The RODS Discuss World On Fire of New album Wild Dogs Unchained

‘80s metal luminaries The Rods are back with Wild Dogs Unchained, a new album that combines reimagined classics from their past with masterfully crafted new songs.

Hooks, grooves, crafty, formidable, and rebellious are songwriting attributes that The Rods gladly embrace. On Wild Dogs Unchained, the veteran power trio continues their famed aural assault with songs like “Eyes of a Dreamer” and “Tears for the Innocent,” revealing heretofore unrealized musical melodicism, while re-tooled classics, “Hurricane” and “Wild Dogs Unchained,” percolate with renewed vigor. 

On Wild Dogs Unchained, the playing is harder, the grooving is heavier, and the singing more soulful than ever before. David “Rock” Feinstein (guitar/vocals), Freddy Villano (bass), and Carl Canedy (drums) have crafted a definitive Rods album aimed at pleasing die-hard fans and new audiences alike. 

Once again mixed and mastered by Chris Collier, Wild Dogs Unchained flexes considerable musical muscle and builds upon the ironclad sonic template that these three musicians have forged over recent years. Not content to rest on their laurels or their legacy, The Rods are getting tighter, more nuanced, and perhaps even more bludgeoning with age. As Derric Miller at hardrockhaven.net said, “The Rods just pummel you. There’s an insane energy coming from this band.”

TRACK BY TRACK: 
EYES OF A DREAMER, David Feinstein
This song is about people wanting to fulfill their dreams; never to worry how big your dreams are, or how hard it may be to achieve them. Even through tough times, be persistent and continue with determination to make your dreams in life reality.
 
ROCK AND ROLL FEVER, David Feinstein
This song is about musicians who are strong-willed and live for their music. Music to these individuals, as well as fans, becomes like a drug to them. It’s an addiction. It makes you feel good making the music and listening to the music. It makes the fans feel good, as well as the performers playing the music. Everybody’s got the “fever.”
 
MIRROR MIRROR, David Feinstein
This song is about looking at yourself. What do you think of yourself? What kind of person do you think you are? What kind of person should you be? Look in the mirror, “Are you evil or divine?”
 
TEARS FOR THE INNOCENT, David Feinstein
This song is about senseless war, and the innocent people that die because of it. We cry for those innocent people and feel sorry for what they have lost. Their homes, their land, their lives.
 
WILD DOGS UNCHAINED David Feinstein
Carl Canedy is the writer of this particular song, but I think I can speak for him in saying that this song is about fighting to be free. It pertains to all people. Fight for your freedom.
 
TIME TO ROCK, David Feinstein
For a rock musician, it is always “Time to Rock.” It’s anticipating an event or concert that you will be playing at. The excitement, the lights, the electrify in the air. It’s always a rush when it’s “Time to Rock.”
 
RUN RUN RUN, David Feinstein
This song is about being free. Casting your fate to the wind. More like a biker anthem. A feeling that I think most of us would like to feel sometime. To know the feeling of what it’s like to really be free.
 
WORLD ON FIRE, David Feinstein
Inspired by the state that our world is in right now. Wars, hunger, homelessness. It’s about having faith that our world will get better and asking, “What can we do to help make that happen?”
 
MAKE ME A BELIEVER, David Feinstein
This song is about perseverance. No matter how hard things get in life, to stand up and do what is needed to make things better. To be a believer and to always fight for what is right. 
 
HURRICANE, David Feinstein
This song is about a car called “Hurricane” owned by an eager person who is possessed with the idea that his car is the best, fastest car on the street. “Hurricane” is always ready for a challenge.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, you until his censer.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
For Wow.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
For you, young rob.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
House, gates are open, the flames are rushing in. Take
the time look around to see that you have sinned,
broken hearts, broken dreams, standing by the cross, take a

(00:42):
stand and fight to win.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
They're always is lost, and we marchings in the school.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
This is the Pipe Man here on the Adventures the
Pipe Man w four C Y Radio. And I'm very
excited our next guest, because, man, this band I've been
listening to since the eighties and was always one of
my favorites. And I love we have eighties badass metal
bands putting out new music in twenty twenty five and

(01:16):
has no different for the Rods. So let's welcome to
the show.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
David. How are you good.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
I'm good. I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Really, I still have my Wild Dogs Vinyl like, so
I love that we are coming out with Wild Dogs unchained.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
That is so cool.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Now we figured we probably at this point of this game,
we probably should unchain them, you know, yeah, right, let
them be free, you know, because there's been a lot
of years. They've been in cages, they've been in chains,
they've been held up. You know, we've been we've been
keeping them tied down, and now it's time to let
them go free.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
I think it's a perfect time lem go free, do
you like, go after all the idiot stuff that's going
on in the world, Like you could just let them
go and maybe they'll fix the world for us.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
I know, I wish it was gonna be easy, but
I don't know. It's really the world is really in
a bad state, you know. I mean, yeah, it's it's
it's too bad. But there's nothing much we can do
about it. I mean, we can protest and we can complain,
and you know, I can write songs that are protest

(02:30):
songs and songs about all that, but it's really not
going to do anything. But it's good to speak up,
you know, speak your piece and let people know how
you feel about it.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
And the music is therapy anyway, regardless of if ever
it's going to fix things. It's therapy for you the artist,
it's therapy for us the listener. And I think that's
all that counts. And one of the best things about
twenty twenty five is I think metal is bigger now
than it was us back in the eighties. You know,

(03:02):
it's it's more like I love going to shows and
I see our generation there with their kids, with their grandkids,
Like I've brought my grandkids to shows and festivals and
my kids, and you wouldn't have had that back in
the eighties, Like I wouldn't go see a sixty year
old band in the eighties, you know, you know, but

(03:23):
now it's cool.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
It's it's you know, definitely a different world obviously, you know,
but I found that, like in the live shows that
we've done, you know, there's been such a broad range
of age groups.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
I mean, right, some of the.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Younger fans are like probably weren't even born, you know,
back when we were in our heyday of doing things
in the beginning of it all. So it's it is
really great to know that the music holds up, you know,
and that everybody stays there because there's people that were
there back in the day, like yourself, that remember it
from the beginning, and there's all ages in between, you know.

(03:59):
So it just tells you that the music does hold up.
You know. It's a brotherhood and I mean in the
word of like female, male or whatever of people that
like the music, you know and follow it. So it
is a good.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Feeling Oh yeah, I love that because I remember going
to shows back in the eighties and I would have
met you only saw people your own age, even the
bands were your own age, you know, like, and so
I think it's so cool. And I look around at
a festival nowadays and there's like one hundred thousand people

(04:34):
and you can't pick who is who they are, age
or otherwise. It's not like that gatekeeper thing we had
back in the eighties. We are one big brotherhood, one
big family now.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, yeah, it is. It is a good feeling, you know,
when you go to the shows and see all the people,
it's really great. So the thing is with the fans
is like, no matter what country you go to, you know,
it's basically the fans are the same. I mean, you
can be in a different country, you could be in
a different country, but when you go to the show,
you can't really tell, you know, what country you're in

(05:10):
because the fans are all the same.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
You know.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, there's no difference in them. So it's definitely a
continuity there of people that are into it.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
And does it kind of blow your mind to when
you go to all these different countries and they don't
speak English, but they can, they can sing every word
back to you.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, it is. It is pretty amazing when you're on
stage and you can see the people singing along, you know,
especially when it's in countries that you know you're not
it's not not the US. You know, you're not speaking
and they're not speaking English. So it is pretty amazing
to see them do that. I mean, obviously they know
the meaning of it, you know, even though they're saying

(05:55):
they may be singing in the and they're there foreign language,
but they do know the meaning, which means a lot.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
And that's important because you know, that's what helps us
is the meaning to these songs, you know, and that's
what's beautiful about metal and always has been, is the
songs had meaning and they were about real things.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Mm hmmm. You know, I think you know, for me,
you know, as a writer, I mean back in the day,
you know, the thing was to write about partying and
about sex, drugs and rock and roll and the whole thing,
you know, And now it's changed to a point for
me as a writer anyways, and you you can probably

(06:36):
be able to hear on this latest album of ours,
you know, I've become more of a person that needs
to write about the way I feel about what the
world is going on, what's going on in the world today,
you know, and maybe we can do about it. And
but you know, just to be able to express your
feelings a little bit more other than what times the

(06:58):
party start, you know, right, So it is it is
a little bit more to it now because the world
is so different and it's good to express your feelings
and it's good to know when people agree with you know,
we're trying to put across in a song.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
So and that's why I love about this new album
is every song has a meaning that I live by,
you know. And and then of course you have world
on fire. I mean I wake up in the morning
and I feel the world is on fire.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
You know, definitely when you watch the news, you know.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
Oh yeah, yeah. I try to stay away now.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
It's like ignorance is bliss. Like last year, I was
in Costa Rica for three months and my brother calls me.
He goes, did you see the news? I'm like no,
and I'll give a shit. I'm going surf and have
a nice day.

Speaker 4 (07:52):
Yeah, Because it's it's.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Like it doesn't change. I'd rather not be so like
these people that are obsessed with the news. Yeah, I
don't think they're living a very happy life being obsessed
with Like I want to be aware of what's going on,
but I don't need to watch it twenty four to seven.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
No, But because it's because it puts you in a
you know, a lot of times puts you in a
depressed mood, you know. I mean, the news is there
to show you, you know, like from what I gather,
you know, like they always want to show you the
negative of what's going on, you know, right, once in
a while there's a positive in there, but it's always
the negative. Who's getting killed? You know, where the shootings are?

(08:31):
What about the war? How many got killed in this
bombing and that bombing? You know. So it's like if
you start your day off of that, I think it's
very difficult to like continue on with like some kind
of positive attitude, even though it might affect you, you know,
like yourself and the town that you live in. But
you could see the world what's going on, you know, Like,

(08:52):
so yeah, it's depressing. You can't really you know, I
don't hardly ever watch you know, I might put it
on in the morning just a little bit to see well,
who might have died, you know, who might have you know,
this might happen. But other than that, to get involved
in what's going on in the world, you kind of

(09:12):
need to know, you know, you know, the songs I
wrote on this album are on in the world, you know,
and how we should feel about it. And again, that's
just my feelings. You know. If nobody likes the album
or nobody likes the lyrics or whatever, it doesn't really

(09:33):
matter to me. You know. It's like, those are my feelings,
you know, yeah, and I feel good about them. So
that's what people should kind of project during their daily routiness,
you know, you know, don't be afraid of what to
say or to feel the way you feel about things,
you know, rather than to be controlled by what's going
on in the news of the day.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
It's funny, I was just thinking about that this morning,
that before we had the internet and social media and
cell phones and all this stuff, you know, things didn't
affect us the same way because it wasn't hammered in
our face twenty four to seven, and cause you know,
you could kind of live your life a bit instead

(10:17):
of being connected to all this negativity.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
And you know, you could.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Even there's certain things that went on back then that
we didn't know about, and you know what, not knowing
about was almost better because there was nothing we could
do about it, you know, that's true.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
I mean we never really in the start of all,
you know, when we started back in the eighties, I mean,
there was there was no there was no internet, you know, right,
you didn't know if you had fans in Spain or
France or any anything any other countries because there was
no Internet. You know, you can't always and you still,
I don't know, you know, you couldn't rely on record

(10:56):
companies to really give you the right answers as far
as you know, how many records you're selling where, you know.
And I don't want to sound negative against record companies,
but in reality, there is a lot of negativity when
it comes to record companies and artists and all that.
As far as I'm concerned. That's just me. But once

(11:18):
the Internet came into you know, once we had like
kind of this Rods reunion when all of a sudden
the Internet was there and we realized we had these
fans that were in all these different countries. We never
we never knew that before, you know, we never knew it,
so it's it is a different world.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Well there's the positive of it, right then, you know,
certain good things, you know, you know.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Definite positive. I mean, as far as talking about the band,
I mean when we we had a you know, we
took a little hiatus, we took a little time off.
You know, when we didn't play for a while. It
wasn't a nasty situation where we didn't get along or
that kind of thing fighting. We just felt like we
need to get away from it for a while, you know.
I mean, I think for me, the and I think

(12:04):
for the I can speak for the three of us
at the time. The business part of you know, like
somebody once told me the music business is two words,
music and business. Business part of it got to us.
You know, it's like, you know, we're in it because
we want to make music. You know. Originally I remember
playing with Ronnie in the early days with Elf. You know,

(12:25):
like we weren't we were in the band. We didn't
have a band because we thought we wanted to be superstars.
We wanted to you know, make a lot of money.
We did it because we love to do it, you know,
and that's what we you know, I know myself and
the people that I've worked with. That's what we did.
We did it for because we loved it. We didn't
do it thinking about we're going to be millionaires. So

(12:49):
when you start out, when you do it in that way, uh,
it changes things, you know. So we got away from
it for a while. When we had a reunion after
a few years, I started doing solo album and Carl
and I hadn't seen Carl and Uh and Gary at
the time was the bass player. I hadn't seen any
one of those guys in a while. And Carl had

(13:12):
heard my latest solo album at the time, and he
gave me a phone call said I just heard your
solo album and it makes me want to play again.
I said, well, you know, let's why don't we do
a reunion a couple of reunion gigs, you know, a
couple of small bars locally for the hell of it.
And I said, I'll try to get old of Gary
and see if he's interested. So we did that, and

(13:32):
we did one in my hometown, and we did one
in Ithaca. That what's Ithaca is something about twenty mile
ride from and that's where Gary lived. And we found
out that even though these little clubs that held like
maybe barely one hundred people, that people were coming from everywhere.
And uh, because the internet, you know, it was there

(13:53):
now and people knew, hey, the Routs are playing again,
and they're bringing all of the albums, the viol for
rust of sell and sign and whatnot. And we're thinking, geez,
you know this isn't this is incredible. We were never
really knew we had, you know, these fans. So, you know,
after we did those two shows, we said, hey, let's
just keep doing some shows if we can. We never

(14:13):
got another manager, We never solicited, you know, we never
worked with a booking agency or any kind of agency
or any management or anything. We did everything ourselves, and
we were real serious about making it a full time thing.
And all of a sudden, we started getting phone calls
from like different countries, you know, like what do we

(14:34):
have to give you to come player festival in Brazil
or you know, we you know, these countries that we
had never been to on our heyday, and you know,
ninety nine point nine percent of the time we would
tell them we just need plane tickets, we need hotel rooms,
we need food, you know, we need transportation, and we need,
you know, obviously there's always stage set up, you know,

(14:56):
gear provided, and you know, mostly all the time, we
never even asked for a performance feet because we wanted
to go do these jobs. They were in different countries
we'd never been in, and we would we would go
for expenses, you know, but it was great because we
got to go and we got to play for fans
that we never knew. We had fans in Brazil, you know,

(15:17):
we never we never had fans in Norway and all
these other countries that we had never gone to before.
So it was really great. So we started doing that.
Like every summer we would do like eight to ten
shows and they would all be like in and out,
maybe you know, fly in somewhere, do one or two shows,
one or two festivals. Maybe one was a club gig,

(15:40):
one was a festival, and fly back. We never did
an extensive and we didn't want to do any extensive
touring at the time. However, in twenty eleven we did
do thirty days with the Deo Disciples that was around
his old band, you know, after he passed away. It
was all through Europe, you know, and that was great,

(16:00):
and that was thirty days and it was like, jeez,
we haven't done thirty days on a bus in a
long time, you know, so we're going to handle it.
But we handled it pretty you know, actually pretty easily.
You know. It was pretty nice and we had a
good time. But that's basically, you know, like we started
in this full my little I get carried away sometimes

(16:22):
and I lose myself in this talking. But the Internet,
you know, changed things a lot, you know, for negative
and for a lot for good, a lot for yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:34):
Well, you know it is true. You know, it's funny too,
Like I do coverage.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
At music festivals all over the US, UK and Europe,
and when I got Europe, it's like I'm going back
to the eighties. Like you turned on the radio there
and they're playing the stuff that would have been back
in the eighties. And it's like some of these bands
that I thought were gone, I'm like, oh, oh, they've

(17:00):
just been in Europe all these years, you know, you know,
and the fans there are just like die hards.

Speaker 4 (17:09):
You know, it's.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Unbelievable, but it's always been that way since the beginning.
Hendricks had to go to Europe to make it, you know,
a lot of bands had to go there, because the
people in Europe are more to me, are more open minded,
you know, and we're willing to listen to what you have.
People in the US, you know, are kind of like,
I don't want to say, I don't know if spoiled

(17:31):
is the right word or not, but they're not as
apt to like listen to something new, you know, to
give it a chance. You know. So a lot of
groups really had to go a lot of big groups,
and I can mention Hendrix as one, but a lot
of groups had to go to Europe to actually be heard,
to make a noise enough to make it big into
the United States and then worldwide. You know. So Europe

(17:54):
is always more hardcore and more dedicated to listening and
being open minded about the music.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, And the key word there is listening, because you know,
we live in this mentality today of the track track
track mentality and listen for two seconds. Listen some of
my favorite songs. Ever, if I only listened to two
seconds of this song, I would never not a song
like it. Sometimes it took a minute to get to
the part like you're like, oh my god, you know,

(18:24):
And I think they appreciate that stuff in Europe more
as well, and you're so right, because I thought COVID
would change things over here in the US, and you know,
because it was before COVID everybody was complaining about every
festival and blah blah blah, and they're still doing it now.
And it's like. One of the things that blows my mind,

(18:45):
to your point is if a band drops out for
whatever reason, how many people get on here in the
US and they're like, oh, now I don't even want
to go to the festival. The only reason I was
going for that band. I'm like thinking, that's dumb. First
of all, the reason go a festival is you find
all these new bands. That's how I find all my
new favorites. And second of all, they're not playing their

(19:09):
normal set that they would for their concerts. So if
that's who you want to see, just go to their concert.
If that's the only band you want to see, yeah,
where's Europe? Like, it blows my mind. We were just
talking about in the UK too. I was just at
Bloodstock in the UK and there were bands playing at
ten thirty in the morning and those, as you know,
those festivals, people are like partying all night long or

(19:33):
having fun all night long.

Speaker 4 (19:34):
It's not like a limited time.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
And there were huge crowds for these bands that nobody
ever heard of at ten thirty in the morning, And
that says it all right there, like you know, that's
that's the way it should be for all of them.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, you're right, I mean that's the way. I mean.
Look at when you think back about Woodstock. I mean
a lot of those bands were unknown. I mean Santana
and all those band you know, they played Woodstock, and
once they played Woodstock and people for their music, you know,
they gave them that boost, you know, to be successful.
So and I think you know, in today's world where

(20:11):
you're doing it, and there's so many festivals, you know,
like everywhere, you know, and and if a lot of
times a band that's maybe relatively well known has to
cancel out, say right, and then all of a sudden,
the agency that's booked us, all we got to come
up with a band. So they pull a band from
the roster that you know, maybe not that well known,

(20:33):
throw them in that slot on the festival, and they
get to play in front of a lot of people,
and it gives that band a really chance to like
expose themselves to like a new audience, you know. So
it is good, you know, I mean, there's there's a
lot so much going out there on out there, you know,
there's so many different types of music obviously as far

(20:54):
as even as hard rock, heavy metal goals, and you
need to be out there and exposure self. And now
that the internet is, we have the Internet, and it's
so easy to record and so easy to get your
music out there that you know, musicians can do that,
you know, without having to sacrifice themselves and being under

(21:15):
control of a record label. Because back in the day, uh,
you know, you couldn't be heard unless you had a
record deal with a record you know, So now that's
not the case. You know, you can you can make
a record on you you can make record on your computer.
You can put it out there on the Internet and
be heard. And you know, as far as booking jobs

(21:37):
or you know, agencies or whatever, you know, you can
sure you can do that on your own tool or
get hooked up with an agency. But it's much easier now,
you know, for a band to be to get their
music out there than it was back in the day
when you you know, you were basically at the mercy
of a record label.

Speaker 4 (21:53):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
And that's one of the things I do love about
today because to your point earlier, you know, yeah, there's
the business side and then there's the artist's side. And
I've always believed, going back to the eighties when I
sat backstage on the Sunset Strip when they'd signed some
of these bands, let you know what, the suits should

(22:16):
do the business end, and the artists should do the
creative ent. Never ever should the business people tell the
artists how to create music.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
No, I know, you know, it's and it's I mean,
there's just so many stories that, uh, you know, prove
that point, you know what I mean. Unfortunately, a lot
of times the musicians aren't you know, money is not
their object, right, They're not doing it for money, They're

(22:47):
doing it for the love of it. So in the
end of the whole thing, the people that are running
the business end are the ones that end up making
all the money. So saying the end of a person's career,
you know, if they're if I'm coached or handled or
managed by someone that's going to be able to say, well,
you you are making some money. Now, let's let's kind

(23:07):
of like do something right with it, so that like
later on in years. You know, you're going to be
taken care of her, You're going to have money. And
I think a lot of bands, you know, were taking
advantage of in their early days because record companies and
publishing companies demanded so much from artists and the artist

(23:29):
of the one that's creating the whole thing that's making
you know what I mean, And the artist was always
the one at the bottom of the total pole getting paid.
So yeah, you know, it's it's different, and it's it's
sad in no way, because music is an art form.
It's just like anything to see. If you're an artist,
if you're a painter, you know, or any kind of

(23:51):
art form, a dancer, an actor or whatever. You know,
you're doing it for the love of your art, you know.
And it's very easy to be taking advantage of people
that are doing it where their motivation is only to
make money. Yeah, if they feel that they can make
money with you doing what you're doing, then then we'll

(24:11):
take advantage of it, you know.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, And to your point, like back in the eighties,
I saw it plenty, you know that people, these record
labels would feed the artists, the party lifestyle, the women,
the drugs, the alcohol to everything for that exact reason,
in my opinion, So they could make a ton of
money and the artist has no clue what's going on

(24:36):
and gets screwed over.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah, that's true. It's true. That's why you need a
good you need a good honest manager at the time,
you know, which you know, if you have a good
honest manager, you're lucky, you know. You know, you've heard
horror stories about even relatives that were big artists managers
that got screwed, you know. So you know, there's just

(24:59):
so many variable, so many different points about it. It is.
It's basically a dirty business, you know. So in the
music business, I love it, you know, It's been my
whole life really, you know, I've written songs, are recorded
and you know, played out live and been you know,
it's been my whole life really and I love it,

(25:20):
you know. But it can it can be pretty dirty.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
Also, and that's why it's great nowadays for an artist
like you. You know, you can put out the music
you want to put out. You don't have to listen
to anybody. You can just be your own creative self.
And here the end result is Wild Dog's Unchained, which
is a badass album. And I'm always impressed with artists

(25:46):
that can still write new music this many years later.
I sit there and I think to myself, I'm like, wow,
how did they come up with new material after all
these years?

Speaker 3 (25:57):
But it.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Somebody like you proves that that it can be done.
And of course there's playing to talk about nowadays, you know.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, And you know, the thing is like, you know,
just to go back just from for me and like
when I when I started playing in Rownie's band, you know,
it was before even it was ELF. It was Ronnie
d On the Profits. You know, from that whole transition
from Ronnie d On the Profits to the electricals, the
Elves and then the ELF. You know, the writing process

(26:26):
began there for us, you know. And even those those
guys in the band were five years older than me,
so I got you know, I really got the benefit
of a great education from being you know, with Ronnie
and those guys, and you know, Ronnie became like my brother,
you know, and and nice. The thing the thing is
is like writing is something that like when when I

(26:50):
had to write songs for the Rods, you know, I
had to write songs that were basically designed for a
three piece hard rock, heavy metal band, they had a
singer that was more of a stylist rather than a
you know, a really good singer, you know, kind of
like we've been categorized as like, you know, an American Motorhead,
which is a compliment to me. You know, we've done

(27:11):
a quite a few gigs with Motorhead and they are
great guys, and I love the band. But you know,
if I was writing is in the process of writing
songs with Ronnie and the band as the singer who
is like the greatest singer of all times. You know,
you can write anything and he can sing it, and
he was he'll sing at the best, you know, So

(27:33):
when you have to write a song that's you know,
basically for a band that's you know, in an era
of time, that's uh, you know American type Motorhead, which
you're singing about partying and you know, rock and rolling
the whole thing. You have to write within that, within
that realm, you know, so that people get people in
the fance, can you know associate it with you know, yeah,

(27:57):
once uh we you know, the the Rods hadn't played
and you know, one of the last jobs we did
was last October and it was in Australia and we
did three shows there, three different cities. But after when
Ronnie passed away, and I got to see a lot
of Ronnie the last ten years of his life. We
spent a lot of time together, and he was such

(28:19):
an incredible lyricist and incredible musician and incredible singer, you know,
you know, and his lyrics to every song really meant something,
you know, whether it was you know, like stand up
and shout, or if it was something more serious, you know,
or if it was stuff that he did with Richie,
you know, in Rainbow that was more meeting, you know,

(28:41):
which was it was an incredible combination with him and Richie.
But you know, after that, I decided, like, you know,
like I don't want to write at this stage of
the game. I don't want to write about you know,
like partying and rock and roll and some mean, yeah,
I could a Rod's album that's gonna be nothing thrashing

(29:02):
away at partying and rock and roll. But I wanted
to write something that was meaningful, you know, like Ronnie did.
You know, All his lyrics were meaningful, they meant them
and and in the last few years, I mean you know,
warl on Fire was written I wrote a couple of
years ago. I mean, the album's been delayed, so you know,

(29:22):
some of these songs were written a year or two ago,
you know, in the song like Tears for the Innocent,
you know, or that's basically about all these innocent people
getting killed the bombing and everything, you know, losing their homes,
losing everything, you know. So I wanted to write something
that was more not really Rod's style, because when you

(29:46):
hear some of these songs, you know, compared to like
songs ten, fifteen, twenty years ago that the Rods put out,
they're totally different.

Speaker 4 (29:56):
Yeah, it's kind of like, I think they have more substance.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
There's more substance. It's like, hey, did the Rods finally
grow up? Or you know, I mean, you know, we're
not wild dogs anymore, or like, you know, they're like
letting them go or unchaining them. But I wanted to
write songs that meant something. You know, whether there's some
good rock songs on the album with their rock and
roll songs, but I wanted to also have some songs

(30:22):
down there that meant something that was going on in
the world, you know, And I know, that's what Ronnie
did when he wrote his songs. His songs, you know,
really meant something even though his capabilities, his vocabulary, his
you know, his mind is like so far above anything

(30:42):
I could possibly do that I wanted. I wanted to
do that. I wanted to follow that path so that
people listen to it, you know, either going to go
along with it and say, yeah, that's cool, I agree
with that, or they're not. And that's basically what you know,
people have always done with music. You know, you listen

(31:02):
to a song, I love that song, or I hate
that song, you know, or when it comes to that
song on the album, I skip over it, don't play
the other songs. But anyways, that's that's that's I think
what is important to me right now is to be
able to put across in the songs that are right

(31:24):
in the in the handful of people that will will
you know, get an opportunity to listen to the songs
that actually want to write. We want to listen to
the songs. At least they're they're knowing like where my
head's are and where the band's heads are right now,
you know, because it is is it. It is a
big change when you when you listen to some of
these songs on this album.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
But you know, what I think is key to what
you're saying that will make it makes this album successful
and good is that? So as an example, you take
a band like Blink one eighty two, okay, who is
really really popular, and when I I saw them at
a festival a few years ago, they were headlining the festival,

(32:05):
a lot of the people were like, you know, I
really liked them when I was fifteen, but I can't
relate now anymore, you know, And I think that's kind
of what is going on here, is like you can't
write the same music you did in the eighties because
we were all kids, you know, and it's like, you

(32:26):
got to write something now that's more appropriate for the
time that you're in in your life. You know, that
would make sense because then it's believable. You know, it's
more believable to write music the way you're writing now
than if you were to write the same thing that
you did in the eighties.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yeah. You know, this particular new album has a couple
of remakes on one of them. One of them well
once Hurricane, which has always been one of the most
popular songs and excuse me, Carl came up with the idea,
let's do a couple of remakes on your son. I
wasn't really upward at first, but he goes, you know,
Hurricane is a song that everybody wants to hear. Let's

(33:05):
do a remake. And we have a new bass player now, Freddie,
who's been in the band a couple of years. And
the other song was one song was make Me a Believer,
which it was written like many many years ago, and
we never really did the song, never really recorded. It
was on a live project album that we did were

(33:26):
Schmook Avigaal at the time, sang the song and Freddie,
the bass player now, said oh, we need to we
should do that song. It's a great song. So I said, okay,
and so we did that song. And wild Dogs is
the other song that we did that is an older song.
Wild Dogs is a very popular album. But for some reason,

(33:48):
when we played live, we never played the song wild Dogs.
And that's because every time we worked it out to
try to play it live, it never really sounded like,
you know, like I should. It never sound like we're
making it sound heavy, you know. So Carl, for a
long time and Carl's on I wrote that song, and

(34:08):
he would say to me, rock, you know, you've got
to you got to redo that song. You got to
rewrite it, you gotta you gotta rearrange it. You gotta
do something and make it sound heavy, you know, make it,
make it good so we can play it live. You know.
It's like you know these it's like for years. It
seems like for years, you know, I kind of like
let that go in one ear and out the other.
I never really thought about doing, well, what am I

(34:29):
going to do with this song? You know that kind
of thing. So before we recorded this last album, he said, Jesus,
there's something you can do with wild Dogs, you know.
So I said, okay. So I finally sat down with
a guitar and I I tried to do things something
to it. So I rearranged the song, changed you know,
the lyrics a little bit and uh. And I showed

(34:50):
it to Carl and he loved it. He goes, oh,
that's great. You know, it's so much heavier, it's so
much better. It's we gotta be we have to record
that song. So that's why we did that song. And
and it does sound a lot better than the original.
It's different obviously, but it's a song we probably could
do live now because of the arrangements a little different,
but that was a popular song. So those are those

(35:11):
are like three of the older two of them. Anyways,
the older songs that we did. The newer songs are
just basically new songs. But it's funny because no matter
and it's happened a number of times, you know, people
want It's just like when you go see Julis Priest,
you want to hear Living After Midnight, you know. Yeah,
those kind of songs that were big hits at the time.

(35:34):
You know, there's songs that we've done through the years
that were songs that we'd put on the last cut
of an album because it was we thought it was
the worst song that we ever came up with. You know.
We just put it on as a filler as the
tenth or eleventh song, and we never learned. We never
played it live, you know, and we'd have somebody at

(35:56):
a show come up to us and go, hey, are
you guys gonna play such and such a song, And
we look at you know, it's like no, and it's
like that song. You know, it's like, you know, We
would never think of playing that song. We hated that song.
We didn't think it was a good song. But that
was somebody else's favorite song, right, you know, which is
so you never know, you know what it's going to be,

(36:18):
like all of the songs. But but but it is
important for me right now to write a song and
that has some meaning to it. And and I've been
criticized in the past for you know, writing protest songs.
You know, I'm not really a protest songwriter, but I
want to. I want to feel like I write something
that has some meaning that other people can relate to,

(36:41):
and it can express my feelings just the way I
feel about a certain situation.

Speaker 4 (36:47):
I think it's great.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Like I think when people say that artists should not
use their pulpit for their opinions, I call bullshit.

Speaker 4 (36:56):
That's that's exactly who should you know?

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Like who who else is going to speak out to
a large crowd for those opinions? And you know what,
somebody may not agree with your opinions, and that's okay,
But then there's other people that will agree with your.

Speaker 4 (37:12):
Opinions, you know, and that's your people.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
M definitely, so uh tell everybody eighth how they can
reach out to you guys on the web, on social media,
get the new album that just dropped or is dropping
in a couple of days. I mean, uh, and uh
where they can catch you live and all all that

(37:37):
good stuff.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Well let's see, I uh. Since since we started getting
calls from you know, people that want us to play here,
and now we've kind of like instead of you know,
people calling three different phone numbers, it's kind of like
put Carl in charge of like taking all the calls,

(37:59):
you know, so it's like one connection. And then that way,
when he gets a call and says hey, he'll call
us and we'll say, hey, somebody from Brazil wants is
to company this festival. This is what they're offering. Blah
blah blah, what do you want to do? We talk
about it and we say when we make a decision,
he gets back. So it's one content as far as
like where you can get the album, I guess the

(38:23):
normal places, I mean, YouTube, whatever, whatever, the internet. You know,
I'm not really a person that's like very the right
word to say.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
It's basically everywhere know where to find your music. It's there.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
You can find the music where you're going to find
the music. You know, you just put in the like
right now they've released I guess the World on Fire
is out as like the single before they will release.
I mean, people ask me, like where can I hear it?
I said, type in World on Fire the rods, somewhere,
Something's going to come up somewhere. We're gonna be able

(39:01):
to hear the song. As far as live shows go,
we don't have anything scheduled right now. We actually didn't
play any live shows just last summer because we were
supposed to have this album completed, mixed, mastered, artwork and

(39:22):
everything done by the end of this last August, because
the album was supposed to come out and last January,
you know, I'm talking about the August prior was supposed
to come out that last January, so we didn't take
any you know, a lot of these dates are booked
a year ahead of time, so we like turned down
some dates because we need to devote the time to

(39:42):
finishing this album. You know, for me, it's like all
we're gonna do. You know, the record label picked up
the option for the other label. All I got to
sit down, I gotta write ten songs. You know, it's
not something that I can do in like five minutes.
So it's like there was pressure there. And I granted,
I'm always you know, I always have ideas. I always
have titles. It's just like putting them together and then

(40:06):
making them a song that has some kind of meaning.
It takes time. So you know, we didn't take any
jobs for this last summer because of that. We wanted
to devote all the time because we had a deadline.
As it turned out, the label had its own problems
within itself. The album was never released when it was

(40:27):
supposed to be released, so we really got pushed back, pushback,
and so we actually lost out on some time we
could have played some live shows, and we saved our
time because we did get the album done and everything
was ready and turned into the label by the end
of a year ago this last August. So right now

(40:49):
we're hoping that when people hear this album it will
generate some kind of interest that they want us to
do some shows for next year.

Speaker 4 (40:57):
You know, I'm sure it will.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
Yeah, I'm hoping because you know, I miss playing, we
all the three of us, do you know, And I
miss playing. I miss being out there. That's like, that's
like the drug, you know, the drug being out there
on stage with the audience, with the fans, communicating with them.
You know, that's the drug that keeps you going, you know,

(41:21):
and and I miss it. So I hope that I
hope that this new album will generate some interest with
some promoters and some uh you know, people that are
in charge of booking different places, that'll it'll put us
in some areas where that you know, people like yourself
and people from around the world are you know, we're

(41:42):
doing interviews with it. It's like even places now I've
never played before, and you know, we want to go
play there, you know, but in order to go play there,
you have to be you know, uh, you have to
be in the interest of some promoter that's putting on
a fire. There's something there, you know. So I guess

(42:03):
if enough people listen to the album, and enough people,
if the album becomes popular enough, and then the promoters
will see that this album is popular enough so that
the band can drop. You know. It's like a whole
Visius circle. But anyways, long story short, I'm hoping that
we get to come and play some shows next year.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Well, I do all the Danny Wimmer festivals in the States.
So I'm playing right out out there right now that
wimor needs to get the rods on the Danny Wimmer Festival.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Well, that's that's good. That's good.

Speaker 4 (42:34):
There you go, that'd be great.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
You know, most of these places that we play out
of the country, you know, it's like weird, you know.
I mean, it's like hardly ever doing a festival of
any kind in the States. I mean, back in the day,
we did a lot of touring with Judas Priest, you know,
down through the South, Ozzie we did. You know, we
did dates with a lot of people, and some of
them were in the States. But I'm not sure if

(42:57):
like the heavy metals seeing what it's like, if it's changed,
you know, in certain areas of the States, because you know,
when you take the whole United States compared to the
whole size of Europe, I mean, it's it's quite a
difference in size. You know, So when you're in Europe
and you're driving from country to country, it's like driving
from state to state here totally, not even not even

(43:20):
as far. So you can do a lot of different
countries as a part. Like if you're driving from you know,
in the United States, New York to LA.

Speaker 4 (43:30):
I mean, you know, it's a long way, so no doubt.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter where it is. Well,
you know, we love playing in the States, love playing
in any other countries too, you know, and we'll just
I'm just hoping that, you know, we get a chance
to do that for this coming year.

Speaker 4 (43:45):
I hope you do too. I'll be there. I love it.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
I love the new album and everybody has to check
it out. And I'm so happy that you guys are
writing new music as relevant to today and still rock
in our world. So thank you for that, and thanks
for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Happy to be here, thanks for having me, sure, thank you.
Hey are you rockers? This is David rock fin Stein
from the Rods and you're looking into the Pipemin on
W for cy Radio. Thank you for listening to the

(44:31):
Adventures of Pipemin.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
I'm W for CUI Radio.