James & The Cold Gun Interview

You guys are taking to the Axiom stage tomorrow morning, what can we expect from your set?

Biss: “It’s gonna be loud, it’s gonna be very loud”

Joseph: “Yeah too loud for that time in the morning”

Biss: “Yeah, you’ll see a lot of people that have just woken up like f**cking hell we’re in it right now. We’re hoping to open that stage with a real bang and we’re actually a five now so we’ve got a real good team on the go”

Joseph: “I think it’s gonna be really cool, it’s going to be the earliest any of us have been up for a while. So we’ll see how that goes!”

Is there any particular song you’re looking forward to playing? Any favorites?

Joseph: “Yeah, I reckon so. We’ve got some good riffs at the end of a couple of our songs. ‘Long Way Home’ is probably our favourite in terms of like people getting stuck in. I’d love to see a early morning mosh pit!”

Biss: “We’ll drag it out of people!” 

You guys have had a busy 2022 so far, from supporting the likes of Creeper, to your own Headline tour and this Saturday you’re only supporting Pearl Jam at Hyde Park! How was it receiving that news? 

Joseph: “Yeah it’s pretty mad. It’s funny because we kind of, were a bit cheeky. We had something really cool happen to us earlier in the year, we signed to Stone the guitarist from Pearl Jam’ label. He heard us on the radio in America and then just got in touch with us. He sent us an email and we thought it was like fake at first, like this just doesn’t seem legit! We ended up getting on a zoom call with him and yeah it was him and he signed us. Then, we noticed that they were playing Hyde Park and so we decided to push our luck and be like, ‘can we support you?’ Can you find half an hour for us to play’ and yeah - he said yeah, we’ve managed to make it happen. It’s gonna be sick, we’re really excited. It’s nice for family and colleagues to hear about because people know the name Pearl Jam, which is pretty cool”

Biss: “It’ll be our first time meeting Stone as well. Like, we’ve done five zoom calls with him now to just chat s**t and talk through songs so it will be nice that this will be our first time seeing him in person and show him what we’ve got really!”

What I’ve taken away from listening to this story, is that you’ve just got to shoot your shot because you never know what could happen!

Joseph: “Do you know what, after Lockdown especially. I used to be a bit like ‘I don’t wanna be that guy who’s like trying’ but after Lockdown, not to be too ‘woe is me’ but it’s hard to be a band you’ve got to sometimes create the opportunities for yourself”

For anyone new to the band, could you sum up James & The Cold Gun? And tell us who are your influences as a band.

Biss: “The most obvious one is South Wales Loudest”

Joseph: “Yeah, short and sweet”

Biss: “That’s what we’ve been called before and I think that’s the best way to describe us”

Joseph: “Yeah, a blog in America called us that and we just ran with it cause we kinda liked how funny it was as well. South Wales is so small, so it’s quite easy to be the loudest but we’ll happily take that! Just energetic rock music, no gimmicks or fake stuff - that’s us” 

Lastly, any dream collaborations? Or what’s left on your guys bucket list for the band?

Joseph: “That’s a good…loads to be fair! I think just being together and writing loads of songs in Lockdown when nothing was happening, we had so much time to like; it sounds really cheesy, but to dream about ‘Ah imagine when this happens or imagine when that happens’. So I mean, we’ve got a massive bucket list now off stuff to do. Playing over in Europe and over in America would be really cool for us”

Biss: “Yeah totally”

Joseph: “I think it’s really cool to see our biggest numbers and stuff like that on Spotify come from America. So it would be really cool to see how our band would be over there. As for bands we wanna do stuff with, there’s a band playing later today Dinosaur Pile Up. We’d love to tour with them, I think that would be a wicked tour collaboration. Urm, we’ll take anything else!”

Biss: “A lovely American tour with them wouldn’t be too bad, would it?”