Return To The Well: An Interview with Toby Driver
“We recently discovered that [maudlin of the Well] is actually more popular globally than any of my other bands, by a wide margin. So part of this is simply giving that music its moment in the light. When MOTW existed the first time around, it never really had that moment.”
It’s hard to think of how to describe a band like maudlin of the Well and their legendary place in metal. Listening to Bath and Leaving Your Body Map back to back does much more justice to the supreme quality of the group than words on a screen ever could (unfortunately, the latter is my job here at the Hell Bathroom). Frankly, one all time classic avant-metal masterwork would have been enough for the metalheads of 2001 – two is just giving the people more than they deserve. Regardless of worthiness, these two LPs (along with the hideously underrated My Fruit Psychobells… A Seed Combustible) stand as incredibly surreal and ambitious genre-fusions of extreme metal, chamber music, folk, and progressive rock.
Yet, as with all things that rule, maudlin of the Well couldn’t be with us forever. The group would shift into the musical collective Kayo Dot, still helmed by frontman and multi-instrumentalist Toby Driver. From 2003 to right now, Kayo Dot has been the one of the main artistic endeavors for Driver, along with his solo career and side projects like Piggy Black Cross, Stern, Bloodmist, and more. Readers with their attention spans left in tact may remember my coverage of Kayo’s most recent album, Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason (which you can read here for more information on that record and Kayo Dot in general). It’s that record that, along with confounding even long time listeners of the group, made it clear that Driver’s creative ambitions were as strong as ever.
As such, I guess the surprise announcement of a reunion for the Well makes sense – especially when you juxtapose it with the multitudes of other bands reuniting this decade (main difference is they probably couldn’t make a song like “Birth Pains of Astral Projection”). Expected or not, maudlin of the Well pre-announced a Kickstarter to fund the production of a new album during what is now the project’s 30th anniversary. True avant-knowers will remember this is not the first time fans have helped fund the release of new material from Driver and company’s Well, as 2009’s Part The Second had fan support in the form of green-backs – resulting in another fantastic part of the act’s legacy.
With this massive announcement, I reached out to Toby Driver to ask him about this new incarnation of the band and what fans can expect if they help fund this piece of metal history. Sit your ass down and pay attention, the interview starts now:
Sean Ghoulson: First of all, thank you so much for your time. This announcement of the Kickstarter for a new maudlin of the Well record comes off the tail end of the newest Kayo Dot record, Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason. Now a few months removed from the release and undertaking the record’s tour, how do you feel about that record? Did you have any thoughts on the general reception of the release? Do you feel that you learned anything new during the process of making Every Rock?
Toby Driver: I’m definitely proud of Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, and I was honestly surprised that the public response to it was overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic. I expected it to be more polarizing than it ended up being. It’s refreshing to see that people are hungry for music and ideas that break the mold.
As for learning anything new, absolutely. A major part of my work is the pursuit of personal growth, both as someone living life and as a musician. I always try to come up with new methods or musical goals that challenge my skills and push me out of my comfort zone. Beyond those technical aspects, the process of this album cycle actually taught me a great deal about my own perspective and judgments. Simple things like what listeners might dislike, how people want to be challenged, how a U.S. tour might go, what role Kayo Dot has in my life, and what my relationships with collaborators mean. One way to put it is that I expected the experience to function like a flat mirror, but it ended up being more like a convex mirror.
Photo via Kayo Dot’s Instagram
Sean: Now, with the announcement of a new maudlin record, this provides a good opportunity to help make a distinction between Kayo Dot and maudlin for audience members who do not quite get the difference. In your opinion, what separates a record for the former project from a record from the latter project? Does experience recording and touring for one project help inspire material for the other?
Toby: When maudlin of the Well reached the end of its original run, there was a very obvious and unavoidable feeling that its time had come to a close. That created a clear boundary between that era and what came next. Creatively speaking, both Jason Byron and I had our own individual epiphanies that led to a kind of sudden growth spurt. The goal of the work changed, and MOTW in many ways represented childhood. There was a step forward into adulthood.
Kayo Dot has existed since then as my exploration of grand ideas and as a way of understanding the many hidden facets of my own identity. When we now in 2026 “return” to the MOTW perspective, it is an attempt to precisely channel that ancestral self and revisit that specific place. It’s not really an exploration of the unknown or uncharted regions. Rather, it’s more like examining a relic and searching for what might have been missed.
Sean: Fans of yours will remember that 2009’s Part the Second was also a crowdfunded release – what inspired the band to go that route again? Would you say you picked up anything from that first crowdfunding endeavor that you will carry into this current project? Kickstarter has almost certainly changed in the seventeen years that had passed, what do you feel is similar and different about the platform and its approach to crowdfunding?
Toby: It’s important to note that we didn’t actually use Kickstarter the first time around. In fact, it didn’t even exist yet. Kickstarter launched in spring 2009, almost a year after we crowdfunded Part the Second.
That album was funded directly by fans in response to a simple blog post I wrote about having some unfinished, unreleased MOTW material in the archive. There were no rewards or structured tiers. It was just a completely pure labor of love from everyone involved.
I’d ideally love to stay pure and do it that way again. However, the primary reason to use Kickstarter now is that we expect their platform to amplify the campaign through their algorithm and help us raise more than we could entirely on our own. They take a hefty fee, so ideally that fee corresponds to real visibility and traffic. In this age of algorithmic discovery, that’s Kickstarter’s main strength. For a band like MOTW that already has an established fanbase (compared to a random product launch,) that also means the platform has a greater responsibility to deliver that amplification, because we could realistically run the campaign ourselves without them.
Sean: Sonically, Part the Second was a departure from the metal roots of motW’s back catalogue. Are there expectations of what the new material will sound like or will the project continue to eschew genre assumptions? I got the indication that, at least for Kayo Dot, your artistic voice’s direction is far more important than the confines of “metal.”
Toby: I think that’s actually a bit of a misconception. Part the Second is made up of MOTW material that was written during the same period as the music on the first three albums, in some cases as early as 1997. If you combed through those early albums and tallied the proportion of heavy parts to atmospheric or “chill” sections, you might find something like 60/40 or even 50/50. So in my opinion it isn’t really the “non-metal” MOTW album. I think it’s quite similar to the others. What it does lack is the very obvious European doom metal influence that appears in places on the earlier records.
You’re right that with Kayo Dot the artistic voice matters more than genre categories. But as I mentioned earlier, this project is deliberately a return to what made MOTW itself.
Photo via Metal-Archives
Sean: Speaking again of Kayo Dot, much of Every Rock seemed to be inspired by the works of the hauntology movement and took a stance against the regurgitative nature of generative AI – has the voice of motW calling you back also brought with it themes of inspiration? Or, has the calling been mostly of a musical nature?
Toby: Right now, at this stage, the inspiration is more like ancestral channeling. As with any artistic endeavor, eventually it will probably take on a life of its own, but we’re not there yet.
Sean: In addition to discussing a new album and a corresponding special vinyl release, the Kickstarter preview notes that the goal is to return to the original “creative space” in which Bath and Leaving Your Body Map were created – does this refer to the physical location of writing and/or recording previous works or is that a “creative space” in a more metaphysical sense? Does going back to that place and returning to motW at its 30th anniversary bring any unique thoughts or feelings back to you? I imagine it might be a bit emotional returning there.
Toby: It means both things, but at this point it mostly refers to returning to the internal creative space that gave rise to MOTW. In terms of the physical side of that process, it actually began about six years ago when the pandemic brought me back to Connecticut. During that time I returned to several earlier roots in my work: my new age influences (Thymiamatascension), the natural environment and personal monuments of my youth (Three Peaks), and the European doom metal side of things (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike). Later I approached those same influences again with a more adult perspective on albums like Oak Lace Apparition and Raven, I Know That You Can Give Me Anything. So this process of revisiting and re-examining those earlier spaces has actually been ongoing for a while now. Returning to MOTW might even end up being the closing of that chapter rather than the opening of a new one. But we’ll see.
Sean: Yet, just as much as this seems to be a return to motW, I can’t help but feel like that won’t look like a Part the Third or Bath pt. II. Especially since Every Rock saw Kayo Dot returning to Choirs less as a end goal and more as a starting point for something new. What would you say is your main goal in returning to motW and what do you hope to achieve?
Toby: There are really two main goals. The first is to honor the life that MOTW has taken on independently. While I’ve been working on my career and artistic practice through many other projects, MOTW has quietly continued to grow on its own, outside of my control or even awareness. We recently discovered that MOTW is actually more popular globally than any of my other bands, by a wide margin. So part of this is simply giving that music its moment in the light. When MOTW existed the first time around, it never really had that moment.
The second goal is that returning to the adolescent creative mind and that innocent creative space is a fascinating compositional and spiritual challenge. Even if it goes badly, it will still be a powerful lesson.
Sean: Your Kickstarter preview also notes “a ceremonial opening of the archive of MOTW artifacts,” can you let us in on details of that archive? Is it physical material from recording sessions, excerpts of cut material and demos from sessions, or something else entirely?
Toby: Yes, it’s stuff like that: recordings, artifacts, documents from the era. We’ll detail that more fully in the campaign itself, so I’ll decline to go too far into it here.
Photo via maudlin of the Well’s Kickstarter
Sean: You also mention the possibility of the group doing live shows – how has touring with Kayo Dot been? Do you see that experience having any impact on interest in touring with maudlin of the Well?
Toby: Yes, absolutely. Touring with Kayo Dot has in some ways been a warm-up for this. On recent tours we brought some MOTW merch with us, and it consistently outsold any of the Kayo Dot merchandise. That was a strong signal to us that audiences around the world are ready for this return.
Sean: Is there anything else you believe the denizens of the bowl should know ahead of the Kickstarter release?
Toby: Just that we hope everyone follows the campaign pre-launch page so they get notified the instant it launches. We’ll need a lot of support in order to do this project at the scale we believe it deserves.
You can find the group’s Kickstarter here! Thanks for reading and make sure to support the project when live!
