NOT LIKELY TO FADE AWAY… CROSSFADE by David Lee Wilson 
Though the members of Crossfade spent a decade morphing from one incarnation to the next under various names, a core musical belief remained constant, taking Crossfade from garage to gold in just six months. Crossfade’s single “Cold” crept up radio playlists despite the fact that there is an almost official stance against guitar/turntable inflected Hard Rock these days.  Crossfade bassist Mitch James shares a few thoughts with Midwest BEAT on how the band’s current success and future plans. BEAT: Radio has been really kind to Crossfade, but are there cold spots where it just doesn’t seem like anyone knows you yet? MITCH JAMES: Not really cold spots, maybe luke-warm spots. At most every show the first ten rows will be singing every word to “Cold” and you can tell the cities that we are really getting good sales in because those people will sing the entire set. It is amazing to have that in our first nine months of touring, our first nine months of touring ever! BEAT: Does that recognition put you in a completely different headspace? MJ: It does and it doesn’t. I mean, we are humble enough to know that we are very lucky to be where we are. We have no doubt that the record label and all of those who have helped us are the reason why we are where we are. The song, “Cold,” just happened to take off when it did and had it been any other song we could have gotten left out in the cold so we are very thankful. BEAT: You tour with Three Doors Down later this year. That seems like a perfect match with both bands being Southern. Is it easier to tour with those who understand Southern culture? MJ: More than you could know! (laughs) It is so apparent that you wouldn’t believe it. We toured with Smile Empty Soul who were from L.A. and great guys, but they had their L.A. thing going on. It wasn’t better or worse than our thing, but it was just completely different, so I didn’t really bond with them as much as we did with a band like Shinedown. We played a show with Shinedown in Columbia, South Carolina when they were just starting their domination of the world and only like nine people showed up! (laughs) But they and we, both being from the South, I don’t really know how to put it into words, but just as soon as you see them and shake their hands you have a bond. Altar Bridge was the same way who are all from down in Florida and they could have really been asses if they wanted to be. I mean, they sold thirty million records but they are the nicest guys you would ever want to meet. BEAT: What would be a dream gig for you to play on? MJ: That is easy! Anything with Metallica! Faith No More would be cool if they were still around, that would be a pretty killer three band bill! (laughs) Wrathchild America would be cool on that too. BEAT: Wow, Shannon Larkin’s old band. I think I’ve only heard their name invoked a handful of times since the early ‘90s. MJ: Oh, man, there were like three or four albums that came out in the early ‘90s that made us feel like we were destined to play together because, for us, everything revolved around those four albums. Wrathchild America, Mordrid, Faith No More and Metallica, that was it for all of us. Those were the bands that had us saying, “Yeah, we can play like them, with cool songs and still be catchy” you know what I mean? BEAT: I haven’t figured out if you guys have just been lucky to escape the backlash that bands who incorporate turntables in their music have seen or if you have simply transcended the categories. MJ: Yeah, Limp Bizkit and all that. Well, our whole point has always been that we are musicians first. We were in a band together for eleven years, well two of us anyway, and we always had that musical mindset before we had some kind of rock star mindset and so we approached it differently. We learned a long time ago to write really complicated, but musical songs and we can do one without selling out to the other really. I think that after this album that fact might be a little more apparent. You pick and choose your battles and you write stuff that you want to get popular but you move on and do your own thing and hopefully it will be honest enough that people won’t be able to say, “Awe, they just changed to be popular. . .” BEAT: Do you have set plans and goals? MJ: Oh absolutely. We reach milestones every day. We never get complacent, never decide that we are good enough or don’t have to go out and meet the people and sign autographs or do extra things for radio stations. We realize that we have to go that extra mile to get to that next milestone. You have to soak it up while you can because it generally doesn’t last. BEAT: Are you writing for the next CD? MJ: We just sit in the back of the bus and strum acoustics and try to come up with harmonies and things that are going to make a song good as opposed to writing out an entire song. We have all of the ideas and if we ever get off of the road for a time we will be able to bang 'em out. We have lived with this album for three years now. We got signed and nothing really happened for a few months and then they remixed the album and that took time so there we were working our regular jobs knowing that we were so close! (laughs) Now it is like we can look back and say that it was fate that it happened that way, but it was tough and we won’t have to wait like that the next time we record. Crossfade perform May 5 at Chicago’s House of Blues. May 11 at Piere’s in Fort Wayne, IN and May 12 at Heartland in South Bend, IN |
