Bill, the question pressing on everybody’s minds is about you and your wife. You are a big, fat, larger than life mortal with a little wife that looks like a cute little wind up doll. Everybody wants to know how you two fuck?

BILL: Oh that’s easy. I have an enormous cock (Everybody laughs)

For a mortal, you have a very large personality. I think people either love you or hate you. Do you agree?

BILL: I’ve always felt people don’t hate my band. They hate me. People hate me because I’m not afraid to tell them to suck my dick.

I’m hoping you’ll tell me to suck your dick!

BILL: Don’t worry, I won’t! (Much laughter) I’m not afraid to say what I think and neither is anyone in my band. But everyone in my band has better tact than I do. I don’t give a fuck. If you insult me, fuck you. I’ve put more stage time in Bangles (a former local rock club) then most of these bands do in their entire careers.

You have an intriguing vocal style for a mortal. Tell me where it came from

BILL: I took a couple years of opera training at Indiana state university. When I was 16, my parents offered to buy me a car, give me $1200.00 or get me $1200.00 in vocal lessons. I took the lessons. I spent the next three years getting my dick sucked in the back seat of my friends car because I knew how to sing (Laughs) I can sing anything right now. On the new album there’s some raw stuff, there’s some clean stuff. I can’t hit the high notes I could back then though. Back then I could break wine glasses. I can’t do that now. My voice is heavy because I like singing heavy. But when Johnny and I do acoustic shows, I can do clean stuff for hours on end.

Who were some of your main vocal influences?

BILL: My main vocal influences while I was growing up were Bruce Dickinson, Dennis Deyoung, Michael Sweet from Stryper. I learned to develop my vibrato from all those guys. Most people can’t do it. Sometimes I get some shitty emails. People are like, “why don’t you do some vibrato?” I’m hardly doing any on the new album. But the fact is I can do it. Teaching someone to do that is not easy. It took years of training. I’m a big Steve Perry fan. I’m into more mellow singers. Don Henley. I listen to singers who can sing. As far as heavy stuff, who influences me? Nobody. Do I like some of it? I love Machine Head, Pantera, Fear Factory. Fear Factory is a great group of guys. Probably the coolest famous people I’ve ever met. Other than that I’m not into a whole lot of stuff because I don’t want it to influence my writing. I spend most of my time listening to local bands or unsigned bands from around the country. When I listen to unsigned bands, I hear hunger. There is an edge to that music that you usually don’t get when you listen to corporate Rock and Roll because everything has been tapered. I listen to unsigned stuff mainly.

And you are a Kiss fan

BILL: I’m a huge Kiss fan. That’s my favorite group of all time. They weren’t so much vocalists, but when I was younger I learned to sing like Gene. Kiss inspired me to be a rockstar. I’m 13 years old, going to their concerts and there’s wall to wall pussy wearing nothing. I mean, how would you not want to be a rockstar? I was like, “This is the life for me” (Laughs).

Every mortal I’ve met in a local band knows who ROGUE are and respects all of you guys. Tell me about how you guys started your quest for world domination

BILL: A lot of bands make it sound like we’ve been around since Cream (Laughs) EA is not gonna die of brain cancer tomorrow. We’re not that old. We’ve been together for almost six years. Devon and I were in a band called Symmetry for many years. The band played a style reminiscent of Iron Maiden. When that band broke up, I was very angry. I was very pissed off and I wanted to play with very pissed off people. I got a couple of musicians that didn’t work out. One of them that did was E.A. The first show ROGUE ever played we headlined a club in the middle of a blizzard and brought 400 people.

Tell me about your first album, If I Were God.

BILL: The first album we recorded in this room for free. (Bill motions to the large ROGUE practice space that we all sit in for this interview) A friend of ours had a really good studio set up. Johnny said, “Hey man, he say’s he’ll come down here and record us for free.” We stacked up couches around the drums and proceeded to record an album. We never mastered that album or anything, but we put out a thousand copies. We even toured on the record.

JOHNNY: We call it “The Pink Album.” (Laughter)

BILL: (Laughs) The cover was supposed to come back looking like a bible but it came back looking box of fuckin’ Pepto Bismal. (Everybody laughs) We were so fuckin’ pissed off.

How do view that album now?

BILL: I can’t even listen to it! (Laughs) Most people say, ” I listen to it every day.” I say, “Well stop it!” (More laughter) Don’t get me wrong, there’s some good songs on that album. Some of those songs have really stood the test of time, but we’ve come a long way since then.

The next album was Subliminal.

JOHNNY: We recorded that one at FTM Studios. It was our first time in a big studio with a professional engineer who had his shit together and was really quick. We were kind of slow compared to him. He’d have the tape set up quicker than we could be ready for him. It was really fun. It was a really cool experience but the budget was limited. Even though we got it financed, we didn’t have the money to spend the proper amount of time in the studio to make sure everything was right. There’s a lot of stuff that slipped through the cracks. It’s hard because every time we listen to it, we hear those little things over and over.

What does “B.A.T” stand for?

BILL: Bong A Thon. We wrote that a couple of years ago. We were at this huge annual party up in the mountains. Johnny and I had been up all night. I had drunk a gallon of vodka. I had to be on stage in an hour and a half but didn’t give a fuck because it was the biggest party in the world. We’re all partying and this cop pulls in and says you have an unlawful gathering. Disperse or you’ll be arrested. All these fuckin’ long hairs are like, “fuck you!” I was like, “fuck this, I’m out of here”(laughs). It could have been because I had drank vodka all night and was a little bit more paranoid than the average guy around me tripping on five grams of mushrooms. But all these frogmen came over the hill, had weapons, raided the entire party and tore everyone’s vehicle apart. Gary Bell from Dig Six Down was with me. It was his birthday. I woke him up and drug him out of his tent. I was like, “we gotta go dude, the place is being raided.” I remember seeing Gary puke that morning. He puked so fuckin’ hard; his muscles were coming out of his back. I’d never seen anything like it in my life.

Before you tell me about the new CD, let’s talk about the record deal you just signed.

BILL: The way it came about is a guy who used to be a guitar tech for Angelic Rage (A former Colorado Heavy Metal band) He came to our shows several times and loved us. He had some friends who worked at Feyline back in the day. One of them had since branched off and bought part of a record company in L.A. I’ve had smoke blown up our asses so many times that I just handed a stack of our CD’s to the guy and said “give ’em to whoever, if they like it, cool, if not fuck it.” And this guy ended up calling.

What’s the name of the label?

BILL: Saturn Records. We’ve been dealing with him for like, seven months now. At times, he can be a total fuckup, but he has made some things happen for us. Things are going really good. As of last week, another company committed to buying 150,000 copies of our new CD.

What company?

BILL: Industrial Strength Records. They are a huge Punk label. They don’t normally deal with bands like us at all. When Johnny and I were out in L.A., we met the owner of that company and turned him onto our product. He liked it and contacted our record company.

How has being signed changed your lives?

JOHNNY: Well, it hasn’t changed our lives financially. Right now, it’s just a lot of small steps put together. It’s hard to see from our perspective what exactly is happening. Over the last year, we’ve had a number of tremendous things happen all just on the small steps we’ve taken. Things are definitely moving forward, but maybe not as fast as I’d like them to.

DEVON: Things really haven’t changed at all. I mean, I still work a regular job. I’m still in debt (Laughs)

Your new CD is called ROGUENATION. Are you recording a new album as part of the new deal?

BILL: Well, you have to understand, in the history of this band, any time we’ve come in contact with money, we’ve talked that person into spending it on us (Laughter). This band has recorded three full-length albums but only spent $300.00 out of our own pocket.

How did you manage that?

BILL: Because we’re smart motherfuckers! (Much Laughter) When we met this guy, we didn’t give a fuck if he was a record guy, we didn’t give a fuck if he was a gay zombie, we didn’t give a shit, you know what I’m saying? He had money. That’s all we needed to know.

I still fail to see how you talked him into paying for you to record

BILL: I used Jedi mind tricks on him. I said, “We need to go in and record.” After about three times, he said, “You know what? You need to go in and record.” (Laughs) It’s all good though. When he heard the dry mix of the record he was blown away. We’re pretty impressed with it too.

Did you have a records worth of material to record when you went into the studio?

BILL: When we told this guy we wanted to record, we only had like, three songs written. But my band is very talented. They threw together more songs than I could possibly write in the time it took to go into the studio. Half the album was written within the confines of the studio.

I bet being together for so long has helped the band work well under pressure.

JOHNNY: Absolutely. I mean what has helped us out in so many situations is that we’ve kept the same fuckin’ four members for years now. None of us have fucked each other’s girlfriends…

BILL: Or at least admitted it

(Everybody Laughs)

JOHNNY: You can only get better with practice. If you keep the same sports team together for years it would be better. You keep the same band together for years; you get better at writing songs. You get better at expressing yourself.

EA: I’ve heard that most bands break up before they start writing their best stuff. They say it’s usually your third album when you start really writing your best music. This is our third album. The cohesiveness is all together. Things are really flowing for us musically. It really shows on this album.

Sometimes when a band gets to record on a professional budget, they re-record some of their previously recorded songs. Was that the case here?

BILL: They are all new except for three songs. We re-recorded three songs from the first album. We did “Ash Be Green”, which is about very, very good marijuana. We did a song called “Help” which is all about a bunch of our friends, including us back in the day when we were all heavy partiers. And then the other song is called “Drift,” which is all about fake people.

Oh yeah! I have a request. Can “Drift” be officially my song?

BILL: Well the “faggot” part can be about you

And the “freak show” part. I am afterall a freak.

BILL: Yeah, the “freak show” part can be about you, but that song is about fake people. You aren’t fake. You are true to what you believe in. You tell people to kiss your ass and hope they do it. (Laughs)

How is the new album different from Subliminal?

E.A: There is a wider variety of material. There are more emotions. There’s some really heavy stuff on it but at the same time, there is the song called, “Blue” which is dedicated to our friend Vinnie Stotts, (Former lead singer of local band, Typhoid Mary died in an automobile accident) It’s pretty mellow. It’s our rock ballad, or whatever you want to call it. Marilyn Taylor from Esovae sings on it. But there are still seven or eight really heavy songs on there.

JOHNNY: With this album, what was so great was we had the budget to stay in the studio for a couple of weeks and really do it right. If there was something you didn’t play right, you did it again. It was just that easy. We got to double, triple and layer. We got to give props to Rudy’s Studio. Mark Obermeyer is incredible.

BILL: Just a couple of weeks ago, Johnny and I went up to San Francisco and mastered it at the world famous Plant Studios. That’s the place Metallica makes all their records. There were platinum albums everywhere. It was the best fuckin’ studio I’ve ever been in. I was lotioning my tattoo and Jason Newstead walks in the room and starts making coffee.

I think Jason is kind of cute. Did you manage to see if he had a nice bulge?

BILL: Jason Newstead looks like he needs a cheeseburger. I don’t think he has a bulge anywhere.

Well now it’s time I get to talk to cute little mortal Devon. Devon! Let’s play “Lets Pretend with Maris The Great.” Let’s pretend you and I are lovers. Do you think you’d be my bitch or the other way around?

DEVON: I would be the jogger running away from you (Laughter)

Joggers are hot. Do you think you have a jogger’s ass?

DEVON: No. I love girls a lot. Girls rule.

Yeah, every sober straight man says that. Whatever. Why don’t we talk about your musical background?

DEVON: I always liked bangin on shit. I wanted to play drums since I was a young child. I tried playing guitar when I was like, 10 years old. In fifth grade I considered taking up trumpet. I ended up playing drums because it takes no talent (Laughs).

Who inspired you drum-wise?

DEVON: Dave Lombardo in the old days. I think Vinnie Paul is God.

Which bands did you listen to growing up?

DEVON: Slayer, Metallica. I was a big Overkill fan. My musical tastes have kind of changed. I like Sara Mcloughlin, Lisa Loebe. I like Dido too.

I like Dido as well!

BILL: That’s not Dildo Maris, that’s Dido (Everyone laughs)

DEVON: I listen to everything but Country. I like Dr. Dre and Eminem. I love Snoop Dogg.

Why hasn’t Hip-Hop made an appearance in ROGUE’s music?

BILL: Because I won’t fuckin’ rap! (Laughs) Don’t get me wrong, there are some people out there that are fuckin’ great. Dellinger (Chris, lead singer of Blister 66) is a white boy, but he can rap his ass off! I don’t know where he got that much urban. I can’t rap. I don’t like rap music. Eminem is awesome. I probably listen to my Eminem disc more often than I do my Slipknot disc. I like the way he sings, you know what I’m saying? I like what he says. But personally, I don’t like Hip-Hop music. I think it sucks ass. I think there are some great rappers. I think Snoop Dogg is probably one of the most talented musicians out there. We are a Heavy Metal band, not a Hip-Hop band.

What about ROGUE doing something within a Nu Metal vein?

BILL: I’m over 30, so I can’t possibly play Nu Metal. I’ve been playing clubs since I was 14 years old. The biggest difference between Nu Metal and Classic Metal to me is the lyrics. If you listen to old Rock and Roll and Classic Metal, the lyrics mean something. I’m proud to come from that school because our songs mean something. What keeps us current is that we are all really good musicians. We are as tight as sandbox pussy. For you that might be “sandbox anus”

(Much laughter)

JOHNNY: ROGUE is a rock band about tattoos, hot women, Harley Davidsons. I mean, we are a classic Heavy Metal band. We’re not freaks. We don’t change clothes before we go onstage to put on our stage clothes. We’re not fake.

EA, tell me about your musical past, mortal.

EA: Actually, I didn’t start playing bass until ninth grade, which was six years into my musical career. I started playing saxophone in the third grade. I grew up playing a lot of jazz and classical music in my earlier days. I basically taught myself how to play bass over a summer and started playing in the Jazz bands in high school. Then I started playing rock music. Jazz has a certain energy to it that will lift you and move you, but Metal is like, raw emotion and aggression.

You’re such a mellow mortal off stage, but on stage you are a mad man.

EA: In high school I was in a marching band. Marching taught me how to play and move at the same time. There were times on a marching field I’d be running 20 yards and playing music (laughs), so I got used to moving while I played. The more I can move on stage the more focused I become. I love big stages. I can run from side to side and make eye contact with as many people as possible.

Have you ever hurt yourself on stage?

EA: Oh yeah (laughs) In Terre Haute I went jumping off the stage. It was a six foot high stage and a cement mosh pit area. I jumped off the stage. I was like, eight or nine feet in the air. I was trying to avoid landing on this guy and I ended up landing on the heel of my foot. I bruised my heel so bad I couldn’t even walk. The guy came to me after the show and said, “Man, that was so cool when you jumped off the stage. You hit the ground and I saw sparks flying off your bass!” (Laughs) I had ground my tuning peg into the cement trying to avoid this guy.

Who are some of your musical influences?

EA: Gene Simmons, Bob Daisly, Geezer was a huge influence.

In what way do you approach bass playing that might surprise people?

EA: From playing Jazz, I get that real jazzy, walking feel a lot. I don’t do a lot of chords. I do mostly runs inside of where most people would try to hold a chord. I try to hit all those notes, but I just try to run through them. It creates a little bit of a different style and things move a little different.

Well Devon, it’s time for another game of “Let’s pretend with Maris The Great”

DEVON: I thought we already did that.

This is another episode, mortal! Ok…You and I are lovers. We have a nice little house that we settle down in. It’s on the edge of a cemetery. You want to bring some spice into our sexual relationship so that it doesn’t get dull. Could you see yourself pretending to be a robber with a nylon pantyhose over your head?

DEVON: No

Silence Mortal! I’m not finished. You are pretending to be a robber. You climb in through a window in our bedroom. You grab me and tie me up. Then you fuck me in the ass while yanking on my mohawk. All the while, you snarl, “I’m gonna fuck you like the cheap zombie you are until you tell me where your money is!”

(Everybody laughs)

Tell me could you visualize doing this, Devon?

DEVON: I…uh…(Laughs) I…BLAH!

(More laughter)

I can see you are speechless. You think about it and I’ll talk to John. Johnny, tell me about your musical past.

JOHNNY: I started by playing acoustic guitar is church services. My dad is a Methodist minister. I know a thousand fold tunes. I quickly went to Rock and Roll because fold music in churches just isn’t gonna get you any women (laughs). I had a high school band with EA. A long time ago, in the Denver scene we were crotch rockers doing Glam Metal. We had a band called Jes Teel. That led to eventually Bill coming up to me and saying he wanted me to play. They had a show in six weeks and a 300-person fan base. I said yes. I’ve been in ROGUE since.

Tell me about your influences.

JOHNNY: I’m influenced by Randy Rhoades and George Lynch. I like Alice in Chains; I’m a big Dimebag Darrel fan. He autographed my arm. I went over to a tattoo parlor and had them tattoo it to me. Lately, I’m influenced by what they are playing on the A.M. radio because what they are playing on the FM sucks.

At what point did you find out you had M.S.?

JOHNNY: I started slurring my speech and dropping shit. It was weird. I’d pick up a coffee cup and then drop it. I mean, I’m a clumsy motherfucker, so at first I didn’t notice. I started to walk into more walls then normal. Fuck, I mean I walk into ceiling fans (laughs). Then my vision started to get crazy. I started to have tunnel vision, like I had a migraine headache.

When were you diagnosed?

JOHNNY: Last year at Thanksgiving. I had a number of procedures, like a C.A.T. scan a MRI and a spinal tap. It took them a couple of hours to diagnose me.

How did you react?

JOHNNY: I was shocked. I called Bill and I called my parents. I think the Doctor helped because he didn’t beat around the bush. He didn’t try to candy coat it. He just said, “you see this spot and this spot on your MRI? I said, “yeah.” He said, “That is typical of M.S.”

How has your life changed since finding this out?

JOHNNY: Right now my life is pretty much back to normal. I’m doing fine. I’ve had to clean up my life quite a bit. I don’t really drink. I don’t smoke cigarettes. Doing drugs are out. Excessive anything is out. Having MS made me realize what I really want to do. I was fuckin’ throwing clutches for a living. It sucked. There is nothing in life I would rather do than play music. It changed my philosophy a lot. I changed jobs and took a drop in pay so that I wouldn’t have as much stress in my life.

BILL: I can honestly say Johnny getting MS made him a better person. I know that sounds fucked up. Sure he may have to tie his thumb to his forefinger to jack off (laughs) but he is a better person. His view on life has changed. It’s made us a better band; it’s made us tighter as people.

Bill, right after Johnny’s diagnosis, I remember you saying on stage that if one of the members of ROGUE left, you would disband the group. Now that you have label interest, do you think it’s wise to keep that same attitude?

BILL: Well, I hope nobody leaves (Much laughter). We’re at a point now where even if I died, I’d want this band to carry on. We’ve all put so much fuckin’ time into this band. We deserve to be getting paid for what we’ve invested in with our time. We still feel that the four of us together is the key to our success, but I don’t think there is anyone that would want to end ROGUE if someone left. We’ve put too much time into it. We’ve put in too much work.

JOHNNY: These guys are great. I was fuckin’ blind. I couldn’t touch the pedals. They were plugging in my cords. Devon learned my I.V. procedures because I was fuckin blind and couldn’t do ’em. It wasn’t even a question if we would continue on or not. The attitude was “let’s take a break and get you better.” The attitude was always about continuing on.

OK, it’s time for yet another episode of “Let’s Pretend with Maris The Great”

DEVON: Don’t I ever get a normal question?

NO!

(Everybody laughs)

Ok, as you remember, you and I are lovers. This time I want to bring a little spice into our sex life. Do you think you would find it arousing if I licked your ass while you stood on a mirror watching me while you masturbated?

(Everybody laughs more)

DEVON: What the fuck kind of question is that?

It’s a good question, little drummer boy mortal!

DEVON: Maybe for another gay zombie, but not for the drummer of ROGUE.

I see you’re hard to get. I’ll let you stew for a bit and talk to Bill. Bill! Tell me about your spiritual beliefs or lack thereof.

BILL: I’m actually a very spiritual person. None of it came from my family background. My parents are great people. They are not highly religious. I learned how to curse from my parents (Laughs). I have a good old All-American family. When my band tours though Indiana, we can sit in my parent’s kitchen and smoke a joint. My parents don’t get high or anything, but that’s how it is. I became a spiritual person through moving away from Indiana and moving to Colorado. I became really fucked up on drugs when I was younger. I’ve been a singer in a band my whole life. When I was 20 years old, I was in Germany opening for Lynch Mob, you know what I’m saying? A lot of things came at me really fast. I did a lot of hallucinogens when I was younger. I did a lot of acid. A lot of mushrooms. That’s probably why I’m so abrasive and angry. But at least I don’t see things in my bathroom. I just kick someone’s ass now and then (laughs). I became spiritual through pain. I was young and had no support structure in my life other than friends. When I was younger, I didn’t look at friends the way I do now. They weren’t family members like they are now. I didn’t trust anyone. I was a total whore. Even now, you won’t find anyone that looks like me that gets laid as much as I do.

What’s your secret?

BILL: I’ve got a big dick.

How big?

BILL: VERY big. I won’t show it to you.

Describe it

BILL: It’s as big around as this beer can.

Well shit, I’m dropping Devon and coming after you!

(Much laughter around the room)

BILL: The thing is, my dick only gets hard for things that turn me on (laughs). The only time I got hard when someone didn’t turn me on was when I had a bladder infection. This big, black nurse that looked like she was on the pro wrestling circuit, rubbed this green crème on my balls. My dick got as hard as Chinese arithmetic in about 20 seconds. She shoved this big steel thing down my dick. She told me I didn’t have a bladder infection, but had a total complex about ugly people getting my dick hard!

(Everybody laughs)

Let’s talk about the local scene. You used to run a place called The Blitz Room. Tell me about it.

BILL: I had a chance to run a club and pretty much own it. I used it to better my band and everything, but I used it to help bands. I enforced my beliefs on the city, which at the time was unity. It still is. I believe people should be loyal to each other. That was pretty much the basis of what my club was about. Did I like sacrificing every weekend of my life for three years? Hell no, who would? Does it offend me now when people I helped out talk shit about me? Yeah, it offends me. But, I did that club for a lot of reasons. I was younger and I liked being the man. Who doesn’t? I was good at it and I treated people well. I made a lot of great friends there that are like family to me to this day. Rod from Throat Culture mag and I are great friends. When Throat Culture started, he said, “Hey I want to start a newsletter. Would it be OK if I distributed it in your club?” I said, “sure.” The very first Throat Culture Mag was a napkin that folded into two pieces and my name was in there. Stuff like that makes me proud.

What about the local scene today?

BILL: I love a lot of the bands. Do I dislike some of the people in the scene? Oh, yeah. Who wouldn’t? They’re shit talkers. But there are plenty of people I like. Donny Crisp (guitarist for A Band Called Horse) has helped me in more ways than I can count. When no one else believed in me, he did and I’ll always respect him for that. Chris Dellinger is another guy I respect. Even though him and I have had professional disagreements in the past, I respect Chris Dellinger as much as anyone. He reminds me a lot of myself, except you don’t want to suck my dick as much as you want to suck his, thank god! (Laughter) I actually heard you would like to fuck Chris if he were a man (More laughter).

If you owned a record company, whom would you sign locally?

BILL: Tread and Typhoid Mary. I know those guys would die and bleed for me. My favorite sounding local band is Rocket Ajax. There’s a new band I heard recently called Soul Pilot. I think they are an amazing sounding band. They sound a lot like Staind.

Devon! Let me ask you a question

DEVON: No, Bill was talking

Well now I want to hear from you, studly mortal! What do you think is the biggest mistake local bands make?

DEVON: (Long pause) I uh…I don’t know…you caught me off guard by asking me a normal question

(Everybody laughs)

What about you John?

JOHNNY: The biggest mistake is that bands don’t give themselves a chance by staying together long enough. You’re not gonna be Pantera with your first song. It takes time. If they don’t like your third album, right your fourth album. If they don’t like that, write your fifth album. Believe in yourself. Keep shoving stuff down their throats until they realize what you already know, which is you’re a good fuckin’ band and somebody needs to hear ya.

EA: This is the music business. You’ve got to treat it like a business. Unless you can show the record companies that you can make money by doing it yourself, they’re not gonna invest their money. You’ve got to have a product that you can show them will sell. You’ve got to bust your ass.

Ok then, final question is for Bill. Bill, let’s pretend I’m new to Denver and am putting together a band. Its called Bill Is My Big Fat Bitch. (Laughter) What advice would you give to me on how to make my band as big as possible?

BILL: Well first of all you’d have to change the name of your band (Laughter). My main advice to bands would be to promote themselves heavily. Get out there and go everywhere. It doesn’t matter who doesn’t come to your show. It matters that you get as many things with your fuckin’ name on it out there as possible. Secondly, don’t fuck with me (Laughs) If you’re in this town, don’t talk shit about me. Do most clubs call me everytime a new band plays here? Yeah, they do. They’ll ask me what I think of a particular band. If someone has been a prick to me, I’m not gonna lie to the club owner. The best advice I can give to anyone is to be a good person. Get along with people because every single person that plays in a band or works in the scene can help you. Every single one of them. Every person you blow off or talk shit about is someone who you lose helping you out. Be a decent person and above all, rehearse. Make sure you write songs that say something. Make sure your lyrics mean something to you and then they’ll come across a little more. Get a product as soon as you can. Having a CD is the best thing you can have. Our first CD isn’t the best, but at the time, all of our fans thought it was the greatest. We are indebted to that guy who helped us make it. Without that first CD, we couldn’t have made it up to the second step and the second CD, which was better. You have to build a history for your band. Build a history on positive thinking, build a history on being cool to people and build a history on getting a product immediately. Without a product, you can’t tour.

Any final comments?

BILL: Yeah, The fact you can ask us some of the questions you do and we can take it…honestly, most gay people would have offended someone in the scene by now. It’s nothing against gay people, you know what I’m saying? You, simply don’t give a fuck. I respect you for it, because you simply don’t care. You like it in the asshole, I am an asshole so…(Laughter). I’m an opinionated person. You speak your mind and nobody can fuck with that. Nobody can fuck with real people. You are a real person. You are…real strange. (Laughs)

DEVON: And I’m not gay, so get over it! (Laughter)