Walt Lafty of Silvertide on New Music, MMRBQ and More
MMRBQ returns on Saturday, September 21st to Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden, and we’re stoked to welcome Philadelphia’s own Silvertide back to the stage.
During a live broadcast with Brent Porche from Dolan’s Bar, Walt Lafty of Silvertide joined us on air to talk about our upcoming festival, how they came to the decision to do a live reunion, climbing the walls of Red Rocks, unintentionally one-upping Scott Weiland while on tour with Velvet Revolver, the band’s connection to mega-producer Andrew Watt, the status of new music and more.
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Brent Porche: This is gonna be the first time you guys have hit the stage collectively together since 2013, right? I know you did a TLA show for us, but you did a couple of Flint, Michigan, shows after that, did you not?
Walt Lafty: I did. You had to do the Machine Shop (in Flint).
BP: I know you guys have teased some pictures up online, like the Zoom picture of the guys with all your lovely faces: yourself, guitarist Nick Perry, Mark Melchior, Brian Weaver, and of course back there on the drums, Kevin Frank. And the internet went crazy when we saw that picture up there and that you guys have been doing some rehearsing . What can you tell me about how it’s been going with the band, Silvertide?
WL: It’s been great. We actually did something that we should have done years ago. We just went into a room and just jammed. You know, Nick’s in California. Brian’s always on tour, always doing things. And everybody has kids and lives and all these fun things. But it really surprised us when we rolled into our first rehearsal space. We actually did it at our buddy Zill’s house.
BP: The Red Room.
WL: The Red Room, yeah… Pawnshop Roses, all those guys. Everybody lives in the Red Room. So for us it was great because we got to just kind of shed off and as friends, just get together and play. And that was awesome.
BP: This is the third time that Silvertide’s gonna be hitting the MMRBQ stage. You played our second one; that was the bill that had Three Days Grace and Collective Soul and Live… But then, Silvertide played WMMR’s 40th anniversary show. (This radio station) turn 56 this year. But didn’t you have a different lineup for the 40th gig?
WL: Yes, so Nick Perry was out on tour, and we ended up getting this young kid at the time, Andrew Watt, who is now bigger than anybody that I’ve ever known!
BP: I was talking to Weaver, the bassist from Silvertide, last week, and he was telling me this story (about Andrew Watt playing with Silvertide). And my jaw hit the floor, because we just played the Rolling Stones on air, and the Stones used Andrew Watt for Hackney Diamonds as their producer on that album. Ozzy Osbourne is waiting in line right now to do his next album because he’s waiting for Andrew Watt. I think he worked with Pearl Jam, Miley Cyrus, and a ton of others. So this (WMMR’s 40th anniversary) was his first ever live stage gig ever, right?
WL: I don’t know about his first live stage gig. But at that point, he was only 15 or 16 years old and we kind of took a gamble because he was such a passionate person and a great guitar player. It just ended up being one of those scenarios where in hindsight, it all makes sense. You see him now and you go, wow, he’s just a more refined and more experienced version of what he was then. And he was a wonderful person. Nice guy.
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BP: This is gonna be such a special event for you guys to be performing at this year’s MMRBQ, because it’s the 20th anniversary of (the Silvertide album) Show and Tell, and believe it or not, one week to the day after the MMRBQ is the exact date of the 20th anniversary. So, September 27th–
WL: September 28th. And I know that because it was my sister Erin’s birthday, and my best friend Mike’s birthday, September 28th, so I’ll never, I’ll never forget that date.
BP: So I know that there have been other releases of Show and Tell like the Japanese release, and there were a couple different bonus tracks on there and stuff like that. Are there any other tracks from that era of Silvertide that are still in a vault somewhere, or on somebody’s hard drive? Lost tunes, so to speak?
WL: There probably is, but it’s probably trash, you know? It probably didn’t make it for a reason, but I know that we have some stuff from a few years later that are demos and things that are they’re not as refined recordings as Show and Tell. I think for me, “Adult Child” being on the Japanese release, that’s something I always enjoyed playing. It had a Rhodes piano part and it was just a really cool song. It had like two different time signatures in it which is something we normally wouldn’t do.
BP: Absolutely love that song. That’s one of my all time favorites, actually, from you guys, is “Adult Child”. Now, I’ve seen you a million times, playing everywhere from the TLA to Dobbs to Chameleon Club up in Lancaster and everywhere else. You love climbing on stuff. You love hanging from stuff. I mean, is that the Walt Lafty that we’re going to see at the MMRBQ? You’re going to be swinging from things on the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion stage or what?
WL: If they let me, which usually just means… what’s the saying? It’s always easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission. I actually got in trouble at Red Rocks for climbing all over stuff. They never gave us the footage from when I played Red Rocks because they were like, “do not climb” and I just didn’t hear them say it. And I’m climbing everywhere.
But my favorite was when we did the Velvet Revolver tour. It got to a point where we were doing theaters with multi level seating, and I jumped off the first balcony. That night, Scott Weiland jumped off of the one above it, and it got so bad that the last night of the tour, everyone had to say to me, “Do not do anything higher than this level, because if you do, you’re gonna die, and then Scott’s gonna die, because he’s gonna do something even higher.” It was a really challenging, fun tour because of it. Scott Weiland is one of the great frontmen of all time, and this was his polite way of saying, “You’re not gonna show me up on my own stage, you know.”
BP: Oh, that’s killer, man. So I gotta ask you, with you guys rehearsing and getting ready for the MMRBQ, any chance of some new music down the line?
WL: Absolutely… I think it just comes down to, I mean, now we’re older, nobody’s fist fighting, you know, I think that’s the big one. Now everybody kind of respects the fact that we did something really unique at the time, and even though everything got crazy and kind of crumbled later on because of our own stupidity, really, now we’re at a much better place where we can walk into this and say as friends – and respecting one another on a totally different level – “How do we put on the best show? How do we write the best songs? And how do we just not get in our own way?”
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
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