Tyler Connolly Interview: The Truth Is

By: Rick Landers

Standing front and center of rocker’s Theory of a Deadman is Canadian, Tyler Connolly, armed with a white Gibson, a disarming voice and a range of dark spiked hair. With him are Dave Brenner (rhythm guitar); Dean Back (bass) and more recently, Joey Dandeneau (drums). Together the group has issued three albums with their third outing, Scars & Souvenirs (2008) running up the charts with eight singles including, a number one hit, “Bad Girlfriend” written by Tyler and his wife, Christine. The album claimed gold status in the States and platinum in Canada in 2009.

For now, Tyler and Deadman are finishing up their new album, The Truth Is, that’s due out July 12. A preview track, “Lowlife” was released on May 17, 2011. The song begins with a heavy bass and a kaleidoscope of sound before hitting its electric anthemic stride, with wink and a nod lyrics. If it’s any indication of what’s coming on the new CD, then Deadman is aiming at a suite of songs that will get arena crowds joining in.

Guitar International spoke with Tyler about how Theory of a Deadman keeps moving ahead after nearly 10 years together, his guitars and work in the studio, his songwriting, Jimmy Page and the trouble with drummers.

Tyler Connolly

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Rick Landers: Theory of a Deadman has been together for 10 years and you’ve pretty much stayed intact, except you’ve had three drummers. Can’t those guys keep a job?

Tyler Connolly: No, all drummers are insane. They really are, and you can quote me on that. [Both Laughing] Our new drummer, Joe, he’s awesome. A great drummer, a great guy and he’s staying. We’ve made him part of the band, so we finally found a guy.

Rick: Is it a tough transition to get used to another drummer, or is it pretty much seamless?

Tyler Connolly: No, it’s all about the personality really, because there are a lot of great drummers out there. We could get a different drummer every week and they can do the parts. We’re not necessarily Sevenfold. We don’t have a lot of Dream Theater. There’s not a lot of technical stuff. It’s just more about the personality. You live with this person 24 hours a day, so we do auditions.

We go through a lot of people and at the end of the day, you’ve got to pick someone you really don’t know and haven’t spent any time with. It’s like, shit, all right. Let’s hope this person doesn’t have some weird issues that we don’t know about, like has manic depression, you know what I mean? But he’s a good kid and when he came into this, he was a great drummer, but really hadn’t done any touring. He’s learned a lot and he’s having a good time.

Rick: I imagine after being together for 10 years, you guys on occasion have differences of opinions, whether it’s work-related or even personality stuff. How do you work that out? With clubs? With knives? Or do you just hurl dirty words at each other?

Tyler Connolly: There’s no real alpha male in the band. I guess, to me, being the singer and the leader of the band, I’m still not really the alpha male. It’s not like I need things to be a certain way. I don’t really need to run the camp. I just have kind of taken that position, so it’s not like there’s someone else that’s an A-class personality that we always butt heads, so we usually just kind of brush it off with humor. Even when someone’s grumpy, you’ve got to have a thick skin. I guess is what I’m trying to say, because if someone’s cranky or in a bad mood or you’re having a disagreement, you’ve got to be able to just brush it off and be able to laugh at it, because you’re kind of stuck out here with these people.

If you just let it go, then all of a sudden everyone starts thinking, “Why is so and so cranky all the time or doesn’t seem to be hanging out?” And it’s something we try to do, too. We’re like a big family. So, we do a lot of dinners, Deadman and the crew. When we hang out on a day off, like yesterday, I went out for dinner with a few of the crew guys and one of the band guys. It’s not like I go sit in my hotel room all day by myself and stay away from everyone on purpose because I’m the singer or something. That stuff helps.

Tyler Connolly

Rick: Sure. Let’s go back to one of your earlier albums, Scars and Souvenirs. That was a milestone for you guys. Was that a surprise to you when it was successful, or did you know it was gonna get a lot of attraction?

Tyler Connolly: I don’t think we did. I think we knew we had a lot of great songs and creatively, musically, we were continuing. I think I was getting better as a lyricist and as a band, we just kept seeing new light, I guess. We kept seeing the fan base building and the songs building. So we knew we had a good record, whether or not it was gonna do what it did, we didn’t really know. I think “Bad Girlfriend” was a big kind of surprise for us. The label hated it. They thought it was cheesy. [Both Laughing]

They wanted me to change a bunch of lyrics and we didn’t think the song was gonna do what it was gonna do. So we were like, “Ah, just leave it the way it is. Like it’s just a rock song. It’s not gonna be a single, so just whatever. Leave it. No, I’m not gonna change it.” I’m not too worried about pissing off anybody and the song became huge. It was a huge song for us and I was like, “Man, I’m glad I didn’t change that stuff,” because the song wouldn’t have been this good. It is cheesy, but that’s what makes it so good, I guess. That’s what people are looking for when they hear the song, the cheese factor.

Rick: Any songs that you’ve written that have evolved so much that it would be pretty hard to recognize the difference between when you first wrote it and how it ended up on the album?

Tyler Connolly: No that stuff never turns out. If I’m working on a song and it just isn’t translating, I change it and change it. Nah, I just literally scrap it. If I’m not feeling it, it just doesn’t happen. Rarely do we ever work on a song, or myself, work on a song where I’ve had it kind of floating around. There is a song on our new record. It’s called “We Were Men.” It’s a military song, another kind of thing I’ve never done before. I’ve never written a song about war or military, and I wrote it a long time ago and actually played it for Dave, the guitar player.

I think when we were jamming stuff for Scars and Souvenirs. He said, “That’s a great song. Let’s do something with it.” I think I just forgot about it or something or I couldn’t finish it and this record, I go, “Dude, do you remember that song ‘We Were Men’?” He says, “Yeah.” I go, “I think I’m gonna try and finish that.” He was like, “Dude, that was a great song.” So, I did finish it. That was just one of those songs that never kind of happened. I never really go back and revisit a song from years ago. And it’s a great song. I’m glad it turned out. Usually I put a song together kind of at once, and if it doesn’t work, I just scrap it. I don’t try to keep changing it.

Rick: How do you decide? When you do an album, do you start with the concept or do you just end up with the songs that just sort of feel right to you guys?

Tyler Connolly: Yeah, there’s no concept. The concept unfolds itself after we really start kind of jamming the songs and recording the record in the studio. We started listening and saying, “Hey, you know, we’re getting a little bit of a theme on this record,” then we kind of push the theme a little bit.

On the new record, the truth is there’s a little bit of a rockabilly kind of feel to it. So, we pushed a little bit and in one of the songs, I do a really rockabilly guitar solo with the slapback echo, and I played it on a Gretsch. It’s got that triplet feel and we put horns, like that Brian Setzer Orchestra kind of feel of horns, on a couple of songs. So, we kind of pushed it a little, and I got the hairdo, so it just kind of made sense. It wasn’t like a concept in the beginning. Just after listening to a bunch of the songs, “You know, we could have a little bit of that rockabilly feel on this record.” It just feels natural, not like we’re forcing it.

Tyler Connolly

Rick: Any acoustic songs?

Tyler Connolly: No. No acoustic songs on this record. We have one ballad called “Easy to Love You,” which is a beautiful song. I thought that song was gonna be a B-side. The song is just so beautiful, it’s almost like it doesn’t fit on the record. It just turned out so good. It’s almost like you need that one wedding song.

Our last record we had a song called “Wait For Me.” We have a lot of women that love that song and it was almost like that was kind of our military song. A lot of people say, “This is me and my husband’s song. He’s overseas right now.” It’s cool. “Easy To Love You” is kind of like this wedding song. I was like, “Let’s just throw it on the record.” That’s probably the most acoustic.

Rick: What guitars are you using in the studio besides the Gretsch?

Tyler Connolly: Mostly Gibson. We use some of our own guitars. I think I only brought in one of my guitars, the gold top, and Dave brought in. I think he had a Les Paul. It might have been a classic tobacco he used on a lot of stuff. A lot of the guitars used were all studio guitars and they have a lot of vintage stuff there. I actually brought out my ’57 Junior, all original. We used that for a lot of solos, but mostly Gibsons, a couple Gretsches, a couple of Teles just to give it that different sound. Teles just have  that “Tele sound.”

Rick: What about amps in the studio? Are you using amps or going direct?

Tyler Connolly: No, same thing. We’re using tons of different gear; mostly Marshalls. We tried everything. There were some songs we went through a 5150. There were some songs where we used a lot of Orange amps. Pretty much every single amp in there; we’ve got some Wizard amps we used on some stuff, which is really cool. It’s what the AC/DC guys are using. But, yeah, mostly Marshalls. We even tried some Mesa stuff, Vox, Matchless. It goes on and on. They really have a lot of gear there.

Rick: When you were a kid growing up in Canada, were you a hockey fanatic?

Tyler Connolly: Oh, yeah. Still am.

Rick: Did you at one point trade your hockey stick for a while for a guitar?

Tyler Connolly: No, but funny enough, Dean, our bass player, he played. Everyone where I grew up played hockey. They just did. I didn’t really play hockey that much till I got a little bit older, till I was in my 20s. But, I played street hockey all the time. Dean, his dream was to be in the NHL, to be a pro hockey player. He ended up getting his jersey when he was a kid in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Because of being in the band, I think that was his dream come true. [Both Laughing] Hockey for us, in our town, literally everyone played music or an instrument and played hockey. That’s just how it was.

Tyler Connolly

Rick: I understand you started out listening to Jimmy Page.

Tyler Connolly: To meet Jimmy Page would be my ultimate dream come true. He’s my guitar hero. I watched that movie, It Might Get Loud. It’s great with The Edge and Mick White. You should see it because it’s the three of them talking about guitars and playing guitar. Jimmy Page destroys. He gets up and plays “Kashmir” and we’re giggling like schoolboys. The Edge’s idol is Jimmy Page, too, pretty much.

I’ve always been a riff guy and he’s written probably the most famous riffs of all time. That’s what I love about him. I like solos and stuff and he’s got some pretty famous solos, too. He’s just written some of the best melodies.

Rick: Even some of his acoustic stuff is great. I understand you’ve gotten a little bit into videography. What’s the attraction for you and what have been the biggest challenges getting into that?

Tyler Connolly: I just film stuff for fun. I don’t have any real cameras or anything. It’s more about documenting what we’re doing. With the Internet and fans, they want to see what’s going on. So, we’re a bunch of goofs, watching something goofy, so I always try to film stuff. It’s one of those things where it’s like I’m the funny friend, but I’m not a comedian.

You know how you get the funny friend in the group and you’re like, “Man, you’re so funny. You should be a comedian,” and the guy is like, “Okay.” And he goes up and does standup and sucks. It’s different. So, I’m the funny guy in the band. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s funny to anyone else. Sometimes I’ve done stuff and I think it’s really funny and I laugh and no one else is laughing.

Rick: But you know, a lot of funny guys are really serious.

Tyler Connolly: I’ve talked to some comedians before and we actually just shot a music video for our first single and Donald Logue. He was in the show Grounded for Life. He played the Dad. He’s not really a standup comedian, but he’s a comedic actor and he talked to me about comedians. It can be really dark. A lot of comedians are really kind of dark, depressive people. They’re out to go onstage and be funny, but in real life, they’re not really funny people.

Rick: Let me get back to Gibson guitars a little bit. Of your Gibsons, you’ve got a 335, a Les Paul, you’ve got a Firebird, right?

Tyler Connolly: On the road with me right now I’ve got four 335s. I’ve got four Les Pauls, a 175. I’ve got a piezo in that one. I’ve got a piezo in one of the 335s. Got a Bixby on it. I’ve got a piezo on the one Les Paul I’ve got configured where I rewired it so the toggle switch when it’s up, it’s piezo only, acoustic only. When the toggle is down, it goes to the bridge pickup and the piezo, so I can just play the verses acoustic guitar and I don’t have to do anything. I just flip the toggle down. It goes to distortion and keeps the acoustic on. It’s pretty cool. So, I think those are the nine. I just got a Tele, an American Standard Tele for one song or two. So, that’s what I’m rolling with.

Rick: Are you more into vintage stuff?

Tyler Connolly: Vintage stuff? Yeah. The Gibson ’57 is the only vintage guitar I’ve got. I’d like to get some other ones, but they’re a lot of money. I’m currently running a couple of Marshall JMPs from the late ’70s. My two heads. I just use an Iso [Isolation] cab with a Marshall 4×12 because you’ve got to crank those up. They’ve got the master volumes on them, so you can crank the pre-amp right up and control the volume with the master volume. They sound amazing. I just love it.

Rick: So after this album comes out, are you going on tour?

Tyler: Yeah. This summer, starting in August, we’re doing the Carnival of Madness tour. They had one last year with Shinedown and Chevelle, Ball of Mud. This year we’re closing. It’s us Alter Bridge, Black Sun Cherry, Adelitas Way and Emphatic. So that’s August, September, just in the States only and then we’re heading to Europe.

Rick: You know the guys from Alter Bridge?

Tyler Connolly: Yeah, really well. Great guys. We just saw them actually at a festival last weekend and we’re all excited about the tour. Those guys are all really good musicians. Miles Kennedy can sing his ass off. Mark Tremonti can shred. I met him before when he was playing with Slash because our old drummer, Brent Fitz, is playing with Slash now. Ironically. I went to the show and I met Miles and Slash. Yeah, he’s a great singer, great guy.