Basically the seed was planted with Billy Morrison and Billy Duffy. They were good friends and basically they wrote a song together. They were encouraged with how it sounded and I got a phone call from Billy Morrison. He said he and Billy Duffy were writing together and asked if I wanted to join them and write a few tunes. We basically just went over to Billy Morrison’s house and jammed in his home studio and it was just real organic. We didn’t have any big plans other than let’s just write a couple of songs, have some fun, and put them up on the Internet. That was as far as we saw it going really to be honest with you. That progressed to going so well we had 10 or 11 songs finished in a matter of weeks. Matt Sorum from Velvet Revolver heard them and said that we should come into his studio and he’ll play drums and we’ll do an album. We agreed to do it and before you know it, me myself, Billy Morrison, Billy Duffy, and Matt had done the album.

You can never start a project and put songs on the Internet and think that’s the end of it.

No, we didn’t even get that far. It went from hey, that would be a good idea to hey, let’s make a record. It just grew organically and we just really had a lot of fun. We did the album in 16 days at Matt’s place. We paid for it ourselves. There were no labels involved. We just wanted to play some rock and roll and we all come from the same kind of background. Love the same kind of music and it just felt like a fun thing to do which it was.

You guys signed a record deal with Koch Records back in April.

Yeah, what happened again, our manager Tom Benarino heard the stuff and he said he could get us a deal for this and we told him to go for it. A great guy called Scott Gibbons at Koch Records heard the stuff and said he thought the band was fantastic and signed us to Koch Records. Here we are.

That’s a really cool label. They have some really good bands on their label.

They’re a great label. The distribution is great. They work their artists really hard. We all know what kind of state the music industry is in so to find a label that still is doing it like Koch is, is great.

Yeah, I know. There is all this stupid shit out there that they’re playing on the radio. I don’t even bother listening to the radio anymore.

I know. I hear you. It’s getting hard. There are so many bands just sounding the same. They seem to have lost any kind of direction or diversity or originality. I’m not trying to sound like an old, sad person but it’s true. I think that people have forgotten what made rock and roll so good. Rock and roll is about sex, drugs, fast cars, and having a good time as well as about politics. You take a band like the MC5. They wrote great political songs but those songs were sleazy and sexy at the same time.

Hell, yeah.

I think that’s what it’s all about. Yeah, everybody has got something to say and it’s good getting your message across but it should be fun. It should be sleazy. It should have a groove. It should be nasty. To me that’s what true rock and roll is about.

You’re right about that. I review a lot of CDs for my publication and sometimes I read other people’s reviews. They’ll totally put down a band for writing songs about drinking beer. What the fuck is wrong with that?

Yeah, there isn’t anything wrong with that. It’s okay to moan. We all like to get things off our chest and be angry but let’s have a point to it. Let’s make it fucking sexy and fun. Rock and roll shouldn’t be “hey, everyone feel my pain and the world is so harsh and I hate my life and it’s awful.” Well, fuck it. Change your life then.

The world is a fucked up place but every day I wake up and I still have a big fucking smile on my face.

Exactly.

Tell me about the debut album that you guys did.

Again like I said, it was done in Matt Sorum’s studio. Matt is an amazing drummer. He played drums on it. Did it really quickly and really organically. Most of the stuff is live. We didn’t have a whole lot of time to mess about which was great I think because we got a really good vibe captured on the record and a lot of energy. It really was just a case of writing the songs, demoing them in Billy Morris’ studio in his house, and then taking them over to Matt’s and recreating the vibe that we had on the demos. It was done so quickly and that was it really. It was very organic and we had a real good time making the record. Matt Sorum’s studios are great as you can imagine. It was nice. It was good although Matt’s dog bit me while we were making the record. I have the scar to prove it.

Well, I hope the dog didn’t bite you in the ass.

She bit me in the leg. Matt had his dog for a long, long time and she’s no longer with us. The poor, old dog could hardly move and I actually walked across her path and next thing I feel these teeth in my ankle. The dog just decided I was in her space so it was pretty funny. It’s pretty cool to be bitten by Matt Sorum’s dog.

Ricky’s claim to fame.

There you go.

There are definitely a lot of heavy hitters in this band. I think that’s awesome. I hate to use the term super group.

Yeah, don’t use that term. Again it’s friends and that’s what we are. Sure we’ve all got other careers and we’ve been doing this for a long time but Circus Diablo came together because we felt there was a lack of pure, honest, wear your heart on your sleeve rock and roll out there and that’s what we wanted to do. There are no pretenses or we need to sound this way or that way. It was we wanted big riffs, big choruses, and great hooks in three and a half minute rock songs. That’s all we set out to do.

Well, you guys come from my era and I think that was really the true era of everything that was fun. Even back in those days the world was fucked up and we still had fun.

Yeah, and I think we need to educate a lot of kids today that you can still make great music and still make it fun and still be angry and still have something to say. Like I keep going back to, make it dirty rock and roll.

Absolutely. Sexy and sleazy. I understand that you’re going to be touring with Keith Caputo in September.

Yes, I am which I’m really excited about. I do the solo stuff and I’ve been a fan of Keith’s for quite some time. Keith’s first solo album, Died Laughing, whenever I left the Almighty and did my first solo record was a big inspiration to me. To get to actually go and tour Europe with Keith is really cool. I’m really excited about it. He’s a great guy. A really nice guy. We’re going to have a load of fun so it’ll be good. We’ll do that and I think when I’m back, me and Circus Diablo are going to go on the road again in October after that. It’s good to be busy.

Matt won’t be able to go out on the road with you guys.

No, Matt and Billy Duffy cannot pretty much unfortunately tour with us just because of their commitments and we have an amazing drummer called Charles Ruggiero. He used to be in a band called Slunt from New York playing drums. We have Rob Patterson who was in Otep and in Korn for a little while playing guitar with us. Those guys are both great players and the band is really tight. We just played at Ozzfest in Dallas today it was a great show. The band’s really, really excited. Matt and Billy are our honorary members but they don’t get the chance to play live with us too much.

I hope you guys come back through Dallas again.

Oh sure, absolutely. I love Dallas. It’s a great place.

Yes, it fucking is isn’t it?

My wife is from Dallas so I’m kind of biased.

That’s cool!

I think Billy Morrison’s wife is from Dallas too.

You guys know where to find the women. How has Ozzfest been going for you guys?

It’s been really good. We’re going to have to unfortunately drop off pretty much this week. Brett’s wife is pregnant and she’s going to be due a little earlier than we thought so he needs to go and spend some time with her which is great because my wife is pregnant as well. We’re going to go and do the baby thing and then we’ll be back rocking again in September. We thought we could have gotten through it until the end but the babies are coming earlier than we thought. Rock and roll.

They take women from Texas and knock them up.

Oh, yeah. It’s disappointing that we don’t get to do the last two weeks of Ozzfest but there’s nothing more important than having a baby so we’re okay with that.

There’s nothing more awesome than having kids.

Of course, and like I said we’ll go and do the right thing and we’ll be back in September. We just finished a video for “Loaded” which we just saw the first edit of it and it looks great. I think that’s going out next week to all the airwaves so that will probably keep our faces about until we hit the road again.

I get the International Music Feed so I hope I see it on that.

It looks great. It was a really, really cool video. Mr. Duffy is in that. It’s rocking. It’s really good.

What kind of theme do you guys have for that?

With a band like us, it’s nothing too clever for a first video. It’s very much a performance video with us hanging out. We shot it in L.A. last weekend on our day off and it’s a pretty in your face right on performance. It’s a what you see is what you get type video. It looks great. What I’ve seen so far I think looks cool.

I like performance videos. I always loved that back in the ’80s when they did videos for MTV and it was just the band playing.

And a band with people in it like we’ve got, great players who look good, I think that’s how we need to be portrayed. I think it’s going to be good.

You opened for Def Leppard.

Yeah, last Saturday was one of the coolest days ever which makes you remember why you do this. I got up. We did Ozzfest in Denver and came off stage at Ozzfest. I jumped in a rental car and drove 90 miles to Cheyenne and went to the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo, hooked up with the Def Leppard boys, and opened that show in front of about 15,000 people. The rest of the Circus Diablo guys came up in our tour bus and hung out We watched the Def Leppard show and I got on my tour bus. There’s not many people that can get to say that they got to open for Ozzy and Def Leppard in the same day in two different cities. I was driving up in the car and it was a beautiful drive up there from Denver up to Cheyenne in the High Plains up there. At 15 years old if someone had told me this yeah, I would have taken it. Absolutely. It was a great buzz.

I was into that band from their very first album. They just fucking kicked ass.

They’re such a great band. They put on such a great show still to this day. They’re just awesome.

Absolutely. I love seeing them and the Scorpions. Those two bands are so fucking badass.

Yeah, they kick ass.

Any other thoughts or comments?