According to a recent press release: “With society consumed by hardline opinions on opposite extremes, neither side of a conversation tends to bend an ear to the other. It sucks the oxygen out of human interaction and leaves us gasping for a healthy breath. Projected explore this social suffocation on their third full-length offering, the aptly titled Hypoxia [Rat Pak Records]. The group—which unites Sevendust’s John Connolly [vocals, guitar], Tremonti’s Eric “Erock” Friedman [guitar], Sevendust’s Vinnie Hornsby [bass], and Alter Bridge/Creed’s Scott Phillips [drums]—artfully address themes of confusion and chaos through a hard-hitting hybrid of magnetic melodies, immersive soundscapes, and intricate instrumentation. Attracting a growing fan base and earning acclaim from Loudwire and more, the band progress through the flames of change once again on these thirteen tracks.” We get signer / guitarist John on the phone to discuss new music, trolls, possible touring, and much more…

John: How are you doing brother?

Toddstar: John, how you doing man?

John: I’m doing good.

Toddstar: Good, good. I appreciate you taking time out. It’s that time of year for you guys.

John: You don’t do anything for two years and then suddenly, I got both bands firing on all cylinders. It’s pretty awesome. When it rains at tours and I will take it for sure, but yeah, it feels good to be out playing and make it and just acting like we did back in 2019.

Toddstar: Like you said, it’s good to be out there because the alternative sucks as we all know.

John: Yeah, for sure. We’re fortunate in what we do and at least if you can’t do the one thing you can do the other, because it’s like when you’re touring, you’re not really creating and writing. You’re writing all the time, but it’s just a different environment. When you’re out and you’re on the tour bus, it’s not as user friendly as going into your own little space here at the house and just unwinding. Sometimes the best songs are written by just doing what you do.

Toddstar: It’s been about five years since we were able to hook up via phone and get something out there and help spread the word about Projected.

John: Yeah, man.

Toddstar: The new album Hypoxia is coming out on June 24. What can you tell us about the album that fans of yours or the band might not grab the first or second time through?

John: It was tough to not address the elephant in the room. I’ve always said I don’t want to just sit down and make a concept record. If a concept record comes to you, then great. And that’s what happened on Ignite My Insanity. It was like everything had that theme and it was all tied into the whole theme that we had going on back on Alpha in Sevendust. It was an accident. We got there and we realized, “Oh man, this is the continuation of the story.” This time around with the pandemic, it was like, “All right, what is every musician on earth doing right now?” they’re all sitting in their little home studio and acoustic guitar watching the news going, “When are we going to get the tour again?” Music is being created like crazy but it’s tough because I’m sort of one of those writers that I sort of react to my surroundings. If you turn on the news, they’re not talking about anything good when we didn’t know what was going on with the pandemic. I said, “Look I want to address it and obviously talk about it,” because that’s sort of what we do both in Sevendust and Projected. From my personal point of view, I always write from experience. There was a lot of experience that I was like, “I don’t want to write about this.” I was like, “Oh my God, every time I turn on the news, I’m writing another ‘Is it over? Is it the zombie apocalypse?’ It’s super, super easy to get sucked into that whole negative head space. Thank God most of the music was already written. It wasn’t like everything was down and depressed and all that stuff. It was difficult not to just focus on that and only that. It took me a minute to go, “All right, let’s, let’s get through the process here and however long it takes.” It’s tough because when your songwriting, at least for me, if I try to force a song, it never comes out. If I sit down and go, “Yeah, I’m going to write the heaviest thing that I’ve ever written.” I usually write a power balled. It’s accidental… I don’t know what happens. Your wires get crossed up and you follow whatever path. On this record, I think consciously, it was just a decision to go, “All right, let’s not talk about the pandemic the whole time. Let’s actually talk about other things that are going on.” The interesting thing is the byproduct of that, was “Hypoxia” was focused on, “Okay, what’s the negative part of all of this?” Everyone’s stuck in their house, they’re all on social media. They’re trying to work from the house. They got kids going to school remotely. People just get fed up and they snap. It was crazy how it was like nobody was talking to each other anymore on social because nobody was seeing each other face to face. People started to get more edgy. It was crazy how people would just lose their minds on each other on social media. For me that was the fascinating thing because it was a perfect storm. You don’t have to see anybody. You’re not going to be traveling any anytime soon. I know how frustrated everybody was because we were all in it together. Not being able to do what you want to do, or go to shows, or just take a vacation with your family or whatever. None of that was happening. Everyone was kind of stuck in the house and it was kind of Groundhog Day. After a while, thank God I had a 15-year-old that was independent at that point, because I couldn’t imagine. See that time with kids that are young and super, super impressionable right now, and I think we’re beginning to see some of what happened; some side effects of that. The social media side effect was the most fascinating thing to me. I was like, “People are just losing their minds and they’re just cut and loose on each other.”

Toddstar: I saw a lot of that. It was so easy for people to just troll the internet and just going after musicians and bands. I thought, “Oh, you didn’t give a shit six months ago, but now all of a sudden you’re losing your mind because the album’s not coming out on time, or the tour been canceled or postponed.” When you saw that kind of stuff, did it piss you off more because you thought somebody didn’t get it or did it piss you off because you’re sitting here thinking, “I can’t release this album. I can’t go on tour.” Did it just add to your frustration, or did it piss you off on principle because somebody’s being a moron behind a keyboard?

John: I mean all of it. It’s super easy to get sucked into this thing. You don’t know how many times I’ve written two paragraphs and I go, “You know what…” I just backspace and delete the whole thing because I go, “This investment is going to cost me eight hours of my life, no matter what, and I’m never going to be able to convince them otherwise.” I remember a long time ago when Blabbermouth first came around, LJ would get pissed off because it’d be the one comment out of a thousand. There’s always the one dude who has to go and poke, right? He’s like, “How do I log on here?” And tell him, I was like, “Don’t do it, dude. That’s what they want. They’re trying to bait you into a conversation.” I was like, “Just don’t read the comments, man. Make music that makes you happy. When you meet other people that has the same effect, great.” If you sit there and you kind of dwell on the negative any kind of negative things online, I mean it can eat you up, it can spit you out, if you read too much into it. At the end of the day, everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and I am too. If you don’t like this and I do, then that’s cool. I win because I created it and you don’t have to listen to it. There’s plenty of other people that will, so we’re good. It takes a while when you’re in the pandemic because it’s so easy. “All right, well what are we going to do? Let’s do a Zoom.” We’d call our friends up on Zoom and have a happy hour, which turns into a happy three hours, which turns into 11 o’clock at night. You’re pretty tuned up and you’re ready to go off on anyone who’s going to cross you. And the whole world was doing that all at the same time. It was a fascinating thing for me. This is a direct effect of solitary confinement. This is what happens when you lock people up and you take away their freedom. It’s not even just the freedom, it’s the unknown, I think more than anything. I think that was more the concern than anything. It was like, “Well, we don’t know what’s happening here. This is a new rule book and it’s being written in front of us.” It’s super easy to get sucked in all that negative stuff, but you can’t do it, man. You really have to let it go and just accept the fact that there are people that are going to believe whatever they want to believe. There are a lot of people out there that are just doing it to get a response, to get noticed, or to get a like. I think half the people out there they’re just trolling to troll and it’s like, “All right, I get this.” They never respond. They just stir the pot. Sometimes I think “Hey, that’s actually pretty good,” because it keeps the threads going and stuff, but it is what it is. We live in that world where social media is used for however you want to use it. I know people who get on there and want to talk about politics, from sun up to sundown. That’s cool. That’s not my space. Like when I’m on Facebook, that’s not what I use it for. I either put them on mute or just scroll on by. It’s like, “I don’t have to read it.” I’ve got the TV remote and I’m like, “I don’t have to watch that show, but why am I going to watch that show I if I get upset?” It’s the same thing on Facebook.

Toddstar: Definitely. Getting to Hypoxia, I love the album. I’ve been able to dig into it for the first couple days now and I’m loving it. I love the fact that it’s like there hasn’t been five years between this and Ignite My Insanity. Other than the pandemic, how different was the process for you from songwriting to recording and to production? How different was this for you guys? You had an EPK before that, and you have the two-disc release under your belt. Was this much different for the four of you?

John: I think everything about it was different, because usually when we do Projected, it’s sort of like, “All right, where can we squeeze time in?” We’ve recorded these records over periods of months, on different hard drives. Then you get it all together and you assemble the pieces of the puzzle. Then you give it a polish and a shine and take it in, and you do the mix, and you go, “All right, what do we have? What do we need?” Sort of a disconnected experience, but it’s cool to know that we could work in that space. It’s very unconventional the way Projected had existed up until the point we went in the studio for this record. This record, the pandemic happened, three of the four of us are here in Orlando. We live here. Our producer lives here. He needed some people to get in there. We needed to get in the studio. And it was just like the pandemic was a good thing for Projected because it made things easy. We can’t go anywhere, and we all need to help each other out. Elvis [Baskette] needs to keep his studio going and we need to make a record. I thought we were going to hop in in August, and he had a cancellation on his books because people couldn’t travel. He had a lot of stuff that was coming in from outside of the United States and you couldn’t get in here. He was like, “Can you guys come in June?” And I was like, “That’s three weeks away. Yeah. We couldn’t do that.” It was like, “It’s time to get busy, but yeah, we can totally do that.” For the first time ever, I think, we went in the studio like every other band does and made a record the way every other band does. You go in, you do a little bit of pre-production. We sat down and made notes. Elvis could hear full songs, at least in the demo versions of them. Super rough version, but at least there’d be a chorus and a verse. I never want to leave him guessing and say, “Oh, what’s happening here? Oh, that’s the chorus,” the most important part of the song, but it’s not written yet. That’s silly. We got in there and we got to work. We had done so much work on the front end that when we got in the studio, it was super relaxed. We just took time with it. We had time and we had space, and nothing was stressed or rushed because we’re like, “All right, how long is this going to last?” I mean, you got to remember this was early summer 2020. How long did it take for us to get back on tour after that? I mean, it was forever. When we’re watching the news and everything, it was like, “Well we couldn’t be in a better spot. We’re all together finally. For the first time ever, face to face whole band in the studio under one roof.” I think the record sounds like that. It sounds connected. It just sounds cohesive. It sounds like we were all in one spot at one time and we all focused together. I’m not knocking what we did before. It’s a different experience when you’re not all together because everyone’s working off their instinct, gut reactions off stuff, but they’re only bouncing things off me. They’re not bouncing anything off anyone else in the band. There’s never a shortage of ideas. It can be subtle things. It could be little things; it could be an of arrangement things. It could be tempo. “I think this is too slow. Why don’t we pick up the pace?” There’s been a million times where I’ve been like, “I’m going to delete this song,” and they’re like, “No, just speed it up a little bit.” And we do, and I go, “Oh wow, that’s so much better.” I need those guys to tell me these things. I’ve almost deleted a lot of songs. People are like, “No.” I think that’s the biggest thing having the experience of all of us together, working together every day, seeing each other, hanging out at the pool eating, talking, watching the pandemic. We’re all having the same experience at the same time. Having Elvis and Jeff in the room and having them there from start to finish on the whole process was something I’d never done before. Vocally, I’ve always just steered the ship, engineered myself. Set up the mic. It’s like, “All right, this is what I’m going to sing. This is how many times am going to sing it. Sing it till I’m happy and move on.” It’s cool when you have someone in there because there’s those ideas where I go, “That’s never going to work.” He’s sitting there singing it to me. I’m going, “What? No.” And he is like, “Promise me, just try it once, and if you hate it, we’ll delete it.” I try it and I’d be like, “Wow, that’s pretty genius. Where did that come from?” That wasn’t something that I would’ve thought of. That’s the beauty of when you’re in that space, you’ve always got somebody who’s very talented to bounce whatever you’re doing. If you’re stuck, they’ll get you unstuck in about two seconds. That is what I love about that because that’s what I’ll do. I’ll spin myself out on one stupid thing and everyone’s like “Land the plane, dude. Great. This is all you got to do.” For me, it was a whole lot of sitting in the back of the room. Once I had gotten in there and loaded in my sessions and put the rhythm guitar parts down it was like, “All right, let me let everyone dig in here.” You get Flip in there with doing his thing, and you get Vinnie doing his thing, and then Erock doing his thing. And then us tag teaming, either vocals or guitar overdubs and stuff like that. We saved a lot of stuff from the demos, surprisingly enough. A lot of the bells and whistles and extra little bits. A lot of that stuff was already there. It was like, “All right, we can either redo it or we can just…” He’d listen to and be like, “Well, it’s clean and it’s what we need. Got to move on.” The whole experience was just more together because it was more together.