Interviews

Norma Jean

Interview with Corey & Scottie on Mar 25, 2005 by Archive Bot

Axl Rose once sang, “Nice boys don’t play rock ’n’ roll.” Apparently, he’s never met Norma Jean. While the band’s peers have been busy buying their way onto Ozzfest (and Axl was working on that Chinese Democracy thing), these Atlanta, Georgia, natives have spent the last five years on the road, relentlessly playing basements and ballrooms, expanding their uniquely organic fan base with each show they play. Punkbands.com reporter Greg Weissel met up with Norma Jean at the Santa Cruz date of their tour supporting Atreyu and Unearth. The new album from Norma Jean, "O' God, The Aftermath," hit stores worldwide last month. With a huge selling new album, and a succession of sold out dates across the country, we got down to business asking the hard questions everyone wants answered:
 
Punkbands.com: Who are you?
Corey: I’m Corey, I sing for Norma Jean.
Scottie: I’m Scottie, I play guitar.
 
Punkbands.com: So what’s the deal with the barbecue sauce?
Scottie: What’s your deal?
Corey: The taste is so sweet.  It tastes good in my mouth.
 
Punkbands.com: Do you do much barbecuing?
Corey: Yeah we do.
Scottie: We did last night
 
Punkbands.com: Did you use your own Norma Jean O God The Barbecue Sauce?
Scottie: No, we didn’t.  We should have pulled it out.
Corey: We only have a limited amount of our own BBQ sauce, the O God The Barbecue Sauce, and we’re saving it for memorabilia purposes because we’re afraid we might not get anymore.  Hopefully we’ll make more.
Scottie: We should have pulled it out though.
 
Punkbands.com: Is there anything a Georgian won’t eat after its spent some time on a barbecue?
Corey: Well, to us in the South, barbecue involves pork and barbecue sauce.  Everyone else says “Let’s have a barbecue” and they get the grill out, but that’s just grilling.  If you want BBQ you have to have the sauce.
Scottie: We’ll there’s barbecued chicken, beef, pork... Our favorite is pulled pork.  But I’d pretty much eat anything off a barbecue.
Corey: Pretty much.
 
Punkbands.com: Any secret Norma Jean recipes you want to share?
Scottie: No, we’re not at liberty to do that.
 
Punkbands.com: What is a grit?
Scottie: I don’t even know.
Corey: It’s corn.
Scottie: I’d like to see some documentation on that. I wouldn’t take his word for it.
Corey.  It is!  It’s a product of corn. It actually doesn’t have a taste.  You have to put whatever you want on it.
Scottie:  We should get the metal chef out here.
Corey: No we shouldn’t.  He’d go on and on about it.
 
Punkbands.com: Can there be the singular ‘grit’ or is it always grits?
Scottie: I don’t know if you can have one grit.  It’s kind of like sand.
 
Punkbands.com: Do you know how hard it is to find Norma Jean stuff on ebay?  You  have to wade through all this Marilyn Monroe crap.
Scottie: Oh yeah, I bet that’s a pain.
 
Punkbands.com: Do you think new bands ought to Google their prospective name and see what exactly they’ll be competing with for name recognition?
Scottie: That’d be a good idea.
Corey: I’ll go along with that recommendation.  Or you can just make up your own word and then you’ll be the only thing that comes up.
Scottie: Unless someone else made up that word also.  So yeah, we’re going to go back to our new motto: “Google your name.”  Even if you made it up.
 
Punkbands.com:  I had a Converge ‘You fail Me’ shirt three years before that album was released, and when I saw the same artwork on the record, I was pissed.  Then with O God The Aftermath, the sinking man with the hook from the cover was on a shirt a few years ago.  Why use art from a few years ago on an album of brand new material?
 
Scottie: Yeah, I was pissed about that Converge art too.  But it’s still an amazing record.
Corey: What a let down. I never thought about that.  Why did we do that? 
Scottie: The Jane Doe artwork is the some of the best artwork you’re ever gonna find on a CD.  In our genre.
Iano (Unearth’s tour manager is pulled into the conversation): Yeah, if you like fucking sniffing patchouli and that fucking stuff.
Scottie: Listen, if you’re a hippie you love it.  But we pulled the same move.  That’s a total bummer.
Iano: Who cares? Is it a limited edition numbered foil wrapped case? No one cares.
Corey: I had a good answer to this question like a thousand years ago.  We just wanted something that kind represented Norma Jean on its own.
Scottie:  Shutup. A man sinking with a hook represents what I played on this record?
Corey: We wanted it to be like if you saw it you wouldn’t have to see our name, you would know that’s Norma Jean.
 
Punkbands.com: Who would win in a fight between the guy with the hook from O God, The Aftermath and the evil looking little girl from Bless The Martyr, Kiss The Child?
Scottie: Trick question.  Godzilla would. Ha ha.  Next.
 
Punkbands.com: Was the new album recorded with the same organic analog mindset as Bless The Martyr?
Scottie: No, we basically went in knowing Matt Bayles, we trusted him.  We love everything he’s done so we went with whatever he wanted to do to create the record.  So it’s definitely different than the last one.  And I just want to say PS on that last question, that dude does have a hook but he is drowning in water, and he’s either really far out in the middle of nowhere in the water, or
Corey: Because he’s riding Godzilla.  Yeah, so don’t mess with that guy.
Scottie: And he has a lot of shark friends.
Corey: That little girl just kind of has a look.  She probably wet the bed that night.
Iano: You know what’s scary about that record?  That little girl looks like one of my nieces and my grandmother’s name is Norma.
Scottie: So you know her.  Would she win or would the dude win?
Iano: if it was a joke telling match she’d win.
Scottie: Actually I think Lemmy would win over all.
 
Punkbands.com: What do the visual effects add to your live performance?
Corey: On this tour, nothing.
Scottie: Yeah, on this tour we’ve been pretty restricted.  We just have a few lights, a few steps above flashlights.
Iano:  I told them to tape flashlights to their guitars.  No house lights either.
Scottie:  We don’t have the projection on this tour.  The main reason for that was someone was kind enough to drive off with our trailer which had our projection screen and all that in it.
 
Punkbands.com: The video for Bayonetwork really meshes well with your style, as did the video for Face:Face.  Will you promise if you release a DVD to stick to a style that works and not go all lame sauce on us?
Scottie: We’re going to put together the DVD ourselves, we’re not going to hire anyone else.
Corey: We’ve done pretty much all that stuff ourselves.  Chris Simms did the video, but we had so many ideas in there.  We’re always producing.
Scottie: We like to think.
Corey: We have fun with that.
Scottie: We didn’t even answer your question.  Yes.
 
Punkbands.com: Do you all still consider yourself a christian band?
Scottie: Yes.
 
Punkbands.com: Happy easter.
Scottie: Oh yeah, that’s tomorrow.
Corey: We’re going to have an easter egg hunt.
 
Punkbands.com: Were there two different versions of the booklet for Bless the Martyr, Kiss the Child produced?  Mine doesn’t have lyrics, but I have heard rumors of a ‘fifth ink’ booklet with lyrics.  Truth or malicious slander?
Scottie: Well the first ones that came out had the lyrics in a clear ink, but then I hear there were some that just didn’t have any.  I guess they figured you can’t see them anyways.
 
Punkbands.com: Will you guys write them down for me?
Scottie: Oh yeah.  Corey can write them down in like a minute.
Corey: We’re going to hide them in an Easter Egg.  Somewhere in the world.
Scottie: We will be around these parts tomorrow so that might make it easier for you.
Corey: We’re going to release hints.  Throughout the world.  Also in Easter Eggs.
Scottie: I don’t know how malicious that is, but it might be slander.  I’ve seen one with lyrics, so if yours doesn’t have it, it’s definitely true.
 
Punkbands.com: The song titles are on the new record are very witty.
Corey: Thank you.
 
Punkbands.com: I thought of one: “Evelatornatholgy: the study of birds in counterweighted machines”  What do you think?
Scottie: Whoa.  What does that mean?
Corey: He’s really scared of birds.
Scottie: Mainly chickens and turkeys.  I’m trying to work on pigeons because I’m surrounded by them a lot.
Iano: Lets not talk about the groupies though!
Scottie: Ha ha.
 
Punkbands.com: Norma Jean sold a shit load of albums week one.  Did you ever think so many people would embrace your style of music?  Ever think you’d see Norma Jean on the Billboard 100?
Corey: No.
Scottie: It’s weird that you bring that up because...
Corey: Yes or no.
Scottie: No.
Corey. No, I’m sorry, go ahead.
Scottie: Well, it is cool.  I didn’t expect it at all.
Corey:  That’s pretty amazing.  When I was growing up, listening to music like this, it was like twenty kids was a big show.  You were like “All my friends are here, plus three new people that I’ve never seen before!” So yeah, it’s crazy that a band like this can do that.
 
Punkbands.com: Does that sales figure include the online pre-orders?
Corey: Yeah, all the internet pre-sales, all the Best Buy.
Iano: Actually, I think the internet pre-sales were another 50,000, but they just didn’t count them.
Scottie: Haha, yeah they don’t count those.
Iano: That was another fifty-six thousand.
Scottie: Canadian gold!  most people don’t know that.  We’re huge in the upper north east parts of Canada.
Corey: Like Antarctica.
Scottie: Uh... like Nova Scotia. 
 
Punkbands.com: Antarctica.  That’s way north.  So why no vinyl?
Scottie: Maybe someday.  We like vinyl.
Corey: Yeah, we all have record players and we use them.
Scottie: Well Iano is right now restricting us.  Hopefully, one day, he’ll let us.
Iano: I don’t like when kids sit around and talk about colored seven inches and colored vinyl, so I just won’t let Norma Jean do it.
Scottie: Well, we’re going to.
 
Punkbands.com:  Has Solid State been giving you and the new record a lot of promotional support?
Scottie: They’re been giving us the run around.  Next question.  No, just kidding, they’re amazing.  I feel they’re changed a lot in the past few years and that helped the record a lot, that and Underoath.
Corey: We’re not their favorite anymore now that Underoath is here.  We’re taking a back seat.
Scottie: Come on man.  They hated us anyways.  Just kidding.
 
Punkbands.com:  Have you guys seen any Norma Jean tattoos?
Scottie: Yeah actually.  It’s weird.
Corey: What?  I haven’t.  Actually, I was on somebody. My face was on somebody else’s face.
Scottie: Yeah, an actual tattoo of his face.  We’ve seen a few.
 
Punkbands.com: Isn’t it gorgeous here in California?
Scottie: Yeah it’s awesome.
Iano: The last two days we’ve been here, no one’s done any work.  The crew has turned into the band.
Scottie: Hey! That’s not fair.  I work hard every day, all day.
Iano: Work hard at looking good.
ALL: Ohhhhhhhhh