INTERVIEW: Tim Montana will bring ‘Savage’ songs to Bush tour this summer
Photo: Tim Montana will soon tour with Bush, Jerry Cantrell and Candlebox. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Atom Splitter PR with permission.
Tim Montana has opened for some legendary rock acts this past year. He has graced the stage with Staind and Seether, and this summer he’s heading out with Bush, Jerry Cantrell and Candlebox. Plus, in the fall, he’s back out with Seether and Skillet, and in 2025, he’s already booked a tour with Myles Kennedy. The songs he plans to bring with him are off his new album, Savage, which is now available and receiving a lot of fan support, especially for the singles “Devil You Know” and “Get You Some.”
The album project began in fall 2023 when Montana released “Devil You Know,” a heavy track that instantly hit a chord with listeners. “The label kind of cherry-picked that song and said, ‘That’s really interesting. Let’s put this out and see what happens,’” Montana said in a recent phone interview. “It kind of blew up on radio … and it ended up going top 5 on Billboard for three weeks. And they’re like, ‘Do more of that.’ I was like, ‘OK, can do,’ so we dug in deep and got about 10 more rock songs.”
Those 10 other songs include everything from “Ashes” to “Die Today” to “Right Again.” When Montana writes a song, he can’t always tell which ones will turn into hit tunes. Sometimes the popularity of an individual song is out of his hands.
“I’ve written a lot of songs that I thought were going to hit,” he said. “I knew [‘Devil You Know’] was a lot heavier than anything I’d put out in a while. I’ve bounced back and forth between country rock and rock for the last, gosh, 15 years, and we knew we had something special, even the day we recorded it. That recording of the storm that you hear in the beginning, that’s all the original demo, and the vocal is the original demo because we treat demos as masters. And so we had a good feeling about it, but you never know. And then it just took off, so it was pretty cool.”
Montana typically writes a new song with his guitar in his hands and an iPhone nearby to take down his notes. He then brings those notes to his producer, Michael Knox, and they start to pick apart what are the best ideas. The tunes were recorded in two unique locations: an 1800s cabin in Wise River, Montana, and a converted tuff shed in Nashville, according to press notes.
“The crowd is my favorite thing, but I do like the creation process a lot,” Montana said. “The recording, you sit there, you listen to it, and you’re like, ‘What if we tried this? What if we tried that?’ Working with a producer that doesn’t make me sit in the backseat — I’ve worked with plenty of those — Mike is like, ‘Hey, instead of me playing guitar, why don’t you play guitar,’ and stuff like that. And in the music scene of Nashville, that’s very rare and not common. They’re usually telling you what guitar player to use. The producer drives. So it was refreshing to get to work with him where the creation process is very collaborative, if you will.”
When Montana toured with Staind, he played pretty much the entire album. He was offered 30-minute sets, and he would rotate the new songs in and out of the lineup. “It was great,” he said of the tour. “It was long. We were out for 42 days straight, so it was a different city, pretty much different hotel we stayed in every night. So it was a long tour, but it was really good. All the bands were really easy to work with. The fans were fantastic. And [I’m] really excited to get out on the next tour with Bush, Jerry Cantrell and Candlebox. That’s going to be amazing as well.”
Montana added: “I love playing for strangers more than I do fans. It’s this weird thing of I love getting up there and they’re like, ‘Who is this dude?’ Song one, their arms are folded. Song two, they’re loosening up. Song three, their hands are in the air, and they’re screaming. I’m like, yeah, got them. That’s my favorite part is turning fans.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Tim Montana’s new album is called Savage. He’ll tour this summer with Bush, Jerry Cantrell and Candlebox. In the fall, he’ll tour with Seether and Skillet. In the winter, he’ll tour with Myles Kennedy. Click here for more information and tickets.
