Jacoby Shaddix jokes that he’s doing the long drive back to California from Los Angeles. Driving home to Sacramento, Shaddix’s energy flickers through the line as he recalls Papa Roach’s earlier days rehearsing in a small, squared room and a significant turning point for the band five years ago, to releasing their remastered hits from the past decade on Greatest Hits Vol. 2: The Better Noise Years and recording the band’s next album.
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Reflecting on the past year, while Shaddix wasn’t expecting to be homebound for such an extended period of time, it’s the longest amount of time he’s spent with his family, including two teen sons about to head off to college, in 20-plus years of touring. This “time off” also led to Papa Roach regrouping to record their 11th album, set for release in 2022.
Creativity has been Shaddix’s medicine during the pandemic. Writing in Zoom sessions and in-person quickly became an obsessive habit, along with physical fitness and meditation. “I’m a creature of habit, and I like routine, and my world got flipped upside down just like everybody else,” says Shaddix. “I found that being creative again was the medicine for me to find some sanity and some peace with what the world was going through, so we just started writing songs.”
Everyone COVID tested, the band set up shop in a “big old giant house” in Temecula, California for a month. “I just laid down the last vocals, so we’re gonna see once we get the entire body of work mixed up,” says Shaddix. “I think we’ve filled the gaps where we saw any weak spots on the album. I cannot wait for fans to hear what we just created.”
Reminiscing on the band’s formative rehearsals in the early ’90s is something that continues to shape how they Papa Roach music today.
“When we first started, it was the four of us in a 10 by 10 room, rehearsing, and learning how to play our instruments, and discovering the craft of songwriting, through failure after failure until we finally got some stuff that was catching people’s ears,” says Shaddix. “Those days were really fun, because this was the first band I’ve been in, and I’ve been able to evolve as a songwriter with the guys. We’ve grown to become good songwriters. We feel like we’ve been sharpened this craft, and we’ve had successes and failures, but we we’re still here and doing this.”
Back in 2002, the band started experimenting with demo-ing on the road since they weretoo exhausted from touring by the time they returned home. “We set up a second bus and built a demo studio and starting to write ideas on the road,” shares Shaddix. “Then, as technology evolved, recording systems became smaller and more mobile, so then we’re in the hotel rooms working on stuff. It went from being in the room together, bashing out all these songs, to writing songs and programming beats in a bedroom.”
Eventually the band returned to what they know best—getting into a space together to make music. “It’s always been about the back and forth between the four of us in a room together, bashing it out,” says Shaddix. “The idea of us being in a small room together, picking up an acoustic guitar and a piano… it’s three chords and the truth.”
Shaddix adds, “I love the peaks and valleys of the writing process. When I’m in the middle of it, sometimes I feel so stuck. I feel like nothing I’m doing is good and I’m not getting anywhere. then the floodgate open, and you’re off to the races again. That experience is exhilarating, because if you push through those walls, and continue to push through those walls, you find the good stuff.”
Aways intentional when writing lyrics, Shaddix says everything he’s done for Papa Roach also reflect different times in his life.
“It’s this true reflection of who I am, how I feel, or what I’m trying to convey, and the snapshots in time as well,” share Shaddix. “I look back at songs and what I was putting into those songs or where my life was, and it’s good to see the growth in who I am as a human, as a father, as a creator, as a musician, and as a husband. I feel that being intentional in songwriting has given the songs a light beyond anything I can imagine.”
Recording Crooked Teeth in 2016 and 2017 was a major turning point for Papa Roach. After writing single “Born for Greatness,” Shaddix says the band tapped into something different.
“It made us feel uncomfortable, and I think when we’re uncomfortable, that’s when we need to go with this thing,” he says. “It was different, but we felt the same way about our song ‘Scars’ [Getting Away with Murder, 2004] back in the day—and when I say uncomfortable, we’re breaking down the wall. Now, whenever we get into those places where it makes us uncomfortable but we love it at the same time, that’s when we know we’re stepping into the right space.”
Intentionally working with younger producers Nick Furlong and Colin Brittain, Crooked Teeth brought the band, Shaddix, along with guitarist Jerry Horton, bassist Tobin Esperance, and drummer Tony Palermo, back to the beginning in a whole new, yet familiar, way. “It took us back to being in that 10 by 10 room, bashing out something together when you’re 18, 19 and 20 with that energy of don’t give up,” shares Shaddix. “Let’s just go in there and make music. ‘Crooked Teeth’ was the record that signified a new era in Papa Roach. I’m so glad that we decided to shake things up.”
He adds, “It’s so special to us, because we know that we are the only people in existence, or anywhere in the entire planet, solar system or galaxy listening to this piece of music. It’s such a drug. It’s my drug of choice.”
Pulling from the band’s catalog of music from the last decade since their departure from Interscope and move to Better Noise Music with seventh album, The Connection, released in 2012, and the three subsequent releases to follow, Greatest Hits Vol. 2 is a collage of the band’s hits throughout the past 10 years with remastered takes of F.E.A.R.’s “Face Everything and Rise” and “Gravity,” featuring Maria Brink—and a guest appearance by Asking Alexandria’s Danny Warsnop on “Broken As Me”—through Crooked Teeth with “Born For Greatness” and “Periscope,” featuring Skylar Grey.
“Come Around” and the title track off Who Do You Trust?, released in 2019, are some of the 15 tracks rounding out the remastered Greatest Hits, along with Aelonia remixes of “Elevate,” “Help,” and “Top of the World,” and a Cymek remix of “Born for Greatness,” in addition to two unreleased acoustic recordings of “Face Everything and Rise” and “Leader of the Broken Hearts,” taped at the YouTube Studios in New York.
“It’s fun to go back and have somebody else strip some piece of our music apart, then rebuild it up in their own imagination,” says Shaddix. “That process is inspiring to me, to hear somebody else’s take on what we did. And the acoustic stuff shows this other side to who we are as performers, stripping away all those pieces and getting down to just the root core of the song.”
As the wheels keep turning, and band readies their next release, and recently recorded a new take on their 2000 hit “Last Resort,” featuring Jeris Johnson, after the video started going viral on TikTok.
This summer, Shaddix is also set to make his acting debut in Better Noise Film’s thriller The Retaliators, out late 2021, also starring Tommy Lee and featuring Papa Roach’s “The Ending.”
“I had no idea how to do it,” laughs Shaddix. “I still don’t know if I can do this, but I did it. The directors thought I did a great job. They were speaking very highly of my performance, so it’s something that I definitely would like to try again.”
Thinking back on the past 20-plus years of Papa Roach, everything has felt like long album cycles. “We’re traveling farther down that rabbit hole, and the farther we go down it, the more new fresh and exciting the band sounds, and feels,” says Shaddix. “I want to compete with all the young bands. I don’t want to just be a band from the past, like ‘oh, I remember those guys.’ I’m competing with the new wave of rock, and in some ways, we’re leading the fucking charge on some of that stuff.”
Shaddix adds, “In 2017, when we recorded ‘Crooked Teeth,’ that was the beginning of this new Papa Roach.”
The new album has some Crooked Teeth energy, he says, but there’s something else.
“It’s intense, but it’s fresh and new, and that’s what I’m so excited about,” says Shaddix. “It feels like we’re pushing rock into the future.”
