Friday, January 07, 2005 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Just Being Himself

Solo shows set Staind's Aaron Lewis free

"It makes me so angry, I don't even want to get into it," singer Aaron Lewis says of the music industry.

Aaron Lewis, singer for the melodic metal band Staind, tried to follow other rock stars by starting his own record label. He named it 413 after the area code in his home state of Massachusetts.

But after only a year or so of conducting business, he put 413 on hold when he became frustrated that his label's parent corporation, Geffen, dropped the band Lo-Pro. Lewis and several music critics had been excited about the rock band, and it was doing OK commercially.

"Lo-Pro came out with their first single, and the single went top 20 everywhere, and they got dropped," Lewis says. "What more could you really ask for from a band's first single?

"That just goes to show you how screwed up this business is right now. They drop great records to stuff commercialized crap down your throat," he says. "I have got a real bad taste in my mouth about the whole thing. ... It makes me so angry, I don't even want to get into it."

Does Lewis' own band deal with similar problems?

"No," he says, but, "you tend to get put on the back burner, so to speak, for all the new trendy commercial crap that they're gonna focus all their attention on, and waste all their money" on, he says.

"And we'll come out and sell (a lot) of records to pay for all their mistakes that they made ... That's usually how it works."

Lewis is able to perform without business matters cluttering his head during his solo acoustic shows, like the ones he is set to play at the Golden Nugget on Saturday and Sunday.

These solo gigs are free-flowing and lighthearted, and he's more himself during these shows than during Staind concerts, he says. For one thing, it wouldn't help Staind if he cracked jokes and laughed or smiled so much, he says.

He also doesn't use set lists during solo concerts.

"I kind of wing it, and crash and burn a lot," he says. "Half of the songs I bust out in an evening, I haven't played in years and years and years, and certainly haven't practiced them. I pull them out from my memory."

That includes songs he performed during his pre-Staind years in the 1990s.

"I played out acoustically a long time before the band took off."

Lewis is known for covering songs by bands such as Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam. But he changes them up according to his whims.

"A lot of them, I have made up guitar parts for 'em. I don't play guitar parts quite right. I kind of play them just good enough to be able to sing over the top of them."

Fans don't mind when he makes mistakes during his improvisational riffs, he says.

"That's what makes it a little bit different than if you came to see the band. I'm the first one to laugh at myself and make a joke out of it, and move onto the next song."

Lewis has recorded only one of his solo shows so far. He burned it on DVD, even, but he hasn't released it.

"I just don't know what to do with it," he says. "I am without a doubt my absolute worst critic, so it's a rarity when I sit back and listen and say, `Ah, that's actually good.' "

As for Staind, he's finished most of the vocals for the band's next album, which is due in the next few months (as is his second child). But he stresses that he won't let his solo work get in the way of Staind.

"As soon as I feel like what I'm doing is taking away from the band, I'm done," he says. "I could inevitably see some sort of solo acoustic record coming out or something, but that's been talked about from the very, very beginning."