In 2005 their self titled EP rocketed them to the big time and with a new offering on its way we decided it was time to catch up with the bad boys of rock n' roll.

So its hours before the lights go down in a small rock bar in Camden, North London. The fans waiting expectantly outside are a mix of overexcited teens and rock n' roll veterans, and what's going down tonight has been hyped to the hilt by fans, promoters and press alike.

This intimate location is the setting for Crystal Pistol's London show, the only UK pit stop on a lengthy tour across Europe and their homeland Canada.

We meet up with guitarists Brian Bresett & Pinto for the interview and find ourselves outside in the venue's car park. Already I get the idea that tonight is going to be something special.

MTUK: You've arrived in the UK today, how has it been so far?

Pinto- Yeah we just flew in earlier, like three or four hours ago... we’ve just been having a few beers....

Brian- We flew in, caught a couple of trains, got picked up, went to Joolz's place [London promoter] who is putting on this show for us tonight-very kind of her- and looking forward to playing the show!

Pinto- I like it this way, I don’t like wasting time, you know- I like flying in, going straight to the gig, that’s the best.

MTUK: Do Crystal Pistol have fond memories of the UK, or is this a totally new experience for you?

Brian- I have very fond memories of the UK...

Pinto- Yeah, Brian found his happy place here!

Brian- I found many happy places in the UK.

MTUK: How are Crystal Pistol finding being a cutting-edge band everyone is getting into- do you find yourself recognised a lot, and does that still surprise you when it happens?

Pinto- Well, it’s really nice- we’ve heard that our music is played in clubs around here and that’s an amazing compliment, we don’t necessarily get a lot of support where we’re from, so it’s good to see that out there in the world we’re getting recognition for what we do. We don’t necessarily consider ourselves a glam band, but we’ll take whatever category people want to champion us as.

MTUK: Is it a strange feeling to be listed as a brand-new cutting edge band when you have been together for six years?

Brian- I don’t think we’re a cutting edge band at all, personally, but we are really new and people are really starting to get what we’re doing; what we’re doing isn’t really new as such, but we’re just having a really good time and having a lot of fun playing what we really love playing.

Pinto- Yeah, the first album came out in 2005 which is not too long ago I guess, so I think we’re relatively fresh still I guess, musically we’ve got a brand new EP coming out, a three song EP and we’ve got enough songs to record a full length album and we’re really looking forward to recording the second one.

MTUK: If anyone is coming to see Crystal Pistol live what should they expect?

Pinto- A really good time!

Brian- Be careful if you’re near the stage...

Pinto- Yeah, we like to rock out, and I think the kind of fun we put on stage is kinda contagious...

Brian- ...and we interact with the audience as well, its not them and us its all of us together.

MTUK: You do play a very energetic live set. What is the inspiration behind the mayhem?

Brian- Just that we truly love what we do, that’s all it is.

MTUK: Crystal Pistol have a really fresh appeal, an uncompromising edge to the music. What do you think it is that sets you apart from the other rock n’ roll bands out there at the moment?

Pinto- My general policy is, I’ll salute anyone that’s about to rock, that’s where I come from. What about you, Brian?

Brian- I’m with you on that.

Pinto- Right on, keep on rockin' kids, keep it up.

MTUK: You mentioned the new material you’ve been working on, can you tell us more about that?

Pinto- Yeah we can, we’ve got tonnes of new material, we’re going to be playing half of the stuff from the first album tonight, and half the stuff from the upcoming album.

MTUK: Has the all-round positive response to first album had any influence on future writing?

Pinto- Yeah, absolutely it has.

Brian- It's opened doors for us definitely.

MTUK: Crystal Pistol is currently embarking on a lengthy tour that begins tonight here in London and continues across Europe. Does touring have an influence on the music written - people you’ve played with, places you’ve been?

Pinto- Touring is the pulse of this band, you know, you’re not going to get what this band is about unless you see us live, so we need to take the show on the road, we need to help people experience it, and then we can go from there basically. I mean, before that there’s nothing.

Brian- When we’re not playing, writing or recording, we’re basically miserable people. It’s what we do.

MTUK: So it’s an enjoyable experience?

Brian- It is for the most part. I mean, there are always the ups and downs, but hopefully we overcome that.

MTUK: Do you find yourself itching to get off the road and into the studio again or would you rather be on tour?

Brian- No, we want to stay on the road and keep rocking out. I mean, we’re ready for the studio, we have been for several months now, and it’s just a matter of... financing. (laughs)

Pinto- We recently fired our label, got ourselves free of that, so now we’re looking for alternative ways to put out the second album.

MTUK: Would you consider putting it out independently?

Pinto- Well if somebody else comes along who is on the same page as we are, then we’re all game, that’s fantastic, and the reason why we fired our label in the first place was they just didn’t get what we were about, I don't think they even saw us live once-

Brian- No, they didn't.

Pinto- And they didn’t want us touring; they were like, ‘no no, it’s all about selling CDs’, we were like no, it’s not all about selling CDs, its about getting out there and playing the music.

Brian- We want to connect with people.

Pinto- We just didn’t see eye to eye on that, we had to part ways.

MTUK: Are you eager to get the second record out there, some bands just want to tour for as long as possible after the first?

Brian- Absolutely. We want to get this record out because we’re not sick of the old album but we have so much more new stuff to show to people. And we want to show it to people. But you can’t just come out to people and say, ‘here’s all our new stuff’ and not play any of the old songs, right? I’m not sick of them but, you know, you just want to play the new stuff and get it out there. Certainly we still want to tour but also incorporate our new material into that.

MTUK: But you’re always going to play the old favourites...

Brian- Oh absolutely. I’m OK with that. (laughs)

Pinto- That’s one reason why we’re so excited about the new material, because we came up with the first album, thought it was a solid album, and we were a little bit worried if we would be able to follow it up with something that was equally good, or better, and we went through a billion songs, just kept working and working and finally we came up with a batch of tunes. It really just happened over a couple of weeks, coming up with these ten or eleven songs that just kicked our asses anyway and we were like, yeah, you know what, this is as good as the first album so... that’s where the excitement comes from, we just want to show people we got more stuff that’s on par with the old stuff.

MTUK: Will the new material be in the same vein as what you have done before, are you aiming to create a certain something or just going with it?

Brian- It’s hard to really answer that question without a third party point of view... to me, just mixing together some blues and other styles, but it’s still all rock, its all in your face.

MTUK: It’s been two years since the self titled album came out. Has the time since given a fresh influence to the material on the new album?

Pinto- The first album was fuelled by a lot of fear and rejection by pop culture, and after that we experienced some acceptance, so we kinda lost that edge. After we signed our label, we started experiencing the same anger and angst that we had back before the first album, and that’s why the new material now compares to the old material. We needed to get back into that same head space that we were at when we wrote the first album.

MTUK: Do you do that by touring, or just by getting through the ups and downs you go through together as a band?

Pinto- We do that by reading negative reviews! We have a black list... I’ve got a black list... (laughs). But its good, its working to our advantage, it gives us that anger and hunger that we need to keep doing this.

We were getting comfortable for a little while, thinking ‘oh yeah, we got a band, we’re doing OK’, but no, you want to be better, you want to keep moving.

Brian- Yeah, you’ve always got to keep working. You don’t stop. You can’t just sit around and go, ‘okay, I’m good.’ You have to keep going, push yourself further.

MTUK: What inspires CP to keep going- is it the music, the fan response, the touring process?

Pinto- It’s all of those things, in a different priority I guess. Number one is the music, and then the second thing is the fan response, we need that, we feed off the crowd. If the crowd are not digging it then we’re not, we wont be feeling it either. So everything starts with the music.

MTUK: Tonight is your only UK show, do you wish you could have had more time here?

Pinto- It would have been great if we could have arranged to play more shows in England, but it didn’t work out that way. The touring agency that approached us to do this tour didn’t really have too many contacts. This show we’re doing in London, we set it up through friends that we made the first time we came around here. We really wanted to come back here, see old friends and rock it up again, we love London, we love England, it was an amazing experience last time round so we needed at least one show in. But we’re totally looking forward to coming back and putting many more in.

MTUK: Are there any plans for your return to UK shores?

Pinto- We don’t plan ahead. We take every day as it comes, we don’t want to set ourselves up for failure...

MTUK: The rumours about what you guys get up to both on and off tour are infamous. What’s the most rock n’ roll thing Crystal Pistol have ever done?

Brian- Oh my god... There’s too many of them, you know...

Pinto- We should be in jail for some of the things we’ve done, they just haven’t caught us yet.

MTUK: Do your outrageous experiences have an influence on your writing?

Brian- It all influences us in one way or another. My personal writing, I just write what I want to hear. A friend of mine in another band once asked me, ‘do you like listening to your own music?’ I just looked at him and I said ‘yes, I do; why the fuck would I write it if I didn’t want to hear it.’ And that’s that. I don’t think that's conceited or vain, but why would you write a song if you didn’t want to hear it yourself.

MTUK: So you’re proud of the stuff you’ve written.

Brian- Definitely.

Pinto- Absolutely. The music and the attitude goes hand in hand, there’s really no separation between our personalities and our music. It’s not an act that we put on or anything, its just the way we are.

This is how we party, and we like to play the soundtrack to our own party.

Brian- Kudos to that.

MTUK: Although CP don’t plan ahead, do you have any other projects in the pipeline you can tell us about?

Brian- There is a documentary being filmed of this whole tour. That’s probably going to be released at film festivals next year. We just decided before we got on the road, you can watch anything, you can show anything- we’re not censoring anything about our time on the road. Everything’s there. So, I personally don’t care what people see, I don’t know how the rest of the guys feel, but that’s the way it works for me...

Pinto- We will see how it goes!

MTUK: Do you have any last words for the fans?

Thanks for the support! That’s so lame (laughs) I don’t know, keep on truckin’... from now on, that’s what I’m going to say, keep on truckin’...

http://www.myspace.com/crystalpistol
http://www.crystalpistol.com

Interviewed by Lyn Connolly

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