DOWN Bassist: 'Now That We're Cleaned Up There's No Limit To This Band'

Mark Hensch of Thrashpit.com recently conducted an interview with DOWN/ex-PANTERA bassist Rex Brown. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Thrashpit: Moving on to more personal topics, you replaced CROWBAR's Todd Strange as DOWN's bassist. What initially attracted you to DOWN and why have you been able to come back to it so sporadically over the years?

Rex: Originally, we had some free time in-between PANTERA and everyone was home. Phil (Anselmo, vocalist of both PANTERA and DOWN) was going to a party somewhere and asked if I wanted to go. I was like "sure, I'll go." So a bunch of us went down there and we all just sat there and kinda started jamming. It was going well, so Phil asked if I'd join the band and I said "why the f*ck not?" Everything gelled very fast and after that we wrote about six songs in a day. It was very cool. For now, we basically know that we make badass f*cking records together, so it is basically just us getting in a room and jamming. We take our time getting together and making everything strong.

Thrashpit: DOWN often is credited with helping popularize a style of heavy metal that is distinctly "Southern." In my opinion, such a term stems from the fact that there is a large blues influence on DOWN's music. How do you think the traditional blues style has influenced heavy metal today?

Rex: If you play the radio non-stop you'll hear the influence of rhythm and blues, jazz, all of it, everywhere. That's definitely the sound of the South. I would call our sound just taking elements of where we come from and making it something new. We're from the South and we play f*cking DOWN. There are a lot of bands who want to be in our little shoes, but pretty much we still tap into where we come from more than anything else. With this band I feel really comfortable in the style of music we play.

Thrashpit: Another vital aspect to the DOWN touring experience is the large video package that is typically presented during the show. Having not seen the new video for the latest tour, what can you say about it?

Rex: If you come to a concert with DOWN, we want it to be an evening with DOWN instead of seeing some band you've never heard of before. What we do is we run this set of clips of old artists, just real killer footage. It can be anybody that influenced us or we're really big on — classic rock kinda sh*t. Throughout it all, these clips have been interspersed with us. It just builds up to the very end, and then the curtain comes down, and we start playing. It is something we keep kinda sacred, as you're getting that evening with DOWN. If someone is going to pay to see an artist we're going to go right to the main event! Some people get it, some don't. Whatever man, that's just the part of the show.

Thrashpit: You are a bassist who has toured the world extensively and done many things most people never get to do in a lifetime. Looking back on all you've accomplished so far, what would you say has been your greatest achievement?

Rex: I wouldn't change any of it. We've worked our asses off to get to where we are and what we've done. I wouldn't change a thing except for the tragic loss of Dime ("Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, the guitarist of PANTERA who was shot and killed by a deranged fan) and that's it. Just getting to be at the level we were at was hard work. We made it somehow though, amazingly. Being in a band like DOWN is kind of like that — we're just starting over. We could go out and play f*cking gospel music if we wanted, as now that we're cleaned up there's no limit to this band, you know what I'm saying? What I don't wanna do is pitch ourselves as an all-metal band, because that is not what DOWN is all about. My greatest achievement then is everything I got to do with PANTERA, and NOW getting to do it again with DOWN. That doesn't happen very often.

Thrashpit: One last question. Where do you see DOWN heading in the next couple years?

Rex: I got a ton of sh*t coming up, some related to DOWN, some not. With DOWN, we're still going. We aren't going to take any big breaks or anything. Just getting this record together took a while as we all wanted to make the best thing possible and now we have to tour behind it. We have Europe left to go to and we have some shows to do in January and February. We just want to tour a lot and get this to as many people as we can. We will have some news for summer time so we have to get this touring cycle out of our systems, take a small break, and then get back to work.

Read the entire interview at this location.