Jim Root Quotes

The biggest misconception about us is that we're just a rock band. We think our music is a cross-section of many genres; a hybrid of what the six of us have grown up on.

I never thought of us as a punk band, a metal band, or a new wave band. Just as a band band.

What I do is a bit broader in scope than a heavy metal band like Iron Maiden, Motorhead, ACDC and so on.

People come in because they like 'Old Town Road.' They'll find out that I'm just not going to stick to that.

I made 'Desert Moon' and when I made those solo albums, I was trying not to be Styx, because I thought, 'That belongs to us.' So, I made different kinds of solo albums that were not dipping my hand back into the magic Styx jar and pulling out all the tricks - because bands, they have tricks, don't they? That's what makes them different.

I can't just turn over and sing disco or rock.

I'm the renegade of funk. I've made house, techno, rock, funk, reggae... That's why I've been on so many different labels.

I certainly hope my music is in no way, shape or form influenced by anything that would be known as a jam band. If it is, then I'm going to do something else.

I'm not really allowed to talk about the Dead though. I think when we are at our best, we definitely do things that the Dead or no other band could do. We explore things and take things to the extreme.

I think it's a Blondie tradition that all of our albums sort of have a wide spread of styles.

I wanna record these girls individually. And then, I wanna cut a blues album on me. But all of it, original stuff, you know. When I listen to the blues today, it's like they all sounds similar. I wanna do something different, to try to add to the blues flavor.

Creating any type of art is all about mood. I've been making extreme music in one fashion or another for decades. And truthfully, Down has a big enough fan base to where I could remain content to do only that, but music is a vast territory and I am an explorer. And I'm a lover of all things considered extreme in music.

When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

I tried so many different musics. I kind of burned out on classical and wanted to make it fun again. I started playing with indie bands and country bands and finally realized electronic music brought my style to life.

Everybody in Lynyrd Skynyrd loves different styles of music, and our minds are very open when it comes to writing our songs and making the band true to what the band is, but also stepping out and doing something current.

My fans are like, 'Lab does what he does,' which is really cool. If I came out with a Jack White rock tune tomorrow, people would be like, 'Yeah, cool man,' which is great.

We were so influenced not only by country music but by the rock bands of the '80s. Our focus was to bring in something different. Country music already had a George Strait and Alabama. We wanted to put some pop music in our show.

I think that, as well as Strapping Young Lad kind of having the name for themselves based on brutality and aggression, I think there's also something to be said to the fact that every Strapping record is different. They're all different.

In all of my years in this business, I've always been part of either a progressive band or a metal band.

Musically, I try not to box things in. I try to just play around this spectrum of influences: soul, jazz, and hip-hop.

The thing is that when I'm making music, I'm not really chasing that sound - the Atlanta sound that we hear a lot.

When you say, 'Man, what kind of music does Outkast make?' You be like, 'They make Outkast music.' What kind of music does N.E.R.D. make? They make N.E.R.D. music. I want to be one of those people, because there's so many layers to the music I create that I don't want people to expect me to do one thing.

I don't mind Ed Sheeran, but I wouldn't want to be compared to a guy that builds his song around a guitar, since we do not have a guitar in our band.

Stylistically, we're trying to push things in different ways, but it always comes out sounding like Tool no matter what we're trying to do.

One of our biggest pet peeves is listening to bands that use harmony guitars for the sake of it. If you can't figure out how do something different than Maiden, UFO, or even Boston, then what's the point?