PipemanRadio Interviews Gringo Star at Shaky Knees 2023

0:04 Hey, you love them too, that's sure. I'm come, I'm wow for you. Wake Up America. It's time for the Adventures of pipe Man on W four C why dot com. West Palm Beach is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the pipe Man, to the show still less the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe MANW four c Y Radio.

1:00 And I'm here with Ringo Star. Yes from Atlanta, Georgia. Yeah, I heard. You guys are locals here, but I've been doing it a long time around here, so that's cool. You're here at Shaky Knees. I love it, born and raised, love it. And you kind of remind me. Okay, so you got the name that reminds me of Ringo obviously, but you remind me of like one of the Ramones, Johnny. There you go. So you guys had some rain here for your show today, But like that, that's good though, because the people are having fun in the rain and stuff. Not so good for the artists sometimes. But how was it into a kind of like a woodstock, right right? And so we kept the gear dry. So hey, mission accomplished. I mean, honest, some of the best shows I ever saw were downpours totally personally.

1:59 I mean it's it's good. I mean, you're gonna be here anyway, you might as well get rained on. It's better than the heat, that's that's for sure. I know it feels like fall. I mean, you know, I was looking over my shoulder on the stage to the big say, I think peach tree people. Yeah, And I didn't even realize it was raining like that because it was hard to tell with the cannonpy And now I looked out it was like, oh my gosh, it's raining and kind of got Mesris for a seconds. Yeah, we were talking before the interview. It's like, don't trust the weather man. It was supposed to stop at eleven and then stop at two, then stop at four. Now I think six gonna rain the whole time, no doubt. But yeah, he listened like you said, better than heat. Because I did a festival last year in France called hell Fest, and it was literally hell. It was a hundred It was one hundred and four degrees, like literally south of France. Yeah, it's Clisson near like Nons and oh my god, it was brutal. I was doing interviews out side because it was cooler outside the press tent. Was like you were in a sauna. It was unbelievable.

3:07 So I'll take the rain any day of the week over that for sure. But it doesn't matter. Like you said, the best gigs sometimes or when it's raining and you have a little mud fest and everybody's just having a blast, you know. And everybody definitely has a blast at Grigo Star, don't they. It was a warm welcome and the crowd had a great vibe and I was mesmerized. So tell our listeners that haven't ever heard you before, what tell them about Grigos Star? What you're not from a genre standpoint, but you as an artist, how you would describe your music? We play a variety of rock and roll and that's me and my brother peeve been playing together since two thousand and seven. Just we write songs and recorded songs and tour around and played the songs nice. And you guys were like, what upen in fourteen or something when you first started or something like that playing He was in the Yeah, he was like eighth grade, seventh grade. That was in high school. It was all his friends. I was like tagged along and one of the guys was kind of a future He was like a trombone virtuos. So, I mean it was everything. He could do it all. But he ended up playing with like the Ringling Brothers circus. But we all kind of we just backed him. He was like he would just solo for like it was like a blues rock band that kind of just he would get out the trombone and go on for a while. Nice and so you went from the middle school dance to shaky knees. Yeah, yeah,

4:40 it's been uh, you know, we played that. We did a music midtown here actually right right. We played the when it was like ninety nine Nix and whatever back in two thousand and five or something. We played a music midtown like our old band name band Nice and So what what do you think started this whole whole passion for music before that? Even? Like what was that for all of you? What was that first time that you knew music is where you want to be. When I saw a kiss O Dynasty tour, Wow, when you learn to hit an e chord, there you go. When you learn to hit an chord, I love it. And I'll tell you that's impressive too, because I played drums and I played guitar and I sucked at both. So more power to you guys for being great music. I remember the movie La Bambo was pretty influential, Like I was like, holy shit, nice. I just think for me, it's I rated my dad's record collection and dropped the need on led Zeppelin for and I think that kind of haunted blew my mind a little bit. Yeah, That's how I kind of started. Was my then older brother, he was eleven years older than me. I used to steal his albums and play them.

6:04 That's what did it. And then to his point with the Kiss. Okay, so I'm from New Jersey. First record album I ever owned in my life. I was at Seaside Heights at the Boardwalk playing a Carney game where they gave away albums, and I saw these four dudes on this album that was black and they were all in makeup, and I was like, that's what I want. And was the original Kiss album when it first came out. I won it at a Carney game. That was the start of my journey. So we guys got going on after a Shaky Niece. We're playing a few US shows and then we're doing We're releasing the record June second and playing a few dates up to New York and then we're going to Europe for about like thirty shows and then doing some stuff later after that. You know.

7:00 Yeah, Europe is a cool place. They still love like rock and roll in music so much over there. Like I love doing the festivals over there because it's like, holy shit, these people, Yeah, dude, people are like they're definitely it's a heightened crowd. I think, like they're in the you know, I mean, this has been great today. Yeah. Also, but it's a it's it's funny. You know, it's funny. Is you know there's some bands I've seen in Europe that I was like that I loved in the eighties. I was like, holy shit, I didn't even know they were still a band and they were over in Europe all this time, A huge in Japan. Yeah, So tell us about the new album. We have a new album coming out June second, called On and On and Gone. We recorded it in the past year, and how many songs Pete recorded it like, oh nice? Yeah. Yeah. We did it kind of different this time, with all of us kind of more live in the room, and it was fun. It was right after the pandemic was kind of getting I was easy up a little bit, and it's nice to get back together. And yeah, we've diden recording in our own studio for I don't know, probably about ten years, and that's just how we do it now. So I love it. Do you think the pandemic

8:33 actually, if you're gonna take something pause with a pandemic, do you think it helped you create even better music because you had that chance to like kind of get off the hamster wheel and create for a change instead of like just we did that much creating during the really peak of the pandemic unfortunately, Like I know a lot of people did, and they were like, I'm doing all this stuff, and I was like, wow, I did nothing during that, Like I took a break, right, I listened. I mean, if it's a forced vacation, I might take it. It was kind of it was kind of cool because I was on tour doing all these festivals and then all of a sudden done. I'm like, at first I was really bummed about it, and then I was like, oh, it's kind of cool just hanging out and not having through shit for a while. But then that first festival back, I remember sitting in the middle of like a crowd of like one hundred thousand people. I'm like, oh my god, I feel alive for the first time in two years. I think that's the key word right there too. I mean I think humans need that. Yeah, they got it. They like to be in big around each other.

9:41 Well that's how this whole like that. We started playing shows a couple of months ago leading up for the record and the release, and that's I would say that it's been awesome just getting to go back and travel around and play shows again. It's been amazing, Like after not like you know, it was you forced onto. Yeah, and you know, I felt bad for like bands that we're doing like live streams, because how to me, how hard is it to perform without the audience? Like I think the audience was part of it, Like, so you feed off their energy, So like what energy are you feeding off of if you're doing a live show? Forget requiring, but doing a live show to nobody? We did. We did one, and we did some liquid lights, like a friend of our, actually a legacy member, Light Ray, did the liquid lights and so it was fun and we were hanging out. But then this windstorm, rain storm.

10:37 Yeah, we had a big stormhead we were kind of on a back porch area, but we also it was like we only did one, I will say, and it was fun. It was like a Serran Nevada thing, so they send like seven cases of beer to ah Nice so it was like it was it was. It was actually pretty fun. But yeah, it's magic doing a bunch of I can't imagine like people were doing them like weekly day lead whatever. It's like, I'm like, I had a buddy texta and her from it a long time and he's like, have you guys thought about doing a live stream? And I was just like didn't reply to the Yeah. I think that I saw multiple artists doing like the live like making monetizing it, finding a way to Yeah, I know some artists have made more doing live streams than they did touring. Yeah, people were doing like you know, getting tipped through you know whatever some digital service, and there was definitely people succeeding with that stuff. It seemed like but I just you know, I don't, we didn't. We didn't really, you know, no way you gotta pay if you want to coach. It's like I don't. I mean, it's just it was fun to do one. I really didn't watch any bands doing that. It's just not my here, it's the future. Let's hope that's not the future because like audio quality or even the five thing during the pandemic though for people, because it was kind of like felt more like you were interacting with people then yet you know, well, the ones that I thought were cool were the ones like like Lacy Stem

12:09 used to do these ones like every week, and she was playing songs that the people in the chat were requesting as she's doing it. So I'm like, now, that's cool. But to your point with the audio quality, that's what bothered me the most because that's when I found out how much musicians don't know anything about sound quality. Yes, right, some of those streams. I was like, holy shit, people are listening to this. Did you want to say something about that. I don't stand in agreement with you or sit in agreement with you. Yeah. Yeah. It's like doing phone or interviews. That's why I like doing this face to face. I do phoners and sometimes the artists will call in, and I had one recently.

13:01 It's walking down forty second Street in New York doing the interview. I'm like, dude, did you make him do a zoom No. I hate God. I hate trying to get it, Like I hate can we just talk on the phone, Like I have clients that do that, and there's like do you need to see me? Like I mean like looking at my computer right now, I mean even if I was clothed, and it's not even necessary. Most of the time, I have clients that like they need to ask a question like I'll send your zoom link. I'm like, just call me. It's a two second phone call. What we need zoom for. It's like people are now addicted to I must do zoom. I hate zoom because their audio quality sucks. It all sucks. Like when I have to do phone or interviews and the publicist is asking to do zoom, I'm like, zoom is not radio audio quality, dude. I accidentally, like there was like some interview for something and it was accidentally not on the video aspect, and the person was like, do you might turn And I didn't even realize that it wasn't, but I was just like, oh, Like she like demanded the video get turned on so she could. I do the opposite.

14:09 I do the opposite, Like when I you we use Skype in the studio for audio because we can manipulate it to be better. And sometimes the artists will call in and they'll put the video on the I'm like, yeah, turn the video off. It gives us better audio quality that it's not good with the video on. You know, it's like I'm the opposite. Turn it off. I don't need I don't need to see it audio. So how do people connect to you on the socials, on the web and all that, and get the new album went drops, get merch all that good stuff, gringo star dot net. That's that's easy. Can find it all there. Everybody order is the new album and whatnot. Yeah, and they definitely have to pre order the new album. They have to buy your merch or they can't listen to my show anymore because that's the only way artists, you know, can keep playing nowadays. It's true, you know, people don't realize how important that our Mario just help to get made. And that's a cool special Lady friend made it, Katie shave it out. It's a cool shirt. Nice any any final words you want to give our listeners.

15:30 It's a really cool shirt. Get the shirt. Get the shirt or you can't get with the mustache. Oh, just leave it right there. That's why people should buy the guy with the mustache. Just leave it right there. Thanks a lot of guys for being here at Shaky Knees and thank you for being on the Adventures pipe Man. Thank you, thank you, Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipe Man. I'm wi you for CUI Radio. H