Ted Kirkpatrick (Tourniquet) Interview
The songs are pretty much ready, although some of the songs are in pieces and we have to put them together. I was pretty prepared on this album. It may be a little different than in other bands, but in Tourniquet the person that writes the song pretty much has the song done. On the new album I wrote all the music, so the songs are totally done, the harmonies are done, the riffs and vocal lines are mostly ready to go. It's never been about sitting down and having a collective effort. When I write a song I write a song and it's done.
This your second album for Metal Blade Records. What has been the effect of being on a mainstream label instead of a Christian label?
It's been great in a number of ways. In doing interviews, especially European interviews, we're finding out people are hearing us for the first time in countries like Croatia, Portugal, and Czech Republic. It's really exciting to be on Metal Blade where their distribution is more mainstream and you have people checking out your band and enjoying the music who would probably never set foot in a church.
Talk about the DVD you recently released.
It's called Ocular Digital. It's our first DVD ever. It's 76 minutes long, with 2 live concerts on it. The first one is from Holland in 2001, and it's one of those big crowds of 12,000 people or so with lots of cameras and a huge stage. The second concert is the first Tourniquet concert ever from ten years earlier, in 1991. It's unedited and uncut, so it's just as it happened. People have been asking for a long time to see some of the early footage of the band. It also has the Ark of Suffering video which we did in 1990. It doesn't seem to have lost its effect when you see these images. We've had a strong stance against animal abuse since we started, so to have that on there for the first time in digital format is really great.
You've traveled all over the world for non-musical things. How have those experiences influenced your songwriting?
I go around the world and have been to a lot of exotic Equatorial countries in search of butterflies and insects. I've seen a lot of things and heard a lot
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