Shannon Larkin of Another Animal

Lots of people know Shannon Larkin from Godsmack (you know, the band Opie regrets breaking the CD of? Linger Longer!) but he and his Godsmack buddies teamed up with Whitfield Crane (Ugly Kid Joe) after John Kosco (Saint Kane) backed out at the last minute, and bring you an awesome beast in the form of ANOTHER ANIMAL. Check out the good humored answers of Mr. Larkin and then get your butt over to Amazon and GET THIS ALBUM! 

FoundryMusicRob: First things first, let’s get the important issues out of the way, how do you feel about shower farts?

Shannon Larkin: They are wet and gross, and the smell just isn’t conducive for that “fresh” clean feeling you are trying to achieve by showering in the first place.

FoundryMusicRob: Equally as important, if we were to raid your tour bus, or your homes, what kind of porn would we find? Be honest, we want names!

Shannon Larkin: I can only speak for myself : amateur porn that is free on the internet. Try “The Hun”.

FoundryMusicRob: You guys are on tour with label mates Alter Bridge, what kind of reaction have you been getting from their fans?

Shannon Larkin: It has been all positive, and a lot of people are realizing who certain members are.

Wow, what a large...... Bass Drum you've got there!

FoundryMusicRob: The new album sounds great, the production is solid and the songwriting is equally as impressive. I know the material was all written during Godsmack downtime, how hard was it to not make this another Godsmack album minus Sully? Did you have a hard time finding yourselves as a separate entity or did it come naturally?

Shannon Larkin: Tony, Robbie, and myself just write shitloads of music that naturally finds it’s home. We don’t set out to write a Smack song or and Animal song, we just write and see what comes out, then where it would feel the best.

FoundryMusicRob: Eating on the road isn’t always the easiest or healthiest. How do you guys make sure you don’t get on stage and suddenly get a case of the Hershey Squirts?

Shannon Larkin: Everyone is different. Robbie cant have any Glutes, so he prepares his own food on the bus. I have an iron constitution and an iron gut, so pizza everyday suits me fine.

FoundryMusicRob: Traveling around on a tour bus, I know bands don’t actually get to see as many of the sites as people think they do. When you roll into a town and meet the fans at a show and they start asking you what you thought of their city, how do you handle that? Do you lie and pretend you saw the whole place, or tell ‘em that the tour bus window needs washing so you couldn’t make out a damn thing?

Shannon Larkin: We tell the truth, and usually, since we’ve all been doing this for so long, we have wandered around most of the cities we’ve played. If not, people tend to understand and not sweat it.

FoundryMusicRob: Music has become so genre/label based these days that most bands just make up a phoney genre name to stand out. You see a lot of this from foreign metal bands. But in your opinion, what do you feel best describes Another Animal, more importantly, who do you feel are your contemporaries out there?

Shannon Larkin: We are an exception being a side project; we can be anything we want at any time, as there is no pressure to make this our bread and butter. That said, we are a rock band with leanings toward metal, blues, and even a little old punk. Basically a mishmash of all the things we grew up on. All bands say that shit, but we are old veterans, so we mean it.

FoundryMusicRob: As of writing this, your MySpace page boasts 5625 friends. Who keeps up with that site, and how many of those people do you honestly, genuinely know?

Shannon Larkin: Our web bitch is Dominique, and she keeps our site for us out of her love of music, and the kindness of her heart. I’m not sure how many people we actually know, but I recognize a lot of the pics I see on there.

OK, who farted?

FoundryMusicRob: With sites like MySpace, bands went from complaining about their music being distributed for free on Napster, to offering it for free in the form of a stream. Now I’m not sure where each of you stood individually on the Napster topic, and I know you aren’t one of those bands that posts their entire album on MySpace, but how do you feel about the flat out hypocrites who do that?

Shannon Larkin: The business is changing so fast that I don’t know what to think. I wish everyone could just give away music for free, but the gov’t would have to give all the bands tour support and free Harley-Davidsons.

FoundryMusicRob: If some kid wearing brand new Nike sneakers came up to you on the street and said “Hey! I love the new album, I just downloaded the whole thing online and made copies for my friends!” How would you handle that? Appreciate the fact that he’s a fan, or kick his ass for spending money on sneakers and not supporting the music he claims to love?

Shannon Larkin: I would thank him for loving the music, and then tell him that unfortunately, he and his friends will never get to see the band in concert because we have no money with which to tour, because no one bought our record.

FoundryMusicRob: After a night on stage, when your ears are all blown out and fuzzy, how hard is it to hear each other talking on the bus? Are there a lot of senior citizen screaming moments?

Shannon Larkin: I can say that for ten years I have been wearing hearing aids in both ears from being dumb and not wearing ear plugs for the first 15 years of my career. So all you aspiring rockers, wear protection or start saving your money for very expensive pain in the ass hearing aids!!!