It’s 5pm on a Friday. Most people are about to call time on the working week. But Mark Tremonti’s not most people. The Alter Bridge guitarist is in a dressing room of Milan’s Mediolanum Forum di Assago arena with four hours to kill before showtime. And he’s not taking it easy.
“I’m going to be working,” he explains. “I’m writing a book right now. So I’ll spend the next two or three hours writing, and then I’ll get onto the guitar, try to pick up some new tricks as I warm up, and then try to write some songs.” All that before playing a two-hour gig to more than 12,000 Italian fans as Alter Bridge take their Pawns & Kings tour around Europe.
Tremonti’s well aware of the huge role Europe and the UK have played in the band’s success.
“When I’m touring with my other band, Tremonti, I always thank the crowd and tell them that if it wasn’t for the UK, we might not be still doing what we’re doing. Because when we first started out with Alter Bridge, it was a huge struggle. And we didn’t know if we could have kept continuing if we didn’t have fanbases like we did over here,” he says.
Louder Than War: Well, that’s a good segue to Tremonti. I reviewed your show at Shepherd’s Bush Empire a couple of months ago and was wondering what the difference is for you being the guitarist in Alter Bridge and playing arenas, versus fronting Tremonti but in smaller venues.
Mark Tremonti: They both have their moments, you know. In Alter Bridge, I like not having to talk in between songs, that makes it much easier for me. I do enjoy singing a lot, so I miss being able to sing every song. But the crowds know every word. They come out in full force, and I get to see the benefits of all the years we’ve put into it and all the work we’ve done.
I like being the underdog as well. So when I’m in Tremonti, I think I’m the underdog again. And it’s a challenge to be that frontman and that entertainer that I’m not. I don’t consider myself that type of personality. But it helps you develop as an artist.
LTW: Despite saying you don’t have that entertainer personality, you always look like you’re having the time of your life when you’re performing. Do you feel yourself coming alive on stage?
MT: I’m a completely different person on stage than I am off stage and I learned a long time ago, probably 20 years ago, not to think about what you’re doing on stage outside of playing your guitar. I’d always think: ‘I look silly’ and I’d try to change the way I acted. But then I just realised: ‘Just don’t worry about it. Just be yourself. Have a good time.’ So when I see all the crazy faces I make, I don’t care anymore. When I play, that’s just what I do. But offstage, I’m kind of quiet. I’m a father of three kids. And when I go home, my friends make fun of me because they party way more than I do. And they’re like: ‘You’re the most boring guy in a rock band ever. You don’t drink with us until three in the morning.’
LTW: But you’re clearly one of the hardest-working people in rock as well. In my review of the Tremonti gig, I joked that you and Alter Bridge singer Myles Kennedy must be in some sort of competition to outdo each other. Where does that drive come from?
MT: It’s a creative itch you have. Once you record a song, and you get to hear it in its most perfect form, and you see how people react to it, it’s like an addiction. Once you do it, you want to keep doing it. You want to create things. That’s why I’m writing the book right now. You’re taking your imagination and you’re having people jump into another world that didn’t exist prior to that.
LTW: Apart from doing that with books, you’re also having people jump into another world with your album Mark Tremonti Sings Frank Sinatra. Was that a different kind of creative challenge?
MT: When I sing the Sinatra stuff, even though I didn’t write those songs, it feels so personal and it feels so heartfelt. I absolutely love it. I’ve been singing Frank Sinatra-style vocals now for about four years, and I just realised singing along one day that I felt good singing his stuff. It just felt like it was in my wheelhouse vocally. But I didn’t know I was going to do a record until my daughter was diagnosed with Down’s syndrome. I decided: ‘I’m going to do a record, and I’m going to do it for charity to raise money and awareness for folks with Down’s syndrome.’ And then I started this charity called Take A Chance For Charity, where I challenge other artists to do the same thing, to do something that their fans wouldn’t see coming, to raise money for charity.
LTW: And how have your fans responded to this thing they couldn’t have seen coming?
MT: It’s been overwhelmingly great. I’ve gotten messages from people that I’ve been huge fans of my whole life, like Kirk Hammett, or Rob Halford, or Slash. I even had a friend play it for Robert Plant, and Robert Plant enjoyed it. So these are some people that would have never even known I existed, if I didn’t do this project. And having them pay a compliment to it just blows me away.
LTW: You’ll be performing songs from the album with members of Sinatra’s orchestra in London this December. But before that, you’re all over UK and Ireland with Alter Bridge to support the new album Pawns & Kings, which sounds a lot heavier and more direct than the one before it.
MT: Yeah, we deliberately tried to do a record where everything was stripped away but the instruments, and I think it worked. The guitars and everything in there just seemed to fill more space. It’s funny how there seems to be more atmosphere on a record without all the atmospheric effects. Just the instruments themselves have all this space to breathe, which gives it more room to just be a fuller sound. So that’s the only thing that we wanted to do with this record. Other than that, me and Myles were, again, competing almost to write as many songs as we could before pre-production. I would turn in two songs and he would turn in two songs, and he would turn in three songs and I would turn in three songs. And it was pretty much like a nine-month race to the finish line.
LTW: You’re obviously playing some of those new songs on the current tour, but what else can UK audiences expect?
MT: We’ll have the biggest production we’ve ever had live. We’ll be four guys that absolutely love what they do and appreciate the UK as much as anywhere in the world because we owe our careers to you. So we’ll put on the best show we can possibly put on. And my kids will be there, so I have to impress my kids.
LTW: What do they think of what you do? Are you cool to them or are you just, like, dad?
MT: It depends on the moment — no, I think they appreciate what I do. But I think I’d be much cooler to them if I were a basketball player. For sure.
LTW: Well, with everything you’ve got going on, I wouldn’t be surprised if you suddenly told me you’re an NBA All-Star.
MT: I can only hope.
- This article originally appeared on Louder Than War.
Nils van der Linden 