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Staind

As told by guitarist Mike Mushok –

The band Staind has had the current line-up since 11/24/95. We put out a self-released CD on 11/29/96. The 1st CD party was an overwhelmingly great success with over 900 people in attendance. We sold more than 200 CDs that night. During the next year, we sold more than 2000 CDs while playing gigs throughout New England with bands such as: Honkeyball, Shed, Kilgore, GWAR, Far and God Lives Under Water.

Staind The band's big break came October 23, 1997 when Staind performed with the band Limp Bizkit at the Webster Theater in Hartford, Connecticut.

The story begins approximately 20 minutes before we were supposed to perform. Fred Durst, the singer for Limp Bizkit, approached Aaron, our singer, and me with a copy of our CD in his hand. Someone had given it to him, which was fine, except Fred thought we were Satan worshippers due to the nature of our cover art.

Of course we weren't, but they tried to have us kicked off the bill. Fred and I exchanged words. Then, he took our CD and threw it across the table; he wanted nothing to do with us – so much for our big break. Well, at least until Fred saw our show!

After our set, Fred approached us and said we were the best band he had seen in two years." Also, he said that he was starting a production company and wanted to work with us. We exchanged phone numbers and then went our separate ways.

Staind At the time, we were in the studio making a demo with four new songs. I tried to reach Fred, but I was unsuccessful due to their busy touring schedule. I found out that Limp Bizkit was opening for the Deftones outside of Boston, the night before Thanksgiving 1997. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give Fred a copy of our new tunes, so the band and I drove up to see the show.

We went to Limp Bizkit's bus and knocked on the door, where we met up with DJ Lethal – Fred was busy elsewhere. We gave Lee a couple of tapes with the new tunes, then went to see the show (which rocked). We tried to find Fred, but were not successful.

That night I went home and went to bed. Around 2 a.m., my phone rang – it was Fred. He LOVED the new songs and wanted us to go to Jacksonville, Florida (Jax) to work with us on our material. After a few phone conversations, we decided that we would leave the day after Christmas. We would stay at Fred's house and play a show with the Limp Bizkit at the Milkbar in Jax on January 4, 1998. We had a gig the day after Christmas. After the show, we loaded the van and trailer and headed to Jax.

We almost made it, but our van broke down 1000 feet from the Florida state line. We had it towed to Fred's house and started work the very next day.

Fred played an integral part in helping us to develop our sound. Aaron, our singer, has an amazing voice and Fred helped to bring that out. We had a lot of screaming parts in our songs. Fred said, "Man, you can sing, why don't you do that more?" The trip was very productive because we reworked four of our songs and played a KILLER sold out show in their hometown of Jax.

While there, Fred contacted Jordan Schur, the President of Flip Records. Fred told Jordan about us and within a week of leaving Jacksonville, we were on a plane to L.A. where we met Jordan and recorded a three song sampler.

We recorded "A Flat," "Suffocate" and one of Aaron's acoustic tracks, "Black Rain," at Sound City Studios with Fred and Lethal producing. By February 1998, we had signed to Flip Records. Jordan did our project as a joint venture with Elektra Records in the Spring of 1998.

During this time, we were to play some shows with Limp Bizkit, Sevendust and Clutch – all of which went great! In April, we went back to Jax and worked with Fred on some more tunes.

By June of 1998, we were working closely with our management company, The Firm, who also managed Limp Bizkit, Ice Cube and Orgy. We were then able to persuade Terry Date (The Deftones, Pantera, Sound Garden, White Zombie) to produce our first album. On August 1, 1998 (the day after we played the Warped Tour in Northampton, Massachusetts) we flew to Seattle to record at Studio Litho (Pearl Jam's Studio.) During early October, the album was mixed at Studio X (the old Bad Animals) in Seattle.

Staind members are --