Mike Shinoda wais all smiles as he stood before a few thousand adoring fans after his performance at KROQ’s Weenie Roast in Los Angeles on Saturday, where he performed songs from his forthcoming solo debut, “Post Traumatic,” as well as material from Linkin Park and his Fort Minor side project.
“I just finished mixing and mastering the [new] record yesterday and I’m doing a double header debut show today. I feel good — it’s crazy,” Shinoda said during during an interview backstage before his 30-minute set. He was actually playing a second show that night — a headlining slot at L.A.’s Identity Fest.
The last time Shinoda had been onstage was October 27 of last year at the Hollywood Bowl, for Linkin Park’s tribute to its late lead singer, Chester Bennington, who committed suicide in July. More than six months later, Shinoda is returning to the stage in what is in many ways a new start, as he explains below.
Always the workaholic — you couldn’t just do one show on your first day back?It wasn’t my call! It just happened that the show I had already booked was the same day as Weenie Roast. The last show I did before this one [the Bennington tribute] was three hours long, so I can do a 30-minute set and then a 50-minute set.
It was longer than three hours.Yeah, it felt like a hundred hours.
Everybody says the tribute was beautiful but brutal. How does it feel to be getting back onstage under lighter circumstances?I think right now with the shows that I’m planning and the way that I’m approaching it, it does feel like a debut artist kind of a vibe. It’s this weird in-between [state] — I’ve got some good songs that people already know I can play, so that feels great. And the disadvantage is I’ve never gone out and done a tour under my own name. I’ve never put an album out under my own name. There is absolutely some building up from scratch — I think more so than a lot of fans or people would think.
This the first Shinoda album, but obviously Fort Minor was your project. Are you preparing Fort Minor songs on the tour?Absolutely. At this point I’m doing a third of new stuff, a third Fort Minor and a third Linkin Park.
Is it exciting to feel like a new artist again?I think the easy road would have been to jump into the studio with my bandmates and make a new record, because I know we’d make something cool. But this [solo project] happened so organically and it felt like the right thing to do for me. My brain was at a place where I needed to be able to feel self-sufficient and have control over what was going on, because everything this past year felt so out of control. So to be able to be at the core of every decision for my music and touring feels really good, and I’m really happy with how the album has turned out and how the set has turned out. I can’t wait for people to see and hear everything.
It must be very different from planning a Linkin Park setlist.With Linkin Park we had so many singles that they were usually the bulk of the set: You only had so many slots that you could fill in with album tracks and other stuff — it was a more populist approach. This is more of an artistic approach, but I want to do a little balance between those [two approaches] and make a statement about who I am and what I want to be doing.