'This Is How I'm Rewarded in the Industry' - Wednesday 13 on Having Musical Heroes Involved in His World

Wednesday 13 is back with the new album Mid-Death Crisis, and it's given him the opportunity to work with another music legend that holds a special place in his musical upbringing.

Taime Downe of Faster Pussycat fame guests on the new record and Wednesday 13 gushed to Full Metal Jackie about having the opportunity to work with Downe and some of the other favorites he's worked with over the years.

"This is how I'm rewarded in this industry. For me, just little things like that. It's not awards, it's not money. It's just getting my heroes involved in my world. So I'm just really fortunate to be able to do what I do and have these things happen," says the singer.

Wednesday 13 and Full Metal Jackie also discuss the Satanic Panic years of his youth and how it plays into the new song "When the Devil Commands," how his other band Murderdolls influenced his latest solo effort and how he feels like he's just starting to understand what he's doing and it's fueled his musical passion more than ever.

Plus, Wednesday also shares a harrowing incident from shooting a music video earlier this year when he and his band jumped into action to put out a fire.

Check out more of the chat below.

It's Full Metal Jackie. Very excited to say we've got Wednesday 13 with us this week. There is a new album, Mid-Death Crisis, and Wednesday is supporting the record on tour while also revisiting his Murderdolls past. Celebrating 20 years of Transylvania 90210. Wednesday you talked a bit about this, but this really is a period of bringing old and new together. How did looking back on Murderdolls impact your new album?

For the last year and a half, we've been doing this kind of Murderdolls 20, well, now it's 23 years, anniversary. So about a year and a half ago, I started doing this tour where it was just strictly playing songs from Murderdolls and we took it all around the world. By the time I was done with that, that was just fresh on my mind. So when I started writing this development just instantly kind of caved into that same world.

It was a good thing. And I was able to go out and tour and play this around the world and hear people tell me that this was important to them. This music was like their teenage years. So I was able to see it in a different light this time.

So it's a good thing with this music and subject matter and the lyrics. Seeing people sing these songs every night, it's just a fun thing. It showed me that this music is timeless.

Wednesday 13, "When The Devil Commands"

Wednesday, 'm really getting a kick out of that song we just played. You spoke of remembering the satanic panic of your youth and trying to write a song in fun that would scare your mother. This video for "When the Devil Commands" is equally fun in pushing the buttons. I'm cracking up over the 666 stage prop behind the drummer. How much fun was seeing how far you could push it with both the song and the video in honor of those old songs that managed to get people so worked up.

That was the whole goal. When I found the location, we actually found a church in Los Angeles that would let us do that. I was shocked that we found that in the first place. So once I found that there was a church, I'm like, well, I just made a list of things that you shouldn't see in a church. And a stripper pole was number one. So we did that.

The 666 thing was inspired by the KISS letters. So I wanted something behind us that looked like the KISS letters. And I said, what if we had a giant 666 behind us? So I went on Amazon.com and you can find anything there.

And then lyrically, this song was an ode to my mom. My mom, loved her to death. Back in the '80s, she was looking through all my cassettes and trying to see if I was being possessed by rock and roll and demons or whatever.

When I wrote the lyrics to the song, it was literally just like if I could go back in time and plant this album into my cassettes, my mom could find this album. She would read the lyrics and just be horrified. So I just wrote them out for her. And that's literally what this song is about.

Wednesday 13 on the show with us and we were talking about "When the Devil Commands." It was inspired by the Satanic panic of 80s hard rock and metal. Who were you listening to during your teen years and what initially drew you to this darker style of music?

I was sitting in front of the television in the '80s. I lived in a little single wide trailer up until I was about 12 years old. So I didn't really have a bedroom. My bedroom was the living room. I slept on the couch. I watched TV, and I remember distinctly my parents were watching the TV show People's Court every day at 5 o'clock. I was watching cartoons. My parents came home and then it was the adult shows and we'd watch People's Court and the news. And there was a commercial on People's Court in between the commercials. There was a commercial for Alice Cooper playing in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is where I lived.

It was like, "This Friday night, the nightmare returns. Alice Cooper." And I didn't know what an Alice Cooper was. And I turned around to my mom and I was like, who is she? And my mom being the God fearing Bible Belt mom, she was like, "Oh, that's the man that bites the heads off of chickens and snakes and he's the devil." I was just always like, "That's what I'd heard about Ozzy." So when I heard that, I went, "Okay, this is interesting. It scares my mom. I want to know about it." So that was the first kind of thing.

Then my brother had KISS posters on his wall. So I saw that imagery and I didn't know what that was, so I was just always drawn toward that. And then the music that I was listening to, my mom was searching for these demonic things, but I had all the glam rock bands. I had Poison and Motley Crue. I didn't have Slayer or anything like that. So she was searching for those demonic bands, but I just had all the glam rock bands. But she still thought it was evil because that's what the TV shows and everything was saying then. So it was just a unique time of that.

But I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a crazy time, but there was a point where rock and roll was as scary as a horror movie.

Wednesday, there are moments that are probably things you love to check off in music. As someone who grew up in the era that you did, how much of a thrill was it to get Taime Downe on this record? And what have been some of your favorite moments since starting in the industry of getting to interact with people you grew up listening to?

I've been really, really lucky to meet a lot of my rock and roll heroes and become friends with them and then get them to be a part of my music. A few years ago I was able to get Alice Cooper to do the introduction on my, on my album, which was unbelievable. It's still hard to believe that I was able to do that. He did that because he's a friend of mine.

When this new record, I was able to get my buddy Taime Downe on it. And a lot of people don't know that Faster Pussycat was a huge influence on me as a kid. When I started. I'm originally a guitar player before I was a vocalist. So when I was playing guitar, I learned how to play the guitar to the first Faster Pussycat album. I had a little tablature book. Someone taught me how to read that and I was able to learn their album note for note. And that's really my only level of guitar playing and skill that I learned was from that album.

So I'm 11 or 12 years old learning how to play that record. And here we are now, Taime Downe is singing on my record. And I'm in the studio directing him how to sing this song. So it's such a cool thing. It's just as important as having Alice Cooper on my record. Taime was an influence on my voice, my look - I dyed my hair black because I saw him dye his hair black.

This is how I'm rewarded in this industry. For me, just little things like that. It's not awards, it's not money. It's just getting my heroes involved in my world. So I'm just really fortunate to be able to do what I do and have these things happen.

Earlier this year, in the midst of shooting a video for "In Misery," you and your bandmates spotted a fire starting amidst all the California wildfires. Can you take us through that experience and what your thoughts were upon seeing this potential danger happen right in front of you?

Crazy. We were just talking about it again yesterday. I kind of stopped thinking about it for a little bit. But basically the wildfires were out in California going crazy for like what seemed like a week and a half. And we were every in California just hoping for rain to come in and put these things out.

I'd already scheduled to filmed two videos and we filmed "When the Devil Commands" in the church and then the second video was for the song "In Misery." And we filmed it outside on this location place in Sylmar, California. We basically built a graveyard for our video. And so we've had to film it outside. We went to this location in Sylmar. Everything was good. We built this graveyard, had everything set up, and the location was right next to the 210 highway. And in the middle of filming, we just literally saw this flame just shoot up off the side of the highway out of nowhere.

Seeing all these fires on TV for the last week and a half and living in California, I had like a bag packed beside my bed every night ready to go in case something happened. So seeing a fire right in front of us just panicked everyone and everyone started running to the cars to get in their cars and leave, because we thought any second this whole place would be engulfed because fires were spreading so quick.

And I ran right to the fire, saw what it was, what was going on, and I decided that I was going to try to put it out. A lot of it was just spur of the moment. I don't know what happened. I jumped over and started trying to put it out. There was a bucket near this place because the place we were filming was like a tree sanctuary. There was trees and buckets and stuff around. So I started using these buckets of dirt to put the fire out, because I saw on TV that the fire department was using bulldozers to push dirt on the fire.

Believe it or not, it worked. And we were able to put the fire out mostly with buckets of dirt. And we did it all in our stage clothes, full makeup. We were able to put it out in about 45 minutes. The fire department showed up, contained it completely, and then we went back and filmed our video.

It is hard to believe we actually did that, but I know if we wouldn't have stopped and tried to put it out, it would have burned that entire thing down. We'd have lost our gear, our cameras, everything. So it was an intense moment that we just jumped into action and we put it out.

The album itself is titled Mid-Death Crisis, obviously a play on the phrase midlife crisis. If midlife crisis is questioning your purpose and achievements in middle adulthood, what questions would you want satisfied or answered when you're in your 70s or 80s? Like, what will satisfy you in terms of reaching your life's accomplishments?

Oh, that's a deep question. I don't know how to answer that question. If I make it to 70, I guess that'll just be the accomplishment there. As a kid starting this whole rock and roll thing, I thought it was going to be the live fast, die young thing.

Hitting my 40s was something I never thought I would do. And next year, turning 50, which is where the title Mid-Death Crisis comes from, I'm just kind of laughing all the way to the grave. I'm not taking life too seriously. I'm just trying to have fun with it. So yeah, I think my goal is just to make it to 70. That would just be the goal to make it that far.

For some of us, our introduction to Wednesday 13 was through Murderdolls. Mid-Death Crisis, you're now your 10th solo record. This career is not one for the weak. Looking back at this journey, what does it mean to you to have reached a mark with 10 solo studio albums? Were there ever moments of doubt? And also, how proud are you to have reached a mark of longevity that not many acts achieve?

It's hard to believe. I didn't really want to be a solo artist. I just said, "Okay, well, if I just used the name Wednesday 13 because I didn't know if I could keep a band together and if I just call it Wednesday 13, I'll always be here and it'll be a thing.

So 20 years later, 10th album. Along the way there's always doubts and things, and that's why I did side projects and stuff, because if I ever got bored of doing something with this, I always had other outlets. But to look back on it all and say, I'm here 20 years later and 10 albums, I mean, I've outlasted bands and it just proves that I can do this. I'm into it as much as I ever was from in the beginning. This is all I know and I love it. And I'm getting more into it as I get older. Some people lose sight of it and I feel like I'm just now starting to understand what I'm doing and getting good at it. So I still got a lot of fuel in the tank and a lot of years ahead of me, I hope.

Thanks to Wednesday 13 for the Interview. The Mid-Death Crisis album is out now. You can keep up to date with all things Wednesday 13 through his website, Facebook, X and Instagram accounts. Find out where you can hear Full Metal Jackie's weekend radio show here.