Editor’s Note: Now that the Warped Tour is wrapped up, we are going to be spending some significant time reminiscing about one of the greatest festivals in music history. Besides Woodstock, I would’ve considered the Warped Tour as the festival that brought folks from all walks of life together. In this, we sat down with Adam Joad of Scattered Hamlet, whose band brought their brand of southern fried chicken rock to the masses. Fans can find Scattered Hamlet at the following locations:
www.facebook.com/ScatteredHamlet
Madness To Creation: Favorite moment involving Stone Cold Steve Austin!
Adam: Man, there’s so many…. his entire career is like a highlight reel. For me it was probably when he put a stunner of Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania XIV when he won the title. I think it was the first world title he won too… I’m not sure. Anyway, it was awesome and just resonated with me and probably a lot of other people. Who hasn’t at some point wanted to put your boss through a table… you know. That’s a theme just about every working person can relate to. Think about in music, we have songs like Johnny Paycheck’s “Take this Job and Shove it,” Dolly Parton’s “9-5” and Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm” and I could go on. We looked at it a little bit in our tune “Shelter,” which is still one of our most popular songs. This moment was the pro wrestling equivalent of classic tunes like this.
Madness To Creation: You’re performing with Kid Rock and Lita Ford in Sturgis! How wild is that?
Adam: It’s a trip. It’s a strange full circle experience for me I haven’t wrapped my brain around yet. Lita Ford was the first concert I ever saw and watching Kid Rock, Aerosmith and Run DMC at Star Lake Amphitheater outside of Pittsburgh back in the day was one of my “this is what I want to do” moments in my life. It took a lot blood, sweat and tears and I carry a shit ton of scars with me on this long strange journey. We’ve played with Lita Ford before at Rockfest on the same stage but never Kid Rock. I really like what he does and the swagger he does it with.
Madness To Creation: Favorite song by each aforementioned artist. Mine is “American Bad Ass” by Kid Rock and “Kiss Me Deadly” by Lita Ford.
Adam: “Kiss Me Deadly” is definitely my favorite Lita Ford track too. Kid Rock I’m not sure. He’s had so many tunes at different points in his career that resonate with me for different reasons. I’d probably pick “Bawitdaba” though because it was my first introduction to him and he really just laid down exactly what he was all about in that tune. From there I just think he kept getting better, which is something a lot of artists don’t do.
Madness To Creation: Take us into the song and video for “White Trash”.
Adam: I was happy most people got it. We aren’t a political band and it had nothing to do with race or anything. We had lots of conversations with our PR and management about that one, for me personally I wanted to make sure it was taken out of context. I want everyone to be able to come to an SH show and have fun and not feel excluded. The song is just an homage to how I grew up and a celebration of the blue collar backwoods culture I’ve always dug. I always thought the Public Enemy video for “Fight the Power” was amazing. I’m a white kid that great up in Appalachia, but I could appreciate the passion and energy when they were marching around Brooklyn. I didn’t have to be from Brooklyn and have the same experiences as those guys to appreciate it. Obviously that’s a lot deeper than “White Trash” and I’m not trying to compare the two at all ha ha. I did want our video to be something that anyone could watch, from the same background or not and still understand it was about fun and celebration. When we made the video we wanted to keep it fun to reflect that. I just watched it again the other day and I like how it turned out. At the beginning, for instance, that was really where Rich lived and that was his lady. We tried to keep it as real as possible. Going back to Kid Rock though, he took that whole vibe to another level in his “Po-Dunk” video. Hats off to him.
Madness To Creation: Give us your favorite Warped Tour memories growing up and performing on Warped Tour this year!
Adam: My favorite memory attending was probably seeing Rancid. I’m a big Rancid fan. In that second wave of punk rock in the 90’s those guys stood tall as everything punk rock should be as far as I’m concerned. They didn’t have whiny lyrics, dickies shorts and pretty boys jumping around talking about losing their high school crush… No, those dudes were street and everything I like about punk to this day. Performing though, I have two that stand out. The first was when I told all the fellas in skinny jeans from the stage that if they stopped by our booth I could use my Buck Knife and modify their pants so they didn’t cut off circulation to their nuts – I thought that was funny. Also we ended up hanging out with Ashley from Black Veil Brides at our merch booth. It’s hilarious, usually our hillbilly rock booth is not where ladies hang out, but with him there, we had a constant flux of girls coming up and buying shit just to get a picture with him. If you can get bigger rockstars than yourself to hang out by your merch table I recommend it, it helps with sales ha ha.
Madness To Creation: Take us into the song “Stay Hungry”
Adam: To me in an already stellar catalog of material, “Stay Hungry” stands out. It was always the one I went to when facing adversity and needing to be my best self to overcome something. It makes me want to whoop ass. When it was recommended to us online I thought it really captured where we were after our drummer Jake’s accident. It was a crossroads for us and me personally. Do we want to keep pushing or throw in the towel was what we had to ask ourselves. Anyway, we were hungry and kept pushing and in a few months we were on the last Warped Tour, we appeared at Rockfest, we did Jesco White’s birthday at his house, we landed this Sturgis gig and we got “Shelter” in the new Nascar Heat video game. If we’d have quit none of that would have happened. It’s bittersweet that Jake’s not out here with us since it was on his pounding of the skins and friendship that helped us get here.
Madness To Creation: What about this life that makes you hungry or keep staying hungry?
Adam: I know where my drive comes from. Maybe pure stubbornness. Everytime I get kicked in the balls, and it’s a lot in this industry, I want to get up and take another swing. It’s always been like that for me. Maybe it’s stupidity but I don’t half ass shit. I’m a take a swing at Mike Tyson kind of guy and let the cards falls as they will. If you don’t take swings you don’t get knock outs… of course you don’t get knocked out either ha ha. Like Joe Dirt, you gotta keep on keeping on. What’s the alternative?
Madness To Creation: When you’re hungry what do you have a hankering for?
Adam: I am not a man of profound culinary taste… I like White Castle and Wings. Not like small jabroni wings but big ass chicken wings that aren’t too hot that you can’t enjoy the flavor.
Madness To Creation: Based on the Snickers candy bar, what is your mood?
Adam: I’m in a weird place right now. I’m overwhelmed, I’m grateful, I’m hurting physically, I’m in my post tour depression mode and trying to get everything in order before I head out to South Dakota this weekend. I’m sort of like a beat dog right now, but that’s when they are the most dangerous and I want to take that energy and vibe to the stage with me. It wouldn’t be a good time to poke the bear though.
Madness To Creation: I’m giving you the floor to have you talk about the band further and anything else you would like to add.
Adam: I think you covered just about everything I would have talked about anyway, I appreciate the questions and approach.
Scattered Hamlet will be in Sturgis for the next couple of days. Check out the dates below.
Wednesday, August 8th- Buffalo Chip in Sturgis, South Dakota(providing support for Reverend Horton Heat)
Thursday, August 9th- Buffalo Chip in Sturgis, South Dakota(providing support for Kid Rock and Lita Ford)
For tickets and further information, click here.
