James Durbin has emerged to carry the torch for old-school metal. Durbin and Riot V guitarist Mike Flyntz are about to release the second record from their band Cleanbreak called We Are The Fire. Much like their debut, it combines everything you love about traditional metal with modern productions to produce a great record.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws James Durbin interview –
On the current Cleanbreak lineup – For all intents and purposes, it’s now Mike and I’s band well, really in all intents and purposes, it is Frontier’s band and we are happy to be a part of it. So, that was the case with the first album. When I signed my deal with Frontiers at the end of 2019, the entire plan was to do a solo record, which ended up being Durbin, The Beast Awakens. A solo deal as well as a one of Frontier’s, what they’re kind of known for doing is putting musicians from different projects and even outsourcing in the case of Mike Flyntz out of the label to put together these kinds of supergroups in air quotes. So that’s what we had with the first record.
Of course, we wanted to do another one, and Perry (Richardson) and Robert (Sweet) from Stryper were not available because that band is a well-oiled machine, it’s a steam engine. It’s an old locomotive, but man, the only way to keep it from getting off the tracks is to keep it on the tracks and keep it going. So they’re constantly going. Michael Sweet’s always doing something with Frontiers. Mike Flyntz and myself were on board and we got to work again with the great Alessandro Del Vecchio. I believe this would end up being his last project being fully working together with Frontiers for the time being.

On if Alessandro will be involved in the future of the band – I’m really not sure. With anything it’s never say never as far as relationships with labels changing. That’s not for me to say. Alessandro wasn’t the only songwriter that contributed to this album. Much like with the first album, we had a lot of outside writers with the first Cleanbreak album. I had two full compositions and one co-write with Alessandro. On this album, I have no penmanship on any of the songs other than my performances which you can’t take songwriters credit for a vocal performance, but there’s a great collection of songs and they were fun to sing. They were fun to interpret.
On how he keeps his influences but still sounds modern – I let the song lead it. This is something I realized is Cleanbreak is pretty much just a studio project. So. There’s not going to be opportunities for me to adjust the way that I perform these songs by having to tour them and play them on a regular basis. So with that said, I knew that I wanted to really make sure that this performance is final. So serve the song. If there’s a chance that I could deviate from whatever the songwriter wrote and how the melody was originally given to me if it would serve the song, sometimes I’ll do it on a second verse. I’ll change the melody arrangement a little bit. On “Warrior’s Anthem”, it was the middle section with “Arise”, those four “Arise” screams, and then that big one, whatever it was. That one was super fun because there’s nothing else like it on that whole song. The screams are tame on this and it’s more chest vocal and more aggression. But it was a lot of fun. II’ve been going through a lot of different vocal influences and hearing things that really inspire me, and Journey and Foreigner as always, and some Whitesnake as well. Just hearing things differently and hearing melodies differently and wanting to incorporate some of those influences.
On if he works with the lyricist at all to make the songs feel more natural – Not necessarily. I think that they know who they’re writing for. One case, in particular, would be Giancarlo Floridia, of which I communicate with through Instagram and stuff, and we work together on the Cleanbreak music videos. He contributed to “Deal With Yourself”, and maybe even “Unbreakable”. I think he had two or three co-writes on this album. The same with the first one. He’s just one of Frontiers’s in-house songwriters. He knows what will probably be a good fit for me. Which is really nice to have.
On if he approaches Durbin differently from Cleanbreak – I’m always in the studio. I feel like it’s a different mindset, because, with Durbin I’m writing everything. With Durbin, it’s 100% me. Every riff, every lyric, every melody. Everything is all on my shoulders and all from my creativity and my artistry. So, I have all of the tools at my disposal. But, also I only have the tools that I have. Which is just my hands, my voice, and my brain. I’m not that fluent of a guitar player as Mike Flyntz, or Alessandro. I’m more limited, but there’s, there’s fun within those limitations, because if I had the entire phone book to use, I’d have a lot more, there’d be, there’d be cooler things I could do, but how do you, how do you like funnel it down to what you want?
When you have more limits and you have less options it’s easier to figure out what it could be, what it should be. With Durbin, I just love that traditional metal. It is more blues-based. You can just do what you want. I like singing about wizards and dragons and stuff, but also, on the other hand, lately I’ve been playing my acoustic guitar. I’ve been playing ukulele. I’m about to obtain a tenor guitar and, and I write more. When I’m writing that kind of stuff, you know, my last solo James Durbin album was an Americana album. I’m kind of writing more stuff like that, writing stuff about my wife and I, and about our relationship and our kids and our family. I’m playing this little, little bar in the mountains called Joe’s Bar tonight and doing this whole thing called Neighborhood Night. So I wrote a song about Joe’s Bar. Just like that old country Americana kind of romanticism sort of thing is so different from it all.
But I just, I love music. I’ve done rock albums, pop albums, alternative, classic rock, punk-influenced pop punk Americana whatever you’d call the Quiet Riot albums, classic rock, soft metal, I don’t know. Then Durbin traditional metal and Cleanbreak American metal, and keep doing it. So there’s different approaches to everything
On having an audience that is willing to check out all those types of records – I think it has to do with the American Idol audience, and even though a lot more these days, which is great too. You don’t want to just rely on one audience your entire career. A lot of the time these days, it’s like, “Oh, somebody told me you were on TV. I don’t watch that crap, but you’re pretty good”. I was like, “Well, cool. Thank you”. I’m not offended, I ike you enjoy me. My whole philosophy is, I celebrate. Any victory is a victory worth celebrating if it’s a small one or a large one. If somebody watches your, your content on YouTube, even if it’s not for them, even if they give it a down thumb, which I don’t think you can do anymore, but even if they leave a garbage comment, they still listened to it and it wasn’t for them. I still got the view. I listened to a lot of different things. And, and one of which that’s stuck out to me lately is from a guy named Gary V. And Gary said that “If you are playing ball, if you were on the field, don’t be concerned about those that are eating popcorn and sitting in the stands. There’s a reason that you’re on the field.” If you want to keep playing on the field, you just got to focus on playing on the field. Don’t believe the people that are trying to tear you down, but don’t necessarily even put too much stock in believing the people that are building you up. Because if you believe everything that everybody says that’s good or bad about you, then that’s like what you’re basing your work off of. Your work should be based off of your enjoyment and what you’re learning from it, your own growth, not necessarily so much about what what everybody else thinks. Cause once you make it and you release it, it’s created, it’s done, it’s out there. It’s no longer yours. Everybody else has a different attachment to it and they’re going to, or they’re not going to. You already made the thing. So just keep making things.
On if he has thoughts about touring – Yeah, definitely. I’m currently in eight bands. I own a house, I got a mortgage to pay. I got three kids that I, I love seeing grow up. Oh, I hate to see them grow up, but I love being here to, to raise them. Coming right off of American Idol, the entire American Idol experience was about a year of my life. It’s different for contestants now. It’s way different for contestants now. They don’t go on tour with Idol, they don’t do all this stuff. So in 2011, 14 years ago, it was crazy. That was a year of my life dedicated to Idol itself. Then to making my own album and then going out on the road. So kind of three years up and from the time that my son was 18 months old, till he was about four, four and a half, I was gone a lot and I missed a lot and that boy is 15 now. I’m just like, where did time go? We also have a nine year old daughter, my wife and I, and, and in addition to our son, and we also have a three year old daughter.
Being in eight bands, lending my voice to eight different musical projects and still working on other ones. My calendar is, is booking up in the next year already. I don’t have a single weekend that I’m not booked working or week. I work from home. I have an independent contract working with Peloton. I make levels for, they have a game called Lane Break and I design all the levels for the tread side of things and help develop it for bike and did that for two years. In addition to also being on this endless tour as Heidi and I call it of there’s, there’s always a show. It’s really hard to like book stuff, like family things and hang out with friends even because I’m always constantly going. That’s just in California. That’s just in a three, four hour distance from where I live.
So with that said, I make good money doing that. I’m able to pay my mortgage on time in full. I’m able to watch my kids grow up and have a relationship with my wife. I know from being on tour that that sucks, and you’re worried about the money you’re losing. You’re worried about the money you’re hoping to make. If you break down, there goes money. If you get held up, there goes money. If your gear gets stolen, there goes money. There is a romance of being on the road, but the kind of road romance that I look at is like me being in a van by myself with a bed in the back, my acoustic guitar. It’s not so much necessarily like going out with a band because I do that constantly anyway. I play in cover and tribute bands, as I know Mike Flyntz does as well. He’s with the New York Bee Gees and they tour a ton. It’s all in a tri-state area. But if he didn’t want to do Riot V anymore, he wouldn’t have to.
I’m in Tainted Love, which is an eighties tribute. I’m in the Lost Boys, which is my own seventies and eighties. I’m in Mustache Harbor, which is a yacht rock tribute and Metal Street Boys/Metal Mouse, which is eighties hair, nineties flair, and also heavy metal mixed with Disney songs dressed up as Hercules with a poison wig and singing where Eagles dare to the tune and lyrics of what’s the song? “I want to be where the people are from a part of that world”, from Little Mermaid, doing stuff that’s fun and still playing sold out shows and entertaining audiences and being a weirdo and wacky but singing songs that they know.
So, of course, I’d like to go out there and if there’s an audience that wants to hear my songs and knows the words. That’s the craziest thing is when people know the lyrics to your song and they’re singing them back to you. That’s not always the case and going and playing Sheboygan in a club that smells like urinal cakes and you’re playing to three people. One of them is the sound guy and the other two are the bass player and the drummer from the opening band, it really takes all the wind out of your sails and you’re like, “Man, why am I, why am I missing my wife and kids and losing money being out here in Sheboygan?”
Obviously there’s fans and that’s great, but it’s definitely a struggle and a hassle. I did that for a while. When I toured with Quiet Riot, I was gone all the time. I, that’s when I wrote my Americana album because I just felt like a sad old, old countryman and it was writing songs like packing my bags again and, and same it’s the lyric I wrote in that song. It just rings true anytime I think of touring and it still rings true cause I’m still constantly on the endless tour. “You can say we’re living the dream that dreams are always full of surprise, same road, same plane, same show, same game, be home the next day, go on the very next night”. And that’s exactly what it felt like. My bag was constantly packed and I never felt like I could just be present and be happy and be at home. Now I’m present all the time and I go when when I got to go and, and then I always come home.
On what success means to him – The only thing I ever wanted of being a musician was to be a working musician, be able to support myself, support my family, make a living doing what I love. Verbatim I have said that for the last 15 years for my very first interview on the Blue Carpet after making the top 24 on American Idol. I said that when I returned home for my homecoming for 30, 000 people in Santa Cruz, the biggest event ever on the history of the city of Santa Cruz. I said that exact same thing when I got interviewed in the day that my first album came out, said that exact same thing throughout every single high and low and climb and rise and fall. I’ve stayed true to that, and I just don’t see that changing. A big thing that that I did after I chose not to resign an independent contract as we had to do with Quiet Riot when I chose not to resign for another year. There was a lot of inner term turmoil in that and I asked advice of friends and colleagues and got some great, great advice from some people that had been there.
But the best advice came from my wife, Heidi, and she told me to be intentional. Write your intentions. We enjoy The Secret and Eckhart Tolle and, and Oprah from time to time. That’s where she gets her stuff and the Bible church and teachings of Jesus and so forth. She was really adamant about me being intentional and writing a list of my intentions and I’ve had it taped to my computer. My intentions are as follows, I, James, will intend to have financially successful tours with an easygoing band, have multiple concerts booked each month, opportunities coming at me, and too much fulfilling and financially satisfying work and stability. Fom the moment that I wrote that, not even five days later, I joined three bands that I’m still in that have continued to keep me working for the last five years. More and more and growth and I get to sleep in my own bed and they provide a hotel when I need.
It’s a growing scale. If a show pays more than at the show pays more, and there’s always a guarantee and that’s not how it always was. Wwith these bands, I’m making more, I’m busier, I’m sleeping in my own bed more. And that works for me. There’s other bands with other situations and I’ve mentored people or talked to people or coached people and to see others that aren’t married or don’t have children and are able to go do that and go live their dreams in that way. It’s still like fulfilling those dreams. I am so freaking happy. To see Nate Peck, for instance, who’s singing for Firehouse. He hit me up on Instagram and before he did Idol, it was like, “Hey man, like, I loved your idle journey. It was an inspiration to me. I’m thinking about here. I auditioned, it went good. I’m, I’m past this certain point.: Then I looked into his stuff and heard his voice, got a great voice. He was mentored by Jack Russell, rest in peace. Then the opportunity came up to fill in for CJ. And then they lost CJ. He’s there with his blessing. That’s the story. That’s beautiful. He’s able to do it. He’s really grown into the role. That had been my dream, but it didn’t necessarily work for me, and it became more of a nightmare in the situation for multiple reasons, but it was fun, and then it wasn’t fun.
These days I’m having a lot of fun and it’s still fun. If something stops being fun, I just either look and see like, “Oh, can I, can I make this fun? Okay. It’s not fun. All right. Let’s take a break. We’ll, we’ll come back to that.” That’s just how it is. It’s real easy to to be happy and to be positive and you just got to choose it.