The reviews are starting to come in, but Pepper Keenan already has heard some of the best comments when it comes to describing the new Corrosion of Conformity double album, Good God / Baad Man.
While speaking with Full Metal Jackie, one thing became apparent. This may be one of the most significant albums of the band’s career. While there were two key lineup changes between albums, it was also a chance for Pepper Keenan and fellow returning member Woody Weatherman to key in on what they love about music and let the influences do their work.
“I played the record for a pretty big time rock and roll guy,” shared Keenan. “He heard the record, and he’s like, ‘Pepper, this sounds like every COC record you’ve ever made put into one.’ And that was a pretty cool thing to say. Because the record, it’s diverse. When I say the, the weird love letter to rock and roll, we just went all over the place.”
The singer-guitarist also shared another early review, adding, “Another guy said it kind of reminded him of Paul’s Boutique from the Beastie Boys in terms of how crazy we went sideways. I thought that was cool as well. But we listened to a lot of influences and we weren’t scared to let them sneak into our world.”
Keenan and Weatherman were guests on Full Metal Jackie’s weekend show, digging into Good God / Baad Man and sharing the important role of revisiting past influences played in the new album. They also address the significant addition of Stanton Moore, which is apparent on the new single “Gimme Some Moore.”
The guys also dig into which of each other’s riffs that they most admire and speak about their upcoming touring with Crobot and Whores.
Check out more of the chat below.
It’s Full Metal Jackie, and this week on the show we welcome a pair of legends bringing a double album of bangers to the table, I’m talking about Pepper Keenan and Woody Weatherman of COC, who are making their long awaited return with Good God / Baad Man.
It’s been a while, but with a double album, it’s understandable. Obviously a lot was hitting you creatively. Was there a turning point where this double album came into focus and you knew how it was going to work together?
Pepper Keenan: Me and Woody went through a lot of crap especially after COVID and all that. And then losing Reid [Mullen] and then Mike Dean going his own way, which was totally amicable by all of us. But we just got down to jamming and writing songs and I think we kind of had the concept of this in the early stages. But then it really started taking shape after we were writing a bunch of songs.
Woody Weatherman: When the lyrics started really coming out, it sort of carved the path. It made it obvious that it kind of had to be two albums.
Corrosion of Conformity, “Gimme Some Moore”
Yes, yes and more yes in terms of that first single, “Gimme Some Moore.” I can’t help but notice the spelling is Moore. Is that a nod to Stanton, who definitely makes his presence felt on this song?
Keenan: Yeah, that was just a play on words. It was too easy not to do it, you know?
Weatherman: Right.
Keenan: But yeah, he nailed it. He nailed the [shit] out of it.
We were just talking about Stanton Moore, who came on board after the death of Reid Mullen. And we’ve also added Bobby Landgraf in place of the exiting Mike Dean. Can you speak to the brotherhood between the two of you and what it meant having each other to help navigate this period of change in the band? And what have the new guys brought to the equation?
Weatherman: Pepper and I have always kind of had this saying, like, “The train don’t stop.” The COC train cannot stop at this time. And it’s just something we’ve always told each other, We always get things thrown at us and we claw our way out and make the best of it. This is one of those examples. We get boulders hurled at us and we keep on going.
Keenan: It was kind of nice at one point, ’cause the only person I had to listen to was Woody.
Weatherman: (laughs) I don’t say much anyway.
Keenan: The person Woody had to listen to was me. So we took that as an advantage and just enjoyed writing music and playing tunes together and listening to records and drinking beer and all the things you do when there’s not that much pressure on you.
We sat in Mississippi in a black shack and just went crazy.
Weatherman: Had a blast.
And tell us about what have the new guys brought to the equation?
Keenan: Stanton had played on a record called In the Arms of God and it was absolutely ferocious drumming.
Weatherman: Right.
Keenan: And of course once Reid was not gonna be in the equation, he was the first guy we thought of. He knew Reid, he studied Reid, he’s a fantastic jazz drummer and amongst other things, but he really wanted to try and shoot to make Reid proud on this on lots of different levels.
I think he did a fantastic job. It’s a very tall order, but he did his thing on it and it’s pretty ferocious.
Pepper and Woody from COC with us again. We’re talking about Good God / Baad Man. And you’ve talked about this album being a weird love letter to all things rock and roll. I’m assuming this brought you back to what made you passionate about music in the first place. What were some of the touch tones that got the ball rolling musically and did revisiting early albums sort of reignite or take you back to the passion you had when you first started this band?
Weatherman: Keenan and I were talking back and forth and we were like, “Man, you know, it’s getting real time to do another album.” And I was like, “Man, it’s way past time.” And I was like, “It’s not gonna happen if I don’t jump on a plane and come down there and sit in the shack with you for weeks on end.” That’s exactly what happened.
I jumped on a plane, we went down there and started doing the things that we do, listening to the albums that we love and just started getting inspiration. Humming each other riffs over the phone and I’d show up and he’d have a riff to go with my riff or vice versa.
It was all about having a great time for us, you know? That was the main point.
Keenan: One thing that was cool about this that I heard the other day, which I thought was very interesting, I played the record for a pretty big time rock and roll guy. He’s in the business, I’m not gonna name his name. Super cool dude. He heard the record, and he’s like, “Pepper, this sounds like every COC record you’ve ever made put into one.” And that was a pretty cool thing to say. Because the record, it’s diverse. When I say the, the weird love letter to rock and roll, we just went all over the place.
Another guy said it kind of reminded him of Paul’s Boutique from the Beastie Boys in terms of how crazy we went sideways. I thought that was cool as well. But we listened to a lot of influences and we weren’t scared to let them sneak into our world.
Earlier we were discussing “Gimme Some Moore,” which you guys decided to also issue as a seven-inch vinyl. What brought about the decision? Are either of you big vinyl collectors yourself? And if so, do you have a prized possession in your vinyl collection?
Weatherman: Keenan has some.. I used to be way back in the day. I was a vinyl dude, sort of like pre-CDs kind of stuff and I still got them all. I think it’s cool. I love listening to vinyl.
The whole thing with the “Gimme Some Moore” seven-inch, it was kind of a throwback because we all had the cool ass punk rock seven-inches and all that stuff, trading. It was an obvious choice..
With the Fear cover on the backside, which maybe some people don’t even know is on there, but it’s just a cool little throwback kind of deal.
Keenan: Yeah, I’m a big vinyl guy, for sure. When we were recording this record, we had a pretty large record collection and turntables and vintage speakers and all that kind of with us the whole time, so we were constantly pulling out and listening to stuff.
But I’d have to say the thing I’ve heard to worn out the most lately would be the Black Sabbath Volume 4 box set. I don’t know if anybody’s heard that thing, but it’s fricking genius in terms of new releases. It’s one of my favorite things. It ended up being one of my favorite things of all time, just because of how exposed they made themselves releasing all the demos of them working on the songs and stuff. I would highly suggest checking it out.
Going back a bit, I found a quote with you guys talking about how the Alice Cooper/Judas Priest touring lit you up as a band. Given that your rock influences play a huge role and now adding being on tour with two of the all-time greats, does something like that, playing a tour with these legends, then start to sort of like seep into the creative process at all? Or was it just more like lit it up by enjoying the spirit of playing live again?
Weatherman: By the time we were on the Priest/Cooper tour, the album was in the can. We had already finished it. It was inspirational just watching those dudes play every night. It’s professionalism at its peak. Everybody was great players. Everybody had a good time. They knew how to be on tour and put on a good show and it made it a lot of fun.
It’s one of those things, especially Priest for me and them being one of my kind of all-time faves going way back and an inspiration to COC from the early days. But it was kind of a bucket list sort of deal for me.
Keenan: Yeah, absolutely. It was a no-brainer. Getting to hang out with them and actually getting to pick their brains about songs and recordings and things like that, the things the average person might not get to do. But yeah, I think Rob Halford was getting tired of me asking questions after a while.
Do you guys still ever find yourselves like fanboying out when it comes to meeting any of your heroes like that?
Weatherman: Yeah man, of course. I mean, it’s Judas Priest dude. That’s one of the pinnacles of the reason why we’re even here. And we had a fun time on tour because we listened to the entire Judas Priest catalog forensically, in chronological order.. And we listened to it every night on the tour bus. We were going crazy.
I was going even weirder, writing down the release dates of what record came out when and everything and it was starting blow my mind of how badass they were.
They’re putting records out, some within 12 months, spitting them out. And every one of them was brilliant. And it started to really kind of freak me out after a while. And then I’d get to ask Halford things the next day and it was really cool. We used it to our advantage, let me put it that way.
This spring brings more COC tour dates. There’s a great bill hitting the road with you guys, joined by Crobot and Whores. What are your thoughts on your supporting bands on this bill, and as a headliner, what are you hoping to bring to your audience outside of your own show?
Keenan: Whores, they’re from Atlanta and they’re loud and they got a good buzz about them. They wanted to do the tour with something somebody threw together and we were super cool with it once we were checking out what they were doing. We’ve known the Crobot guys for a while, great musicians, great players and so it just sounded like a cool package that we could throw together.
And we’re also playing some shows in between all this with Clutch, which will be fun as well.
You guys have done a bunch of touring with Clutch over the years.
Weatherman: We have, yeah. They’re kind of like old buddies at this point, you know?
It’s always tricky with new material, but it feels like there’s a lot of love for the new album. Ideally, is there a certain amount of tracks you’d like to work in from this two album set, or would you even consider doing shows dedicated to one or both of the double album?
Keenan: It’s a lot of information on these things, as I said before, but yes, they are all within reach to play live, easy. Most, but not all of them, but most of them are. It’s definitely something we want to get into.That’s always a conundrum, ’cause you get further down the road, the more catalog you got and it starts to get really tough.
Even if you try to whittle out the hits, whittle it down, I’ll still play two hours, I don’t give a shit. Hopefully, we can get it figured out.
Weatherman: It would take that long to really play everything we want to play. We just got finished with that South American run and we were doing a full 90 minutes. And we were only doing one song off the new album. We just got too much stuff that we almost kind of have to play and we want to play. It makes it tough every time we put out another album. You got to whittle them down and decide what you want to do.
And now you have two albums worth of material for this new one to decide what to play.
Keenan: Yeah, we kind of knew that going into it. They’re all cool. There’s not any filler on this whole thing, so it’s going to be tricky.
Taking it back a bit to last year, we got this killer cover of “Fire and Water” you guys did of the Free classic during a studio jam. Who here was the Free fan that brought that out and what are your thoughts on Paul Rodgers finally getting his due, albeit with Bad Company, for the Rock Hall last year?
Weatherman: That’s fantastic. I think what spurred us on was Keenan was talking a minute ago about throwing vinyl on in between takes working on songs and he threw on one of the Free records.
Stanton was sitting there, and he was like, “What’s this?” And we were like, “Dude.” So we kind of just learned it right then and there and sort of did a jam version of it. It’s kind of how that really came out, just because Stanton was like, “Who the hell is this?” And we were like, “Dude, that’s Free. We’re gonna … you gotta learn it.”
Keenan: He had never, he had never heard it before. It blew our minds and he’s like, “Let’s cut this.” I was like, “I will,” and I was like, “Man, you’re out of your damn mind. You don’t just walk in and start cutting Free songs.” He’s like, “Come on, do it.” And he learned it. He learned it real quick, he studied it, chartered it out like he does, even the end part and everything and we went for it.
He said, “Just sing it like you.” Okay, ’cause I’m clearly no Paul Rodgers and don’t claim to sound anything like that, but he’s like, “Just do it like you.” We kept it in me and gave it a shot, you know? And it was fun. It was great.
Corrosion of Conformity, “Fire and Water”
It’s Full Metal Jackie, Pepper and Woody from COC with us. As the two longest tenured members of Corrosion of Conformity and both playing guitar, it’s time to put you on the spot. Favorite guitar riff or part that each other are responsible for? Go.
Weatherman: Oh, wow. That’s a tall order. Keenan keeps getting better. I would say it’s definitely some of his work on the new album. He’s kind of stepped above and beyond on a lot of stuff, I think. I don’t know if I can pick one right now and you wouldn’t even know what I was talking about. But, for me, it’s, it’s some of the stuff that Keenan did on the new album. I think he’s stepped it up a notch.
READ MORE: COC’s Pepper Keenan Plays His Favorite Riffs
Keenan: Yep. There’s classic Woody riffs here. There’s one song on the new record that is called “Swallowing the Anchor.” That’s Woody stuff all over the place on it and that song was also reminding me of another song that Woody had laid out, which was a riff on “Goodbye Windows” off of Wise Blood, which is another killer.
But then, of course, you can go all the way back to “Lost for Words.”
Weatherman: We might as well. And another thing Jackie, we did do a song off of the Animosity album live on the South American run just to pull out a super oldie, and that was fun. It’s a tune called “Mad World.” We had a blast doing that stuff and it was great seeing Stanton jumping into some old school punk rock like that. It was fun.
I play that song on every cover show that I do. I do a cover show for like the holidays and I always play that cover.
Oh, nice.
It’s Full Metal Jackie, Pepper and Woody of COC with us. The double record is called Good God / Baad Man. There’s going to be plenty of touring. It’s so great to catch up with you guys, and I’m very excited to get to see you guys again live.
Thanks to Corrosion of Conformity’s Pepper Keenan and Woody Weatherman for the interview. Good God / Baad Man is out now. Stay up to date with COC through their website, Facebook, X and Instagram accounts. Find out where you can hear Full Metal Jackie’s weekend radio show here.
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Gallery Credit: Joe DiVita, Loudwire
