When Between The Buried And Me announced The Blue Nowhere, their first album as a four-piece, anticipation ran high. Guitarist Paul Waggoner shouldered new responsibilities in the studio, recording nearly all of the guitar parts himself.
“I took on all the guitar playing duties, although Dan Briggs, the bass player, does some auxiliary guitar stuff, like the 12-string acoustic guitar parts,” Paul explained in a conversation with Rodrigo Altaf. “But for the most part, all the guitar was performed by me in the studio.”
He admitted it wasn’t the playing itself that weighed on him, but the complexity of the music: “It’s more of a mental challenge than anything, just kind of because we do write such sort of intricate music. There are often a lot of layers of guitars. It’s not just like two rhythms and a lead or something. Sometimes there’s more going on, there’s harmony parts, both rhythm guitars are doing different things.”
To keep sane, he relied on meticulous organization. “I make like a spreadsheet basically, of all my guitar parts that I need to record. And, you know, as I record them, as I get them done, I just check them off one line item at a time, and it makes it a little less overwhelming for me.”
Despite this being the band’s longest gap between records, Paul dismissed the idea that timing shaped the music: “To us, it didn’t really feel like it was that long of a gap… the things that influence our writing are mostly just like, you know, just where we’re at musically, and where we’re at in our lives. I think all that stuff is more influential to the final product than just the gap of time itself.”
The first single, “Things We Tell Ourselves In The Dark”, reflected both experimentation and identity: “That was kind of the brainchild of Dan, who’s really a multi-instrumentalist. He’s like an old prog head, true and true. It’s still in spite of it being kind of out of left field for us, it still has that BTBAM identity to it. We knew it would probably be kind of divisive… but that’s cool because it gets people talking.”
Another track, “Absent Thereafter”, had been sitting in his riff vault for years. “I actually wrote that probably in the Automata sessions, so that’s an old one. It was never the right time to use it, but finally, it was like, okay, let’s bust it out. I wanted to write something that was like, well, what if Eddie Van Halen and Brent Mason and Danny Gatton wrote a metal song together? And then of course, once we added everybody’s flair to it, it really came together as a really kind of fun and unique BTBAM song.”
Dynamics are essential to The Blue Nowhere. Paul pointed to the interludes: “I like albums that have peaks and valleys. Because we want our fans to listen to the entire record as one immersive experience, I think it’s important to have those moments where things come down a little bit, especially if it’s before or after something very intense.”
That philosophy is clear on “Slow Paranoia”: “It started out with mostly just kind of the quirky sort of stuff that Dan had written, very prog and very melodic with the waltz. Then Blake added some bits here and there, and then all of a sudden, we had some really heavy moments. Once everybody put their little flair into it, it became something so grandiose and really cool. That song is like a total journey from start to finish.”
Would they ever play the entire album live? Paul said he’d love to: “As artists, as musicians, I would love to do that, because that’s how the album’s intended to be heard. But I think our fans, you know, they want to hear old stuff as well. Maybe later in the touring cycle, it would be cool to do a shorter tour and play the album in full.”
On the minimalist album art, he was happy to keep some mystery. “This album is centered around basically a hotel called The Blue Nowhere. I kind of like the idea that it’s open to interpretation. Even though it’s our own layout, I’m okay not totally knowing what it means. The fact that it can provoke thought from the audience, I think that’s what’s cool about it.”
The record also marks the band’s first release with Inside Out Music. “It made sense for us. They’re at the forefront of the prog world, and they’re also starting to evolve with younger, heavier bands. We help bridge that gap between classic prog and aggressive prog. Some of our favorite bands, like Haken, obviously, we’ve toured with them, Leprous, we’ve toured with them, Dream Theater, we’ve toured with them. They’re sort of icons in the progressive world. So it’s an honor to be on a label with those acts.”
Influence has always been wide-ranging for the band. “We never abandoned any of our influences; we just added to them,” Paul reflected. “There is no formula in heavy music—it’s a blank canvas, you can have all of these influences and be inspired by all these different genres and all these different eras of music. We’re not trying to fit into a box, you know, we want to prove to people that there is no box, like you can truly do musically whatever you want to do, and you can be inspired by a massive breadth of musicians, and you can use that influence and inspiration to create your own sound and create your own thing.”
Looking ahead to the co-headlining tour with Hail The Sun, Paul sounded excited. “We like to tour with unique lineups; we don’t like to tour with the same types of bands all the time. Hopefully we’ll play to some new people, and Hail The Sun guys will play to our fans. Everybody will hopefully reach some new ears and eyes as well.”
And for Canadian fans, he made sure to show love: “Toronto is one of our absolute favorite places to play in the whole world. Toronto has always been good to us, and we’re excited to be there. We love the Danforth, love the area, love the venue. I just love going into Canada.”
