Dead Boy Productions

 

We’re here with the Guana Batz. Guys, go ahead and introduce yourselves. 

Pip: I’m Pip the singer of the Guana Batz

Johnny: I’m Johnny the bass player

Alex: I’m Alex the current drummer, I guess we’ll say, right?

Pip: The latest drummer

Alex: The latest drummer

Pip: Gino the guitarist is in some bar somewhere getting hammered 

So the first thing I am going to say is that we actually saw you a few weeks ago at Musink and we had a good time. We went for the bands. I was going to ask you your perspective on the whole thing because from our side the sound was kind of muddy 

Pip: Obviously we couldn’t hear the sound from out front, that whole room just wasn’t designed to have bands play, and it’s like an acoustic nightmare. They did what they could with drapes. The warned us during the week that the sound wasn’t ideal, but onstage it was fine, we probably had the best sound in the room. 

Did you guys wander around and check out the rest of the convention, what did you think? 

Alex: It was alright, it was kind of cool. It was big, it was definitely quite big, there was a lot of people, a lot of artists and the whole tattoo side was crazy, but I thought it was a cool thing, just more control over it next year. 

I thought for sure it’s going to happen again next year. How did you guys get into that how did you get that gig? 

Pip: Through Tiger Army originally. We played with Tiger Army at the end of last year at the Wiltern and it was kind of tied in with that. They said hey we want you to do the Wiltern and also if you are interested Musink, so we didn’t even know what it was at that point. Bill, the guy who was putting it all together contacted me and said do you guys want to do it and then he tied that in with the Hootenanny. Hey if you do Musink I will guarantee you a spot on the Hootenanny as well. 

Oh so you are going to be on the Hootenanny too? 

Pip: It just kind of all tied together pretty good. It was a really good show for us, I think. There was a lot of people there and hopefully we turned some people onto us 

As far as playing shows around here, how often to you play shows, because I really don’t see anything like a tour 

Pip: We are starting to do more shows around here. For years we didn’t just because it was a logistical nightmare, our drummer and guitarist still live in England, so to get together to do a show over here would basically cost the promoter a lot of money to have to fly a couple of them in. Myself and Johnny have lived here for a long time, so they would just need to fly two in, but that is still expensive and we’re not really prepared to tour because of family commitments. We’re not really interested for being on the road for weeks at a time. To fly them out here for just one or two shows isn’t cost effective so we just came up with an arrangement with our manager and the guys in England, so we basically have a U. S. Guana Batz and a European Guana Batz 

Do you play any of the European festivals 

Pip: When we play there, we use our guys from England, the drummer and guitarist, and our manager has just given us free reign to do whatever we want over here with Alex and Gino on guitar and drums so once we found that out we basically found some good local musicians, local to where we live. Alex is a pretty well known drummer in his own right and then Gino we have known for a long time. It all came together pretty quick and it needed to because this was a month before the Wiltern. We had to get ready for that and it worked out real good. We’re actually a tighter band here because we get to rehearse. When we go to Europe we don’t rehearse, we just go onstage cold and it takes a couple of songs to get going, but here we rehearse every week.  

Not to get too, too personal, but going from England to Southern California, why? Why did you come over here? 

Pip: Basically we both got married to American girls. I met my wife Heidi in England, when we were playing like 16 years ago and you have to choose between rain and sun so I chose the sun. Johnny came over a couple of years later and he met his wife here and they got married. 

Whereabouts did you originally move to? 

Pip: Originally San Diego. He still lives in San Diego. I live in Lake Temecula area. 

I’m from Riverside and he’s from Corona. 

Pip: Not far at all. 

One of the ideas that I came up with was to meet at Pechange, but I didn’t know if you guys would be into it.

 
Pip: I go to the buffet there quite a bit. We kind of got our foot in the door at Pechanga. We might be playing there. There’s this lady that puts on all the bands there is kind of all interested in having us and in fact when Setzer cancelled on New Year’s Eve, because he got sick, she was trying desperately to get a hold of us to come stand in and play and it wouldn’t work because Johnny was in England at the time anyway, but oh man that would have been cool to go play to Setzer’s crowd and kind of scare the crap out of them. 

Is there ever going to be a new album? 

Pip: Yup. We’re working on it right now and it took a little while just because we are all new musicians together and Alex doesn’t really come from a rockabilly background, so it took a little while to gel with ideas and the sound. The first couple of songs were a little slow going, but now it’s accelerating. I think by the summer we’ll have the album out 

So you don’t come from a rockabilly background what kind of background do you come from 

Alex: I was the drummer in Finch. I was in this back called Red Net Radar that was like rock and roll. Finch is still going, we had a gold record, did TV shows a major label deal and all that junk 

Who’s putting out the record are you doing it yourself? 

Pip: The only people we have approached so far is Hellcat and they were like …..eh we are kind of full for the year, but I think until we actually have a product in hand it isn’t really worth trying to beat on doors trying to get people interested because it has been so long and people think who knows what it could sound like. We are going to put it out ourselves I would imagine but  if we get an offer or whatever. It’s almost like you don’t really need a label anymore 

The product sells itself really 

Pip: Yeah we will have distribution in Europe because that has always been our biggest market, but for over here at least to start we will see what happens 

When the album comes out what about touring, because you know with an album comes touring to really push it. 

Pip: That’s the problem. We are just gonna rely on the name the Guana Batz to sell it. Imagine having to go work to sell it (laughs). We have a really good agent, Deborah, from Devil Doll, and she has finally come to terms with the fact that we cant go away for weeks on end, so she’s booking us on long weekends around the country and if we can do that for a while and build a name up where its more cost effective for us to do a week or two weeks well OK because at our age there is no more sitting in the back of a van and going to play shows to try and build the name up. We did that 25 years ago. 

It’s hard being married with kids 

Pip: Yeah I stay home with the kids. I have to take them to school and pick them up. My wife works. She can’t work and take care of the kids. Johnny is in the same situation and it’s just a big pain in the ass. It’s not something we definitely won’t do at some stage, but right now the money just isn’t there to make it worthwhile. 

I was talking to Dan driving down here and one thing that pops up on the internet a lot and even on flyers is the term legendary psychobilly band. How do you feel about that? Some people would accept it wholeheartedly and other people would think oh well….and be a little more modest about the whole thing. What is your take on it? 

Pip: It’s cool. I don’t know. Its kind of hard to take it too seriously because I still cant really get to grips with psychobilly as being a real serious kind of music. I understand legendary as being Chuck Berry and Eddie Cochran so to say a legendary psychobilly act is a bit of a contradiction to me. We were really I guess the second psychobilly band. We were inspired by the Meteors, that’s how we formed the band. There really wasn’t any other psychobilly bands then and we were kind of the next ones and we put a more fun spin on it. The Meteors were definitely like 666, the devil, blah blah blah and we just weren’t really into that side of it so I think we went a little more rockabilly and just filled that void for people who were ready to get out of rockabilly, but weren’t really ready to get into the Meteors. We’ve kind of filled that gap and I guess when you have been around 25 years I guess “the legendary” kind of works. 

What do you think, Johnny, legendary? 

Johnny: I don’t mind being a legend!