Mark: I’m not even sure what my favourite track is on there after listening to it so many times, all I know is that it’s absolutely wonderful. A brand new song to re-breathe some life into it and launch the tour and make another round of press and all of that stuff, I can’t let it go it’s just too good, the best thing I’ve ever done. There was the juice and the buzz from everybody knowing it was done, and sending out the digital downloads, and releasing a single and everything… then it just sat there for a while, and you know the record wasn’t set up properly and done all ass-backwards and then before you know it, even right to this day it’s kind of deflated and I just can’t give up on that record that’s why I’m releasing a new single next month. I think I wrote the first review and I just looked before we spoke 27,000 people read that review to date so let’s hope they all go out and buy the album and then they all go out and tell their friends to do the same.ĭonnie: Well there were a lot of things that tried to stop the album happening including me being in hospital almost dying… all those things made it almost two years after it was recorded before it got released.
Mark: (laughs) It’s funny you should say that I didn’t get my copy but I also appreciate what went on and was so happy to get it digitally. There’s still people busting my balls that they didn’t get theirs, there’s like two people who haven’t got theirs and that’s probably because the mail man can’t find the cornfield. But we actually took loans and actively bought all that stuff, and I got a deal that sent them all out and honoured that thing. I wrote about it at the time and I think that there was only you and Danny Vaughn and a couple of others that actually did that and honoured the Pledge out of their own pockets, some bands signed to major labels, even just said ‘tough luck’ it changed my opinions of a few people.ĭonnie: That’s what I heard, but my fans I consider are all brothers and sisters, we’re like a family, we’re small but we’re mighty and I love them so much and I appreciate them so much… I was already forty grand in the hole so what’s another few thousand dollars to take care of these people? But in all reality we got fucked, they got fucked, the engineers got fucked, everybody who was supposed to get paid got fucked and that’s where it sort of lay, and that’s where everybody else left it. Mark: It was horrible, but also very interesting to see how bands reacted. But they disappeared and vanished off the face of the earth and I think as one of the only artists that tried to do the right thing, and ended up honouring the Pledge using my own money, and my sister getting a loan, I took a shitty record deal so we could get all of those CD’s pressed and all the other stuff that people paid for, and postage and all of that stuff. It’s the most conducive and expressive, you know exactly what I’ve always wanted… the record I should have made my whole life.ĭonnie: But as far as Pledge goes we set a Pledge goal and we doubled the goal really quickly and so the budget easily would have been met, all the players paid and everything, and I still would have had like twenty, thirty grand to promote it.
Mark: As a long time listener I think it is my favourite of your solo material.ĭonnie: I’m so proud of it, I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Then ‘Breaking Me Down’ then ‘Fly’ popped into my head after that, it was like three days in a row, and I was thinking “Well I think we’re back in business” there was my answer! (laughs)
Just to recap… we’d just been talking about Donnie not being able to write for almost three years after ‘The White Album’…ĭonnie: When I finished the program I was thinking to myself and talking to God and saying “what now? Now I’ve got it together and got my head together are we still gonna do this anymore?” and the next day “I Could Save The World” popped into my head. In Part Two we look deeper at ‘Beautiful Things,’ Enuff Z’Nuff’s final album ‘Dissonance,’ that first live show in 5 years and the letter to Metal Sludge. In the first part of our interview we looked back at the early days of Enuff Z’Nuff you can catch up with Part One HERE.