Hello, thanks for having a chat with me today. So you’re releasing an album in October? How would you describe your sound and how has it changed over the years?

 

The sound of this record, I’d say rock. Over the years we used to do more funk and I’d play slap bass kinda basslines. But it’s more about vocals now, more singing more melody.

Yeah you can hear that in the album!

 

Who were you influenced by when writing this record?

 

As a band we used to be describes as Guns ‘n’ Roses meets Chilli Peppers. Now I think our influences are more of each other over the years. Clouse is kinda a classic guitar player and I’m influence by his music and I respond to it. It’s kinda like we’re using each other as our influences nowadays.

 

Awesome. What’s been the most noticeable change in the industry over the years?

 

It seems like no one’s buying records or CD’s anymore. It seems people wanna buy a single more, they want just the one song. Rather than part of a collection. Something to have in your hand is trickier to sell to people nowadays. So having good artwork for your album is important. Or sneaking a $100 bill in there for somebody. To me that’s the main difference, it’s more of a digital world.

 

Oh for sure. What’s the thing you love most about being in a band?

 

The thing I love about being in a band would be that I love playing the music. I appreciate playing the songs together, probably more now than I ever had. You hear about this sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll kinda thing, you know, and it’s fun to be a rockstar, but the truth is, at the end of the day, it’s fun to play music with your friends. With people around you enjoying it too, of course. But really I appreciate the moments playing together because when we’re not playing together, we took a break for a long time, when we’re not playing together, you kinda long to jam and jump around and play and stuff. In the beginning, we practiced a lot together. We’d have four days a week of rehearsals and now we don’t get together until we’re going to record a record. Maybe two weeks before. Or a week before a tour. So you miss playing and hanging out with your buddies and actually being onstage while the songs are playing, that stuff. That’s what I like about it.

 

So it’s the performance side of being in a band?

 

Yeah! It really is, being with your buddies. Playing songs together, I can’t describe that. Just traveling with your friends too is cool you know, because when the song starts, we’re playing a song that we used to play together many years ago, and now I’m just like, now this is cool, because you all have dreams about playing with your friends and then actually doing it is really cool.

 

You mentioned before about strong artwork, what inspired the cover of your debut Americas least wanted?

 

Ah yes, the cover art for Americas Least Wanted, all started with a friend of ours called Moish. He was a skateboard artist and he did our drumhead for the price of a bag of Doritos and a six pack. He and Clouse came up with the idea of a little mascot and then that turned into the Statue Of Liberty cover for the album. That was another of Clouse’s ideas, Clouse is really the mastermind of our artwork. So he said instead of Americas Most Wanted by Ice Cube, how about Americas Least Wanted? The Statue of Liberty idea took off from there. Now it’s a continuation with our artwork.

 

What inspired you guys to reform? And what did you do during the break?

 

That was more than a break, that was 13 years of like, everyone just went in different directions. The re-unification of the band was Dave Foreman. He said we should get back together and record some of the old songs, so that we release them and collect royalties on those things instead of giving them away to the old record company that turned out to be a bad thing in the end. I always wanted to do it again, when Whitfield and Clouse said I wanna take a break for a while, that made me really sad. I was like in tears. I knew we wouldn’t be jamming for a long time and sure enough 13 years is a long time. I have another band that I play in called Hear Kitty Kitty. Hear Kitty Kitty is myself and a female singer, and I’ve been doing that for maybe close to nine to ten years or something like that. That’s what I put my musical endeavours into. I know that Shannon, he left Ugly Kid Joe and went to Godsmack and Dave became a world renowned producer. Whit did another Animal and Life Of Agony I think it was and now he’s doing Richards/Crane also on this tour. Clouse I’m not sure what he did, I think he just wrote country songs and kept plotting our next move. It was a long break you know, we thought we were never gunna play again but it wasn’t like anybody hated each other. It was just time to do something else. Coming back together, it feels nostalgic to some, but for me it was just about time you know.

 

Thirteen years is a lot of time, so that makes sense. You mentioned about the label being a bad thing in the end. For bands aspiring to be signed, would you have any advice?

 

Well, my advice to bands that are starting, it used to be like, yeah we wanna start a band and get signed, that would be your ambition, that was it. But the truth is that getting signed is like the beginning of the whole process.  And my advice is write your songs, get your songs together. Make sure you have a really good name for your band and a good logo and own it. With the way the internet is, you have the possibility of getting your music heard by a lot of people. You know, the vehicle is there, now how are they gunna hear about it? So I would spend more time trying to get publicity or get heard of, put your energy there instead of borrowing money from a company to record your record. That’s really what being signed is so I would say maybe find an 'Angel Investor' or someone who believes in your music who would fund you. I guess record labels still have the in with radio stations and that, but maybe work on a distribution deal instead.

 

That’s awesome, cheers. What was it like to be the main support for Guns ‘N’ Roses?

 

That was really cool for us. A lot of shows were festivals on that trip so Guns ‘N’ Roses would be the headliner that day and we would be intermingled amongst the other acts. A couple of shows we were direct support so we literally opened up for them, those were fantastic. I can think of playing in Israel, in Tel Aviv, and doing the gig and then after the show meeting up in the bar across the road, hanging out and sharing all these stories, it was really cool. Axl’s a very great singer, a great musician. He gets a bad rep from some people, but in my opinion the dude’s really good. We drank and talked about all kinds of stuff you know, any questions I could think to ask him I did. We left at like 5/6am, the sun’s coming up and he goes ‘people make fun of me for wearing my sun glasses but who’s laughing now?’. And he puts on his shades and walks off in his sparkly converse into the sunrise. It was cool. I like those guys, doing support for Guns ‘N’ Roses, I’d do it again.

 

I don’t think you can get more rock ‘n’ roll than sparkly converses and sunglasses.

 

Yeah he’s the real deal!

 

And talking of working with big names, what was it like working with Lemmy from Motorhead?

 

Lemmy is an icon for a reason. After his shows every night he sits in his dressing room with pen and paper and writes lyrics. He has a slot machine next to him, and he plays a game here but he’s always writing words to songs. He is who he is for a reason, he really works hard at his craft. For me, hearing his bass tone is magical, I love the sound of his bass distortion, Marshal cap. I think a lot of people could learn from Lemmy because he starts from the ground up, he’s writing a song every single day.

 

Cool, what are your favourite tracks from the new record?

 

I like to let the record playreally, but I like Under The Bottom, that’s a fun song to play. I like She’s Already Gone, that’s a real sad ballad kinda song but it’s got a lil bit of pride in there you know. A lot of songs Dave writes have a lot of beautiful melodies in them. It would be nice to have Dave Foremen on the road with us, but like I said he’s producing bands all the time. In his place out here is Sonny, Sonny Mayo, and he brings a lot of excitement to all the songs on the record too, he wrote a couple of tracks with us as well. Each night feels different as far as what I appreciate goes, as far as the new record goes. Each night the songs from all the records kinda pop up their head and go ‘no I’m the one you wanna play’ and then it’s fun to call them out. I think the new record is great, I love it. I’m really proud of Whitfield he pulled out the pledge campaign and got the crowd interested in the idea of it before we even began. So it was a lot of fun to make that record. They’re all my favourite tracks. Songs are like children in that aspect, the next song we record is always going to be my favourite really.

 

Are there any particular songs on this tour that have received a really positive reaction from the crowd? Or does it change each night?

 

Yeah, Hell Ain’t Hard To Find, people are really enjoying that one. We made a cool lyric video for that one for everyone to watch and that one people are taking notice of as far as the new songs go for sure they really like that one. Tonight we’ll try Under The Bottom, we’ve been doing it at sound check a little bit but we haven’t pulled it out at the show yet because there’s some complicated parts and we seem to forget them after a couple of months of not playing them.

 

Well thank you, it’s been nice to meet you.

 

And you.