FIRST TIME OUT!

by Darian Darqly

I knew darqpress was off to a smashing start when our first interviewee was detained. The interview began almost 3 hours late. We were in a bar, going to interview one of the owners, what else could we do with that much time to kill? We got shit-faced!! Consequently, this made for a hilarious interview when he did arrive.

He was a great sport (he’s used to corralling drunks). Before the evening was over two of my lady friends flashed me both “T” and “A,” (gay boy privelege – if only that did it for me), but the hot, young bar owner topped it off by flashing me the new tattoo on his abs and all was right with the world.

The two words I think best sum up our first interview would be “profane” and “obscene.” It was a perfect tone setter! Welcome to darqpress! Let the games begin!!

Six Shots Till Dawn

Interviewed by The Brothers Darqly

The Brothers Darqly had the privelege of interviewing Six Shots Till Dawn on Sunday afternoon at the Springfield Brewing Company in downtown Springfield, MO. – thanks to The Brew Co. for the royal treatment! They let us use the glass enclosed “cigar room” upstairs. We had gadgets and gizmos plugged in every outlet and they even let us rearrange the place!

Six Shots is a true garage metal band with a gritty, hard edge sound influenced by great bands like: Lamb of God, Pantera, Metallica and Damage Plan, but surprisingly ecclectic in their individual tastes that they bring to the music. Six Shots was formed in February 2006. They’re probably one of the youngest bands on the local scene, with all of its members still in highschool with the exception of their frontman, a veteran rocker from the bands “Mr. Blackwell” and “Explicit” from the local scene in the 90’s.

First, introductions were in order and I had a few questions about these guys nicknames. Six Shots Till Dawn is:

Jamie “The Bossman” Holdren – Lead Vocals

Mick “The Dick” Carter – Guitar/Vocals

David “Sexy” Seth Roberts – Bass

Byron “Tight Ass” Holdren – Drums

Jesse “Precious” Ward – Guitar/Vocals

I knew this interview was going to be a good time when Jesse (“Precious”) dove right into my ice breaker question about the origin of his nickname and told a crazy-ass story about partying too hard and hurling at a friend’s grandma’s house who defended him from his buddy’s jokes, saying, “Leave him alone! He’s precious!” The name stuck (and, no, it has nothing to do with Lord of the Rings).

I realized after that, there was going to be no ice to break with these guys, they were already making us feel at home.  

DARIAN: “You guys are about to open for Trust Company & The Dreaming. Since you’re beginning to open for some pretty serious bands, is it starting to make you take yourselves more seriously too?”

DAVID: “Lately, yeah..definitely.”

JAMIE: “When we went to the Dallas show I took these guys out for the first time on the road to do a show out of town in a totally different scene with a couple of bad-ass bands. I came back from that show going, ‘Holy shit! We could actually do this! If we go down there and make friends that quick and book more gigs there – we may be going back down in April to open for Stem, in Dallas. It’s easy to play a show down there, those people are so cool, man. What those guys are doing down there is what I dream of bands doing here..the coolest bands with the most friends getting together to create a scene, so that way when any band plays more people will show up.”

LUCID: “Check out Austin sometime.”

JAIMIE: “I’ve always wanted to, I’ve been to Nashville a lot to check out the guitar players there, but I’ve heard Austin is Nashville on speed!”

DARIAN: “So, some of you guys are still in your teens?”

MICK: “Yeah. All of us are!”

JAIMIE: “Everybody except for the old man here. Byron’s the youngest.”

DARIAN: “How old are you?”

BYRON: “17.”

DARIAN: “I like that there’s a family dynamic going on here (Jaimie and Byron are father and son) it’s cool that you and Byron are able to be in the same band together and it seems to be working out for you.”

BYRON: “Yeah. It is.” (The other guys nodded in agreement).

JAIMIE: “I actually got to play with my dad a little bit and it was one of the most awesome experiences I ever had.This all came about with these guys getting together to jam and they were really coming up with some good tunes, but they were having trouble finding somebody their age to sing for them…”

DAVID: “The right kind of singer for what we were doing.”

JAIMIE: “They had a couple of guys come along..”

MICK: “But in the end they all turned out to be douches.”

LUCID: “Imagine that in the music industry.” (Understanding laughs filled the room).

JAIMIE: “They just weren’t finding a singer that could fill the gap. One night at one of the first gigs they did, at the Blue Room, they were doing a couple Metallica covers and some dude got on the stage and grabbed the microphone and started heckling them. It almost turned into a bad deal, it’s a good thing they grabbed the dude and got him out of there, cause we had that room packed with our people and that dude was about to get hurt! I said, ‘fuck this, man.’ I’m not a lead singer, but goddamnit I was gonna be that night. I had some beers in me and I took the stage and just started screaming and everybody loved it. Basically, from there on they were like, ’so you’re gonna keep singing with us right?’ And I’m like ‘I don’t know, it’s really weird.”

DAVID: “He said ‘I don’t think I’m gonna do it’ or ‘I’ll do it till you find somebody’ – and now he’s with us.”

JAIMIE: “We take the stage as family, as friends, and we’re here to have a good time. And we’re lucky enough to have a lot of friends and family that come to the shows and support us.”

DARIAN: “How has being in the band effected your lives as ‘normal’ teenagers?”

JAIMIE: “There is nothing ‘normal’ about any of these teenagers.” (We all laughed).

DAVID: “It’s different. Like Byron was saying they all know we’re in a band. It’s a smaller school and it helps us get the word out for our shows. It’s pretty cool.”

DARIAN: “Do you feel a little bit of ‘celebrity’ at school?”

MICK: “People say we should, but we don’t.”

DAVID: “Nah. I don’t get a big head about things like that.”

JAIMIE: “Here lately we’ve been making a lot of new friends and connections.”

DAVID: “It’s all about the love.”

MICK: “That’s what this whole things about – brotherhood.”

JAIMIE: “I’ve been preaching some old school shit to these guys since they were 14, man.”

DAVID: “Jaimie came up with a pretty good slogan to describe that. What is it Jaimie? ‘Thanks for givin’ a shit?’”

DARIAN: “You’re totally right, if everybody worked together, instead of cutting each other’s throats, everybody could get somewhere.”

JAIMIE:”I won’t touch too much on that, but I’ve been playing this town my whole life and that’s always been a problem around here.”

LUCID: “I’ll say it. In this town everyone wants to compete and we should be coming together. The scene here used to be really cool years ago, then everyone started thinking it was a competition, and what we’re doing (darqpress), we’re trying to bring things together and make things interesting again.”

JAIMIE: “If everyone would get together, get their people together and start partying together, then you got a scene again, but when we seperate and ‘my people’ come to ‘my shows’ it all becomes a competition. For the most part the bands who are further along than us and nationally touring – those guys are all humble as hell, man. They’re just happy to be there and hoping to make a new fan.”

LUCID: “As you’re on your way to the top, you should take people with you and then you can be a dick when you get there (everybody laughed).

DAVID: (Playing along) “Yeah, when you actually are at the top, not when you think you are.”

MICK: “When you get to the top is when you’ve gotta be the most humble of all.”

DARIAN: “Well, it sounds like you guys are maintaining a great attitude. Obviously, as you get bigger you’ve gotta take some things more seriously, but rock n’ roll is all about having a good time and if you take the fun out of it, it’s nolonger rock n’ roll.”

In my opinion, these guys are off to a great start and they rock on stage and off.