PipemanRadio Interviews Velvet Chains About Suspicious Minds & More

0:04 Hey, you have then too, censure forty wow, crazy young wyke Up America. It's time for the Adventures of Pipeman on W four C why dot com West pomp Beats is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the White Man. We go ahead a tray h k oh cow because to un baby, I can't you see? This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio and I have a return guest, and their only returned guests if their music is badass those otherwise they can't come back. So you know that you're gonna want to listen to this because man taking this first, We're going to talk about this great tune that's been around forever and this killer band making it their own. So let's welcome to the show. Velvet Chains. How are you? Hey, Hey, that's a great compliment. Thank you so much. We're super excited to be here.

1:30 I'm super excited to be here. I'm Nil's the bass player and founder of the band and not doing great. Thank you for having me. You know well, I love hearing there. How often do you hear that the bassis is the founder of the band. I love that. Yeah, No, it's the only way to be heard and listened in the band if you're the bass player, right unless you that's right. Well, yeah, it's quite unique, I suppose. Okay, so I have a trivia question for you before we even get arted. Okay, yeah, So why is Paul McCartney a bass player? That's that's a great question. Can I put my own twist in it? Or I don't know to say whatever you want.

2:17 It's your world of just living in it right now. Yeah, all I know is that Rolling Stone magazine put him in the list of best guitar players ever. So I'm not even sure he's a bass player anymore. But no, I don't know what the answer is, so please go ahead. So there, there's that's part of it right there. Because he was a guitar player. He never played bass, and when the Beatles got together there was George and John, they didn't they didn't need another guitarist, they needed a bassis. So he changed to bass. And that's also they say why he's ranked as one of the top bass players ever, because he plays it more like a guitar. I love that. I love that. I did not know that. I love that, and I actually I didn't know it either like till like a year ago. I mean, I was like, wow, that's such good information. I actually relate because I sometimes feel like I play my bass a little boy like like I would a guitar. But I love it. That's so cool. I have a lot of comment with Paul McCartney. See, and I love that too, Okay. I love bassis that like are out there and you know, really taking full advantage of the instrument instead of just what people think it's meant to be. Just like see, to me, music is experimentation anyway. There are no rules. I believe in that one hundred percent. And I agree. I'm all about, Hey, that's I do what I want with my bass and whatever works, and there's no limits to to if I may do something wrong, I may

3:51 do some right, but if I feel like it works, then let's go with that. So that's so cool. And see, that's what makes you or any other musician unique is when they have their own way of playing their instrument. Yeah. I really dig that too. I'm very unapologetic about how I play my bass and how I live my life in general. And I could see that, and that's a little bit more uniqueness to each musician. So that's so cool. Yeah, I love it. So speaking of uniqueness, okay, so you have this well known song that totally I found was unique without changing it so drastically that it's not the same song. See that's one thing too. I think if you're going to cover a song and record it, it should have your own sound, but still have the original sound.

4:48 And what you did with Suspicious and Suspicious Minds from Elvis is exactly that. Yeah, thank you for that, and I agree with that that it keeps the song relatable and it keeps it like, oh cool, and it doesn't go too far away from the original version. But we wanted to add a lot of rock and roll to it. And to be honest, I have to credit Jim Kaufman, who was our producer on that song. And we went to him and we said, hey, man, we want to do a cover. We want to do something that we're from Vegas. We want something to honor our city. And he's a huge Elvis fan, and he said, how about this, and he gave us a little bit of the idea that he had. He shared, he grabbed a guitar and shared a little bit and we're like this is sick. So yeah, we went all in with that. But huge credit to him. He's amazing. Well, that is amazing, and that's always a key ingredient. A lot of people don't realize there's so many ingredients to the recipe of making a song.

5:50 It's not just a musician, it's not just a songwriter. There's so much that goes into it. Yeah, and it's never an exact science, right. Something may come completely stem from us. Another song may completely stem from a songwriter that we work with. It may come from the producer. It may be a mix of three, four or five different things. And we try to keep our creativity and our process kind of like that where we're not just boxed into one thing and it's worked out. It's worked out at least for the time being. Yeah. Well, yeah, and it's cool to have different people's viewpoints come into it that maybe you don't notice or you know anything, like a different perspective, because there are going to be different perspectives out there. Funny story, I wrote a song once that I was collaborating with my friends who were a duo. And I'm a book writer, okay, like I'm an author, So I wrote this song and I brought it to my bro like, here, what do you think of this? It's like, what is this a fucking book? But then he turned it into a song, you know, like I thought it was a song, but it was it really he was right, it was a book and he but you know, it's hard too when you're like the songwriter or the musician to like eliminate anything. So sometimes you need some of the outside point of view to make changes, eliminations, additions, because you're like he like, he

7:24 even said to me, what can we take guy here? And my answer was nothing. And I'm like, you might as well just take whatever you're gonna take out of there, because I'm not going to be able to pick. And I love that because for us, it's we got no ego in this right. So I may write something that I'm like, oh my god, this is the best song ever and this is gonna be huge, and then somebody else in the band or a producer or a friend or a family member or whomever. An author could be like you could come and say, hey, man, what if we change this, what if we kill that? And that mayually be what makes the song great. So I just we always try to keep an open mind and again keep ego out of the way and really rely on people that have perhaps more experience, perhaps greater success.

8:11 Ultimately it'll be our decision. Yeah, we like to listen to others, and I think that's so important. It's absolutely important, I think in anything, and you do that, you do in life. The I think the most important question for you, though, is why Usher didn't have you guys come perform Suspicious Minds at the super Bowl. You know, we were waiting for that call and we knew it was going to happen. But the universe, I think his cell phone was broken or he lost our number. It's got to be that. It's got to be that, you know what, it might have been just somebody watching out for you, because all you see on the internet with the trolls is either talking negative crap about Taylor Swift or negative crap about Usher from this super Bowl. And you know what, you were better off without that because you guys are badass and you were You were just on tour in Brazil with Slash, So that's even cooler than the super Bowl in my opinion. Hey, no, for sure, But they say there's no such thing as bad news. Right, So hey, as long as my name is out there, I tell people, Hey, if you like our stuff, comment, If you hate it, comment too. We want to know. So yeah, we love the exposure. But yeah, we were just out with Slash and Brasil and it was essentially mind blowing is probably the best way to describe it. And I don't I don't want a fanboy, but I mean Slash is one of, if not our biggest influence, one of them at least, so yeah, it was pretty epic.

9:41 Yeah see there, you know, at certain points, there's nothing wrong with fanboying out. Like going back to Paul McCartney. I don't know if you watched that documentary where he was with I think it was what Rick Rubin and they were listening to old Beatles songs and Paul McCartney just sat there. At one point he's like, you know, back then, I was just playing with my bloke John, and now I'm listening to I'm like, holy shit, I was playing with John Lennon and he was fan boying out John Lennon from his own music. That's incredible. No, I missed that episode.

10:22 I gotta go check it out. But that's that's wow. That's a great way to say that. Yeah wow, yeah, so see, I see nothing wrong with that. Listen, when you're out with somebody like Slash, I don't care who you are, you could be anybody. I think you could be Axel Rose and still be like, Wow, I'm playing the slack, you know. So there you go. And what was it like playing in Brazil? Because I've heard that brazil are like the most serious rockers in the whole world. And I go to festivals all over the world, but I haven't been to Rock and Rio yet, and that's why I want to go to press coverage at Rock and Rio. Yeah, Brazil is incredible, like most of South America is incredible for rock and roll. And our band is kind of unusual because we have Tucilan's at Brazilian and two Americans in the band born and raised. We all live in Vegas, but born and rased in different countries, so we have a little bit of understanding of how it works down there. But you can never get enough of it. This is our second time going there. Last year we went with Stone Temple, Pilots and the Winery Dogs and we played a couple shows in Rio Soplo. We did Summer Breeze Festival, so we kind of knew what we were going in for, but it's just once you're on that stage and the energy of the fans just brings out that extra rock and roll out of us and it's just so much fun. Yeah, no doubt. So what do you got coming up next? Going forward? Yeah, we're looking at doing well. We are booked for a show here in Vegas. It's a radio industry program radio

11:56 programmers show. It's called Hat Happens, so sure you're familiar with it, and we'll be doing that end of February, and then after that we're actively looking at what's happening. We are trying to get out there again. We're trying to look at Europe see if we're able to jump on something, either support or our own tour, but definitely trying to get that Velvet Chain's name out there. And it's every time that we do a show, it seems like we just grow by leaps and bounce, but it's it's also a challenge to how do we get people to listen to our stuff, So it's always an ongoing battle. But once we're out there, it works. Well, there you go, Well, that people definitely have to listen to your stuff, and they have to listen to suspicious minds be cuz it's pretty killer.

12:43 I just have to say, And if they don't listen, they can't listen to my show. I'll support that. I'm with you there. You go tell everybody how they reach out to you on the web, on the socials, merch all that good stuff. Yeah, we're super active on Instagram. We're a little guilty that we're not too active on TikTok, but Instagram is the way I think we got Facebook too. We will reply to every single message on Instagram, share your stories whatever. Merch our website, velvet chains dot com. That's the way to go. YouTube. We got a bunch of killer music videos in there. Check them out. But yeah, we're very active on Instagram, very cool. I love it. Is there anything else you want the listeners to know that we haven't covered yet? No, check out our Spotify, Apple Music, whatever you use. It helps us a ton if you follow us on there and you check up the music videos.

13:35 They're kind of unique. We got all sorts of stuff going on in there, so hopefully you dig it. I'm sure they will. Thanks for continuing to make us great music. And thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man Hey, thank you so much for having us again mean sometime, thank you. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin on w for CUI Radio.