OOC: feel free to write your own stuff for this, just only for alt.rock bands please and under the CTRL name.
Warren McGriff- Stoner, Drunkard, and Possibly One of the Best Alternative Guitarist Today
Written By Michael MacCallahan
When I was asked to interview Warren McGriff, I asked him for an address for the interview. When I was given an address in a harbor, I thought that McGriff had invited me onto a yacht. After all, the man is already a millionaire with only one album and a handful of singles released. I was surprised by what I actually arrived at. I arrived at a one-story houseboat tethered to the dock.
I knocked on the door to see if I had the right address and, sure enough, McGriff answered the door. Though it was 11:30 AM, Warren was unshaved dressed in a white tee-shirt and jeans that appeared slept in. I was graciously greeted with a slightly slurred “What do you want?” When I told him I had come from CRTL and I was there to do the scheduled interview, he suddenly seemed wide awake. He invited me inside. We passed through the living room on the way to the kitchen, and I was excited to see Ryan Page sleeping on McGriff’s couch. Warren woke him up and was greeted by the
very slurred “It’s before noon, why am I awake?” When told about me, Ryan simply covered his head with the blanket and went back to sleep. We went into the kitchen, Warren poured us some coffee, splashed some rum into his and we began the interview.
CTRL: So, this wasn’t my first question I had planned, but why are you living in a houseboat if you have so much money?Warren: *laughs* It all has to do with one piece of wisdom my guitar teacher gave to me one lesson. ‘What do all of the bands accused of selling out have in common? They all made a ton of money and then bought fancy houses, cars, clothes, and all that. That stuck with me, so, until we want to sell out, we made a pact that none of us would be upgrading from what we started out in. Though, in Ryan’s case, that was pretty nice to begin with.
So, with several recent hits, is it easy to adjust to being famous?Yeah, it’s easy because we’ve always treated every show from the very beginning like we were playing both a small club and a giant stadium at the same time. We just have fun onstage, you know?
You’ve also shown yourself to be a capable rapper on this album, will we be hearing any of this on the next one?*chuckles* Ryan would kill me if I didn’t. He always loved my rapping, and I had a ton of fun doing it. We’re already working on new material that incorporates rapping into it.
So, this new artist, Doll, that your band is funding, why?We’ve known Doll since high school, and he’s been in a few relatively short lived bands with us, the best being Revelation. He’s one of our best friends, but he hasn’t been able to get enough money to get his career going in this current recession. Since we aren’t spending a ton of money right now *gestures to show the house* we figured we’d get him off of his feet.
What can we expect from the next album?We’re going to keep the spirit of the last album: Don’t Be Friendly to the Radio, Make the Radio Friendly to Us, while getting a bit more post-grunge. I’m also rapping on the album on a couple of tracks. Basically, we are going to fuse our style with Korn’s.