finger eleven is not your penis. finger eleven is not
your middle fingers corralled together in a triumphant
fuck you! finger eleven is an instinct that lives in the
back of your brain. It's a decision made true to
yourself, with a complete disregard of outside influence.
It's that one extra finger that you use to point you in
the right direction. It's the path of most resistance and
that's why it's the perfect name for this band.


When we were making the last album we had all kinds
of technical and political garbage hanging around us and
even though we got a great album out of it, we still felt
like there were many stones left unturned with both
Arnold and ourselves. This time around, after having
been through almost all the pitfalls a band can go through,
with the exception of a dying member
(knocking on wood)
we had a much clearer idea of what we were about as
people, songwriters and musicians. Having that much clarity,
or at least thinking we did, made a huge difference.

As we got into the heart of our six-month recording
session things got cloudy. It was as though we had been
admiring a mural from half an inch away and finally
thought What does this thing look like? Once we could
see the big picture, once we were listening to the songs
as songs rather than a pile of little parts, we started to
get that clarity back. The music started shaping us and
our vision and with that a new vision started shaping the
songs. Because of that there is way more of our
selves on the album.

The album artwork was another place where we were able
to sit back and look at things - where we've been and where
we've ended up. It's a visual chronicle of what was happening
to us from the '97 release of Tip to the making of this new
one - a complete retelling of how we were dropped by our
first label. To how we didn't hesitate to pick ourselves up
and go the uphill road on our own legs. To realizing that all
of this clawing has brought us back to another puppeteer ­
the great record industry in the sky ­ where we surrender the
strings again and jump off the edge to dangle. Only this time
we're armed with all the knowledge we've gathered along the
way and all of our decisions are and can be made with our
eyes open.

The Greyest of Blue Skies felt like the perfect title for this album
despite how late in the game it came along. Stop the presses!
was actually yelled someplace, somewhere, by some person
when we decided to change it at the 11th hour
(pardon the pun).
It was originally the title for Above which Scott changed, as the
lyrics evolved and it stuck with each of us over the years. Then,
with a last minute epiphany, at a rehearsal, it came to us. It
seemed perfect for a few reasons, the first being that it feels
like a title.

THE GREYEST OF BLUE SKIES. The second was that it was
really relevant to the artwork and the story it was trying to tell,
so in turn it was very relevant to us and the journey we had been
on over the past few years. And finally, it summed up the music
nicely. It's this strange blend of dark/brooding and twisted
positivity . It's kind of bleak, but at least we admit that blue
skies exist somewhere.

The Greyest of Blue Skies is the closest we've ever come to
getting what was in our heads onto tape. Along with all of the
previously mentioned ups and downs our heads were filled
with all the music we've enjoyed, absorbed, admired and
interpreted over the past three years. There isn't one area of
music that is relevant to us that we didn't explore on this record,
from the heaviest influences to the softest. These extremes are
the reason why the album has to be listened to from top to
bottom - there isn't ONE song that sums up Finger Eleven on
this record. From its opening riff First Time definitely sets a tone
for the record but once you're baited in it takes you to all sorts
of different places.

Drag You Down is definitely the heaviest song we've ever done
and is a result of being frustrated in the studio. It's a very simple
song that just happened to catch a moment. My Carousel, in
comparison, is probably the most complicated song we've ever
done. We worked extremely hard to keep it as interesting and
insane as it could be, but still have it maintain melodic value. It
gave us the confidence to say, We can do anything as long as
it's musical . That's when parts like the bridge of Sick of it All
came along. There is something like fifteen voices in the middle
section of that song which is something we had never done before.

Then we head into For the Ocean which has a great full speed
ahead spirit that we probably would have over thought a few
years ago. Broken Words sort of floats into existence with no
real structure until the chorus. We wanted to just let the vibe
carry you rather than put it on rails; we put a lot of trust and
faith in our listeners. Suffocate is another one of those songs
where we felt comfortable trying anything and those risks paid
off and made it a really unique song.

Bones + Joints and Famous are both great melodies that didn't
need to be overpowered by volume or aggression. They were
great lessons in letting things be what they are and not forcing
square pegs into round holes.

They also really helped to stretch our sound even further. For
the past few years we've been playing Depeche Mode's Walking
In My Shoes live, so when it came time to do the record it was an
interesting notion to record it. In many ways this song had just as
much history and relevance to us as any of the other songs since
this one had been along for the ride over the years. What was
initially appealing about the song was it's inherent heaviness,
something that isn¹t always associated with DM. It was cool to
draw those elements out of it, but still have it maintain its
original shape.

Stay and Drown always felt like a great way to end it all; there's
a certain grandeur to it that is hard to follow and there are so
many of those magic moments that give you goose bumps
every time, as though you weren't even there for the recording
process. Each song leans on the other and feeds the other. By
the time the album is over you're in a totally different place than
when you started, but the journey never feels bumpy or forced,
it just evolves. And when it's all over you have to go back to
the beginning to remember where we started.