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PL: State something interesting about yourselves. You might want to state your names too.
WH: Thats Colt Thompson and he dated OJ Simpson's daughter.
BIV: Something interesting. Lets see. I'm a player/coach for a baseball team up in Boston. Thats interesting.
PL: Actual baseball?
BIV: Its baseball, not softball.
JS: Hi, I'm John and I'm an alcoholic. I've also studied drums with Tito Puento at one point...for about half an hour.
WH: I'm Ward Hayden, and the best thing I've got going for me is that I've been unemployed since January.
PL: Hows that going?
WH: Not too bad, actually. Its going pretty good so far. So far so good.
PL: How has winning the BCN Rumble affected your band?
CT: Its been awesome.
BIV: Thats it.
CT: We all got penis implants.
WH: I thought you guys had a real answer. You got these guys on a silly day.
PL: Thats fine.
WH: Its been really good. We got a ton of press out of it. Its really helped the band get a lot of exposure, especially with the recent release of Inverted Valentine, which came out a week after us winning the Rumble, so we couldn't have had a better media push. Plus, a lot of the prize package was studio time, so it will hopefully cover a lot of the studio expenses of our fourth record.
BIV: Also name recognition.
WH: Name recognition has been the biggest thing. All of a sudden, a lot of people know Girls Guns and Glory in Boston. You can't listen to BCN for more than 15 minutes without hearing us at least once up there. Especially leading up to the River Rave, which is on Sunday at the Kroger Center which used to be The Tweeter Center. The name is just all over the place.
CT: Does this recording go on your webzine, or do you type it out?
PL: I type it out.
CT: Edit it a little bit. Take out the penis implant part?
PL: That'll probably stay in there.
CT: Oh, good.
JS: We can all do cock pushups nows.
PL: Do you guys think you'll fit in at the River Rave?
BIV: We always win over whatever crowd we play in front of. We try to.
WH: We've definitely been the misfits on a lot of bills. The heart and soul of this band is rock and roll. Early rock and roll like Chuck Berry-esque, which is the roots of harder rock or stuff that will be at the River Rave, or even the punk stuff like Pennywise. We take that and mix country stuff into it. Hopefully people who dig that kind of music are gonna perk up their ears and give us a listen as well.
CT: We also might get booed, but hopefully not.
WH: We won't get booed.
CT: I don't think we'll get booed, but its gonna be one of the drastically misfit shows we've ever played. It will be fun though.
BIV: Even though we are playing Johnny Cash styled stuff, people are starting to accept that and listen to it more.
WH: I think Americana music is coming to the forefront with a lot of music that is going on around us. Just in the past few years in Boston, where we're based out of, there were only a handful of bands playing the type of music we do, and the majority of them been playing it for 15-20 years. Now its gone from a handful of bands to 20 or 30 or more bands that are actively playing Americana rock country music. Its not pop music yet. It might not be. It probably never will be.
CT: It might get the 15 weeks of fame like the swing revival did with Brian Setzer.
BIV: I'd be okay with 15 weeks of fame.
PL: I was gonna ask if alt country is becoming a trend is today's music.
BIV: Definitely.
WH: I think a lot of these indie pop bands are embracing a little bit more of alt country and they're becoming more of these indie folk bands, and thats a great thing. You get bands like The Everyday Visuals that take these snippets from indie rock and indie pop and mix it with alt country, and it blends well. Its an interesting listen with a lot of heart and soul.
PL: Did you release Inverted Valentine yourselves?
WH: We did.
PL: How difficult was it putting out an album yourselves?
WH: It was kind of time consuming. You've got to get in there and record. Sometimes that takes forever, especially getting something you're happy with. And then, financially, it definitely costs a lot of money. It seems like the future of music is going digital, so I don't know if CDs are going to stick around forever. They might have a 5-10 year window like casettes. Everybody has an iPod now-so even if you sell a CD-I sold one to a guy last night and he told me he was gonna put it on his iPod right away. For artists, that means a lot less money, but I guess things will pick up with digital sale.
CT: Quick question: is Inverted Valentine on iTunes yet?
WH: Not yet.
CT: It will be, right?
WH: Yeah. It takes about 4-8 weeks to go up. I put it up there forever ago.
CT: Right now we're available at CD Baby, Newbury Comics, Rhapsody and Amazon.
PL: Do you have to pay to put songs on iTunes and stuff like that?
WH: No, but every song you sell they take a third of.
CT: You've got to register first. You can't just put anything up there. Its pretty word. $.99 a pop.
PL: Do you make more from digital sales?
WH: Actually, our CD sales far outweigh our digital, but the digital stuff is definitely inclining. You sell a CD at a show for $10 or at a store for $8-10, but a lot of people will just buy one or two songs digitally instead of the whole album.
CT: Luckily, our album is full of good songs. There's not just one or two to latch onto. There's 11.
PL: Whats the overall mission of the band and has winning the Rumble changed that at all?
WH: Do you guys want to chime in on that at all?
BIV: Our mission is to be full time, and winning the Rumble, if anything else, is gonna help us towards that mission.
CT: Recognition has gone sky high over the past three months.
BIV: The mission of the band is to be touring 2/3 of the year.
CT: And to be making a living, even if that means owning two outfits and sleeping in a van.
BIV: And for people to like us.
CT: I don't care if people like us. You can still come to our show and buy our CD. You can burn it afterwards and tell me you hate it afterwards. Or give it to your girlfriend.
BIV: Thats the thing: if your girlfriend likes us, you're stuck with us.
CT: Or maybe I'll steal her from you, and you won't have to worry about that anymore.
BIV: We like to rob a few cradles along the way.
CT: We want to leave a bunch of illegimiate children all over the country.
JS: I want to play on Conan O'Brian. Thats been a dream of mine for a long time. I want to meet Conan and have this gigantic human being shake my hand. We want to be pretty solid road warriors and make a living.
WH: We're just gonna keep plugging away like how we're doing. We're starting regionally and expanding around there. We're trying to play more around New England and New York and then branch out to the midwest and down south. The ultimate goal is to target cities and try to play them as often as possible and build a following.
JS: And then settle down with a mini van and a station wagon, a tree fort in the back.
PL: Do you think the economy right now is putting a small damper on your band?
JS: Small?
WH: Thats killing us.
BIV: Our van is an eight cylander.
WH: We've got a 26 gallon tank. I just put $70 worth of gas in there and its not even 3/4 full. I was thinking about that today while we were driving. I put $100 in it and one trip to New London, CT put us at E.
BIV: Its really hard to make money. I don't think it makes it any harder for people to like us.
WH: It makes it harder to tour. More people are gonna get those biodiseal vans to try and save money.
BIV: I'm all about that now.
CT: If you don't mind your whip stinking like oil all the time.
WH: Thats fine by me.
JS: I'll smell like fucking tuna fish if it'll save me $100 a day. I don't care what I sell like.
PL: Is it hard playing a show while a favorite sports team is playing?
BIV: Yes. We were playing a show in New Hampshire while Bucholz was throwing a no hitter. By the time our set ended, I don't think any of us hit a proper note.
WH: I don't think that people who are fans of live music are die hard sports fans.
CT: The hardest thing is football because they only play those games once a week.
JS: There have been shows that we've played during a Patriots' playoff game. No one was digging that. We were playing a show in Jersey when they were playing Jacksonville in the playoffs.
CT: I stare off into space sometimes, so watching a game on the TVs is good for me sometimes.
BIV: Its great when you're playing and the crowd erupts into applause.
PL: Whats a little known fact about Massachusetts?
CT: Someone told me the other day that Duxbury has the best tasting oysters. Do you like eating raw oysters?
PL: No.
CT: If you did, you would love those Duxbury oysters.
BIV: What other good facts?
(This brings up conversations about making amends with Native Americans by playing the CT casinos, building casinos in MA, the band getting impeached, this webzine, Barn Burning and Sharks Come Cruisin.' I could only hear bits and pieces at first, and picking up where I could hear things would leave you lost reading this.)
PL: Name one album, besides your own, that you think all people should have in their collection.
WH: Rhymes with Dolores To Be Named Later.
CT: You just picked mine, dude.
WH: We had the same one?
CT: On a serious note, I would say Cake's Prolonging the Magic. Its full of awesome songs. I don't know if you're into Cake, but I love them.
WH: Cake has really been growing on me lately.
CT: Prolonging the Magic came out just before Comfort Eagle.
PL: Anything else you guys want to say?
CT: What do we want to say?
WH: Check us out on CD Baby and Myspace. Also girlsgunsandglory.com. Hopefully that site will be updated really really soon. People can always feel free to reach out and message us.
BIV: Death threats.
CT: And nude photos if you're a girl. We're always looking for those.
JS: And someone to cuddle with. I'm always looking for someone to cuddle with.
CT: We all are.
JS: But not fat chicks.
BIV: Though they make the best cuddlers.
CT: You always want to cuddle with the prospect of someone else. I like plutonic cuddles.
BIV: I want to make a living-
CT: Making album titles for my other band?
BIV: Making album titles for Colt's other band.