David: Oh yeah - I mean, we're on iTunes. But here's the thing - when I talk to somebody about the band then they go "Oh, you're in a band? Are you on iTunes?" and I think they're expecting me to say no, but then I say "Yeah, actually we are" and they're kind of surprised. But then, for the most part, that guy's not going to buy it anyway. He just asks if we're on iTunes out of conversation. In terms of people actually buying it, in the past few months, it's been the first time that that's actually going up. So for the first time ever, that's actually increasing and iTunes activity is actually going up. But it's not anything, though, man. It's nothing still. I wish it would do a whole lot better and for me, too, I have a CD player in my car, but I have a two gig iPod and that's where I do most of my listening or on my computer or such. So CD's for me now… I still bought the KINGDOM OF SORROW record the other week, but at the same time, that CD's just going to end up in a landfill anyway. It will be cool, I think, when it does go digital because it'll eliminate a lot of costs for indie bands or bands in general and manufacturing costs. And then there's the environmental issue, as well. That's just the medium of where things (are) going. We'll still sell T-shirts at shows and stuff, but we might do something down the road where we just have songs on a memory stick or something like that. There's going to be some old school kind of listeners who have an issue with that or we'll do stuff on vinyl digital downloads or something like that. These are all really good ideas, the problem is from where I sit is that… we have really loyal, supportive listeners who buy lots of stuff, there's lots of those guys, but for every one of them there's about, let's say, twenty other ones that listen and never buy anything. In the early MySpace days that used to be cool, this idea that even though someone's not buying your music, wouldn't you rather them listen to you? Like, even if they're not paying for it, wouldn't you rather that they listen to it? And that's kind of an interesting idea, but if the years go by and all you have is this sense of  all around the world there's X number of people listening to the record who never email you, you have no contact with them, you never hear from them, they never buy anything. At some point I kind of think it doesn't impact my life, it doesn't help me at all.

Phil: Yeah, it's kind of like a ghost at that point.

David: Yeah, it's totally like a ghost, man! I think one of the best analogies was something like, say if someone goes into a Shopper's Drug Mart… oh, pardon me - that's a Canadian thing. Someone goes into a gas station or something like that and sometimes they pay for something and sometimes they steal, but you allow them to steal because sometimes they pay for it, that kind of thing. That's how I think a lot of people justify the downloading thing where they go "Sometimes I buy, but sometimes I steal". I certainly don't mind this idea like, you download something, you don't like it, you don't buy it - fine. But if you download it and you like it, then we did something right. Here's another one for example - I was in Vancouver, went into a Rock T-shirt shop, so it's hundreds of Metal T-shirts, I'm a Metal guy, I go in there with a sense like "If there's a CROWBAR T-shirt in here, I'm buying it", you know, because someone made that shirt, someone in that store ordered that shirt in and it's on the rack for a guy exactly like me who's going to go in there and who wants a CROWBAR shirt. So it'd be like, if I find it and it's not exactly what I wanted and it's an XL and for me, man, I probably fit a medium, but you have to make it go full circle. I went in there for a CROWBAR shirt, one is there, so I gotta buy it.

Phil: Are there any projects aside from WOODS OF YPRES that you are currently active in?

David: On the copies of "The Woods IV" that we did, they came included with the NECRAMYTH album, "Slaughter of the Seoul", so I drummed on that. Since that, I've done session drums for a couple other projects over a year ago that haven't even come out yet and I'm a little bit disappointed about that 'cause it's certainly not the way we do business in terms of if you're going to… ask for someone's investment of time, it's only respectful that you're going to uphold your end of the bargain and finished project.

Phil: Sounds like the last website I worked for.

David: Ah! Yeah! (laughter) So I'm certainly not thrilled about rehearsing drums for something for four, five, six months and then recording them in an album, fourteen months goes by and it still hasn't come out yet. I'm not thrilled about that - doesn't help me at all. Other than that, we brought in a guy this year who's doing lead guitar for us on this tour, his name is Joel Violette and he's from Fredericton, New Brunswick and he has an eastern Canada Folk and Black Metal project called THRAWSUNBLAT. So he had an album that was ready to go and I agreed to drum on it, so we did that last May and it got finished last year, we put it up online as a free torrent, just to try to get people into it on January first, so it's the whole album up for free download from the band and last we checked, I think there was thirteen-thousand unique downloads of that torrent from one location and it's even spread since there, so that's cool. Joel's on the tour with us now and he's doing his own music too, so he gets a few minutes here and there and he's writing THRAWSUNBLAT riffs, so he's wanting to do second album like that. I imagine I'll be drumming on that. But WOODS OF YPRES is my thing, my number one, my baby, so in my ideal world we'll always continue doing WOODS OF YPRES, I'll always be writing songs and in my mind there's still this long path yet of different types of albums I want to do and different themes and we'll wait to see what happens.

Phil: Okay, just one last question - recommend a book for our readers and then tell why you recommend that particular work.

David: Oh, man, okay. How's this - have you ever heard of the movie "Hard Core Logo"?

Phil: No.

David - Okay, well it's also a book. I've enjoyed the movie since I've been fifteen, I just turned thirty last week, so fifteen years… "Hard Core Logo" is the first of it's kind, kind of music documentary, kind of mock-umentary movie where, when it first came out and it was about a Canadian band from Vancouver who was big in the eighties. But the way that it's filmed, it's as if like, you could show this movie to somebody and they would believe that it's a real thing, like it was a real documentary, but it's completely fictional. But it's the story of this big Punk band from the eighties in Vancouver that reunites and they do a tour across western Canada. I love it because I love touring western Canada, you know, so we're on the road and we have the lines all memorized from the different towns and their experiences in the different clubs from Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. Before coming on tour, a really good friend of mine who writes for a magazine in Canada called "Hellbound", Natalie Zina Walschots, who is taking over the Metal reviewing world right now, found me a copy of "Hard Core Logo", so I have it actually in book form for the first time to read. We've busy on tour - I haven't had any downtime to get into it yet but apparently Joel, who's a big reader, Joel in our band who's doing his Masters in Greek language and something else, but he read the entire book yesterday in the van. So if he read it in a day, I hope that I can read it in the next three weeks. Bruce McDonald is the guy who did the movie, I don't even know the name of the author who wrote the original one, but if you have any interest in Canadiana, Punk or music or band lifestyle on the road kind of thing, that's what I recommend - "Hard Core Logo".

Phil: Okay, cool - is there anything else that you would like to add?

David: Yeah, we drove into Portland, I think this is maybe the most beautiful city I've ever seen in my entire life. British Columbia and Vancouver, which look similar, I said on stage the other night about British Columbia, hands down, the most beautiful province in all of Canada for sure and we drove into Portland and it's a combination of greenness and just that modern landscape of buildings… it's like you took Toronto and you demolished the whole thing and built if from scratch - that's what I think Portland looks like to me, man, it's awesome out here. You have it made - don't move anywhere, just stay here, enjoy your life.

Woods of Ypres' David Gold

July 12, 2010

Interviewer: Philip A. Wickstrand

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PHOTOS BY PHIL A. WICKSTRAND

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Formed 2002
Saulte St. Marie, Ontario  CANADA
Label: Practical Art Records
Genre: Melodic Black Metal

CURRENT LINE-UP:

David Gold:  Vocals, Guitar,
                      Piano & Drums
Shane Madden:  Bass & Vocals
Evan Madden:  Drums
Joel Violette:  Guitars

DISCOGRAPHY:

Against the Seasons: Cold Winter
     Songs from the Dead Summer
     Heat EP (2002)
Pursuit of the Sun & Allure of the
     Earth (2004)
Woods III: The Deepest Roots 
     and Darkest Blues (2007)
Independent Nature 2002-2007
     Best of/Compilation (2009)
Woods IV: The Green Album (2009)