Light It Up

“I’ve not taken a summer off in almost 11 years,” he explains. “Everyone in a band knows that that’s the time when you’re touring, you’re doing festivals overseas, and I’ve just had enough. I just needed to take some time with the family, take some time with the wife, and come back to me.”

The band’s forthcoming Australian run with Whitechapel will in fact be the last tour off the back of their hugely successful 2013 album Winter Kills. “We figured [we’ll] come Down Under and finish it off right. The record has performed so well all over the globe. For our sixth record to actually do what it’s been doing, I just think okay, let’s end this cycle, let’s come off for a while, let’s take our first prolonged break as DevilDriver, get with our families, and get writing.”

He reveals that the band have been given the deadline of 1 Nov to turn in six songs for the next album. “I write daily, and I want everybody to write daily, so if you don’t give people deadlines some people will slack [off]. You just have to say, ‘By November, if we have six songs, then we’ll know by January, February next year if we’ve got a record,’ and then we can start talking to producers or whatever. I work best on a deadline, and the people around me need to work best on a deadline.”

With the reactivated Coal Chamber having also just announced plans to release their fourth album in 2015, Fafara definitely doesn’t fit the increasingly invalid stereotype of the lazy pot smoker. Nonetheless he smokes daily, and is proud to support the legalisation movement.

“I’ve suffered from ADD and ADHD my whole life. My parents had me on Ritalin for a long time, which is a terrible drug, and if you’ve got your kids on any of those drugs – they’re giving them for hyperactivity – what you have to know is you’re dealing with a hyperactive kid, which means you’re dealing with a very intelligent, smart individual. He could listen to four teachers at once and probably do all of the things at once, but you’re boring him with one thing, and that’s why he’s not getting good grades.

“When I found marijuana in my life, it absolutely changed me for the better. I was at a friend’s house and we put on Black Sabbath and I smoked a joint and sat back and said, ‘What a minute, what’s this?’ And then what’s crazy is I remember I had to go home [after] to do homework, and I not only flew through that homework, but I understood it and it stuck with me. The doors of perception opened wide. The third eye opens. The brain works differently. The manifestation from that is incredible on an individual.”

Beyond the mental effects, Fafara is well-versed in the social and economic benefits of the plant. “In the United States most of our farmers are out of work. We don’t build anything here anymore, most of our stuff is made overseas, and all you’ve gotta do is install hemp and watch it happen. I think people here are watching what’s happening in Colorado, where it’s fully legal, as if it was going into a liquor store and buying beer, and all you need is ID. They’ve gotten millions of dollars from it and they’re putting it all into schools. Over here in the school system we’re watching the arts completely disappear – everything from shop class to painting, sculpting, a lot of the music classes are suffering horribly – and we’re watching Denver giving all of that money, all of that surplus to their school system, and the schools are booming.

“There’s so many aspects of this herb that have unfortunately been demonised over the years. The hemp seed is the most powerful piece of protein on earth: it makes incredible clothing, our constitution was written on hemp, our forefathers over here grew hemp, smoked hemp, Benjamin Franklin smoked it... It irritates me that it’s illegal – for something derivative from the universe, not even touched, not even chemically altered – it’s illegal for humankind to take it. Who’s making that statement? Who’s telling me what I can and can’t do with my body? Who’s directing me like that? It’s just very upsetting to me. We should all be of free will.”