Interview with Kelby Ray & Neil Mason from The Cadillac Three

As always for our starter question, who are The Cadillac Three and what do you do?

 

Neil: We are from Nashville Tennessee and we are a Southern rock badassness. That’s what Jaren would say if he were here. We’ve been friends for half our lives and we just get up there and play some rock n’ roll.

 

Does this feel different to your previous band, American Bang?

 

Neil: American Bang was the three of us and our friend that we went to high school with and it was something we really enjoyed doing. But when he had to leave the band cause he had a baby and got married and started doing normal people stuff it made sense to start something new. He’s one of our best friends and it didn’t feel right to just replace him and carry on.

 

2 minutes in and we’re interrupted by an 0800 number trying to sell me double glazing or claim PPI for me.

 

Kelby (speaking into my phone/recording device): Whoever called, don’t call again! They’re probably confused to how they rang America.

 

Neil: We got really excited about when we just plugged a couple of cables into different amps. That helped drive the sound.

 

This is your third time in the UK in 2014, fourth in 12 months, you guys just can’t keep away.

 

Kelby: It’s good though. We love coming over here and every time we come we see that the fans appreciate us coming over here. It doesn’t seem like a lot of bands from the States take the time to come over here and play shows. This is our fourth trip over here and it’s our third sold out show in three days. That’s pretty awesome.

 

Does it feel good to get some headline shows under your belt after The Graveltones tour and Sonisphere?

 

Neil: Yeah it feels really good. We hadn’t done a headline show in London so that was great. But we also wanted to come back to some of the places we came to in March and headline some shows there.

 

Kelby: And we’ll be back a few times in 2015 too. Hopefully in March time and then again in the Summer. We’ve come over too many times now to not come over again.

 

I spoke to Ryan, the singer from SOiL, a couple of weeks ago and he said that London is really the place for bands to go right now.

 

Neil: We really had no idea. It’s something we’d wanted to do for a while, but it had just never made sense. When we hooked up with Spinefarm Records they got behind the records and they’ve been really great. We pretty much say yes whenever there’s a gig somebody wants us to play.

 

Kelby: If we can physically do it then we will.

 

You’ve got to do that now with the way that the industry is these day.

 

Neil: Exactly and it’s something we’ve never been afraid to do. In this case we’re so excited to be here and the crowds seem to be the same. Hopefully it keeps going. We’re going to make it a permanent part of our touring.

 

You’ve recently done Planet Rockstock. How was that?

 

Kelby: The show was great. The event was a little weird though. Is it a Welsh thing that’s been there for quite a few years? We call it a trailer park but they called it a…..caravan is it? Park. There’s like a bowling alley and restaurants and people come for a holiday. We’ve never seen anything like it! The show itself though was awesome though.

 

Neil: It reminded me of a fancy version of that movie Snatch.

 

Your single, The South, sold over 150,000 copies. How does that feel? It’s an impressive figure for a debut single.

 

Kelby: well it means people are listening so that’s a step in the right direction.

 

Neil: We’ve really been able to see the difference to a year ago. Seeing the kids coming out to the shows is great. No matter where we are they seem to know all the words.

 

You’ve had a lot of love from Classic Rock winning their Best New Band award. Pretty good for a band in their second year.

 

Neil: We just thought it was cool to be nominated. But we kind of forgot about it after we saw the list.

 

Kelby: Yeah we looked at it and thought “well we won’t win that”. After a show back home the manager rang and told us that we’d won.

 

Bet you were like "what award?"

 

Neil: Yeah, I'd forgotten we were nominated. The night picking up the award was a great night. Joe Perry from Aerosmith was there. Ozzy Osbourne.

 

Kelby: Brian May. Every time you’d turned around there was another rock star just stood there. When we accepted the award from Sammy Hagar, Jaren got up there and just said “Now you know who The Cadillac Three is motherfuckers”. That’s the quote in Classic Rock.

 

Sounds awesome. On a very different topic, your album is on streaming services like Spotify. How do you feel about services like that and are they good for the industry?

 

Neil: The way I see it is that for a band our size any way people can hear our music is a good thing.

 

Jaren: We really want people to come out and see our shows, that’s the main thing for us. We’re playing as many shows as we can, so as many different ways of hearing the music the better.

 

Neil: I do think that the more established acts, like Taylor Swift, are taking a stand and are making a stand because I don’t particularly think that the payment system is fair. But at the same time I think that the idea of the service is doing a lot of good for the up and coming bands. It’s a double edged sword.

 

Jaren: There’s a line somewhere but I don’t know where it is. I mean heck I’m guilty of it too sometimes. It’s just so easy to pop a song title into YouTube and watch it.  

 

Neil: It’s difficult to find that line with a record label and that system has been around for like a hundred years. Where we’re at right now it’s a good thing for us.

 

Jaren: Something that I have noticed is that over here a lot of sites are blocked that aren’t in the States. There’s still a lot of piracy over there. The bottom line is, the more people that come and see the shows, the better.

 

Another strange question: It’s been said quite a lot recently by people like Gene Simmons that ‘rock is dead’. Is that a scary thing to hear for a band just starting out?

 

Neil: I think that it’s perspective. Gene Simmons’ idea of rock is different to mine or yours. We’re really big Rival Sons fans and we really love what Royal Blood are doing. There’s been a number of bands in the past five or ten years that have really moved rock on. Do I think it’s dead? No. But at the same time it’s not the mainstream music that it was 30 years but it comes in circles.

 

Jaren: I think Gene Simmons needs to come and see one of our shows! There’s your headline.

 

I’ll Tweet him. He’ll definitely get it! Back to more normal questions, do you have an album or artist of 2014? Aside from yourselves…

 

Jaren: I’m not sure if he’s made it over here but there’s a real old school country rock guy called Sturgill Simpson. I’m a really big fan of his. It’s like country on acid or something.

 

Neil: We’re really big fans of Rival Sons and getting to see them at the Classic Rock awards just made us think ‘yeah, they’re legit’.

 

Yeah, we're big fans of Rivals Sons at MNN too. What would you say has been the highlight of the last couple of years as The Cadillac Three?

 

Jaren: Well we got to play The Grand Ole Opry which a lot of people would love to do and that was a really cool thing for us. Playing Sonisphere and seeing Metallica afterwards was pretty awesome too. That actually all happened in the same month. So yeah, July was pretty great.

 

Sounds like a dream. Finally, who would you love to have on a bill with you?

 

Jaren: Tom Petty.

 

Neil: Yeah Tom Petty, but we’d have to open for him because I wouldn’t want to follow him.

 

Cool, maybe just have you guys sit on stage and watch him play?

 

Neil: Yeah that sounds pretty good.

 

Brilliant. Well thanks very much for taking the time to talk to us. We hope to see you guys soon.