Interview with Toazted.com
(Source)

Interviewer: Could you please introduce yourself?
Mark Tremonti: I'm Mark Tremonti from Alter Bridge.
Interviewer: How are you doing?
Mark Tremonti: I am doing very well, how about yourself?
Interviewer: I am doing fine. Great weather outside, which we really needed here.
Mark Tremonti: It's beautiful, just like Florida.
Interviewer: Always sunny.
Mark Tremonti: It's always sunny and hot here in Florida but we love it.
Interviewer: How is Alter Bridge doing?
Mark Tremonti: It's great, we're just finishing up this round of tours over in Europe. We're gonna go back to the states, do another three-week tour, take about a month off to do some writing, and then I think we'll be back over here in Europe in November.
Interviewer: Then already.. with a new album?
Mark Tremonti: No, no, we'll still be touring this album. We'll go in the studio probably spring time next year.
Interviewer: It's going great, isn't it?
Mark Tremonti: Yeah, we're having a good time.
Interviewer: New singer, well not new singer, new band, did you expect that?
Mark Tremonti: You know, we just wanted to put out the music that we loved to do, and whatever happened, happened. That's about it.
Interviewer: Yea. It can't be more precise than that.
Mark Tremonti: Yeah, put out what we love to do and see if people like it.
Interviewer: And today here you played Fields of Rock here in Holland, did you enjoy it?
Mark Tremonti: Yeah we had a great time. Being the first band is probably the easiest slot of the night, or the day, because you got a fresh crowd, so it was very fun.
Interviewer: How was it on the stage? Lots of people?
Mark Tremonti: TOns of people. Looked like there was a good 20,000 people out there already. It was great.
Interviewer: About you guys, because you have a new band now, did you expect to be playing like this?
Mark Tremonti: Well we just, we had a lot of success back in the day with Creed, so we thought with Alter Bridge we had a bunch of open doors as far as a fan base.
Interviewer: And how many millions of records did you sold?
Mark Tremonti: 30 million.
Interviewer: Wow, so there is a fan base.
Mark Tremonti: So yeah, we had a fan base, but uh now we're just trying to be as artistic as possible with ourselves and put out what it is we want to put out. If people like it, they like it, if they don't, they don't need to like it. So we're just having a good time with it, we all just wanna do exactly what it is we wanna do.
Interviewer: You're producing also, is that right?
Mark Tremonti: I produced a band called Submersed in the states, that are out on WindUp records, and I've been too busy since then to produce anything else so that's it.
Interviewer: Did you do it at home?
Mark Tremonti: We did Submersed about a mile from my house over in Orlando. We actually produced our new record over at my house. But we did the Submersed record actually over at their house on the lake over in Orlando.
Interviewer: That must be cool.
Mark Tremonti: Yeah, I mean with ProTools nowadays, you can produce a record anywhere.
Interviewer: Do you have a rehearsal space in your house?
Mark Tremonti: We have rehearsal space in Orlando, but it's not at my house, it's probably fifteen minutes from my house. Can't get too loud with the neighbors, you know?
Interviewer: Yeah, that's... is it your own, or are you splitting it with other bands?
Mark Tremonti: The rehearsal space is, well they usually don't even have bands in there. We have a really good relationship with them, and they let us use their warehouse after store hours are over.
Interviewer: What is it like there?
Mark Tremonti: It's just a big square, open room that we put a PA in and our stage gear. We have a good time. Everyone leaves the building about five o'clock, so that's when we start playing, and we play until midnight, or two o'clock in the morning if we're having a good time.
Interviewer: Cool, man, how many times a week is that, when you're not touring?
Mark Tremonti: When we're not touring we'll be in there pretty much five or six days out of the week.
Interviewer: Unbelievable. So you must be a big music fan.
Mark Tremonti: That's my favorite thing to do in the world, man.
Interviewer: How did you get into music when you were a little sprout?
Mark Tremonti: My older brother Mike listened to bands like Kiss, and Nugent, and, you know, I liked it a lot. I started getting into Metallica and when I heard "Master of Puppets" that kind of completely made me a huge music fan. And since then I've been trying to be the best guitar player I can be and the best songwriter I can be.
Interviewer: And you started out playing guitar, only guitar or something else?
Mark Tremonti: Only guitar, just trying to learn how to play the guitar.
Interviewer: Did you have lesssons?
Mark Tremonti: No, never had.. well I had two lessons when I was young, and they tried to teach me "Silent Night" and all these horrible songs that weren't any fun to play, so I quit taking guitar lessons. Now that I'm older and I know a lot of great guitar players, me and my friends will just play guitar and we'll kind of bounce ideas off each other and learn from other people. It's great to learn from other guitar players that you respect because you can learn a lot more from another player than you can from a book or a CD.
Interviewer: Do you also teach for children?
Mark Tremonti: I'm doing an instructional video, I started recording it this week, and I'm gonna put it out, and we'll see what happend with it.
Interviewer: An instructional video, of your own music or..?
Mark Tremonti: Yeah, well it will just be how I warm up and the exercises I do to play and get better.
Interviewer: Were you asked to do that?
Mark Tremonti: Actually it's something that I'm going to do with my brother Dan, who has a production company. We're gonna put it out ourselves. We're not going to go through the big companies, through the main distributors of instructional music. So we're gonna kinda take a chance with it.
Interviewer: How do you stay in contact with fans? Through the internet?
Mark Tremonti: My brother Mike is our personal fan laison, pretty much. His job is to keep in touch with the fans and keep the fans in touch with us. Let them know everything we're doing. He travels with us and all the fans that come to the shows, he gives them backstage passes, we constantly are in contact with them.
Interviewer: Meet and greets?
Mark Tremonti: Yeah, they let us know what they like and what they don't like, and it's great to have that fan base built in.
Interviewer: And what's coming up with you guys, touring until September you said?
Mark Tremonti: We tour for another two weeks here in Europe, then we go back home, we got about a week off, then we tour for two or three weeks in the States..
Interviewer: Alone? Or with another band?
Mark Tremonti: In the States we're playing with, it might be Submersed, I'm not sure. Then we're gonna take about three weeks to write, and then after that I think we have a little off time. We're gonna come back here in November for sure. I think we have some August-September tours in America. Come Christmas time, that's when we're gonna sit down and make sure the album is done, and then go in the studio probably February.
Interviewer: You looking up for that?
Mark Tremonti: Oh yeah, I always love putting out new music.
Interviewer: Touring, do you like that?
Mark Tremonti: Yeah, I love touring. Right now's kind of tough because I just had my first son, so..
Interviewer: Congratulations!
Mark Tremonti: Thank you so much, he's only three weeks old, so that's tough.
Interviewer: So touring, it's like, driving all the way, is that okay? You have a nice bus, by the way.. television..
Mark Tremonti: No, we have fun on the road. Like you said, though, if I had my wife and my son out here I couldn't be happier.
Interviewer: Can you get him over here?
Mark Tremonti: He's too young right now, he's gotta get his shots and when we go out, I think September is the first time he can come out.
Interviewer: New single coming up? New clip?
Mark Tremonti: I think it all depends on the record label politics. I'm not into that kind of stuf, I just like to play and have a good time. I don't know what they're doing or what they're choosing or planning.
Interviewer: Thank you very much man.
Mark Tremonti: Thank you. Alright.