Whitechapel Guitarist Talks The Importance Of Touring, Straight-Edge Lifestyle

KKnoxville, Tennessee’s death metal band Whitechapel just finished touring in support of their latest release, This Is Exile. Prior to returning to the studio in January, the band talked to UG’s Joe Matera to discuss the new album, touring and living a straight-edge life.

Check out few interesting to Dotted Music comments from Whitechapel guitarist Alex Wade below. The full interview is going to be posted on Ultimate Guitar pretty soon, but you read it first, as usual!

Alex Wade

The band has toured heavily in its relatively short lifespan, how important is touring these days for a band such as Whitechapel despite all the doom and gloom within the industry?

It is absolutely crucial for a band. And for us that is the only way we can make money. We do get a royalty check here and there, but our royalties really goes back into paying off all of the stuff we have to acquire as a band. So the only way we can really make any money and be able to do it as a career is to tour. If you are a young band looking to tour and stuff like that, and you are really wanting to make this your career and make this your lifestyle, I am not telling you to quit your job or quit your school and head out on the road, but it definitely takes 110% and all of your effort and everything like. You have to put everything you are into the band and hopefully from all of that, you’ll reap the rewards.

It is well known that Whitechapel adhere to a clean living, straight-edge lifestyle?

Yes but that is just me. I am the only band member that is straight edge. Honestly, the other guys really don’t party as hard as people probably think they do. I mean they do enjoy a couple brews now and then, but nobody has any problems with drugs or alcohol or anything like that. I am very thankful to be in a band like this and living the lifestyle that I do. I do it for myself so I don’t really care what other people do. I have a lot of friends that drink and I have more non-straight edge friends than I do straight-edge friends. And it definitely helps not having to worry about my band members being sloshed all the time and stuff like that.

Do you find it hard to maintain that kind of lifestyle within an industry that is known for excesses of every conceivable kind?

No, not really. A lot of people tend to say to me, “man I don’t how you do it being in a metal band“. But honestly my whole life I’ve grown up being pretty clean as I’ve never really drank or done drugs or stuff like that so for me, it is a pretty easy lifestyle.

I should be doing a separate post on this topic soon. My point is that living a stereotyped sex, drugs and rock n’ roll lifestyle is not as affordable nowadays as it used to be (I don’t touch the moral aspects here). You are a CEO of yourself and your band, and you have to work hard to push your business (music). I doubt you know a lot of successful companies’ CEOs getting drunk each evening or sniffing coke from whores here and there (OK, maybe CEOs just don’t have the same opportunities as rock stars, but you got the point).