Joey Vera of Armored Saint at Milwaukee Metal Fest - PipemanRadio Interview

0:04 Hi, you have done to censure. Wow for you you. This is pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio, and I'm here with Hi Dean, Hi Joey, Joey Vera, my great friend from Armored Saint. We go way back, yeah, yeah, and to see you again. I have to start off right from the get go that I am so excited about this Metal Saint tour. Oh yeah, and the fact that the last date on the tour so far is in the town I brought you to out.

0:50 Of your zip code for the first time. That's right, Hills. I know how trip. What a weird circle that is it is. I think I have to make sure I put it in my schedule because that would be so cool. You got to come out right. I know. Tell me how this tour came about, too, because that's that's killer tour. Well. We we've done a tour with Middle Church in the past, and they're friends of ours, you know, and we actually have to share the same book an agent now, So this idea came up. They have a new record out and we have a new record out, and we were both looking for dates and tours and it's like, well, wait a minute we got. You know, both of us are under the same umbrella at our agency, so we made a few calls and emails to each other and it's like, great idea, let's do it.

1:36 Like it was done in like ten minutes. I love it. It's great. And here you are at Milwaukee Metal Fest. Yeah, I gotta tell you, this is my first time doing this festival because I always have conflicts. It feels like old school, back in the days when I knew you, Like, yeah, I mean, I was at a show last night, violent show, and it was like it remind me of when I knocked my teeth out at the country club and Rasina. It was. It was insane and like all these bands that like it's just a big family reunion here. Yeah, it is cool. It's a really cool vibe here. We were just saying that upstairs in the dressing room, like because this is our first time playing this this one, and it's a great vibe. Everyone's you're seeing all the people you haven't seen in a while, friends and bands, founding the crew, you know, everybody in the organization has been super super cool and it's really really a cool vibe.

2:35 So we're stoked to be here. I think it's also kind of cool that Jamie's running it because he's a musician, so he understands what you go through. Oh you know, and like, yeah, there's a lot of festivals. There's good ones, but then there's a lot of them, like they don't really know what they're doing, right, And I know for somebody like you that might be really frustrating because like, you produce everything, so you're a. Master with all that stuff. So it's got to be us, right if you go to some other festival and they don't know what they're doing and the sound is terrible and all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, you're lucky that Jamie's got this under control. He's done a few now, he's got a funder his belt, so he's got it down. It's great. Everything's cool. And did you know what's across the street? Do you know what's across the street?

3:20 Well, yeah, I think it's is it the chocolate factory or the hotel? It's the hotel what used to be the hotel? Right. Well, it's funny because I didn't even put two and two together. I saw a Milwaukee Metal Fest shirt and that had Damer on the back, and I was doing an interview this morning and we had it as a backdrop, and the dude's like, you know, that's where Dahmer is because I brought up Dahmer because of her song. And I'm like, I can't believe I didn't put that together. And I was looking at him like, that's pretty cool, man, in a sense. It's a sense, in a sense, it's cool.

4:01 I don't know that I want to stay there. It's pretty dark. It's a it's a dark thing. Yeah, right. Uh So the new album, Oh my god, Like, listen, I go from way back where I heard almost every new song you guys ever put out. This album is amazing and it's like the old days with a modern twist. Cool. Thank you. I'm glad to hear that, you know. I mean, we we spend a lot of time writing new songs and making it good. We put ourselves. We have a high bar for ourselves. We want to write great songs, but we don't want to repeat ourselves. We want to keep moving forward exact and it's not an always it's not an easy thing to do all the time, you know, without alienating certain people, certain fan base. You want to you want to expand your horizons as a writer, but you don't want to.

4:56 Totally piss off your fans. Yeah, so how do you do that? You know, I don't really we have a silver bullet answer for that. We just try to make great songs, great music that we like for ourselves and hopefully everybody likes it. So the response has been really great for this album so far, and it's two weeks old now, yeah, and uh where it's been really really great. The response has been really phenomenal. Well, you know what to a couple of things. I want to focus on. What you said is, first of all, yes, you have to be true yourself, because not only being true yourself, but fans can tell if you're not, you know, so you're always going to attract your tribe. You're not gonna please everybody. You found that out probably over all.

5:41 The years of being the artists a long time ago. You know, and so you just got to do you, yes, and because otherwise I find that out too, Like in my radio stations, if you appease to one person, then somebody else's upset. If you're constantly changing to make them happy, you don't make anybody exactly. And we were kind of in our early in our career, believe it or not, and I've talked about this before, we did have a moment where we felt like we had trouble fitting into the music genre scenes that were changing in the mid eighties to the early nineties, and we suddenly felt ourselves like without a place and we started a second guess ourselves.

6:22 And what are we doing? Are we doing something wrong? And it affected some of our songwriting, But that was a brief period of time. And after we made and we came out with Symbol of Salvation in ninety one, that was really the time when we realized, you know what, we just want to write good songs for ourselves and make good music and hopefully people come along for the ride. And you know, along the. Way, we probably disappointed some people, but we've also made a lot of people happy. So it's like, you just have to do it for yourself first and hopefully everyone comes for the ride. And so far, for the most part, everyone has, and it's been We're super lucky that we have this fan base that is supporting us through all of this.

7:06 Yeah, and you know what I've noticed from being on the other side of it. Is people seem to be so. Excited that Armored Saint is doing new music and doing new tours, and you know, it's kind of like I think the people that complain way back and they realize maybe they lost. Something, when they get it back, they realize how great it is. Yeah, and I think that's it. I mean, we've been really lucky, like I said, you know, and one of the things that we kind of was in our benefit. It was the changing of technology and the internet. You know, we became sort of this underground band that was obscure a little bit in the mid to late nineties and early two thousands. You know, we all had different things. We weren't really active. John was in Anthrax and yeah, I was playing with Fates Warning.

7:58 But because of the Internet and social media a little later, we sort of have this renaissance and people started rediscovering us. Some people started discovering us for the first time, which is I mean, it's pretty phenomenal. Like you can't ask for marnat for a band that's been together for like forty five. Years, and especially when you're inactive for a while. And there are so many bands talk about some of the negatives of technology today, but that just shows the positive. That's a positive. That's a positive. It's been for us, you know. And it depends how you use it, you know. I mean, we use technology and the way we write new music and the way that we record new music, but we don't abuse it. We don't use it to.

8:38 Make our band perfect by any means, right, but we use it to capture what we're trying to do, honestly. Yeah, And it's we can work a little faster because of the technology, but we don't make anything perfect. We're not. That's not who we are. We're still a rock band, flaws and all. There you go, that's just a rot bit. We're just a rock band. There it is. And you know, we've been going back to like then compared to now with technology. Forget the music for a second. It must be so as you said, so much easier to get discovered. Like the work you had to do back in the eighties to get people to know you was a lot, you know, and like we talked about, sometimes people didn't even reach out for outside their zip code, and now you probably have listeners in countries you we never thought of.

9:32 That's true. Absolutely, our reach has been expanding since we joined Shoscal media in the early two thousands places we'd never imagined. People are discovering us like for the first time, which is awesome. Yeah, it's great totally because that must feel great after that many years to get new listeners. And yeah, I think what's cool about today compared to then, Like back then we were close in age and now gus who went to shows. My dad would have never gone to an Armored Saint show, and I certainly wouldn't have gone to see somebody my age play. But nowadays you go out there, it's like I've brought my kids and grandkids to shows. Amazing and find out that my grandkids like the same music that I do and I didn't even know it like it, And it just.

10:21 Blows my mind. It is right. You know. I took my grandson to Welcome to Rockville a couple of weeks. Ago, and he, uh, he. Asked me instead of his dad to get him up front and goes, Caauzady, you know how to work the. Crowd and to maneuver through the crowd. It's like you never I would never thought my granddad was that cool like then, Like He's gonna take me to the front and to where the pit is and all that stuff. You know, so it's totally cool when you what does it feel like as an artist when you see like kids like younger than we were back then or out there and know the words to your.

11:02 Songs, It's amazing. It's I mean, it's like I said, we're just blessed that we have that kind of a situation happening. You know, we're lucky that we're still doing this forty some years later. And all the fans that were there in the beginning, like you said, they're our age or a few years younger than us. They have kids and grandkids and they bring them to shows and it's just phenomenal. That's a great thing to see. Absolutely, And so what else do you want to tell the listeners that we haven't covered already. Well, we have three videos out now. Singles are out, Close to the Bone, Hit a Moonshot, and just recently every Man Any Man just came out.

11:50 So the records a couple of weeks old, like I. Said, playing tonight, having a great time in Milwaukee Metalfest, it's going to be a blast. And then in a couple of weeks we get home and we go to Europe in the end of July, we're there in Europe doing We're there for like almost three weeks and we're doing a mix of things, some big festivals, some co headline shows with middle Church, some shows supporting Testament, some shows supporting Sabotage. So friends with both of those guys. So really looking forward to the European trip. And then we're playing the UK Stone Dead Festival at the end of August. Then we have a little break and as we said earlier, we're doing the co headline tour with middle Church starts in November and that's just Western States this time. But we're currently working on doing more dates in twenty seven, potentially with middle Church. I can't release confirm that yet, but we're talking about doing more stuff in early part of twenty seven.

12:48 Well, I'm really excited about everything. The new music is absolutely amazing. Thank you, and I can't wait to see you here. I made sure that nobody could schedule any interviews in your set. Milwaukee Metal Hawsome appreciate it. Thank you so much, you got it, and I appreciate you being here, and thanks for being on the Adventures of pipe Man once again. It's good. It's good to be back here and it's good to see you. Good to see you, my friend. All right man, Thank You for listening to the Adventures of Pipe Man on W for c u I Regio