved my four-track demo. A week later I was in this office signing a gigantic publishing deal, and it was just a really weird thing. And that afforded me to have a band for the next couple years, and I was able to hire really bad-ass musicians to play exclusively in my band.
Cosmik: All this when you were 19.
Shinn: Yeah. I'd never made a dollar in my life, and my first paycheck was like a hundred grand. It took a long time to really settle. It was a trip. I still don't think I've fully comprehended all that, but the really cool thing is that after about four years of being with Chrysalis, they started to go under, and I was able to get dropped, meaning I didn't owe them anything. They'd spent twice what they gave me ON me during those years, too. So I had as big of a party for being dropped as I did for being signed, which was rather interesting.
Cosmik: Do you realize what a tiny percentage of bands that get signed to major labels come out the other end not owing large chunks of money to the label?
Shinn: Oh, God. And especially on the publishing end. It's just incredible. They just gave me the money. It was just a full-on development deal. I had no record to release. They were just trying to develop me as an artist and help me get a band together. I had total freedom to do whatever I wanted. It was quite remarkable. And it was only because the president, the main guy, fell in love with what I was doing.
Cosmik: Somewhere in the middle of all this, between parties, your house burned down, which had to feel like the ultimate negative sign, but it turned out to be the beginning of the best of times, didn't it?
Shinn: It absolutely did. After I signed the deal, I moved into a home in the Hollywood hills, and I had this great band and I was living the life. But I was having some bad luck. I had the best taste in musicians, so I was taking the best of the best. Sure enough, it wouldn't take very long before they'd get offered bigger and better jobs. For example, the bass player is now the drummer for Macy Gray, and my drummer and guitar player are both in Everlast. When the fire happened, I lost everything. The band was rehearsing at the house. We had all our gear there. My brother wakes me up and everything is burning. My memory is kind of weird about that day. It took me weeks to remember what happened in that one day because I got burned pretty bad, but Kent luckily healed fine without barely any scars. I wasn't mad. Oddly enough I was very calm about the whole thing. I chose to accept it instead of fight it. Luckily I was very insured. I had a wonderful accountant, and I was totally covered, so I got to completely start from scratch. I chose it to be a very fun thing. It was pretty cool to get to re-buy everything you used to have, but better versions of them.
Cosmik: What about a place to live, though?
Shinn: I moved in with a friend of mine, a video director who has done Marilyn Manson videos, numbers of Dave Matthews videos, Ozzy Osbourne... the guy's just incredible. He was a big inspiration to me and helped me get my feet back on the ground, and he inspired me a lot. And during that time I made my EP that Christopher [guitarist Thorn] would end up hearing, and that's how he found me. So it's all kind of weird when you think about it.
Cosmik: That everything happens for a reason.
Shinn: It does. And had my drummer not left to join everlast -- and we were the sole members of the band at that point -- and I had just hired a new guy who was great, but it just wasn't the same anymore, so I started thinking of moving from LA. It was between Seattle and New Orleans. Meeting Christopher was such a weird thing because the timing was perfect. Had it been six months earlier I would have been neck deep in my band.
Cosmik: What made you think of Seattle?
Shinn: My old band had played a couple shows up here, and something about the city I just loved. I still do. When I got the chance to move up here to start the band with Christopher and Brad and getting Dave involved, I was just so excited because I love it up here.
Cosmik: [glancing out the window at the gray skies and drizzle] You don't mind days like today?
Shinn: Well... yeah, exactly, it's okay! It rains a lot. I travel a lot, too, so it's easier to handle.
Cosmik: This is my favorite kind of day right here. Anyway, were you apprehensive about singing with Christopher and Brad at first? Did it worry you that you'd be seen as Shannon Hoon's replacement.
Shinn: No, because I knew I wasn't. I knew there was never a replacement being considered. The one stipulation I had from the beginning was if we're going to work as a band, it'll start right now. Everything will be created from this day forward and nothing from the past at all. And that's what we did. It was a complete mutual agreement. It was like "you're right, if this is going to be a band, it's going to be everything together." I take the comparisons well. I think it's extremely flattering. I consider Shannon Hoon to be an amazing singer, and to be compared to him is quite flattering. But in as much as there'll never be another Shannon Hoon, there'll never be another me, either, for that matter. That's what I tend to believe. I'm very comfortable with what I do and who I am, and I don't feel I need to prove it to anybody.
Cosmik: Is that the number one most over-asked question you've been forced to deal with?
Shinn: Um..... Yeah. Probably one of them. But shit, I'd ask it, too. We understand people wanting to know that stuff. We're totally cool with it. At the same time, we try to make sure everyone knows it's a completely new band. Just to be fair to be Unified Theory, there are a lot of people who never liked Blind Melon who would probably love Unified Theory, so we don't want to get stuck in the Blind Melon category when we think it's very different.
Cosmik: Well anyone with an ear can hear there's a vast difference between Blind Melon and Unified Theory. I mean, they could do an A/B test.
Shinn: I'm glad you said that, because I think it's a cheap way to get out of actually interviewing a band just to say "oh, they sound like Blind Melon."
Cosmik: At least the fans seem to be getting it. I believe Unified Theory will always have its own fan base because of the ethereal quality of the music.
Shinn: Absolutely. Touring is so important to us for that reason. Every time we get to a city for the third or fourth time, it's more and more overwhelming. We've got really fucking cool fans. Sweet people. Not fanatical or overwhelming, just really cool people who come because of that feeling that they get.
Cosmik: They're probably more detail-oriented people, first of all.
Shinn: They definitely are looking for music the same way you and I are. They're all just as tired of hearing Limp Bizkit as we are.
Cosmik: They're not there for sonic assault.
Shinn: (Laughs) Right!
Cosmik: Seems to me your music's based on textures. How involved in the creation of that are you as the vocalist?
Shinn: Very much. We divide everything right down the middle. Of course, there are songs on the record that are pretty much written by one person. There are probably six songs on the record that I wrote from top to bottom, and then it needed, say, an ending, or there was a chorus lacking, and the whole band made it happen. But vocally, that's totally my area. Even on a song like "California," which Brad had written and was on his solo record, which we didn't even think about doing until we were shopping for a record deal way toward the end of the whole process, we were able to bring that in. But the way Brad sings is completely different than the way I sing. His phrasing is more hip-hoppy because he talks more in his vocals, and I had the job of editing it to fit my style, which is just a terrible thing to do to someone's song. I was so scared of what he'd think of it once I'd finished. I put that off for so long, until the very last thing, until they said "Chris, come on, you've got to do this by tomorrow, man!" and I was terrified. "Oh God!!" Because I had butchered the hell out of the thing.
Cosmik: Not that bad, really, was it?
Shinn: Now I cut almost half of his lyrics out and then added my own little twists. We'd opened up for Live and Counting Crows in front of 20,000 people and I was never nervous, but I had Brad sitting here on my couch and I was trying to play him his song with my words to it and I was shaking like a fucking baby! And then he loved it. He was like "YEAH!!" There's a lyric in "California" where I said "and I wish all my friends could see me," and that'd one I put in there and he said "man, that SHOULD have been in there!" But to layering, we know that once we take an idea from an acoustic, it's going to end up sounding unlike anything you can at all imagine at that moment. We're all studio hounds, so we just get in there and start making noise. You know, Christopher didn't really start playing slide guitar until this band, but he learned just because he thought certain songs needed it. And now he's a bad-ass.
Cosmik: I think the most intensive textures are in the opening tune, "Cessna." Is that a crowd favorite, as well?
Shinn: Yeah, that and "California," which is a lot heavier live. But "Cessna" is a pretty special song. I'll never forget, I wrote the music to that in about 10 or 15 minutes. I'd been out for a walk, and I came in and I was just stoked to be living in Seattle, and just really happy, and I put the music together. And I had the melody. I showed it to Brad, and he said "cool, let's record it!" It was just like that. We figured it out like that. "okay, that's the verse, there's the bridge, the chorus repeats here. Done. It was that fast. And they said "We'll get Dave to come lay down the drum track, and I was just "what?!? Dave Krusen is going to play drums with me?!? I'm freakin' out. So Dave comes over and lays down a bad-ass drum track with me playing guitar to it. It was my idea to call it "Cessna" because I wanted it to be about my fear of flying.
Cosmik: You don't write much fiction, do you?
Shinn: Well, the only song I've ever written that's not first person, or about first person experience, is "Keep On." I wrote it through the eyes of a fictitious character who died doing what he loved to do, which is sailing.
Cosmik: One song that has me kind of confused is "Not Dead." I've listened to it about 8 times in a row, trying to get some insight into what it's about.
Shinn: You know what's odd is that song is about a number of things. Ever since I wrote that song, it's always been played by the bands I've been in. They've always liked it. It took Unified Theory to completely rework it. Christopher and Brad came to me and wanted to redo it, and I was flattered, but I said if we do it I want to completely RE-do it, and we did.
Cosmik: I love that there's no attempt to artificially fit in with the pissed-alts. Unified Theory seems to be exactly what it is and it doesn't try to be anything else.
Shinn: As tacky as it sounds, my dad always said "don't get bitter, get better." It's silly, but it's so true. I hate hearing people complain about how bad music sucks today... it DOES, I'm right there with everybody, but we decided to do something about it. That's a big part of the reason why I started to play music in the first place, because I never had anyone show me good music. I never had an older brother. I grew up listening to George Jones and Bruce Springsteen because that's all my parents listen to. Those were the only two options we had.
Cosmik: Could be worse.
Shinn: Oh no no, George Jones is one of the greatest song writers of all time. But when we're up there doing what we do, we're doing it with no pretense. We're not posing up there. We're doing what we do because we love the music we make, and that's all there is to it. And if people get something out of it, that's wonderful. That's ultimately the goal. I certainly believe that being honest is the only way to achieve anything in this life in whatever form of art you practice.
Cosmik: There's quote attributed to you that I really loved. "We miss that there's so few bands anymore that when you leave their concerts you feel as though you've been to church or had a spiritual experience where the music and vibe has changed your life. We want the audience to feel like they're sharing the moment with the band." Now I'm an old guy, but that's how I used to feel after a Stones concert or a Springsteen concert.
Shinn: Yeah, and you don't get that from Blink 182.
Cosmik: Were you able to bring that back during your abbreviated opening sets?
Shinn: On some occasions, yes, but it's much easier when you have time to let everyone open up and get comfortable. I know for me it's like that every time we get on stage. But when it's our show, it's a little different, especially when you know some of the songs and you know what to expect musically, then you're able to let go and see how differently we play 'em live. But it's ultimately that whole thing about being honest. When we're honestly happy doing what we're doing up on stage, the people sense it and they get off on it.
Cosmik: When it's your show, you're the headliner and you have your setup, your timing, is it like a religious experience for YOU up there?
Shinn: Absolutely. It's always weird coming off
the show like that, too. Every show I need time after to get my head straight
again... not that it's not straight, but I sing a lot of long notes that
I hold out there for a long, long time, and I sing so hard I almost faint
every show. It takes me a while to come down from that. But it's a great
feeling. It's a selfless feeling. You feel like a channel. This isn't me.
This is something the four of us are making together at the same moment,
channeling this music through the instruments and our bodies. And that's
what it is.