Interview with Shiny Toy Guns synthist/bassist Jeremy Dawson


All of our Fan Of The Month winners recieve a free cd of their choosing. Our most recent winner Amanda requested the debut album by Shiny Toy Guns called We Are Pilots. I had never heard of the band, so I checked them out and what I found was a very cool synth-pop infused rock band that will get your ass out on the dance floor. I know, i know...this isn't normally the type of music that I go for, but I liked what I heard and then went to see the band in concert. I have to tell you, they were BADASS! That sealed the deal and I had to get them on the site to help promote the band! Jeremy Dawson, who plays synths and bass guitar for the band called me up a few weeks later to fill us all in on the group. Basically, think Kill Hannah meets The Killers meets New Order meets...no, forget all of that. They are Shiny Toy Guns, and you should keep reading so Jeremy can tell you all about them.


Anarchy Music: Lets assume that there are people like me who are new to this band. Tell us how things got rolling. This is kind of an extension of the previous band Cloud2ground right?

Jeremy Dawson: Wow, you just went way back! Yeah, if you want to go all the way back to ‘95. Chad and I were actually in 4 or 5 more bands before that. The last moniker we had before Shiny Toy Guns was a group called Slyder. I wouldn’t call it a direct continuation of all that, it’s more of this is where we are now and this is the final morphing of what we have been trying to do since we were 15 years old.

Anarchy: How’s it feel to finally be there?

Jeremy: I would be able to feel it, but I’m too busy. It’s cool, it’s like having seven 9 month old children that are screaming and crapping their diapers and if you turn you head to the left or the right for more than 5 seconds, they’ll dive out of the chair and hit their head. It’s an amazing amount of marketing responsibility and touring responsibility. Even with the team that we have. We have 3 managers, all of the people that work for the record label that we’re signed to, even with everyone working every single day we still can’t get a grip around the things we need to be doing every day. It’s crazy.

Anarchy: You’re from Oklahoma but you left there for Los Angeles, which historically is a tough town to shine in. How did you guy’s make a name for yourselves out there?

Jeremy: In the beginning we started so young in songwriting and wrote so many hundreds of horrible songs that we got to a point where we were developed as writers. We could write lyrics and look at that and say “that is horrible, we’re not going to use that line”. We started at literally 12-13 and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote for a decade before we actually started to do it in more of a public, professional realm. So, when we got to Los Angeles, when you have a lot of other groups or people that move from all over the United States to LA or New York to “make it”, they’re usually just starting or they have a year or two under their belt and they go there green and have to deal with LA and deal with learning how to be a band, how to play your instrument, learning how to write songs. We already went through all of that. All of the things you go through when you’re starting a band. When you think you’re cool, you think you’ve figured it out and you think you’re really good and you realize that you’re not and you humble yourself down to that. We’ve already done that. We’ve been through the phases. So, landing in LA, we’re here, we’re here to work, and take who we are and reflect it through music. We had a very well structured plan and we went for it from that point.

Anarchy: One thing I really dig about you guys is that capture the style of the 80’s in a genuine way. A lot of bands try to do that now but they sound like they’re shoe-horning it in to be trendy, but I understand that you guys aren’t even particularly 80’s fans, right? Is the fact that you’re creating something new why it sounds more genuine?

Jeremy: Well, we’re not from the 80’s and we never got to experience that and have that as a reminiscent angle of songwriting. It’s a very common misconception that when you see or hear a synthesizer or technology in music, you call it 80’s or you call it dance music. That’s not the case at all. Our music is melodic, and during the decade of the 80’s melody was a very big deal. Now in this decade, melody again is a very big deal and bands are more and more going “okay, we’re a rock band, but it’s 2007, there’s all these machines, all this technology that we can take and implement into a four piece rock band”. we choose to be melody driven, and song and lyric driven and to use machines with rock n roll. It’s a choice that was also made in the 80’s. In the 90’s it was about screaming and yelling and tying flannels around your waist It was kind of rebelling and revolting against the song. In this decade it’s back to the song. It’s not a resurgence of 80’s bands or a resurgence of bands that sound like 80’s bands. They write songs and aren’t afraid to use anything around them to make their rock band have a different color and a different shade.

Anarchy: So it’s more that you sound like 2007 as opposed to the early 80’s.

Jeremy: That’s our opinion, yes. Exactly right, or beyond hopefully. We try to stay as ahead as we possibly can.



Anarchy: We Are Pilots has been circulating for awhile in demo form. For the people who have that, how is this release different, because they should want to pick the new version up as well.

Jeremy: There’s a complexity to it that’s very strikingly different. There’s a couple of versions that were simply demos and there’s really only literally two or three thousand copies total of both of those in their raw audio form. The problem is that we are such a digital band as far as the internet goes that those versions hit Limewire so vigorously and so aggressively that a lot of people have what they think is the album that’s available in the store now and actually they just downloaded something two years ago. It makes it very complicated because we made those in our bedroom with a Dell computer and a guitar and then got ourselves together and hit the road and never stopped. As we toured more and more of the sound of the analog instrumentation began to blend into the more synthy drum machine stuff we did on the computer. By the time it was time to put a record out officially and distribute it worldwide, we knew that we had to start over and capture everything that we’ve done live. All the people that we’ve met, all the stories that we’ve heard and just record that to tape. So, we completely started over and we recorded the entire album in it’s entirety with all of that. It’s bigger, it’s wider, and it sounds like we sound live, while the other versions don’t sound like we sound live.

Anarchy: Your songwriting has been described as “weapons of real things that people go through”. What inspires your songwriting process? It tends to be pretty emotional stuff, is it real life situations for you?

Jeremy: Sometimes. Each individual song has a story and a situation and a methodology that created those lyrics and that song. Every single one is from a different period or a different situation. They’re all completely separate in that fact that. None of the songs were like bam, bam, bam, wrote in a week. They all came from different times in our lives, or different times in other peoples lives that we observed, recorded and made music about. People on the road or people that are immediate parts of our lives or people that are total strangers and they have no idea that we wrote a song about them.

Anarchy: You have a very sci-fi look, almost like you just stepped off the set off Battlestar Galactica. How did the look come about and how does it reflect the music that you do?

Jeremy: There’s so much that we can we’re really good at, but as far as imagery and photography there’s another person who’s really a fifth member of the band. His name’s Benjy Russell and he’s in charge of that. He’s in charge of taking our songs and interpreting those songs into the visual aspect of art. We’ll have a song and he’ll take it and we’ll go to a set and he’ll build it and then he’ll hire the stylist and the make-up and we’ll run with whatever he wants. He’s been working with us for 12 years now. He’s a very prominent LA fashion photographer and abstract art photographer but he’s actually from Oklahoma. He’s someone who knows the deepest parts of the band and our personal lives. He knew our songs when we wrote them on notebook paper. He’s the best person and the best choice to re-interpret our songs visually.



Anarchy: I heard that every now and then you’ll go back to Oklahoma and chase tornados. Is that true and have you ever been in any danger of being killed?

Jeremy: Yeah, May 3rd 1999 was the first F6 storm ever recorded in history. It’s a sleeper tornadic cell that at some points 1.8 and 1.9 miles wide. . It dug a trench 14 feet deep for about half a mile to 3 quarters of a mile, ripping over a GM factory killing tons and tons of people. I was right behind it in a little 240 SX Nissan and my partner was right in front of me in the van with all the gear. I didn’t get there in time. The area we were in we had to leave immediately because it was heading in that direction. A support wire holding a telephone pole…as I was driving telephone poles were collapsing behind and in front of the car. One of the coiled support wires fell in a ditch and it was flailing in the street. I ran over it and it caught itself on the rear axel and wrapped itself around my car. It sent me in a 720 degree spin that landed the car in the ditch. Through the soft mud it didn’t really hurt, but it kept me catching some much more vibrant video. I had to settle with horses wrapped in barbed wire and stuff like that. In Oklahoma you can either get really large, do lots of drugs, work at Wendy’s or you can chase deadly tornados and put yourself in imminent danger. The choices of things to do are pretty slim.

Anarchy: A lot of the bands that are categorized in the same genre as you tend to be kind of laid back, or even boring when performing live, but you guys definitely are not. What goes into that live experience?

Jeremy: Well, there’s all different kinds of ways that you can do a live show. You can do melancholy and tuck your shirt in and stand there and don’t even move a muscle on your face, and maybe that’s the right mood for what you’re trying to project artistically. Just as in like we were talking before about photography, the two most important senses and the ones that go into the world of art like music and pictures and pottery and other things that are artistic are the ears and the eyes. Because you can’t really taste art, unless you’re a culinary guy, but that’s not really our deal. Take a show, take a band, take a song, take a movement, take an image and put that on stage and somebody drives 3 hours and pays money and brings their friends to see that. To sit up there and simply play music is pointless and illogical because you’re leaving out the other half of the senses, the eyes. Going into getting ready, the appearance of what we look like, how we sing, how we perform, the energy that’s put into that, especially the lighting, the special effects stuff, the LED’s that we use. In our shows. We try to within the confines of resources that we have to make all that stuff, we try to make it just as cool to watch as it is to listen to, to the best of our ability. Both senses matter, and they both should equally be addressed in a live show.

Anarchy: Another thing I LOVE about you is the way you treat your fans. Your Myspace is used in much more than just a cattle call of fans that are ignored. What’s the relationship that you have with the fans and how do you make them feel like they’re an extension of the band?

Jeremy: We literally believe that. When we communicate with people online, that’s exactly what we’re doing, and over time, it’s developed a trust. The people who listen to our music are our friends and it’s a two-way street and it’s a relationship driven by how we do things. If there were no people there would be no band. We would be playing to nothing and that doesn’t make any sense. It’s like if you were to prepare this huge meal and then you ate your share and there’s all this food sitting there, why did you do that? There has to be another side to what’s going on. If you flip it around, humans can’t survive without music, it’s like water. They’re always reaching out, trying to fond something to grab onto that reminds them of their grandmother, their boyfriend, their work, their wife, or of the pain and the sorrow and the happy and the sad. It’s a 50/50 situation. It’s completely 50/50, so that’s why were so adamant and extremely defensive and protective of the people who listen to our music. We go a hundred miles out of our way to get them what they deserve and what they ask for because they are giving us what we deserve and what we ask for. It’s just fair and it’s a real relationship. It’s a peer to peer thing and that’s just how we think it should be within our band.

Anarchy: A lot of bands will say things like that and it's just lip service whereas you actually mean it, and live by it, and I think that's awesome.

Jeremy: We don’t actually talk about it unless it’s in the context of an interview, like now, we just do it. In life, you can tell someone that you love them, and that’s cool but you can actually love someone and never tell them that and they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you do love them. Because of your actions, because you do what you actually believe. It’s an integrity thing.



Anarchy: How important has the grass-roots fan base been to the success of the band?

Jeremy: There’s several different ways to measure the success of the band. This grass-roots fan base that everyone talks about is just their friends that are all over the world. That’s the only thing that we look at. There’s a lot more on top of them and there’s new people that have come into the picture that we haven’t gotten to meet yet on tour or talk to them. We’ll be able to get to them soon. Obviously it’s a foundation that makes it appear to be something successful, but it’s just us doing what we’re doing. The thing is, we’ll always have those people, even when we’re crappy, because we're friends with them. So, if someone we were tied to, like a company, were to do something we didn't like we could mobilize every other artist, because that's what we have, each other. It's much bigger than anything else and we can do crazy things together.

Anarchy: You kind of mentioned this before, but you'll basically play anywhere. You'll play countries or towns that most bands wouldn't even consider going to. Is that just another part of you reaching out to your fans?

Jeremy: Well, right now we're in Missoula, Montana. the entire town is surrounded by about one and a half million acres of national forest that is covered in snow and ice. There is no direct way to get to this town. it took us 16 hours to drive a 6 hour drive. It was crazy. We don't use that to reach our fans, we just don't look at what an agency would normally look at as a way to tour or a way to reach fans. The conventional methodology of touring is to hit the big cities and assume that everyone around the big cities will commute to the big cities to see the concert. You can maximize profits in the big cities, you can maximize profit in the bog cities. You can charge 20-30 dollars a ticket because the economy is better, there's more money, more bodies, more numbers and people that will buy cds using big radio and big video. If somebody asks us to come somewhere, we put them on the list and we go there. It just takes one person. We can't go to every city that people ask us to, but we put it in a queue and then force it into the touring, because those are people and the people in Missoula, Montana are just as important as the people in Chicago, Illinois or Miami, Florida. There's no difference. the numbers and all the strategic, profit sharing tour marketing stuff...if we looked at this as a business, as far as earnings and making a bunch of cash for us and our booking agent then I would open a business and sell plumbing supplies or cars. the band would be business people, but we're not business people and we want to share it with people that say "hey, i like that, I want to hear more". "I live in Carter City, North Dakota and I don't have any money and our parents don't have any money or my wife doesn't have any money and if you could come here I'd really appreciate it". We're gonna go there, because he'd really appreciate it. So, they're just as important as the guy on the 25th floor in Manhattan that wants us to play the Irving Plaza. There's absolutely no difference in any way.

Anarchy: What's coming up next for the band? Where is the band headed?

Jeremy: Right now we are trying to stay focused on We Are Pilots and projecting that live and following the record as it's released and available for people to hear. I want to maintain focus on that. We do have a studio, we have studios built into the trucks that we travel in but we're going to keep everything really, really quiet for the next two years because I want to keep all the attention on the fact that we now have something you can have, where before it was so difficult to find our music.It was nowhere, no stores, we barely had enough money to keep cds in our little U-haul trailer in our crappy van. now that it's out, there's hundreds of thousands of people in every country that has never heard of us or barely heard of us and they don't have music. We now have music and we're just right in the middle of that record right now. this record, this movement, this time, this place.

Anarchy: Anything else you want to say to people who might want to check out your Myspace or your website and listen to you?

Jeremy: Just that we want to make sure that they get the whole thing. The fact that we're on MTV and all over the radio with one specific song, I want to make sure that the person who goes for the song, likes the song and buys it on ITunes or watches it on TV and thinks tha its kinda cool. i would really like for them to take it all the way to the edge and look into the record and then listen to the performance. That way you get the whole Shiny Toy Guns, then they can determine from that point if you'd like to be a part of this.

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I'd to thank Jeremy for taking time out to talk to us, and we should all thank Amanda for helping to introduce this band toall of us! Also, a big THANK YOU to Jim in management and Shawn from Motown who hooked us up! For more info on Shiny Toy Guns, visit ShinyToyGuns.com and Shiny Toy Guns on Myspace.

http://www.youtube.com/wa...7QPAp6zGlA
[Edited 2/13/07 18:41pm]