Who are you and what is your role in the band?
My name is Robb Pritchard and they won’t let me touch anything that makes noise, so I’m the lead singer…The damn lead singer.
How did the band get started?
Well, it wasn’t supposed to be a ‘real’ band in the first place. A few of us had been in a different groups here and there over the years and had known each other awhile prior to all of this… I mean, hell, Greg and I are cousins… so we had all taken a stab at ‘making it’ in our separate groups, failed miserably and decided to put together one of those cool ‘no pressure’ bands that would play on the weekends for fun and beer money… It was actually a semi-acoustic thing, at first, but we all pretty much cut our teeth on eighties metal and harder stuff, so once we decided to ‘plug up,’ we kinda never looked back.
Who are your influences and how do they play a role in your sound?Â
Well, we’re primarily a ‘cover band’ – and I say that like it’s a dirty word or something, but it’s really not – but being a cover band, we didn’t want to limit what we did to just cookie-cutter versions of the rock songs people know, so we took ideas from bands we grew up on, and tried to bring some if that into our versions, no matter who originally did the song. I mean, we grew up on Sabbath, Dio, KISS, Crue and AC/DC, so when we cover any of those guys, we do our damndest to keep the feeling we had when we were burning up the highways at 17 years old coming across to the crowd when we play it. Really kinda how we picked our song list, too. We tried to pick songs that, if we were hanging with our friends at a party or something, and this certain song suddenly began blaring over the stereo, would strike a nerve with everybody there, whether it was a fist – pumper or a ballad. We’ve pretty much always looked at it like that.
What has been your most meaningful experience being in this band so far?
We’ve gotten to do some pretty cool things, got to share the stage with some of the bands we had posters of on our walls growing up, but we’ve gotten to help a lot of people, too. We were able to raise enough money to buy some instruments for a local school’s music program, help some families out that had went through a personal tragedy or experienced loss. A lot if things like that. That’s the stuff that really means something to you. It’s fun to do what we do, and we’ve been fortunate enough to have a strong support system in our friends and fans, so when we can put all this things together to help people out or make some situation a little better, that’s the good stuff.
Favorite memory from a show you’ve played or a place you’ve travelled?
There’s a lot. Some of them I’d probably never admit to nor want to see in print anywhere, but one of the best ones is from one of our guitar players, David Robinson.
We were on our first trip to Sturgis and decided to go check out Mt. Rushmore, because being a bunch of North Carolina rednecks, none of us had ever seen it in real life. We were standing there, taking it all in – (And having a beer. They sell beer at Mt. Rushmore now. ‘Merica!) – and out of the blue, he looks over at me and says, You know what’s amazing right now? We wouldn’t be standing here looking at this right now, if it wasn’t for rock & roll. Never would have happened.
And, corny as that sounds, he was right. I’d never have thought about it like that, had he not said that. But, dammit, he was right.
What do you hope to accomplish with your music?
Well, there are a lot of bands out there with deep, meaningful, political convictions and a lot of great new ideas to change or save the world, and so on…
But we ain’t one of them.
We kinda want to be the guys you come to when you want to forget about all that horsesh**t for a little while. We sell a good time. Period. If you’ve had a bad day – boss sucks, kids driving you nuts, work blows, blah, blah, blah – we want you to come out and hang with us, have a few drinks with your friends, dance, sing songs you know and let off some of that stress and pressure you’ve been chewing on all damn week. We tell everybody that it’s a rock show. And that’s pretty much what it’s there for.
Something about you that no one knows?
You mean like, ‘I once killed a man outside of a Kansas City Denny’s using a vinyl copy of A Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash and a broken KFC spork?’
Okay. That entire answer is bulls**t, but, and not many people know this, I actually invented pigs.
Yep. Sure did. All except for the curly tail.
I think that was Scotty. But I’m currently trying to get a patent on bacon, so…
Nah. The actual real answer is something lame like, I actually learned to sing by listening to old Journey, Dio and Maiden records, but everybody says stuff like that, and it’s boring. I like my first answers best.
What is next for the band?
We just picked up Fireball Whisky as a major sponsor, so that’s been super-cool. We’re in talk with them about some new direct support gigs for a couple of nationals and other things. We’ve been working on quite a bit of original stuff that we’re hoping to get to the studio to lay down, and we’re about to head out to Sturgis for our third year. We’ve been very fortunate. Couldn’t do any of it without all our friends and fans putting out good words about us. Can’t thank them enough for that.
Anything else you want to add?
No. Not really. Just to come hang with us at a show when you can. See what it’s about. We promise you a good time.
