How you doing today? Real good, I know Snake was supposed to do the interview but I’m here filling in for him. Where are you guys at today? We are in Baton Rouge Louisiana, doing a one off gig on our own. During our day off from the Poison tour. Oh so you get to go out and do a full set rather than the 35 or 45 minutes you get on the tour. Yea, Yea. Totally, We get the to do the full set. Its much more intimate.

What is you set list like is it all the old classics or more of the newer stuff.
Well there six or seven songs that we have to do. If we didn’t do them we would be chased out of town with pitch forks. Then we throw in two of the new songs and on our own shows we put in about four of the new songs. Plus a couple obscure thing that people don’t expect us to do.

Which do like better the big area show or the club shows?
Well with this new line up, we immediately got on the Kiss farewell tour which put us in front of a huge crowd. So we have been doing shows, on average between 5 and 25 thousand people. It’s cool man, it’s a really good vehicle to let people know we have a new album out (Aug 5th 2003).

Is the new material similar to the older songs that we all know and love? It is and it isn’t, I mean Snake and I write the bulk of the songs so it has the Skid Row finger print on it, But with Johnny signing he has a much fuller approach. He’s got some of that southern soul being from Dallas, Texas I guess. He also brings a lot of feeling to the table.

The new CD is going be released independently, what brought about that decision?
We started our own label which was in fact plan A, with the climate of the music business right now. However once some of the major labels started hearing some of our stuff, they took interest. But they really didn’t have the same direction in mind as we did for Skid Row. So we went with our initial plan and put it out ourselves and got a distribution deal. And put it out through our own label.

Did you do all you own recording to?
Well, no. It’s weird. We recorded the record twice. We worked with a producer in Charlotte North Carolina it sounded cool but it was not really representative of what we were trying to achieve. So we went into our friend’s studio in New Jersey, called Sure Fire Sound and re-did most of it on all his gear. He engineered and we produced it ourselves and we are really happy with the outcome.

You have a DVD in the works, can you hook us up with some info on that? It’s actually done, it was suppose to come out a while ago, but for what ever reason it never did. I think it should be release about the same time the new album is.

What is it like, is it live footage or videos, what can we expect?
It’s all kinds of stuff, from when Johnny first joined the band, the song writing process, the recording process. The whole ball of wax. Us on the Kiss tour and some of the stupid shit we do when we don’t have anything else to do.

You have said that Kiss and Gene Simmons have been you main inspiration for you starting to play, how where you exposed to them growing up?
I come from a family of four kids and I was the youngest so there was always music in my house. My brother was big into Hendrix and Chicago. My sister was into a lot of folk music, my other sister was way into the Beatles and the whole English movement. So I was turned onto a lot of music at a young age, but Kiss and I guess the Sex Pistols are the ones that made the biggest impression on me. I started playing bass when I saw the pictures of Gene when I wasn’t even sure what a bass was. I always had a gig cause there seemed to be a shortage of bass players.

Are you planning to do your own tour after you finish up the Poison commitment? Yea, we are gonna go out on our own and do some stuff in the states. And then probably Europe and Japan, because we have done some record deals over there. So we should be touring well into 2004.

What has been one of your fondest or most proud moments as a musician?
Man, there is a lot. I think playing Saturday Night Live. That’s something I always wanted to do, growing up in New Jersey everyone wants to play there, so that was one thing. There was times of us doing acoustic sets and us not being known as a acoustic band. Then listening to our end results and it like “I’m so proud to be in a band with you guys”. Or we just do show here and there that really make me happy and I say “Holy shit we are a kick ass band”. And I glad to be almost 40 years old and be able to say that.

Any comment on Sebastian’s Broadway career?
Obviously it was short lived, No I really don’t, because I haven’t talked to the guy in eight years and it has been great. It’s just a lot of bad blood and he’s not somebody I will be sending a Christmas card to any time soon. So I really don’t care what he does.

It seems you guys are a much more happy group now.
Yea, we are having fun doing what we do now. It’s not a battle of ego it’s a band now. It’s more of band now than it has ever been. And everything happens for a reason, we had our success in the past and that was great. Now we are doing it for the right reasons, for the love of the music.

Anything you want to add or let all our readers know?
If they wanna know were we are and what’s going on SkidRow.com is our official website. Also that the new album is out now.