Different singers, different personnel. Different songs. Different trousers.

Ross McGibbon finds out what happened when the Stone Gods stepped out of The Darkness.

With an album that teeters between cartoon rock fun and balls-out fun, Stone Gods are in a strange place. Add to that the history being shadowed by having partially formed from The Darkness and you have a band in transition.
Toby answers our questions.

How far are your tongues in your cheeks?
- Not as far as some might imagine. Rock music has always had an element of the “cheeky wink”, though, hasn’t it?

Tell me about writing Burn The Witch.
- I can’t, I’m afraid. The boys wrote that before I joined the scrum. What kind of dirt-digging answer were you after? It’s a song about a witch and the traditional method of dealing with them.

Don’t Drink The Water – I can’t decide, is it glam or metal? What do you reckon?
- I thought it was a punk-rock nod to The Who, but to be fair, I am a bass player.

How much fun is it being the Stone Gods?
- Much more fun than not being in Stone Gods. We all share the same sense of humor and we do an awful lot of giggling. Being in a band can be quite an intense experience so it’s terrifically important to add as much levity to it as possible, wherever possible.

How many milli-seconds was it from Justin’s departure to deciding to do Stone Gods?
- It was about thirty minutes, I’m told. I don’t have a calculator with me, but therein lies your answer.

What’s the difference for you with the Stone Gods, as compared with The Darkness?
- They are two different bands. Different singers, different personnel. Different songs. Different trousers.

Can an amp go louder than 11?
- Yes, but the Diezel amps that Dan and Rich have are so ridiculously loud that they rarely go above 2.

If you could dig up a dead musician to join the band as a zombie, who would it be? And what would you call your zombie band?
- Zombies freak me out. I wouldn’t want to be in a band with one. Having said that, though, getting John Bonham on the drums would be neat. I suppose we would be called Dead Zeppelin, or something equally droll.

Bleeping swearwords out of singles – a commercial necessity or artistic evil?
- Artistic necessity. We didn’t bleep, though, I think we’ve done things like turn words around backwards and things like that, on occasion. It all seems a bit silly in this day and age. Swear words are still seen to be more offensive than some of the other lyrical content in popular music around at the minute, which is a bit odd, in my opinion.

What are your favourite songs on the album?
- They are all our children and picking one or two over the others means they’ll all grow up twisted.

What are your favourite albums?
- Personally, Revolver by The Beatles, In Utero by Nirvana, Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying? by Megadeth, Fore! by Huey Lewis and The News, The Milk Eyed Mender by Joanna Newsome and the Oh Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack among numerous others.

Is it me or does the album get softer and more melodic as it goes on before a brief return to kick you in the teeth?
- I suppose so. It’s just a good journey, to my ears.

Heartburn – so are you guys old enough for acid reflux?
Yes, I’m afraid so.

What’s your poison?
- Funny. That was my other suggestion for album title! My poison is White Russians. Or Brandy Alexanders.

vanguard-online

from Bad Robot

British heavy rock band Stone Gods, formed from the ashes of the Darkness, recently played an excellent show with Airbourne at the Carling Academy, Newcastle.

Bad Robot�s Jamie Thomas spoke to Toby MacFarlane (bass), Dan Hawkins (guitar), Robin Goodridge (drums) and Richie Edwards (vocals, guitar) just before they went onstage.

Jamie: Toby, people will know you from your time in JJ72, but more recently you�ve been working with Graham Coxon. He�s a creative guy, but always comes across as very quiet. What�s he really like in person?

Toby: Yes, he�s a strange boy (laughs). Everyone has a character they put on sometimes, so although he is pretty quiet, perhaps some of the mannerisms you see when he�s on stage are slightly exaggerated, because that�s how everyone expects him to act. Jamie: Do you think you�ll be working with him again in the future?

Toby: At this stage I don�t know, it all depends on how people�s diaries line up. It would be nice though.

Dan: We�ve stolen Toby from him, but we might give him back!

Jamie: Moving on to you, Robin, you�ve recently been drumming for Spear of Destiny, now you�ve joined Stone Gods does that bring your time with them to an end?

Robin: Again like Toby said, it depends on diaries. Spear have some dates booked for next year, but they have a bit of a revolving door policy when it comes to their line-up, it seems to change all the time! I think I�m actually their longest-serving drummer, because I was in the band for about three years.

Jamie: You�re best known for your time in Bush. Can you see a Bush reunion happening in the future?

Robin: Gavin (Rossdale, Bush lead singer) has got a solo album out at the moment, so that�s keeping him busy, but who knows? Some day perhaps. Reunions are best left until everyone really wants to do it. I had a great time in Bush but I�m concentrating on Stone Gods now.

Jamie: As everyone knows, Stone Gods came about after The Darkness split. Do you guys get sick of journalists asking you about The Darkness?

Dan: No, not at all. I�m very proud of my past. We achieved some great things with The Darkness, had a lot of fun, and for me it was a great start to my career. If some people don�t like talking about their old bands, maybe it�s because they were in shit bands! The Darkness was my band, and I�m proud of what we did.

Jamie: I recently spoke to Justin (Hawkins) and he was very positive about what you guys are doing with Stone Gods. Have you had a chance to listen to Justin�s new band �Hot Leg�?

Toby: Are they really called Hot Leg?

Dan: I have to say I haven�t really heard them yet. Do they have an album out?

Jamie: I�m told they�re hoping to release it early next year.

Richie: I�ve heard some of their tracks. I thought it was good stuff. It�s healthy that people are moving on with their new bands.

Dan: Obviously what people are doing now reflects what they�re really into. I think that�s one of the things that brought down The Darkness, in the end. We had different priorities in terms of the kind of music we wanted to make. Hopefully Justin�s now getting the chance to do what he wants to do.

Jamie: You�ve recently been championed by the rock press, with the likes of Classic Rock and Kerrang! giving you a lot of support. How does that feel?

Robin: It�s ok being on the periphery, as long as you�re enjoying your music, but it�s really good to feel you�re actually appearing on the radar straight away. And we�ll prove them right.

Jamie: Your debut album is an interesting mix of styles. A song like �Burn the Witch� is very different to, say, �Magdalene Street�. Did you deliberately set out to make an album with a wide range, or did it just happen that way?

Richie: There was no real agenda. We all got together, wrote a whole load of songs � I think 28 in the end � and then whittled it down to the 14 or so we thought were good enough for the record. When you�ve got four people working on an album, you�re going to get lots of influences coming together, and we�ve ended up with a pretty diverse record.

Jamie: And how are you enjoying being on tour with Airbourne, do they party as hard as their image suggests?

All: It�s fucking awesome.

Dan: You can print that � �fucking awesome�. The tour is going very, very well. They�re a great band and we�re having a really good time.

Robin: And once this tour is over, we�ll be looking forward to hitting the festivals next year.

eGigs talks to the Stone Gods at their recent gig at Nottingham’s Rock City on Thursday 20 November 2008

After being escorted through the weird and wonderful backstage corridors to the rock city dressing rooms, I am greeted by a friendly “hello” and made to feel at home as the band members of Stone Gods take precious time out of their warm up time to speak to eGigs…

After playing festivals and arenas in your former project (The Darkness) what is it like doing a support slot?

Dan: To be honest, it’s a lot less pressure in some ways. You’re the underdog. You’re like…

Robin: …The bonus from an audience point of view. The fans know what they are getting with Airbourne, we have got a few hundred of our fans here, I haven’t done a support slot for twenty years, it’s a good experience, forty minutes- go smash the hell out of yourself, and then get off, you can reach maximum velocity early and stay there for the whole show, whereas if your doing an hour and half, you have to back off a little bit.

Dan: In my career, I’ve supported bands more than I’ve headlined, in the previous project we supported Alice Cooper, Def Leppard, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rolling Stones, Metallica, Whitesnake, the list goes on and on.

Robin: you’re a veteran…

Dan: Yes I’m more experienced at the support slot gig than the headline gig.

Robin: if the billing is right, its okay.

You played the Download festival earlier this year, how do you feel that went?

Robin: I thought it went really well? That’s was our first festival. That was my first gig.

Dan: We were thrown in to the deep end at Download, we had about two days to rehearse with Robin.

After that festival slot, would you consider playing any festivals next year?

Dan: We would like to play every festival.

Robin: Every one.

Dan: We can go out and do our own headline tour at low level, but the main aim of this band is to get out in front of people who haven’t seen or heard us before.

Toby: It’s no good preaching to the converted is it?

Dan: I think we will do well at festivals, we really do suit a bigger stage.

Where did the title for your debut album ‘Silverspoons and Broken Bones’ come from?

Dan: Toby came up with that…

Toby: I made it up out of words I found in the air (laughing) It was just a nice phrase that came to mind. Then I sort of thought of a meaning to them, ‘Silverspoons’ is the perception of the big glitzy thing that people think being a rock band is, whereas ‘broken bones’ is the truth underneath that, the reality of that, revealing the gritty truth, there’s a lot of honesty on the record.

‘Silverspoons and Broken Bones’ has a lot of sounds similar to the legendary bands such as Metallica and Megadeth to name a few, was it your intention to sound like these bands? Did you want to create a more rocky, darker sound than your previous band?

Dan: It’s a different writing process, we all write together, the resulting sound of that is your band sound, and so the people in this band listen to heavier stuff really, so I think that’s where it comes from, if someone’s playing a riff and someone’s goes that sounds great, we will work with it. It wasn’t a conscience decision. It was enjoyable to get really heavy as it wasn’t something I had a chance to do with my previous band.

Robin: Its just a natural sound, it like the equivalent of shaping a balloon, when you blow a balloon up it becomes the shape it is, you cant look at it an d try to put an extra bulge in, you just cant do it.

‘Silverspoons and Broken Bones’ doesn’t seem to have been given much exposure, why is that?

Robin: Its still early days yet, don’t forget its not been a major release from a major label, there’s been no massive campaign, everyone is geared up to the idea that next summer everyone will start to warm to the album.

Even though the album will be a year old, that’s irrelevant, your album could be two years old before anyone really cares about it, If it was the second album we would be dead in the water by now, but because its our first album people haven’t gone “I’ve heard that and I don’t like it”, they simply just haven’t heard it.

So the fact that we’ve got this tour and Black Stone Cherry tour, the two best tours this quarter, and we are on both of them means we get exposure that we haven’t had before. So by next summer we should be playing T in The Park, Leeds, Reading etc, and that’s when the album should land, and we will probably release ‘Burning Witch’ again.

It’s been a success in download terms but it hasn’t really been exposed to the general public in my opinion, and I know radio stations will play it if the punters like it, they play what people want to hear. Commercial radio stations are interested in getting people listening so they play what people want to hear.

Toby: So far it appears people would quite like to listen to us.

Dan: It’s a new band, people can talk about previous bands we’ve been in.

Robin: It doesn’t sound like the Darkness, doesn’t sound like Bush, so it’s not a natural migration.

Dan: It’s so different we have to find our fans, we expected it to be a journey, but you know we are happy with the way its going to be honest, I think people would have been really dismissive if we came out using our previous bands sound.

Toby: Look who we used to be (in a sarcastic tone)

Robin: It’s a longer path, but it validates you a lot more, if you play to people, and your exposure is universally accepted as great, that’s exactly our we prefer to work it, In my old band (Bush) we started at 240 in the American charts and worked our way to the top ten over a year, working and working, it didn’t matter how old the album was.

eGigs would like to thank Robin, Dan, and Toby from the Stone Gods for their precious time just before going on stage.

egigs.co.uk