Karma: First thanks for doing the interview.

Joe: Thank you.

Karma: I was reading that [former band] Godbelow served as a major influence in the direction of Brand New Sin. Please expound.

Joe: The basis of the band or what’s left are the two guitar players and the bass player of Brand New Sin were in God Below and at one time there was a third guitar player [Slider] and he was also part of it. They wanted to venture out, they felt they had taken Godbelow as far as they could and wanted to get a little more into the rock n roll so they went and found another drummer and searched for a vocalist which took them quite a while. I mean, being in Syracuse, New York, it’s not easy to find the perfect guy. Seventeen people later, I walked in and finally got the job.

Karma: So this was also through your mutual friend, Chucky Love?

Joe: Yeah. The guy that just walked us in here was the one that introduced us.

Karma: How cool is that?

Joe: Yeah.

Karma: So how’s the tour going so far?

Joe: Good. One, two, four dates so far. We started in Springfield, Missouri then Cudahy, Wisconsin; which I’d never heard of before. We played Edgerton last night and we're here in Chicago tonight and it’s good because we’ve played here so many times and we have a lot of friends and family up here so it’s good. However, we still have another…It’s only the seventeenth of June and we’re going all the way till July twenty first. We still have about another four weeks out.    

Karma: Okay, always good to feel at home when you're on the road.

Joe: Yeah! [Smiles]

Karma: So how is the scene in Syracuse these days seeing it was huge back in the day with the whole hardcore scene and all.

Joe: [Laughs] The hardcore scene is still there but it’s just not as prominent as it was, it still exists but those people totally hate what Brand New Sin is. There’s a whole other side of Syracuse that a lot people [don’t know about]. It’s kind of all over the place, there's not just one sound that happens. You have bands that are playing really heavy, bands that are playing rock, you've got experimental metal, you got jazz and a lot of blues. You’re starting to slowly see now that we’ve made a mark that there’s other bands especially really younger kids that are starting to play rock and roll covering Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath and all that. May be we'll start another scene; make people forget that Syracuse is just hardcore.

Karma: There you go, it's a good goal.

Joe: Yeah!

Karma: How does it feel to be on Century Media? What does it mean to you to be on a label such as this?

Joe: It’s good; we’ve had a lot of friends over there for years. Our first record we just had a lot fans over there. To be a label where not only they liked us as a band but they’re truly fans of ours and the people who are working with us, our A&R guy, our radio guy, right down to George [Vallee] our media guy. It’s just like they are true fans. Even before we were on the label, we played LA and they’d be lined up in the front singing all the words. So far so good, you know. You always try to keep the best of relationships between the two of you but we’re hoping that we’re going to have a long and happy career with them.

Karma: Must be a very comforting feeling.

Joe: For now yeah, just knock on wood. [Chuckles]

Joe: Well I guess, the best thing about the record is that ninety percent of it is done live. The drums, the bass, all the rhythm guitars, and some of the vocals that came out all right were all captured at the same time. We pride ourselves as a live band, we pride ourselves as a band that can go in the studio and not have to piece everything together because once you start piecing things together you start losing the atmosphere of what you want to create and it sounds fake. There are a million records out there that I can name that sound that way. The only things we do when we go back are the guitar overdubs, the solos, and the acoustic parts, we’ll put that there, and the vocals but the majority of it is done in about three days. We just lay that down and the key is to let us have three weeks to really take our time on the icing sort of speak.    

Karma: So then you have always recorded that way.

Joe: Yes as Brand New Sin, we have always [done that]. We did the last record that way but it was a little more different then because we had a different drummer at that time so it wasn’t as easy sort of speak but know that we’ve been playing together for four years and we really know what we’re doing we had a lot of time to prepare for this record. Preparation, don’t waste your time in the studio you’re there to record not to rewrite parts and everything else, you have that stuff done when you get in there.

Karma: Gotcha! It sounds like you are really happy with the outcome then.

Joe: Absolutely. 

Karma: So you wouldn’t change a thing.

Joe: Never, no. I’m very happy with the album, there were a few songs that we had that were on there, we recorded fifteen and ended up using twelve. So there was three that after we listened to them we decided that we weren’t happy with how those came out and decided to sit them on the side for now and come back to them maybe on the next record or an EP who knows when we’ll come back to them. That’s why you always want to record a little bit more than what you need because you never know. What if you only record eleven and you got two of them you don’t dig I mean you can’t knock it down to nine unless you’re Slayer and you can do a record in twenty-seven minutes.

Karma: Are you the kind of band that makes it common practice to have a backlog of songs or whatever. 

Joe: Oh yeah. In between June of 2002 and last year, our first label went bankrupt; we went to a Sony distributed label that doesn’t have a chance to get distributed to other Sony labels. It was kind of a major label contract inside of a subsidiary and we went through living hell trying to appease these people, they wanted us to be a top forty band. We’re just like, “have you ever listened to us at all?” [Chuckles] So during that time one thing that we don’t regret during all this down time, we wrote nearly seventy songs for this record.

Karma: Wow.

Joe: Yeah! So we definitely have a back catalog!! [Laughs]

Karma: To say the absolute very least. So how did you wheedle all of those songs down for the album?

Joe: The good old American way, we voted. [Laughs]

Karma: I guess it works in some forum, right. [Laughs]

Joe: Yeah exactly. [Laughs] It may not have worked for the presidential elections when it came to that but basically we took seventy and everybody came up with an idea of what they wanted on the record.

Karma: So was it a concept thing?

Joe: Yeah, everybody came up with their own concept of the record all the way down to artwork; it was like we had homework. It was like everybody this week…From there we had a list of songs. [Karma’s cell phone rings rather loudly) [Laughs] We didn’t write that one though. [Smiles]

Karma: (Visibly embarrassed) No, no. [Chuckles] It’s the Godfather.

Joe: [Chuckles] I think we had it down to about thirty-five, there were about five or six that were common and there was a whole slew. Then we took that thirty-five and wheedled that down to twenty. Then from twenty we got it down to about fifteen so. I think once we got down to twenty we started playing those songs and kind of feeling what it was like, and once we got it down to twenty, I think we really had a good idea of how the record should flow and we could really start seeing the vision of what it was going to be about. When you have thirty-five songs, your record can go in a lot of different directions.

Karma: So was it like, I mean obviously majority ruled but was it one specific band member whom gotten more songs in or…

Joe: …no, we write everything together. We always say everyone gets one fifth of everything. It’s just the way it is; it's easier that way because some bands can’t function like that. I’ve seen a lot of other bands break apart because of something like that. If someone says, “I am the musical vision of this band…” Everybody has their say, even if it’s a little, a couple of lines. I mean the next song, someone might have a bigger part, but there’s never one person in this band that completely takes over.   

Karma: Awesome. You’ve had a lot of success with your single “Black and Blue”, congratulations.

Joe: [Smiles] Thank you.

Karma: Being an avid watcher of Music Choice, where your song is in heavy rotation, I saw that the pig symbol [sparked by Kris W’s late father]. There was a quote, “belonging and bodies represents speed and something American” can you explain that?

Joe: Where it came from was, Chris' father built custom Harleys. Every time he built a Harley, he had the pig on there and that was like his way of saying this is Ingo Wiechmann’s... Everybody has their own insignia that goes on there that you know it’s theirs, like Orange County Choppers got theirs, West Coast Choppers got theirs and on and on and on. He kind of modified the pig because the pig actually comes from World War II the German tanks were called Panzer tanks and they had a pig on them. The original pig had a lightning bolt that was a little bit longer, but his dad being of German descent, got and kind of shortened it and sanded it up a little bit. And when Chris dad passed away he put it on his guitar and when it got to this point of being Brand New Sin we wanted a logo or sign or something you can look at a sticker on a wall and just see that. Hopefully some day you don’t have to think and say, "well what is that?" you'll know what you’re looking at, you’ll just say that’s Brand New Sin.

Karma: That’s awesome.  So, then there was another quote, “Birth of something bad and the epitome of gluttony.” Does that refer to America itself?

Joe: [Laughs] I guess and to us in a sense in the way that we you know…

Karma: Go about life?

Joe: Yeah well it’s not that we’re bad people, we just enjoy ourselves. [We all laugh] We’re in America and everyone knocks us for having a big… but you know what, I’m gonna enjoy it while I’m here cause you never know when you get older and you go you know what I wish I would’ve done that.  

Karma: Well, my mantra is you if regrets are to be had, regret the things you've done, not the things you haven’t or wished you would have [done].

Joe: Exactly!

Karma: Well, I was reading your website and I find it rather cutting edge you are selling your merchandise through Ebay.

Joe: Yeah.

Karma: What was the deciding factor in that? Is it easy?

Joe: Ebay just sees so much traffic and for you to sell your stuff on something…I mean your website is cool but think about how many times in a day someone crosses Ebay, I mean people are on there all the time, they just stumble upon it. So, basically what we do is put our shit above our merchandise and see what happens. We’ve had some mild success with it but I don’t know of any other bands that do it.

Karma: I haven’t seen any bands do it yet.

Joe: Fans obviously do it but for us as a band as a whole it’s our drummer that does everything on our website so he’s like I’m gonna try this and see what happens.

Karma: So he actually does the website?

Joe: Um-hmm. Well we control the website but it was actually designed by a fan of ours.

Karma: Oh wow.

Joe: We just don’t have much money to go out and get one of these fancy websites. I mean, this one kid he’s nineteen years old been a fan of ours for years. He was like, well I just took a course on computer design, and you guys want me to design your website? We’re like yeah, so that’s something that he can put on his resume someday.

Karma: Yeah no kidding. It puts a feather in everyone’s cap. So, if you could commission a band to do a Brand New Sin cover, who would do it and which song would it be?

Joe: Someone to cover our song? Nice. (Pauses) I don’t think I’ve ever even thought about that before. The only band that I can think of, I would love to hear…I mean not an up and coming band but a band that’s been around a long time. I always loved the way Metallica did cover songs and as for what song that would do… (Pauses) I can’t even think of a song. They could pick any song of ours and I would be happy I guess.

Karma: [Chuckles] Well speaking of songs, what is your favorite song off Recipe For Disaster?

Joe: That’s not a fair question at all…

Karma: Why not?

Joe: Well, I guess that it depends on my mood. I think about it and there’s so many different facets in the right spots on this record, so of them were around for three years and some of them were written in the last couple of months when we were doing the writing process. They go through different facets of what we were feeling and where we were going. I mean basically we were with three different labels during the writing process of this record. So there are different forms of like, anger and depression and anger and depression again in a different form. But I think right now some of the slower songs like “Vicious Cycle” really hit me because it reminds me of some of the stuff we went through and look at where we are now. It kind of makes you reflect on really bad times but in a good way, I think of a healing process more or less to hear them.

Karma: As far as your birthday is concerned, what day did you blow out candles and how many?

Joe: I blew my candles out on the 20^th of March, actually here in Chicago.

Karma: Oh, did you really?

Joe: Yeah, it was on the 19^th we played with Motörhead at midnight, I’m not tellin’ ya’ how many candles. [Smiles]

Karma: Okay, fine! [Laughs]

Joe: Everybody in rock n’ roll is twenty-five! [Chuckles]

Karma: Well, I guess that means that you’re a little…older then. That's okay, we all are, 25 then if that's the case!! I like that, we're gonna have to use that! [Laughs] So, what did you grow listening to?

Joe: Oh everything. I come from a very musical family; my mom played piano and both my brothers sang in chorus and played instruments in college. I have older brothers and I’m the youngest of three but there’s a gap between us. My oldest brother is older by like ten years. My parents were listening to Elvis and a lot of the old country like Johnny Cash, Charlie Pride, and Merle Haggard, stuff like that. I have a real country side of me that I never really bring to the band but my oldest brother, Mike, was probably the most influential on me because he was the one that got me to listen to Black Sabbath, Kiss, and [Lynyrd] Skynyrd. At the same time, he would take me to the other side of the spectrum and listening to Journey.  He was always a person that had such a wide variety of musical tastes. My one brother used to bang on us… “One minute he’s listening to Ozzy Osbourne, the next minute he’s listening to Alabama, what is he doing?” Well it’s appreciation of a lot of [music]. I listen to everything if it’s good music, I’ll listen to it. I don’t pigeon hole myself being like, “I only listen to metal and hard rock.” I mean, my girlfriend has got me into parts of R&B and hip-hop that I never in a million years thought I’d listen to. She’s got me appreciating that and I listen to country music when all the guys are sleeping in the van, I’ve got Garth Brooks, I enjoy it all.

Karma: Well, it shows that you have an open mind.

Joe: Yeah, there’s too much good music in this world to just confine yourself to one thing.

Karma: Very true. Well do you have any final words? 

Joe: Buy our record; come see our shows, so I don’t ever have to work a day job again!

Karma: There you go! Thank you so much Joe.

Joe: No problem, Karma. I always love having conversations, you know so thank you.