It’s my pleasure.

 

We are from a town called Hesperia in Southern California. I live in Oklahoma though and the rest of the band lives in California.

 

It’s actually working pretty good, because what they do is record materials, send it to me through email, I download it, upload it on my recorder and we just bounce back and forth sending each other new stuff. When we get new songs written, we meet up and just record it. Our management helps us book shows, so I go out there whenever shows are booked or they come out here.

 

I love it, I grew up here for about seventeen years and then I went to California for about seventeen years. I have been back in Oklahoma for about a year and a half now.

 

Five years

 

No, I wish it was. We went through so many different band members. I love the current line-up that we have now; I wish that these could have been the guys in the band the whole time. Just like any other band we went through changes and stuff until we found the right people that can travel and have the time to be in a band. We finally got the perfect line-up.

 

Nope. I can barely walk, talk and chew gum at the same time. I took guitar lessons and found out that I wanted to sing. I enjoyed singing more and I didn’t have the patience to do both.

 

Yes, when I was a kid, they used to make me get up in front of the church and sing, which went on for about five years. Sometimes, they would make me get up there and do it by myself. I got over that nervous feeling real quick. I never thought I would end up doing this, but it was a good starting point.

 

I believe the same thing.

 

Only for about eight years. I started off in a heavy, hardcore, metal band. I ended up screaming so much that I thought I was going to end up blowing my voice out. I started doing some acoustic stuff with an old friend and we did some coffee shop stuff. I started enjoying that more and more. I was still throwing some of the screaming stuff in there and that is what kind of freaks people out. We are an all acoustic band and then I’ll just start screaming on certain parts, but our guitar player kind of beefs it up when it comes time for that, so it kind of has its own unique sound.

 

Yeah, so far.

 

We have one out, but we are in the process of recording another one. That should happen this year. I think we are going back in the studio around September. We have about thirty to forty songs to choose from. We did the last album back in 2007, so I think we’re due.  We have a couple different producers that have been talking to us.

Yes, there were a couple songs on the last album that each one of the guitar players had written and then we collaborated together, but for the most part they wrote two songs lyrically. The guy that writes most of the music in the band now is Mike, our guitar player. Whenever we get together we just try to do crunch time and record as much as we can. It’s kind of a fun process, I like doing it like that.

My influences are Slipknot, Metallica and Slayer. I can’t do any of that stuff the way that we write this music. That’s where I come in and try to scream on different songs and the funny thing is when people see us when we play and they see us put up the acoustic guitars and stuff it kind of freaks them out. They say “You know you are playing with heavy rock bands right?” and they say “Are you sure you want to do this?”  We have to convince them by saying “It’s going to be okay, just let us play. You’ll see.” They always invite us back, but that is some of my influences. I also like Alice in Chains and Godsmack. The other guys are completely on a different page.  It’s a neat little collaboration of ideas.

 

Exactly, every time we do a show somebody tells us a different band that we sound like, so that’s cool.

 

We’ve been told Alice in Chains, Days of the New, Godsmack and every once in a while Metallica. It’s all over the map.

 

They do and it’s probably coming from their influences and what they like.

 

That’s what I do; I’ll sit there and watch the singer.

We have been with them for about five months, we are pretty new. They have about thirty bands that they are working with right now. We are really excited, we just had a conference call with the owner and he was telling us some of the new directions that we are going to go in and what he is going to do to take us to the next level. We are really excited about being with those guys.

 

We did a music video for one of our songs called “Savannah Rose.” It turned out great and that is actually how Dirtbag discovered us. After they watched the video they went and listened to the music. We have a couple more shows we want to finish out the year with, we are heading to Texas and I’m sure there will be more things that will come. We definitely want to get the new album going. I am talking to a guy right now, the same guy that shot the last video, about shooting a new video for us for the new single. We are really excited to work with him.

 

That’s what I heard and I think it’s a great idea because everyone is kind of struggling with money to put towards this and that.

 

We put that up because we never know how things are going to turn out. We may go in to the studio and they will say “Okay, that’s going to be $25,000” and we will be like “Okay, we’re going on tour.” (Laughing)

 

Most of them are just clothing companies and I have one that sponsors me called Darker Image Clothing and Dirtbag obviously. I have a sponsor from New Zealand who works with a company called Dead Ringer and he sent me over all these skull rings and jewelry. He gave it all to me for free and he made all the rings for the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie. He made all the rings for everybody who went down the red carpet. I was shocked that he gave me all this stuff. We have Dunlop who gives us guitar strings and picks. Nothing for me, but the rest of the band, I guess when I got all the jewelry they pretty much told me I wasn’t going to get anything.

 

(Laughing) Exactly

 

Yeah, exactly

 

With this line-up we’ve just started. We actually just came off of a small tour. The whole time that we have been a band, we’ve done quite a bit. We’ve been to Colorado, Texas and California. It kind of goes with whatever time that we get to do things. We will do ten or eleven shows at a time.  We haven’t had the opportunity yet to do thirty or forty day tours or anything, but I think we are getting close to that.

 

Not yet, you know what’s crazy is when I do a lot of friend requests off of MySpace through Oklahoma, it seems like the Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas people like our music the most. I’ve been telling the band that we need to be hitting some of the states where we are receiving a lot of attention. We were actually going to do that in September, but then my manager saw the email and he said “No! You guys get back in the studio. Stop trying to book these shows.”  He’s dying for us to record another CD. We are showing so many different people this new album that have never heard it before. That’s the fun part, even though we think it’s old, they are hearing it for the first time and it kind of re-sparks the whole band.

That’s weird because when we were on the phone with Dirtbag, they were trying to find our target age group. We were just in Colorado playing a music festival. There were kids on skateboards riding around and when we started playing they came up and before you know it by the end of the night there were hundreds of sixteen year olds with their parents standing behind them watching the whole thing. It was just kind of shocking. We haven’t found our target age group yet, because the songs go from one extreme to another on the CD. Dirtbag told us they need to target an age group, so they are even trying to figure out what age group to target.

I like playing on my boat. I love going to the river. When I was in California, I would go to Lake Havasu all the time. Since I’m in Oklahoma, I do a little bit of hunting. I like to browse on the internet and find new things that people are doing that involve music. I also enjoy being with my kids.

I love scary movies. Every year I throw haunted houses for the public.  I love the Evil Dead trilogies. I like being scared.

That’s a good question because half of the CD is more of a hard rock style and the other half is really kind of light and mellow. We have had guys that used the songs in dirt bike videos and another guy used it in a B flick movie in a sadder scene. There are so many different places that I think it would fit in well, I guess it would depend on what kind of action is going on in the movie. I’m kind of curious too; I hope someone else figures it out. (Laughing)

I just want to get back in the studio, we have three or four songs right now that I know are just going to surpass our previous CD.

Visit our MySpace page and listen to our music. It’s acoustic all the time with kind of like a metal edge to it. I think people will enjoy it. It’s not a combination that too many people use, but I think it is going to be something fresh. We wish you the best of luck too!