You're 19 years old and, as fate would have it, you get thrown into one of the most legendary, cult status, punk rock bands of our time. As a singer/songwriter you've basically reached the pinnacle of your career. So...what do you do next? Well if you're Michale Graves, the young man brave (and possibly foolish) enough to step into the role of lead vocalist for the Misfits over a decade after the band was disbanded by it's original vocalist and founder Glenn Danzig, the answer is simple...you quit.
Where is the infamous Graves now, some eight years after his departure from the band that launched him into a world most 19 year olds can't even fathom? What is the older, wiser Graves doing with his time? And has he come to terms with being simultaneously one of the most loved and hated figures of the "horror punk" legacy he helped propagate during the 1990s?
I had the chance to catch up with Graves recently on a day off from his current acoustic tour promoting his third solo album, Illusions. While keeping what may seem to be a low profile compared to his past life in the Misfits, those who've been paying close enough attention have seen a great many things from him in recent years. From musical projects like Gotham Road and his solo work, to acting on stage and screen, to debuting as a director, to advocating for death row inmate Damien Echols and the West Memphis 3 and being just as politically outspoken as he always was, Graves is as busy and as controversial as ever.
Illyria Suicide: The music on Illusions and the acoustic set you're playing on this tour are really different stylistically from your previous work with the Misfits, what's that transition been like?
Michale Graves: The progression has certainly been a natural one because coming out of the Misfits and working through all the other bands and the projects that I've had... I've been able to sort of shed the skin of having to write in that specific genre of just like horror and ghosts and zombies that the Misfits really were going for. So coming out of that I just needed to and wanted to and tried very hard to expand to what its become now.
IS: You mentioned something the other night about playing without any stage makeup on, without a full band backing you up, and "injecting some substance back into the scene." Care to elaborate on that?
MG: I'm stuck in the horror punk thing that I feel I very much had a large hand in starting back in 1995 when I started with the Misfits. When I talk about injecting substance, and truth, and reality, and all the things that I talk about trying to put into this scene, its because the horror punk scene sucks. The bands that I come across or I listen to or people show me are...maybe sucks is a bad word. It just doesn't seem like...it seems like everybody's ripping everybody else off. And then it's just so uninspiring. [laughs] So what I wanted to do is like I said, just strip it away and get back to the beginnings of where rock & roll came from.
IS: On the topic of horror, you said you're kind of stuck in this whole horror punk, horror movie, horror everything trend. Is horror just something you have a natural inclination to?
MG: I guess so...You know I wasn't really like a horror junkie or like a comic book collector. I dug horror movies, when I was growing up. I was into Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th, Poltergeist....but I was never really a horror junkie. But going through the Misfits and having to write like that and learning how to take that genre and pull it apart and see the inner workings of it, and getting behind the psychology of it, and writing about that and hooking that up with real life things is I think where my knack comes in.
IS: Your newest album, "Illusions Live/Viretta Park," dropped Oct 21st. How do you feel about releasing a live album vs. a studio album?
MG: Because of the way that these performances have been touching people, I really wanted to somehow capture that and put it out, to have it. And when you hear the album it's not the greatest audio recording, which is perfect for what I'm trying to achieve. As you listen to the record you can hear people in the room talking, you can hear the back bar, you can hear the bottles going in the garbage. I really wanted to capture that live experience and have the listener feel like they're sitting there.
IS: Viretta Park? Big Nirvana fan?
MG: I was a big Kurt Cobain fan. And Viretta Park is an especially cool place to go, for people my age. I was alive when Elvis Presley died and when John Lennon was shot. But I don't remember it. You know what I mean? I was too young. So for my generation when Kurt Cobain died...that was our John Lennon. And because I was the age that I was, and soon after that got into the whole Misfits thing and my life completely changed, to be able to go to Viretta Park and just sit there... It was like God put the world on pause for a second and everything became still and quiet for what seemed like forever. It was so amazing to come full circle like that. It was just very inspiring. It felt like as I was sitting there the universe was telling me nothing's ever gonna be the same after this point, nothing's ever gonna be the same. And once I left it never was...
IS: You've been supporting and advocating for the West Memphis 3 for a while now. How did you get involved with that?
MG: Just like everybody else. I watched the movies [Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations] and I freaked out. I hadn't seen it in a couple of years. I went over to wm3.org to see what was up, what was happening because I hadn't checked on any updates. And I saw that Damien wrote Almost Home; saw that he wrote a new book. Then it clicked in my head and I came up with the idea of getting in touch with him or whoever he was dealing with and just getting as much of the books as possible and going out and selling the books and telling people who the West Memphis 3 are, who Damien is. So I wrote an email to his wife Lorie and I said, "listen I have an idea, I want to do this and I want to do this." She got in touch with me, then I got in touch with others involved and they said they were fully behind me and support me in any way they can. They sent us books and I just started writing back and forth with Damien and it took off from there.
IS: You collaborated with him for some of the songs on Illusions. What was that process like? How do you write a song with someone that's on death row?
MG: Through the mail. We would just write letters back and forth to each other. When we were doing it Damien was having this explosion of creativity. He was writing so much and he was so positive and he was confident and he would send me some of the stuff that he was putting together. I loved it and I said to him, "I would love to put music and sounds to your words. You could just write to me and articulate whatever you feel or hear or see or smell in your mind and then I'll go and I'll record those sounds and I'll put it together and we'll make some sort of composition like that." So we started to work on that, then like a week or so later he said that he was walking around in his cell and he was listening to like Nick Cave in his head, he heard Nick Cave over and over in his head, and he sat down and he wrote the words to "Frostbite," and he sent it to me and that's how it started. And then "Wormwood" came, "1000 Cracks of Daylight."
IS: I'm sure at every one of your shows there's at least one or two kids in the crowd that have never heard of Damien or the West Memphis 3 before. That being the case, what do you want people to take away from your shows?
MG: I want people to take away from my shows exactly what I'm trying to give them. Truth, music, and the reality of my existence as well as theirs. As far as West Memphis 3, I want them to take away from my show that the collaboration between two humans, regardless of their situation, can result in wonderful, beautiful things.
IS: You mentioned working on a movie in Romania, that would be Perkins' 14 with director Craig Singer? What can you tell us about that?
MG: When I try to tell people the plot it comes out so messed up and retarded. I just don't tell it well. I think if you go to AfterDarkFilms.com or Massify.com, they give you the good plot. It's a horror movie. It's a good solid story of faith and....horror.
IS: And bloody murder. Is horror the only genre you see yourself acting in?
MG: No no, not at all. I'm actually doing something that's not horror back in New York City in December. December 15th. I'm part of an off Broadway production of a story called Paradiddle that's a drama that Craig Singer wrote. Working with Craig is amazing. I did a cameo appearance in one of his first films that he did in 1995 and we hit it off right away back then. Then I ran into him about a year ago at a Chiller convention in New Jersey and we just started talking again and I told him to keep me in mind just in case any certain roles came up.
IS: So what's it like going from making music to doing movies and plays?
MG: For me the tools, like the internal tools, that I use are very much the same; To dig in and bring those emotions to the forefront so that it transfers to other people. Obviously I hadn't acted in awhile, but going through the process again I found it to be quite the same.
IS: Is there a career change in your future?
MG: It depends. It depends. I'll never be able to get away completely from music, but...
IS: Backing up a bit, you mentioned Robert Johnson at the show the other night. Legend has it he sold his soul to the devil to learn the blues. I'm sure you've heard that story?
MG: Of course.
IS: What's your take on stories like that? I heard a rumor you were involved in paranormal investigation?
MG: Yea, I started going out with investigators and just tagging along on some of the things that they would go off and do in and around New York, New Jersey, went to Connecticut. Then my booking agent called me one day and she said, "my son just bought a house in Fort Meade, Florida. Really really old house. And all these crazy things started to happen in the house to the point where they reached out to an investigative outfit down in Florida". And I said, "I have to come down, I have to check this out, I have to see what's going on."
So I went down there and hung out with them and literally got so scared in the middle of the night I woke up screaming. I was laying on an air mattress in one of the upstairs bedrooms and I was falling asleep, there was a ceiling fan above me, the door was open probably about four or five inches, and as I was falling asleep it seemed like something came in through the door and hung out by the left side of my shoulder right here [gestures to shoulder] and just this energy that just swirled...and was very intense and very angry. I woke up screaming. I sat straight up screaming, "Its all right, its all right, its all right!" Then I walked out of the house and I sat there till everyone came out. They're like, "are you all right?," like I need help..."I just need to go sleep in a hotel now, I don't wanna go back inside." [laughs] It was really freaky.
IS: I know that you've been pretty outspoken politically before. You helped found the website ConservativePunk.com and voiced Republican sentiments in public many times. Where do you see the election going?
MG: Ummm...Wow. It really depends. Especially now with the way things are going with the economy and with the war. It really could go either way. Again I think that the way that our country is... there are a lot of people on the fence. But it's important. Especially in punk rock, everyone's, "Oh you shouldn't mix music and politics." But especially now...and that's one of the reasons that I got involved with and I started Conservative Punk with those people. Not because I wanna jam what I feel or what I believe down peoples' throats, but especially for young people or anybody who just wants to get both sides of the story.
Punkvoter is a great place to go to hear that side of the story. But then there's no other side of the story, there's no other opinions to the contrary of what those people are saying. And so that's what we wanted Conservative Punk for. What I was trying to do was take those two entities and put them together and then present them to the whole audience and say again, "This is how I feel, this is how fat Mike feels. And we're gonna argue till the day is done about stuff but at the end of the day its gonna be cool." And maybe we can reach some sort of compromise and get some stuff done, and be an example to our audience, to the people that pay attention and listen to us. It doesn't have to be like it is on TV. Everybody doesn't have to argue all the time. It doesn't have to be black or white...you can meet in the middle so it doesn't have to be like it was. I put together a book that I'm going to release someday of all the hate mail and just the horrible horrible things that came my way after that happened.
IS: After you launched Conservative Punk?
MG: Yea. Yea.
IS: I'll be looking out for that one.
MG: I'll send you a copy [laughs]. On the political side of things, whether you're a McCain fan or an Obama fan, I just think it's amazing, regardless, that Barrack Obama you know... being black and running for president. Regardless of whether the guy has any experience or not, it really says a lot about the country. Forty years ago that guy wouldn't have been able to share a water fountain with me because of the color of his skin and now he's running for president. And to be able to go through the channels, however he did, and rise to the top that way is a testament to how good this country is.
IS: All right, so we cannot end with asking you the most overused question ever. Misfits reunion? Yay, nay, who cares?
MG: Misfits reunion...even before this tour, I was really working hard and reached out to Jerry and tried to reach out to Doyle to try and get those guys to at least talk to me. I really wanted, after this tour, to come out and play a couple shows with him [Jerry]. Just...try and take steps towards getting us back together. Because everybody's out there doing these songs. I tried to tell them that what I believe is the Misfits are so much bigger than me, its bigger than Jerry, its bigger than Chud, its bigger than Doyle... its bigger than Glen. For the fans sake, I don't understand why we can't, or they can't, put aside all their bullshit and all their problems. Whatever it is. To just put that aside and stand in a room and play some music and go out and play some shows for these people that have never seen us before, and do it for them, and do it for the legacy of the Misfits, and do it for that skull and what it means to everybody else. If they called me up and we could work it out I would do it...You didn't once ask me what it was like to fill Danzig's shoes...was that your next question? [laughs]
IS: [laughs] No. You know...sometimes stuff is way too overused in interviews.
MG: [sighs] Yea, no kidding.
Where is the infamous Graves now, some eight years after his departure from the band that launched him into a world most 19 year olds can't even fathom? What is the older, wiser Graves doing with his time? And has he come to terms with being simultaneously one of the most loved and hated figures of the "horror punk" legacy he helped propagate during the 1990s?
I had the chance to catch up with Graves recently on a day off from his current acoustic tour promoting his third solo album, Illusions. While keeping what may seem to be a low profile compared to his past life in the Misfits, those who've been paying close enough attention have seen a great many things from him in recent years. From musical projects like Gotham Road and his solo work, to acting on stage and screen, to debuting as a director, to advocating for death row inmate Damien Echols and the West Memphis 3 and being just as politically outspoken as he always was, Graves is as busy and as controversial as ever.
Illyria Suicide: The music on Illusions and the acoustic set you're playing on this tour are really different stylistically from your previous work with the Misfits, what's that transition been like?
Michale Graves: The progression has certainly been a natural one because coming out of the Misfits and working through all the other bands and the projects that I've had... I've been able to sort of shed the skin of having to write in that specific genre of just like horror and ghosts and zombies that the Misfits really were going for. So coming out of that I just needed to and wanted to and tried very hard to expand to what its become now.
IS: You mentioned something the other night about playing without any stage makeup on, without a full band backing you up, and "injecting some substance back into the scene." Care to elaborate on that?
MG: I'm stuck in the horror punk thing that I feel I very much had a large hand in starting back in 1995 when I started with the Misfits. When I talk about injecting substance, and truth, and reality, and all the things that I talk about trying to put into this scene, its because the horror punk scene sucks. The bands that I come across or I listen to or people show me are...maybe sucks is a bad word. It just doesn't seem like...it seems like everybody's ripping everybody else off. And then it's just so uninspiring. [laughs] So what I wanted to do is like I said, just strip it away and get back to the beginnings of where rock & roll came from.
IS: On the topic of horror, you said you're kind of stuck in this whole horror punk, horror movie, horror everything trend. Is horror just something you have a natural inclination to?
MG: I guess so...You know I wasn't really like a horror junkie or like a comic book collector. I dug horror movies, when I was growing up. I was into Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th, Poltergeist....but I was never really a horror junkie. But going through the Misfits and having to write like that and learning how to take that genre and pull it apart and see the inner workings of it, and getting behind the psychology of it, and writing about that and hooking that up with real life things is I think where my knack comes in.
IS: Your newest album, "Illusions Live/Viretta Park," dropped Oct 21st. How do you feel about releasing a live album vs. a studio album?
MG: Because of the way that these performances have been touching people, I really wanted to somehow capture that and put it out, to have it. And when you hear the album it's not the greatest audio recording, which is perfect for what I'm trying to achieve. As you listen to the record you can hear people in the room talking, you can hear the back bar, you can hear the bottles going in the garbage. I really wanted to capture that live experience and have the listener feel like they're sitting there.
IS: Viretta Park? Big Nirvana fan?
MG: I was a big Kurt Cobain fan. And Viretta Park is an especially cool place to go, for people my age. I was alive when Elvis Presley died and when John Lennon was shot. But I don't remember it. You know what I mean? I was too young. So for my generation when Kurt Cobain died...that was our John Lennon. And because I was the age that I was, and soon after that got into the whole Misfits thing and my life completely changed, to be able to go to Viretta Park and just sit there... It was like God put the world on pause for a second and everything became still and quiet for what seemed like forever. It was so amazing to come full circle like that. It was just very inspiring. It felt like as I was sitting there the universe was telling me nothing's ever gonna be the same after this point, nothing's ever gonna be the same. And once I left it never was...
IS: You've been supporting and advocating for the West Memphis 3 for a while now. How did you get involved with that?
MG: Just like everybody else. I watched the movies [Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations] and I freaked out. I hadn't seen it in a couple of years. I went over to wm3.org to see what was up, what was happening because I hadn't checked on any updates. And I saw that Damien wrote Almost Home; saw that he wrote a new book. Then it clicked in my head and I came up with the idea of getting in touch with him or whoever he was dealing with and just getting as much of the books as possible and going out and selling the books and telling people who the West Memphis 3 are, who Damien is. So I wrote an email to his wife Lorie and I said, "listen I have an idea, I want to do this and I want to do this." She got in touch with me, then I got in touch with others involved and they said they were fully behind me and support me in any way they can. They sent us books and I just started writing back and forth with Damien and it took off from there.
IS: You collaborated with him for some of the songs on Illusions. What was that process like? How do you write a song with someone that's on death row?
MG: Through the mail. We would just write letters back and forth to each other. When we were doing it Damien was having this explosion of creativity. He was writing so much and he was so positive and he was confident and he would send me some of the stuff that he was putting together. I loved it and I said to him, "I would love to put music and sounds to your words. You could just write to me and articulate whatever you feel or hear or see or smell in your mind and then I'll go and I'll record those sounds and I'll put it together and we'll make some sort of composition like that." So we started to work on that, then like a week or so later he said that he was walking around in his cell and he was listening to like Nick Cave in his head, he heard Nick Cave over and over in his head, and he sat down and he wrote the words to "Frostbite," and he sent it to me and that's how it started. And then "Wormwood" came, "1000 Cracks of Daylight."
IS: I'm sure at every one of your shows there's at least one or two kids in the crowd that have never heard of Damien or the West Memphis 3 before. That being the case, what do you want people to take away from your shows?
MG: I want people to take away from my shows exactly what I'm trying to give them. Truth, music, and the reality of my existence as well as theirs. As far as West Memphis 3, I want them to take away from my show that the collaboration between two humans, regardless of their situation, can result in wonderful, beautiful things.
IS: You mentioned working on a movie in Romania, that would be Perkins' 14 with director Craig Singer? What can you tell us about that?
MG: When I try to tell people the plot it comes out so messed up and retarded. I just don't tell it well. I think if you go to AfterDarkFilms.com or Massify.com, they give you the good plot. It's a horror movie. It's a good solid story of faith and....horror.
IS: And bloody murder. Is horror the only genre you see yourself acting in?
MG: No no, not at all. I'm actually doing something that's not horror back in New York City in December. December 15th. I'm part of an off Broadway production of a story called Paradiddle that's a drama that Craig Singer wrote. Working with Craig is amazing. I did a cameo appearance in one of his first films that he did in 1995 and we hit it off right away back then. Then I ran into him about a year ago at a Chiller convention in New Jersey and we just started talking again and I told him to keep me in mind just in case any certain roles came up.
IS: So what's it like going from making music to doing movies and plays?
MG: For me the tools, like the internal tools, that I use are very much the same; To dig in and bring those emotions to the forefront so that it transfers to other people. Obviously I hadn't acted in awhile, but going through the process again I found it to be quite the same.
IS: Is there a career change in your future?
MG: It depends. It depends. I'll never be able to get away completely from music, but...
IS: Backing up a bit, you mentioned Robert Johnson at the show the other night. Legend has it he sold his soul to the devil to learn the blues. I'm sure you've heard that story?
MG: Of course.
IS: What's your take on stories like that? I heard a rumor you were involved in paranormal investigation?
MG: Yea, I started going out with investigators and just tagging along on some of the things that they would go off and do in and around New York, New Jersey, went to Connecticut. Then my booking agent called me one day and she said, "my son just bought a house in Fort Meade, Florida. Really really old house. And all these crazy things started to happen in the house to the point where they reached out to an investigative outfit down in Florida". And I said, "I have to come down, I have to check this out, I have to see what's going on."
So I went down there and hung out with them and literally got so scared in the middle of the night I woke up screaming. I was laying on an air mattress in one of the upstairs bedrooms and I was falling asleep, there was a ceiling fan above me, the door was open probably about four or five inches, and as I was falling asleep it seemed like something came in through the door and hung out by the left side of my shoulder right here [gestures to shoulder] and just this energy that just swirled...and was very intense and very angry. I woke up screaming. I sat straight up screaming, "Its all right, its all right, its all right!" Then I walked out of the house and I sat there till everyone came out. They're like, "are you all right?," like I need help..."I just need to go sleep in a hotel now, I don't wanna go back inside." [laughs] It was really freaky.
IS: I know that you've been pretty outspoken politically before. You helped found the website ConservativePunk.com and voiced Republican sentiments in public many times. Where do you see the election going?
MG: Ummm...Wow. It really depends. Especially now with the way things are going with the economy and with the war. It really could go either way. Again I think that the way that our country is... there are a lot of people on the fence. But it's important. Especially in punk rock, everyone's, "Oh you shouldn't mix music and politics." But especially now...and that's one of the reasons that I got involved with and I started Conservative Punk with those people. Not because I wanna jam what I feel or what I believe down peoples' throats, but especially for young people or anybody who just wants to get both sides of the story.
Punkvoter is a great place to go to hear that side of the story. But then there's no other side of the story, there's no other opinions to the contrary of what those people are saying. And so that's what we wanted Conservative Punk for. What I was trying to do was take those two entities and put them together and then present them to the whole audience and say again, "This is how I feel, this is how fat Mike feels. And we're gonna argue till the day is done about stuff but at the end of the day its gonna be cool." And maybe we can reach some sort of compromise and get some stuff done, and be an example to our audience, to the people that pay attention and listen to us. It doesn't have to be like it is on TV. Everybody doesn't have to argue all the time. It doesn't have to be black or white...you can meet in the middle so it doesn't have to be like it was. I put together a book that I'm going to release someday of all the hate mail and just the horrible horrible things that came my way after that happened.
IS: After you launched Conservative Punk?
MG: Yea. Yea.
IS: I'll be looking out for that one.
MG: I'll send you a copy [laughs]. On the political side of things, whether you're a McCain fan or an Obama fan, I just think it's amazing, regardless, that Barrack Obama you know... being black and running for president. Regardless of whether the guy has any experience or not, it really says a lot about the country. Forty years ago that guy wouldn't have been able to share a water fountain with me because of the color of his skin and now he's running for president. And to be able to go through the channels, however he did, and rise to the top that way is a testament to how good this country is.
IS: All right, so we cannot end with asking you the most overused question ever. Misfits reunion? Yay, nay, who cares?
MG: Misfits reunion...even before this tour, I was really working hard and reached out to Jerry and tried to reach out to Doyle to try and get those guys to at least talk to me. I really wanted, after this tour, to come out and play a couple shows with him [Jerry]. Just...try and take steps towards getting us back together. Because everybody's out there doing these songs. I tried to tell them that what I believe is the Misfits are so much bigger than me, its bigger than Jerry, its bigger than Chud, its bigger than Doyle... its bigger than Glen. For the fans sake, I don't understand why we can't, or they can't, put aside all their bullshit and all their problems. Whatever it is. To just put that aside and stand in a room and play some music and go out and play some shows for these people that have never seen us before, and do it for them, and do it for the legacy of the Misfits, and do it for that skull and what it means to everybody else. If they called me up and we could work it out I would do it...You didn't once ask me what it was like to fill Danzig's shoes...was that your next question? [laughs]
IS: [laughs] No. You know...sometimes stuff is way too overused in interviews.
MG: [sighs] Yea, no kidding.
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
I know it's late on the draw, by 3 years - but new tour starts MARCH 11TH, he has 2 radio shpws - RADIO DEADLY and LOUD N' SNOTTY which I host.
The tour is dubbed SPILL MY GUTS and runs down the east coast - scope it if your still on this site - we can use the support!!
MICHALE ON FB