Taproot drummer Jarrod Montague is penning an upcoming book titled ‘True Rockstars: 12 Guiding Principles For Success And Happiness‘. With the band’s 2002 album “Welcome” set to turn 14 this coming Saturday, October 15th, he shared the following excerpt from the book that touches upon the album via his Facebook:
“This Saturday marks the anniversary of my band Taproot‘s release of our 2nd Atlantic Records album, “Welcome.” Here is an excerpt from my upcoming book, “True Rockstars: 12 Guiding Principles for Success and Happiness” that touches on the completion of the record and its release. Enjoy and crank up what is quite possibly my favorite Taproot album, “Welcome!” #truerockstars
We continued to write and rehearse and within a few months, we had 15 full songs ready to record, most of them brand new with our new push from Toby and a burst of creativity. We loaded into Cherokee Studios in Hollywood where the likes of Elvis, Aerosmith, Motley Crue, David Bowie, Korn, Dave Matthews Band, Guns N’ Roses, and Van Halen had recorded.
The recording of “Welcome” took longer than “Gift,” mostly due to Toby’s interest in trying lots of different sounds. For me, that meant a different snare drum for almost every song. We tried different toms and cymbal sizes to get the right feel for each tune. Mike and Phil tried a wide variety of guitars and basses. Nothing was off-limits with Toby to get interesting sounds. For the intro to “Time,” the high-pitched guitar sound came from placing a tiny pocket amp into a glass candle with a microphone and hitting the record button. Steve and Toby spent a lot of time one-on-one working out three-part harmonies and layers of vocals which earned us many favorable comparisons to Alice In Chains.
During the process of writing the songs for “Welcome,” we put together the music for an atmospheric mid-tempo song which we thought has a spacey vibe to it. The working title was “Spacey” for a while which then morphed into “Kevin Spacey.” We recorded the track along with the others but Steve hadn’t been inspired to put vocals on it yet. Toby, who had produced multiple Alice in Chains albums suggested that he send it over to their iconic singer Layne Staley to see if he’d be interested in putting some vocal on it. We were ecstatic at the possibility, especially given that Steve had been listening to a lot of Alice in Chains records while writing “Welcome” to get some inspiration for harmonies. Toby mailed him a CD and we waited for feedback.
It wasn’t long after that the world heard the news that Layne died in his home in April 2002 just a few months before our record release. Toby took a few days off from the studio and headed up to Seattle, Washington to attend the funeral. When he returned, he was in a somber mood but said it was great to see the other band members and Layne’s family. To our surprise, Layne’s mom told Toby that Layne had Taproot’s instrumental of “Kevin Spacey” in his CD player when he passed away. It’s an honor to know that one of the great pioneers of alternative rock vocals was listening to our track but also unfortunate that the project would never come to fruition. When the time came to choose the 12 songs that would comprise the record, 3 of our 15 did not make the cut: “Remain,” “Transparent,” and “Free.”
We finished recording “Welcome” in May of 2002 and returned home for a much desired break to spend some time with our families. That fall, I proposed to Stephanie by painting “Stephanie, Will You Marry Me?” on the windshield of my car and picking her up from work. I got down on one knee next to my car when she came out of her office, recited the painted words, and presented an engagement ring. She thankfully accepted.
To begin promoting our next album, we hit the road with a headlining tour accompanied by Deadsy and Dredg. The one-month run kicked off at the Castle outside of Las Vegas where we were developing a strong following. The primary rock station X107.5 had booked Limp Bizkit to headline a show of theirs. When we visited the station for an on-air interview, they told us that Fred Durst and company cancelled the show to play for a radio station in Sacramento on the same night for more money.
The Programming Director at X107.5 made a public declaration that because of our early feud with Fred, from then and into the future, anytime they would have normally played a Limp Bizkit song in their rotation, they would instead play a Taproot song. Needless to say, because their songs were regular fixtures of rock radio, we got some wonderful support and built a great fan base in Las Vegas thanks to the team at the station.
The tour took us through some great venues and markets that would become regular tour stops: the House of Blues in New Orleans, the Trocadero in Philadelphia, Birch Hill in New Jersey, the Middle East in Boston, the Rave in Milwaukee, Slims in San Francisco, and the Metro in Chicago. By the time we got closer to our home state for the gig in Chicago, our lead single “Poem” was starting to make its ascent as a bonafide hit single. The enthusiastic crowd at the sold out Metro show made for one of the best shows we had had to date. We could feel the momentum building.
On October 15, 2002, our second record “Welcome” was released. Our lead single “Poem” that we had been debuting for the Ozzfest audience got a fantastic response throughout the summer. It had been playing on radio for a few weeks and reached #5 and #10 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks and Modern Rock Tracks respectively. We received some great reviews from the critics, including Rolling Stone who named Taproot one of 2002’s “Bands to Watch.”
The video we made for “Poem” was directed by the Brothers Strause who had directed “Californication” for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Linkin Park’s “Crawling.” The whopping $225,000 cost of the video was advanced by Atlantic and it was thankfully getting regular play on MTV and MTV2. The album debuted at #17 on the Billboard 200 chart and sold 51,000 copies in its first week. The Taproot machine was firing on all cylinders.
The night before the record was released, we appeared on the nationally syndicated radio program “Rockline.” The next afternoon, the record store Rock-A-Billy’s in Utica near Detroit hosted an in-store event for us where we signed fresh copies of the new record for hundreds of fans and performed an acoustic set for the crowd. That night, we kicked off a headlining tour with our label mates Pulse Ultra and Project 86 at one of our hometown venues, Saint Andrews Hall in Detroit. After opening for bands at this iconic venue for the last five years, it was an amazing feeling to come back as the Hometown Heroes with a nation-wide hit single and record.”
For more info on his book, head to Facebook. Currently Taproot are working on a b-sides & rarities collection titled “Besides“.
