Josh Rand of Stone Sour – I Want to Share My Roller Coaster Ride of A Life

By: Robert Cavuoto

Fret 12 has recently released a new instructional DVDs; The Sound and the Story Series, featuring Josh Rand of Stone Sour. It features over 90 minutes of lessons taught by Josh and offers a never-before-seen look inside the dramatic life story of Stone Sour’s guitarist.

Josh shares his compelling story of overcoming cancer and a run in with the law that put him back on track to finding his identifiable guitar style.

The lessons section includes tips on alternate picking, finger independence, hammer ons/pull offs, string skipping, sweep picking, musical modes and exotic scales. In addition, there are in-depth lessons on how to play seven of Josh’s signature Stone Sour solos.

I caught up with Josh as he drove to Stone Sour’s tour rehearsal to talk about his involvement in the DVD and what it was like to share his private stories that have been buried for over 30 years.

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Robert Cavuoto: I enjoyed your Fret 12 DVD, The Sound and the Story. After you had beat cancer and a run-in with the law, you get a second lease on life. Was that the trigger for you to really focus on playing guitar?

Josh Rand: It definitely was. It was just a big wakeup call. I didn’t want to go to prison. It was just a reality check for getting my shit together. I was put on strict probation/house arrest. I was still a minor at this point and going to school. I would only go to school for three hours.

Then the second half of the day, I would work in a program that helped the elderly. The rest of that time, I spent playing guitar. I didn’t go out and do anything, because I was threatened that they would press the charges if I got in any more trouble over the course of a year-and-a-half or until I turned 18.

I guess I’ve been given a few opportunities. The cancer thing for me was really hard, because I was so young. All I remember is all the bad stuff from it. Things that are painful for me to think back on, so I always buried it. I was excited about doing the DVD to share my story.

There’s a hundred other guys doing instructional video that are going way beyond my ability, but for me it was the telling my story. Even the closest people to me don’t really know all the stuff. In making the documentary part of it, it was really the first time that my parents and I had really talked about it in 30 years.

It was really very therapeutic. The same with getting in trouble, you do have a choice.

Nobody’s perfect; you screw up, but you can make things right. Maybe somebody is going through the same situation, or parents that might have children going through the same situation, giving them hope. I’m here 30 years later and been very successful. So that was the main thing for me, was really the documentary. I felt like I had a pretty unique story that’s been quite the roller coaster ride for me.

Robert: How long did it take you to film the instructional part? It seemed like it just would have been tough to get it just right.

Josh Rand: We filmed the instructional parts in two or three days. I’m a very crazy OCD person, so I already knew how I was going to break it down with the solos and exercises. I was a little bit nervous; I’d never done anything like that. Looking back, like any artist, and say, “I’d really like to change this or that.”

Many of the exercises, and I’ve been doing for 20 years and I wrote the solos, so it went pretty quick. It was honestly more just getting the cameras set-up and making sure everything was synced than actually filming it.

Robert: I would think one of the hardest things would be doing the solos at half speed as it’s not so intuitive. Did you struggle with that?

Josh Rand: Yeah, there were a couple of exercises that were weird. It made me think, I need to go back and maybe do these exercies with a metronome, I need to slow everything down and work on the precision of it. I’m so used to playing it at a certain speed, and maybe, at this point, I’m not even getting anything out of it, except for just the general maintenance of it.

Robert: When you were developing this DVD, did you have the creative decision to say, “I want this to be for the beginner, intermediate or advanced?”

Josh Rand: I wanted it to be all of the above. I didn’t want to make it where everybody could take something away from it. That was really important to me.

I grew up with Yngwie Malmsteen’s VHS tapes and I never could get it right. He’s an amazing player, but at the time I couldn’t play one thing he did. I probably would still struggle with half of it. He’s cool player, but to do what he does and not really have any explanation or to see it slowed down I don’t think I ever took anything away from it more than just the pure entertainment of watching it.

For me, I wanted to make stuff so that people could relate at all levels – beginner, intermediate and then also show the solos down from Stone Sour.

Robert: I think revealing the tuning was critical to the success of being able to play everything correctly.

Josh Rand: Stone Sour uses seven different tunings. I made sure that was one of the things included, plus the tab book. I didn’t want everybody to go, ‘Okay, I’m trying to play this solo. Why does it sound completely off?’”

Robert: There are so many training tools available to players with You Tube, DVDs, and online lessons. I’m finding that more players are better players younger. What do you think it takes to get somebody to the next level – to be an innovator, or to take things to a higher degree?

Josh Rand: You bring up a very interesting question that I don’t know the answer, but I agree with you. For myself, I’ve been taking courses and actually have my professional certificate. I need three more for my masters. Those classes are jazz, blues, and an elective. I’ve had people come up to me and ask, “Why would you want to take these classes? You’re in this band and you’ve had success.”

It’s because I don’t know all of this, and I want the band to evolve. The only way it’s going to evolve is for me to step out of the box and try different stuff and bring those influences for different styles of music into what Stone Sour does. Will we be a jazz band? Absolutely not, but the approaches for some stuff, or maybe some of the chording, would come into play. It already has in the song “Sadist.”

When you listen to the pre-chorus, it goes into sevenths and ninths and stuff like that. That’s because I was taking a course when I finished writing that song. And it influenced how that song was written. I think that’s the only way to be an innovator is to branch out.

I wish when I was younger I had been more open minded. For somebody to be an innovator, they’re going to need to take all aspects of every style of music and somehow mesh that into one.

Robert: What’s your practice regimen like now compared to when you were younger?

Josh Rand: When I was younger and first starting out, I would go six or seven hours a day. That’s not the case anymore. I have two kids, run a household, and in a band. [Laughter] I don’t get that much time to totally dedicate it, but I try to at least play an hour a day. When I’m taking the classes, I’ll play a little bit longer, or if I’m really inspired and working on new material, I might spend all day, but as of right now I try to at least get in an hour a day.

Robert: Back when we were growing up, Eddie Van Halen used to turn his back to the audience to not give any of his trade secrets away. Was there anything that you didn’t want to share on this DVD that’s your trade secret?

Josh: Eddie Van Halen was an innovator of a technique that everybody was trying to wrap their brain around at the time. I don’t really see myself as an innovator with a technique that I’m trying to hide from everybody. I believe that all your tone comes from your hands. I just posted a picture of my pedal board and amp settings on Instagram. You have everything you need to sound like me, but it still going to sound like you. I believe everything is in the hands.

Robert: I wholeheartedly agree with that. You and Jim Root have very different styles. How did you make that work?

Josh Rand: From a writer’s standpoint, where he really excels is the layering, and the added the guitar work. My enjoyment is playing the riffs more than soloing.

I always make the comment, “I’d rather be James Hetfield than Kirk Hammett”, with no disrespect to Kurt. It’s not from a player’s standpoint; it’s just that I like riffage. You can’t do that if you’re having to play all this lead work and layering and stuff. Jim complements how I do the riffs. He plays over the top.

Lead-wise, we kind of come from the same school, but we don’t. I come from the Paul Gilbert, Joe Satriani, and he comes to the table more from Warren DiMartini and Jake E. Lee. A lot more legato. I’m more picked out with my stuff. I try to be the very stingy with all my stuff. My favorite solos of all time are very sing-along-y, very melodic.

So. I think that’s really how our styles are – it just works because we’re so different. We each know what we bring to the band, and we’re comfortable with what we bring to the band. There’s no conflict there at all. There never has been.

Robert: What have you learned from Jim?

Josh Rand: I’ve learned more from him when we first started out, just because he had already been seasoned on the touring side of things. Player-wise, because we play so different, I don’t know if we’ve really learned a lot from one another. You’d have to ask him about myself. Stone Sour is the only band I’ve ever been in. I went from playing in a basement to my first show which was a sold-out place in Des Moines and never looked back.

Robert: Jim really showed off his guitar collection. How does your collection compare to his?

Josh Rand: Oh, mine’s not nearly close to his. [Laughter] I have like 30-35, but he has over 200 right now or something crazy. I don’t really need that many, I have a couple of guitars that are collector-type pieces. But other than that, everything is for applications that I would need to record or tour.

Robert: Is it a challenge for Stone Sour’s schedule to be based around Slipknot’s schedule?

Josh Rand: It can be challenging. Right now I’m ready to go on tour and Jim’s not going to be part of this tour. He’s obligated to write the next Slipknot record. But Stone Sour needed the tour because we got all this success, and we’re not out promoting the records. So we made the decision to having a friend of the band come in and fill Jim’s role, so Stone Sour could go out on tour.

On one side it can be irritating, then on the other side of it is way as a blessing, because it really allows us to have time to work on the next record. We really could spend a year or two years trying to fine-tune each Stone Sour record before we can start in the studio. Not many bands at our level get to do that. Maybe Iron Maiden, Priest, but bands at our level, most of the time it’s just tour-record-tour-record, nonstop.

For us we’re still about making whole records, and not just here’s one song we put on nine songs that are filler.