No Label Problems for Borland's New Act

March 8, 2001 -- Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland didn't have to chase after his record company A&R man while he was making his new solo outing, the delightfully whacked-out Duke Lion Fights the Terror under the moniker Big Dumb Face. He could often be found in the same tour bus, dressing room, or recording studio.

Duke Lion is the first Limp Bizkit side project recorded for frontman Fred Durst's Flawless Records label, which, like the band's albums, is distributed by Interscope Records. Durst was also well aware of the project during the several years in which Borland has been conceiving it, so the guitarist reports there weren't any battles over direction, deadlines, or artwork.

"He was just like, 'Whatever. Whatever you want. I don't care,'" Borland says. "He'd been hearing these songs for the last year and a half. He knew where it was going. I was doing the songs, not to get a record deal, but for fun, before I ever thought about releasing them. I thought about releasing them one day but wasn't actively planning on it. I was playing them for him two years ago, along with playing them for everyone else. So he knew this was coming for a long time."

Borland will be taking a stage version of Big Dumb Face — which also includes his brother, Scott — on the road in mid-March for a short tour shoehorned in before Limp Bizkit's European tour kicks off in late April. But he promises this won't be the last we hear of his "other" group.

"Oh, it's my band," he says. "It's a real band. Of course, my commitment to Limp Bizkit is first, and that's my main band. But this is just as much a real band to me as Limp Bizkit is, and I just have to fit it in when Bizkit isn't doing stuff."