Shiny Toy Guns

Jenia does a follow up interview with Jeremy Dawson, during STG’s last stop in Montreal, a few weeks back

Shiny Toy Guns was formed in Shawnee, Oklahoma almost a decade ago. Over the years the band has seen one significant change in the group’s lineup. Vocalist Carah Fay Charnow was replaced by Sisely Treasure, who appears to be the perfect fit alongside Jeremy Dawson (synth/bass), Chad Petree (lead vocals/guitar) and Mikey Martin (drums). They have released their debut album, ‘We Are Pilots’, on three different occasions and in 2007 it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Electronica/Dance album. In 2008, they released their second studio album, ‘Season of Poison’,  which includes the hit single “Ricochet”; which hit #17 on the Modern Rock Charts. Their music, defined as electronica/rock, can also be found in the video game Grand Theft Auto 3 and more recently in the television commercial for the new Lincoln MKZ.

I sat down with Jeremy backstage at Club Soda, before their show with the All American Rejects in Montreal, on April 21^st. Chad was also in the room when the interview was being done so he added his input on several occasions. The interview focuses mainly on the history of the band as well as a neat story about what they do when they’re not on the road (hint: it involves going up against Mother Nature).

CONFRONT:  You guys have sat down with CONFRONT in the past…

Jeremy:  We have!

CONFRONT: If one or two of the questions are repeated I apologize!

Jeremy:  It’s totally cool.

CONFRONT:  You guys were in Montreal not too long ago to play a show right?

Jeremy: It was probably about two years ago.

CONFRONT: What was the experience like?

Jeremy: It was good. It was our second one here. We’ve done two here at Club Soda. One was sold out and the other one was almost sold out. It’s good. Montreal is always part of a bigger Canadian tour and it’s like everything’s red and then it switches to blue when you come to Quebec especially Quebec City. It’s like Europe. I’m sure Quebecers use it all the time…it’s a hybrid…

CONFRONT: It’s a lot of different cultures.

Jeremy: Yeah! There’s Western Canada but when you get to Ontario you start to hear a little more French and it’s more cultured, especially Toronto. Edmonton and Calgary and all the other towns are just Canadian. That’s what it is. Then you get here and things begin to blend and worlds begin to collide. You go to the East and it’s like Scottish and everything.

CONFRONT:  Everything’s generally very mixed around here.

Jeremy: Yeah because I live in Los Angeles and it’s a melting pot.  Los Angeles is melted into a segregatory, is that a word? No. It’s very segregated. In the sense that there’s Korea town and Little Tokyo and Canada’s just *He sticks his hands together to indicate how everything is combined*

CONFRONT:  So you really see it when you come here.

Jeremy: Absolutely. I see it immediately. It’s very blended.

CONFRONT: Can you give readers a brief background on how the band was created? Also how it’s evolved especially since you’ve changed band members along the way.

Jeremy: We’ve really only had one true member change since the band formed. There’s a lot of crap on Wikipedia that says we auditioned certain people before the band even existed and they just keep adding their name to it. I could basically make you a man and until you found out you’d be a man and you would have to defend yourself because Wikipedia’s just a terrible website. Our original singer who we started the whole band with was Carah. After a very long tour of about four years we got to the point where we weren’t speaking that much. It had to do with not communicating within the band. A lot of us in the band are very hard headed and opinionated. We’re all still a big family and we all love each other  but instead of going to seek intervention and talking to someone to mend things but we just let a lot of shit that wasn’t there build. There was me, I’ll be the first to admit that, and her and when we got home from the tour we just didn’t speak at all. We just never talked about what had happened. There really wasn’t just one thing that had happened. After that we went to month one, month two, month three and Chad and I were like “What’s going to happen? Is she going to come back? Does she want to come back? She said she does but does she?” She hadn’t contributed anything to the record at all or shown a desire to. We were dead sure she didn’t want to be in the band and wanted to do her own thing that she would be in control of instead of being a part of something that Chad and I were more in control of. Technically Carah and I were the first ones to put the band together. A lot of people don’t know that. We’re a family. We made the decision to go with someone who wanted to be in the band, who was stable and that was a girl named Sisely. Chad and I were facing the situation as “Do we throw the whole thing away or do we take a safer road with someone and continue on.” Was that the right decision? I don’t know. Was it the final decision? Who knows?!  But today in Montreal we’re here!

CONFRONT: You’ve re-released one of your albums three times…

Jeremy: Yeah, We Are Pilots.

CONFRONT: What was the reasoning behind that?

Jeremy: We made our own record with our own money and our own computer. We made 1000-2000 copies. We started to go on tour and we started noticing some of the songs on the records were almost too 80′s or they weren’t coming off live the way we wanted it to. We wanted to change some and drop some. We switched and moved things around and went back into the studio and tweaked things.

CONFRONT: Okay so you wanted to improve it?

Jeremy: Exactly. We had some better ideas. It was still ours. It was a demo. At the very end of the day we did We Are Pilots again for Universal and we went back to New York and re-tracked everything with better microphones and expanded sonically. That was the actual true release of the album.

CONFRONT:  Is there anybody you guys would love to tour with?

Jeremy: I don’t know because you don’t really want to tour with a band that you’re in love with…

CONFRONT: How about if you could play one show with any band?

Jeremy: White Lies. Best band in the world.

CONFRONT: Do you guys, as a band, have any pre-show rituals?

Jeremy: Yeah! It’s really weird. We all kind of punch, slap and spit on each other right before we go on. Of course more the boys.  We don’t want to slug a girl in the face. *laughs* It started as a joke and it’s actually started to move onto the stage a lot. You’ll notice. We’ve gotten e-mails from really young girls saying things like “Please tell me why you guys are fighting! Every night Chad spits in Mikey’s face!” It’s just fun though, that’s all. Chad will walk over to Mikey’s drums while he’s playing and he can’t stop playing and he’ll undo the symbols so it’ll fall off next time he plays and there’s nothing he can do about it. He can’t get up. It’s just funny stuff. When you play 700 shows, we get up there looking for something else to do while we’re playing.

CONFRONT: It also helps the entertainment factor. It always helps to keep the crowd entertained when they see the band up on stage doing something different.

Jeremy: Yeah! It really does. It’s exciting. We want everyone to get crazy.

CONFRONT: What’s a day in the life like for you guys when you’re not touring?

Jeremy: When we’re not touring? We’re writing or chasing storms.  Chad and I live in Oklahoma as well as L.A and we work for the American Red Cross for SKYWARN. SKYWARN is sort of like the marines, the military version of storm chasers. We drive this armored van covered in radar equipment, chainsaws defibrillators, flares, first aid kits, water, food, blankets and all that stuff. We can go into the path of the storm. We’re the first response and the first people there.  It’s crazy.

CONFRONT: What made you want to do that?

Jeremy: We grew up in the middle of Oklahoma. Like every three days there was something. Imagine seeing a tornado so large…

*Chad walks by a moos*

Jeremy: There’s a cow in here. I know this doesn’t happen in Quebec but it does happen in places like Manitoba. Imagine a storm that can take a drinking straw and shoot it through your head at 240 mph, you’d die instantly. All of this stuff happens every day. Growing up we heard about it every day and instead of being afraid of it we were like “Wow, I want to learn more!” Now we’ve taken some of the money we’ve made as a band and invested it into like a 100,000$ tank that can take us into the storm.

CONFRONT: That’s crazy. I’m going to ask you 5 questions the magazine asks every band. What’s the first and last CD that you bought?

Jeremy:  The first CD I bought was probably Milli Vanilli’s Girl You Know It’s True but my first tape was Motley Crue’s Girls, Girls, Girls. The last CD I bought, well I bought two at the same time, was the new Doves and the new Metric.

CONFRONT: What was the first and last show you attended?

Jeremy: The first one I ever went to was when I was ten or eleven and it was Milli Vanilli. I thought it was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I had never been to a big concert so it blew my mind.

CONFRONT: What was your most recent one?

Jeremy: Besides the fact that I see The All American Rejects every day? *laughs* Hey Chad! What was the last concert we went to?

Chad: Uhhhhh. I don’t know.

Jeremy: I can’t remember. Think about how much we don’t want to go see a band.

CONFRONT: I can understand that! So you can’t remember what it was?

Jeremy: If I had to say, maybe MSTRKRFT. Not really a band but it works.

CONFRONT: It counts! Okay so finish the sentence: I would never…

Jeremy: Do that

CONFRONT: And I have never..

Jeremy: Done that

CONFRONT: No one has ever answered it that way..

Jeremy: *laughs* I try to be original

CONFRONT: Finally, looking back what do you want your legacy to be. Either as a band or an individual.

Jeremy: Looking back?

CONFRONT: What do you hope to have accomplished?

*Chad starts singing Don’t Know Much*

Jeremy: Aaron Neville’s here! I didn’t know he was performing tonight. Chad what do you want to have accomplished in 20 years from now and don’t say anything about beer or weed or legalizing.

Chad: I think just being alive would be good.

Jeremy: Yeah! Staying alive!

Chad: If I’m alive in 20 years I’ll be happy. I want to keep breathing!

Jeremy: Also to continue to impact peoples lives with our music..

Chad: Oh man…cheesy answer!

Jeremy: Okay we’re sticking with Chad’s answer!

CONFRONT: Thanks so much for doing this interview!

Jeremy: Absolutely!

I had never experienced a Shiny Toy Guns show until the 21^st and I can honestly say that I’ll see them again next time they’re in the area. Their goal of keeping the crowd entertained was accomplished as the audience sang and cheered for them as much as they did for the headlining band the All American Rejects.

CONFRONT Photographer, Vanessa, had the opportunity to shoot both the STG and AAR sets and her pics will be posted shortly so make sure to check back soon.

Visit the following websites for more information on the band:

www.shinytoyguns.com

www.myspace.com/shinytoyguns