Transcript of an interview I recorded with JOEY VERA of ARMORED SAINT - 20201010. Full article here. MAL-
Let's get started. Thanks for talking to me today. JOEY- Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. No problem. MAL- It's good to have you on. Just let me take you back initially the early days early 80s. What's your most memorable moment of the early ARMORED SAINT days? JOEY- Wow, you'd have to define it, I mean a smaller time frame. The early 80s A lot happened. MAL- Starting off, the early days of ARMORED SAINT and getting the band going. How did it go it. Is it all a blur? Did it all happen too quick? JOEY- Well kind of but you know, I think probably one of the biggest first things that happened that was a big deal was we were just starting out and starting to play out. And we played a very small club. in fact, it was a comedy club called The Ice House in Pasadena. They were having a battle of the bands and the grand prize of this battle of the bands who was a full-page ad in our local basically our local music magazine called Bam, Bam magazine, and it was you basically the rag on the streets that everyone looked at to see where shows were happening locally and it covered all kinds of other things but it was the biggest local magazine in Los Angeles for music basically. So we played this show and we won first place and it was the show was like just completely crazy, all our friends came to the show and we were obviously at that point heavily influenced by what was going on in the UK. The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. We were just trying to bring that to Los Angeles, you know that trying to recreate all the pictures we saw in Kerrang magazine things like that from the Marquee and so forth. So all our friends came to the show and you know granted it probably wasn't more than 30 people or something, but it was like watching an old Saxon video from back in the day. Just this hair, Head-banging everywhere and just Denim and Leather. And so we made a huge impression on whoever the judges were, I can't remember who they were but they were supposedly quote unquote industry people. But so we won first prize and we got a full-page ad in BAM magazine and it was a that was our first kind of like, you know mark that we were here kind of, and the band literally had been together for a couple of months like it was super new, you know, we had just started to get started out. So it was a cool thing for us to get right on this kind of radar if you will right away. That was a pretty big moment in the early 80s. I'm going to say that was 1982 for sure. MAL- This is a question I wasn't going to ask til the end but you just sort of touched on it there. If you know word of mouth, the flyers, BAM Magazine, magazines all that sort of thing versus now the internet, Facebook, Instagram, which wins? It was a simpler time back then. Which wins? It's an interesting question, isn't it? JOEY- Yeah, I mean, it's more localized, you know, the old way it was it was very much guerilla. You're on the ground and you were localized you were getting attention right away in person with people on the ground, you know. With the internet now, it's so dense. It's so removed, you know, you relying on someone coming to you to see something, some advertising or to reach you, you know, the internet's a double-edged sword in opinion. There's a lot of great things about it, it has some negative sides too so it's a great thing in the sense that it's like an open library and there's a billion books that you can get information on in this giant Library, everybody has access to it. So that part of it's great but problem is if you are if you happen to be one of those bits of information, how do you stand out? How do you get out and make someone notice you that's the harder part? I don't know if they're both, you know, sometimes I think like if I was promoting a show in Los Angeles, I think the old way was better, going out on the streets and handing out flyers and giving out you know comp tickets or discount tickets, you know and doing things the old school way because people, you have an interaction with people, you know, but if you're promoting something now, it's a little harder I think and you have a wider spread because now it's not just Los Angeles, it's across the globe, but you're also spread yourself thin so that the globe is a very big place and like I said, how do you stand out across the globe? Harder. MAL- Aren't you glad you're not starting out now? JOEY- Yeah. Yeah I am. I think it's harder now. I think there's way more competition. I don't even think there were as many musicians in 1982 as there are nowadays. Nowadays because of Technology. It's much much easier to even pursue wanting to be a musician. I'm not saying succeed at it. But I'm saying become you know, take up being a musician. It's much easier. MAL- Absolutely. Let's talk about the upcoming ARMORED SAINT album 'Punching The Sky'. Tell us all about this. How did you go with lockdown? Did you have it recorded earlier? Did you have to get together over the Internet? Tell us about the process in here. JOEY- Luckily we were done when our city shut down. We had just finished I think, about a week or two before it closed down. So I was still doing technical stuff, cleaning up tracks, and getting the sessions ready to hand off to Jay Ruston so he could mix so I was still working from home anyway, so it didn't affect us or me at all. So that part was fine. You know, I remember driving the drives over to Jay Rustin and the city had just shut down the week prior. And so, you know, we're at the beginning it was all super scary, you know, like 'oh, no, I can't see anybody can't touch anybody. I can't be anything' and so I called him I talked to him and I said, 'all right, here's the deal. I'm going to put it in a brown paper bag, and I'm going to leave in your doorstep so you don't need to see me or breathe on me and I won't need to breathe on you'. I wiped it down before I put it in the box and you know, you wipe it down again, you know, it was just a funny exchange when that first happened but it didn't affect us at all. Really. It just kind of went ahead, business as usual, mix the record. And yeah, I mean that's really it. You know, we had already done our studio work together starting in December. We work December, January, February and first week or two of March, first week of March I think it finally finished. So yeah, you know, we got lucky. MAL- Hmm. Okay good as far as touring goes, you're gonna have to do it the modern covid internet way, you're starting off with a live stream. What's the plan after that? Is there light at the end of the tunnel over there. It's a bit hard to judge that from way over here. JOEY- Well, it's the same here as everywhere I think. There's light at the end of the tunnel in the sense that it seems like there's going to be some breakthroughs medically coming up by the end of the year. So that is a positive note for everybody. We're hoping to you know, if that happens at the confidence level will be up, the distribution of this medical breakthrough be available to everybody soon, quickly, hopefully by the spring that mean there might be some venues opening up for shows and of course everybody and their brother is going to want to go on tour. So I think it's going to be hard to get in but we're you know, we're hoping that things start looking up in the spring and you can get out there again. MAL- Yeah, when the gates do open it is going to be a bit of a log Jam at these venues, isn't it? You're going to have to draw straws to see who gets to play. JOEY- Yeah, it's going to be tough competition, you know, because, you keep in mind too that some venues, you know, lost their businesses, they closed, so now there's less venues and you know, like I said competition is going to be tough and who knows even that we'll be able to go at full capacity. It might be something that opens up to partial capacity which means again less less everything, you know less people, less bodies in the building, that means les tickets sold, that means less income, that means less gas less everything across the board. So it's going to be interesting. MAL- Just on a side note, have you got other work? Have you got a finger in another pie? I think of this all the time with all these musicians that are not being able to go out and tour, what's happening? JOEY- I've been pretty lucky. I've been busy, you know, I'm obviously this ARMORED SAINT record has been pretty time consuming for me and I also have you know, I play with FATES WARNING and our new record comes out literally three weeks after the ARMORED SAINT record, so I have two records coming out this year. There's no plans for FATES to do any touring either everybody's in the same boat. We're just waiting to see it's happening. I also play with a band called MOTOR SISTER and we were actually recording basic tracks when the city got shut down here in LA so I literally went from ARMORED SAINT tracking and I went into the studio with MOTOR SISTER for one week, and then then we were cut off so we have an unfinished record we have to finish and there's been loose talk about going back into the studio in late November maybe even December if the City opens up again, all the studios are still closed right now. So there's still a lot of uncertainty with that. But anyway when that comes up then I would be going back into the studio at the end of the year with MOTOR SISTER but until then, you know, I'm concentrating on doing press and promoting ARMORED SAINT and involve social media to help stay engaged with fans. And we have a couple of videos coming up. We're working on a new video for our new single and we have a couple of other places coming up. So that'll be some things to do. So there's some things going on keeping me busy. MAL- Just think of all the unfinished albums that are out there right now, mind-blowing, isn't it? JOEY- Yeah. Yeah, there must be a lot, you know. MAL- Yeah Joey. Thanks a lot for talking to me. You have a great rest of the day. Good luck with your new album 'Punching The Sky' out, October 23rd, all the best with it and hope to see you down here soon. JOEY- Thank you for doing this and hopefully this opens up the world and we can get back down to Australia to do another tour. So we're looking forward to that. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |