 is that too loud jimmy should i turn it down or no i think you're good i think you're good you're coming in loud and clear all right i think we are good live on the metal voice first time we've had uh steve whiteman from kicks you even said on the show is there a wrong way to say it whiteman i get that a lot steve whiteman isn't it yes it is whiteman steve whiteman exactly i can read i can read those people can't all right oh actually you know what let me just record this just in case everything goes south all right good recording in progress there we go all right today on the metal voice you're welcome which was released on july the second steve whiteman's first solo album ever you know what that's kind of not true because i had a band called funny money that i did most of the writing the first the first couple albums were all my stuff but i did want to call it the steve whiteman band i wanted to be a band so we called it funny money but basically that you know they were my they were my records as well but this is the first album under my name yeah yeah so i guess the big question is you have kicks you have your solo album music i don't know did you feel that it was a more of a solo album or a kicks album and steve jump in like what's the difference i don't know where that line is well i was writing this stuff you know in hopes that uh the boys and kicks would like some of the of the songs i don't expect every song that you write to be you know accepted by the band but um i don't think the band was in a position to want to record a new album at this point so uh cova just came along and gave me an opportunity to get together jimmy jimmy shalfon actually suggested it because him him and brad divins were getting together and just doing cover songs and putting them up on facebook and jimmy said to brad and steve's sitting on a pile of songs won't we get him over here and record a couple of originals and that just kind of kicked off the whole thing and sat down with brad and jimmy we i played him like 12 tracks and just looked at me said let's do them all so i thought well we're making a steve whiteman album aren't we he said i think so and it just kept you know it it was a lot of fun it gave us something to do during covet and um it it actually turned out really really well yeah i think so too alan i mean usually we try to be ahead of the curve or promote the album before they come out but you know what we'll do i mean we'll get a second win going here and try to try to whip up some more interest into the album here just i like that i like it second coming going back to the day we joke about this all the time you know back in the day in the 80s we had enough money maybe to buy one album and we wanted to get 30 and for myself i apologize ahead of time steve kicks fell through the cracks for me it was hard to find their albums here in montreal and uh but going back listening to the solo album we've been doing some of the kick stuff from the 80s i i kind of regret that because it sounds like something that was right up my alley well you're not alone believe me a lot of people didn't know about us and and in fact the the current touring that we've been doing i think we've reached more people in the past eight years than we had in the in the whole 18 years that we were together and releasing albums on atlantic records so you're not alone there you know what i remember like hit parade magic with everybody that had a little kid yeah same here look that's what i pulled out to what the record company didn't back up guys or not hardly at all they didn't do anything they didn't do anything until blow my fuse until that record started to take off in areas outside of our little comfort zone when when it took off in in kansas and it took off in other areas that's when the record company bought okay i i think i think this band ready to pop but until that point yeah we did all of our we paid for all of our own touring we paid for that that stupid little advertisement and hit parade or we paid for everything and we were just relentless we were i mean most people would have said fuck this and quit but we we were too stupid to do that and we believed in what we were doing steve that's it going reading reading a promo you know your first album came out in 81 and and i i revisited all my old hit paraders a couple of months ago and i'm like kicks kicks was there at 83 82 you know i was very surprised because in my head it was that album that came out in the late 80s 88 and i was just blown away how early you guys were around so well we were lucky enough to have fans on the east coast that that really supported us and kept us alive and we would sell just enough records to get re-up for another album so but atlantic never really pushed the first three at all and it was you know it was hard it was disappointing but like i say we believed in ourselves and our fans believed in us and we were still having a pretty damn good time i just have you ever played in canada did you ever tour in canada we played toronto one time and we got we got stopped at the border for about three hours and they searched our bus and it was uh i was i think i was jack daniel's drunk and i pissed him off and it was it was not a it was not a good it was not a good night so we never really had the desire to go back and we would never really uh invite it back so it's just a canadian hospitality yeah i mean we're known for being really mean they're notorious for stopping tour buses and and making you get out in the middle of the night and it's freezing as cold and it was not a pleasant experience actually just want to go back to this article like this this not the article the ad okay this this like this is and so me and al and grew up in montreal canada and twitch kicks never toured you know we never had radio airplay but we kept seeing that ad over and over again just give me some background on this ad like there was a kicks ad and they go who's kicks who's kicks to the point where if you watch them tv or much music up here in canada you would eventually see a kicks video and i even remember being in north carolina and seeing kicks play in a bar like you know sort of the mat the marquis yeah and and it just but we've never had the chance so just tell me a little background on this ad a little more on this if you don't mind well it was just our attempt at getting the word out that we're a band we're on atlantic records which is you know should be a very powerful label and should be doing this we shouldn't have to do it and we just thought it's the only way to get to let people know that we're out here and little by little people would bite and they will go okay i'll i'll get that album that was for the midnight dynamite album our third album uh up until that point i don't know if we did that ad before that or not but um it was just our way of trying to get out there trying to let people know that we exist how much did it cost you must have cost a pretty penny back then um i don't think so it was it was i don't know maybe i honestly don't know i i would make four or five hundred dollars for each each time we did it it was every month yeah it goes back to what you were saying there's no way you guys should have been doing that that was a record exactly but you know we felt like they're not doing anything so we've got to do it at the same when it came to touring um they were for midnight dynamite we we put out a song called cold shower made a video for it and got very little mtv airplay and the record company was done with the record after after one song one single and it was done and we thought fuck this so we just took all of our money that we would make from the east coast from boston to new york to philadelphia to baltimore and dc and north carolina we'd bank our money then we would take it out to wherever people didn't know who the hell we were like cleveland cincinati chicago texas and then we finally made our way to la and had the boys from from poison hook us up with a couple of shows so it was just our relentless attitude that you know it's never say die attitude and we would use up all of our money go back home make another pile then go back out and do it again you know what amazes me about this album i go this is the probably one of the better kicks albums like a really good album like your solo album that is it's really good i'm and that's how i want to come across like this should have been a kicks album and and i find that in the early years in the first few albums you're underutilized after hearing this album you should have been i mean was what was that all about like i mean why did it seems like you could really write a great tune and and your voice sounds better than ever i mean jeez that's nice um well we we've had a pretty damn good songwriter and donnie pernell and unfortunately he ran to band with an iron fist so it was hard to um it was hard to contribute because he was so intimidating and getting his music done first and i would bring a song in here and there and it was almost like a i'd go ahead and record your song i'll give you a day in the studio then we would spend two and three weeks on one of his songs so it wasn't very enjoyable to bring songs into that band because most of them got shot down and you always felt like you were inferior so and trying to contribute on his stuff was like impossible because he just he had such an insight on how he wanted his music to be presented so um but i mean not to take anything away from him as a songwriter because he was a great songwriter and we really believed in the music that he wrote all right well i'm just in this solo album i'm listening to it it sounds so familiar but like new at the same time i've never had that experience with another album but that's night not the compliments yeah it's a couple you want to say it's kind of like aero spritz and you got a lot of harmonica on it and yeah but it's nothing they sound it could be bass and rollers at the same time it's not that popular you know it's funny about all the harmonica stuff because i'm not a very good lead guitar player so just so i don't have to listen to chords playing over a lead section i just threw a harmonica on it because i can play a harmonica and when we went to record the record i'm like okay we've got to get some leads in place of all this harmonica and everybody goes no man the harp's great leave it alone don't don't don't go over that stuff with with just licks and you know they're very well thought out solos and so i said okay i'm i'm game yeah you know you know what i gotta say kid dynamite is um probably the best when i listen to that song yeah it's got the meaning behind it is of course you know uh with ronnie right but that song sort of like i got transported into i don't know another time is that it's got that sort of what i think it's the melody it's because there's it's just so it's sort of the it's so contagious the melody or it's so uh you could really hum it like it's a great written song i just a great melody could be a commercial for like i don't know a tv commercialist song or you know i don't know where i'm going with this but if you just i just feel like it doesn't fit in today's world it just fits sort of like in the path somewhere well i don't you know i don't write in any kind of genre or any kind of direction i just i just sit around and bang on my acoustic guitar and something starts to come to me and the arrangement will come into place and i'm not i'm not really ever trying to like copy another song and and use that as a as a recipe for a new song i just i just kind of banged stuff out and if it when it's done i record it and people like it great they don't it just sits around i've got a bunch of stuff sitting around have you ever met bond scott because i'm hearing those acd c bond scott era riffs especially off of easy and talking about love there is there is acd there's the bond scott absolutely right absolutely yeah but we were i mean kicks was heavily influenced by acdc and bond scott was one of my favorites of all time yeah yeah um did you ever meet bond i never did no we got to meet a acdc i think on the for those about the rock tour they were they were come to town they're on atlantic records and our record exec took us to see him and meet him backstage but no never had the pleasure of meeting bond i just i just love that feel that you have and your voice man you know when they they they're talking about replacing brian when he was gone i think you would have probably been the best replacement am i am i wrong about the salad do you hear it i had done it because you could do brian and bond because you could do brian and bond that's why yeah but you know what i thought axl did a hell of a job when he went out and tore with him he did a he did an amazing job so hats off to that because that that's just hard to do that's hard to say yeah absolutely absolutely no and again the going back to jimmy's earlier points you know you listen to first kicks album and then you listen to second one and they're they're they're quite different you know and then you listen to third one and that's different so this this wouldn't be outside of the kicks wheelhouse doing an album that's this poppy if you want to say or this different i think you've always done something yes the main grooves maybe acdc sound is but the overall feel of an album change from from album to album yeah our first albums our first two albums were were definitely written in the bars and during sound checks and um it was definitely lighter and poppier and uh and i think we took a new direction when donnie started writing with outside writers for the midnight dynamite album and it got obviously heavier and everybody seemed to like that direction more than than the older way that we were approaching our album so we kind of stuck with that for for the next one and then blow my fuse and then hot wire so yeah we got we definitely got heavier after the third album and i was asking me before were you part of the the sound was very la at the time i guess 83-84-85 but were you part of that scene or you were strictly staying on the east coast at the time never we never we never wanted to conform to that we wanted to be an east coast band that's you know we were proud to be from the east coast and not having to travel to los angeles and put flyers on cars and eat ramen noodles and go through all that bullshit because we were we were doing really well on the east coast and although we never really financially made a whole lot of money individually but we made a lot of money as a band but we just reinvested it back into the band so um never made any real money in that band never never got a royalty check in my life so it was just for the love of music that yeah that kept us going at atlantic all these years that you've sold you know i i'm sure you've passed the million mark all these years they just what they they gave you advances and that was that and then yeah and you can't pay the advances back on on the on the shitty record deal that you signed when you when you first signed with them and unless you have a hit record you know you're at their mercy you can't go in and go well we we sold 80 000 records so we want to redo our record deal they're just laugh at you so it's impossible to pay back those advances of like 80 000 100 000 and they think you know they send you to new york city to make a record where we could have made a perfectly good record in baltimore and have the budget but that's how they get you that's how they nail you down and get you under their thumb is uh get you a massive debt so um you can't ever get out of it and they never have to pay you yeah yeah it's like the pizza guy the delivery guy they they mark it up a little more right a coffee guy they mark up every little thing that they do they use as an expense towards your advance right we made our first album in new york made our second album in miami third album back in new york fourth album in los angeles and the fifth album in los angeles so you know they take us out to these expensive places to live and expensive studios and and then they expect you know we can't expect to pay back all that money with our our 10% and after the the record producer takes their percentage and the agents take their percentage and like there's nothing left yeah yeah so it's such a familiar story i mean we're right every week yeah you know it just keeps sending you invoices there's no way you can ever pay this you know and if you're happened to be the principal songwriter well that's the one they're gonna focus on because he's probably the one it's the best thing in fact correct it's such a familiar story and maybe those days are probably over maybe it's a good thing in certain ways they are so yeah record companies are about done which is you know i'm good with that and when i was uh when i was trying to put this record out i i didn't know how i had no clue of how to even how to get it out there so i had to get people to help me out and um it sold a couple thousand but it's not moving any you know i'm not flying up to charts and that was never my intention anyway i never really intended to make a solo album you just kind of fell into my lap and i had the music and brad and jimmy and bob perry were really excited about it and they helped me out and made a good record i'm trying to figure out the meaning behind uh prick teaser really i was i was kind of sitting on the next what does he mean by that that's the next buy for a jingle um for a prick teaser is a girl that that says come here come here no get away get away get away come here come here now get away get away that's that's a prick teaser so you know she comes off she flirts and when it when it comes time to get down she she goes that now no i kind of figured that much i'm just trying to make a little joke were you writing what about like are did this motivate you to think of you know what i want to write another solo album you know this this really this really went well i really dug the songs or maybe you want to use those songs for kicks um you know what i don't i don't look ahead like that right now um because of i'm so involved in kicks that that's my primary uh that's where all my attention goes to right now people are asking me if i was going to go out and do any do any shows with this new music and i'm like probably not because uh it kind of gets in the way with with kicks and people are going to expect me to do kick songs if i go out which is what i did in funny money which is why i had to let funny money go because everybody come out to hear the kick songs and then kicks was out playing too so it's like now i'm i'm kind of hurting the big project to do this little project so it didn't make any sense anymore yeah i hear you and we got questions here and i could read them out or alan could read them out go ahead jim who were steve's inspirations i mean i think you kind of touched on that but go ahead um i had a lot i mean i started i started with the Beatles of course tada yeah kill surprise they're um they're the reason and i'm and i've heard thousands of artists say this they're the reason that i do this because i'm old enough that i call i actually saw them the night on ed solid and i'm like i'm in that's what i want to do and i was i was into the Beatles then it was it was more like like pop pop band and even the monkeys the monkeys had great songs even though they didn't write them they had great songwriters they did and then i got into the bands like grand funk railroad alice cooper james gang um deep purple all those all the heavier bands so i kind of went away from the Beatles and got into the heavier stuff and then along come aerosmith and acdc led Zeppelin and that's what really got my attention that's that's the kind of direction i wanted to go in the song strip off of this album reminds me of that alice cooper feel especially when you come back with the strip song at the end reminiscent of the movie slob shot i don't know if you've ever seen that but that's kind of the same song that they use at the end of the film as well so yep yep yeah that one's that that song i've been sitting around for about eight years and i finally finished it up and i i always struggle with the with the verse to that song and then i finally hit me one day i was listening to ragdoll by aerosmith and i'm like oh they're changing the chords around i'm just staying on one chord i gotta change the chords around that's what it all clicked okay thank you sorry yeah here's a question from patty saying uh steve which song is your favorite song or your most preferred of all or i guess i guess i will how about this we'll take one from the solo album then we'll say one from the kicks i like the way prick teaser turned out just i like the acapella intro and i like the meaning of the song i like the arrangement i think that one turned out really well and do me i like a lot okay and as far as i don't know kick songs there there's so many and we've been doing them for 35 years so i don't i can't really pick one you know there's a bunch of them one of my favorites to do is off of the rock your face off album called wheels in motion that was a lot of fun to play live all right which which song do you hate performing a live out of the kicks well that's easy yeah yeah yeah i'm so tired of doing that song and doing that stupid rap that everybody knows what's coming but they gotta hear it and she threw up all over the floor that's oldest shit so we haven't been doing it lately i'm like i can't do that damn thing anymore all right 12 pack wants to know didn't kicks tour with rat back in the day yes yeah that was our first arena tour that was the first band that ever invited us to come out and join them in an arena tour it was it was rat britney fox and kicks britney fox yeah britney fox and they were it was a great tour it was it was great fun great guys we had a we had a lot of fun on that tour and got to know those guys really well and i still see steven once in a while because we we either open for him or he opens for us and you know we reminisce about that tour and just had a great time here's one joe peas saying any chance of a vinyl reissue other than blow my fuse which was already been done i recently played 150 bucks for a vinyl version of hot wires i think it's worth every penny so bottom line is the question is any chance of a vinyl reissue other than blow my fuse i think they're working on that i do believe they are working on that and this um this this solo record that i just put out is when it's out on vinyl now if anybody there you go there you go but you got it there's only there's only one source for it and it's called the head vinyl shop in haggers town maryland so anybody wants one just google the head vinyl shop in haggers town maryland and and rick parks will hook you up you brought up britney fox i'll throw out some band names from the 80s around the time when you were starting out just your thoughts if you remember them anything about the flake like heaven with alan fryer yeah i i mean i knew of them but i was i had a i had blinders on when when we were going through that i mean bands i grew up in the 70s and and the 60s and those are the bands that always influenced me so the newer bands didn't hit me as much i mean obviously bands like death leopard you'd listen to rat i'd listen to um white lion i got into but i didn't i didn't really check out all the bands that came out at that time because like i say i was i was going down my own path and so busy i i didn't really care and i love the old music that i grew up with the east coast guy what about riot out of new york city i knew of them but again wasn't on my radar okay you guys there's not many bands from maryland there were there weren't that many bands that broke out of there that at least that's sort of on the mainstream level that i right it was one band called crack the sky that that broke out of here before we did and another band called face dancer that that got a record deal and did a couple of albums but other than that you're right not too much has come out of here i mean yeah there was the thrash there was the speed metal but not really in sort of the hard rock vein you know sort of a lot of hard rock wrath child was another one wrath child was a usa remember them yeah not uk usa right there was two and fourth page warning coming out of connecticut the connecticut's not exactly a hotbed of uh of metal either a band's coming out of there but right well i mean bands like extreme come out of the northeast twisted sister come out of the northeast yeah i mean there were some what about the relationship between kicks and bob halligan junior who's you know known for judas priest you got an uh some heads are gonna roll helix rock you and who else uh and i guess so many songs by kicks especially you know the songwriting or a co-songwriting yeah well that was that was donny pernell and and bob that those two we get together we really i mean we would see bob in passing but i never really got to know him or anything it was it was just a writing relationship between him and donny okay you never were you never were invited to those writing sessions or you never did that really bother you back then like it would bother me i don't know yes it did yes it did but you know it was what it was and i i i just i i accepted it okay uh allen what else we got no i mean i just some of the songs off the album i you know bad blood i think is my favorite off the album uh yeah that's my favorite too shock you got shocks and a little bit east coast twisted sister feel for me a little bit yeah okay i can see that and you shook shook me in my shoes i think that's a great closer yeah and now that's that's a silly little song here's another question steve what do you think of la guns i mean there is a little bit of la guns vibe sometimes in your songs or we could see the other way around right yeah la guns has a little bit of a kicks vibe i'm a big fan of la guns and we get to play with them every now and again so yeah i'm a big fan of those guys and you guys played with queen's rike too like in the later years right yeah yeah we still see them once in a while we all all the bands docket and and queen's rike and and steven piercy and god i'm the m3 guys yeah the m3 sir the m3 sort of circuit right yeah that 80s genre yeah yeah yeah i'm just looking at other questions you're a lot of people are writing stuff so i'm trying to keep up that's why i'm going this way so one of the things i had steve a question was listening to the lyrics on this album you know you're a certain age we're a certain age and it's it's like they're adolescent uh mostly you were you're targeting that to like guys our age that were trying to relive the 80s or just hey these are pop songs and that's what we sing about guys and girls it's very adolescent and that was on purpose and and i'm just a horny asshole so i'm like you heard it here first yeah well tell the truth but i always like music and lyrics that are funny and fun and have double entendres and and you know there's nothing nothing more fun than sex and and women and and so that's what i like to write about and even 90 of it's made up and bullshit but you know it sounds good steve steve did you draw the album cover or did you bring did you bring in some sort of artist to i will show the album cover great there it is was that like hooded did you bring somebody in for that or what's going on there this is the original the girl that was helping me out said what kind of an album cover concept you have and i'm like i only have one idea and and it's dumb as hell and if you don't like it i understand so i drew this and took a picture of it and she said we're done and it's like this took me like two minutes to do for 2000 copies yeah yeah but i like it it's cute it's cool i like it it's cool i like it too yeah that drawing you like you were saying it comes from maybe uh when you sign autographs everybody wanted to write something especially you just started designing this right i got i ran out things to say to people so i just started drawing a stick figure and saying it was me so and it stuck every ever now when people want my autograph they want the stick guy too all right so uh will there ever joe p saying will there ever be another kicks album i'm assuming yes and i never say never but you know in this in this age of of trying to make new music it's expensive to make and and it doesn't sell that that much so business wise it's not a good idea if we were a rich band that had a bank of money to go to go in and draw from we would more than definitely do it but it kind of comes out of our own pockets and if it doesn't reap much of a reward it's kind of hard to justify it at this point um and we don't have a record label and because they're kind of worthless anyway so like i say i never say never but at this point there's nothing in the pipeline okay do you find that is your strictly a touring band playing the songs people want to hear and that's kind of like where you've decided that that's where you're going to go and when when covid is over that is uh yeah i mean and well we're still playing i mean we got the monster the rock uh cruise coming up pretty soon so yeah that's a hoot and yeah i mean because we're playing all over the country and the people that do know if they want to hear those songs so those songs off of midnight dynamite off of hot wire they want to hear those so that's pretty much what we're what we're giving them and it seems to be working because we started this in 2008 i believe and it's going strong in 2022 so whatever we're doing it's working hey just a question we have uh michael suite is a friend of the show he's often on he was saying of some band just because of their reputation as a christian band won't tour with them so if michael calls you to more money said we want to kicks to open up for us on our our next tour what would the answer be hell yes we we played with suite several times there you go yeah mike's a great guy you know him well yeah and he's an east coaster now too so oh yeah yeah well he's a Boston area somewhere yeah okay right yeah clement clement math you know he is originally from the west coast um what about ronnie is he okay ronnie ronnie is um he was pretty much being supervised in a halfway house for about a year and and i believe he's finally got his freedom so we're just kind of waiting to see how he continues to recover because it was it got ugly there for a while and we want to make sure that he's got his his family life together his own life together before bringing him back into this you know this temptation that that is just around all the time so we're all pulling for him we all you know we we're in touch with him and um just it's a waiting game at this point just to make sure that unsupervised he's going to be able to keep it together well they say the first thing is when you try to get off any addiction in life it's to get away from what you used to do in your old habits and your old friends right yeah that's where it become and they at least a year of sobriety you need to sort of at least stay away from all those and you're supposed to actually not ever go back to that because those are the triggers right yeah that's that's what we're waiting to see i mean i know the fans would love to have him back and we would love to have him back but it it's got to make sense for everybody and right now we've got the guy that committed to help us out to replace Ronnie Bob Perry he's just been doing an amazing job and um i don't want to rock the boat you know at this point just to take a chance so we're to wait and see a game to see how how he continues to recover and can he continue with his sobriety and get his life back together Steve did you ever fall in those traps when you when you're like in the early days i've never been a druggy no i mean i like i like alcohol after a show like to have a couple beers a couple shots of jack but i've never really fallen into into the drug thing never never been my thing i don't like not being in control so in alcohol you can get to that point okay that's enough but yeah drugs you don't know what the hell you're doing yeah yeah no no it's fun the committee border guard is taking away that's enough yes all right what else can we say about your new salon that you'd like to talk about would you like to talk about your salon um pretty much i think i've said pretty much what i how i feel about it and how lucky i was to have the people around me to help me make it and how pleased i was when it was all finished and the great job that brad divins did when the recording it and producing it um i was i'm just really proud to be able to put something out at my age and and have the local fans appreciate it i had a lot of people locally who bought it and really like it a lot so that makes me feel good and it's almost like a bucket list for me so even though i never really set out to make a solo album but when the opportunity called and we and we pulled it off and did it well you know it's um i feel real good about it what else is on that bucket list anything else out of the rat you know out of the box right is there anything else out of the box you'd like to pursue i'm not a very adventurous guy i mean right now i'm pretty happy in life i've been doing what i love to do for all my life practically i've been playing music since i was 13 and i'm 65 and i've never done anything else but play music i've met the love of my life 38 years ago and i've just i've had a pretty pretty good life so no bucket list is empty so you're done we we uh we interviewed matt barlow recently in his project ashes of air reason it was a labor of love for him too he kept repeating how he made no money off of this he just wants the fan looking back like you said it's a bit of the same situation with your welcome here if you were to leave this as a kicks out do you think it would have done better i don't know i don't think any i don't know how many copies our our last record did rock your face off it may have done 18 000 which you know that's nothing that that's that's that's that's a that's a shitty amount but back in the day you know a failure kicks album would sell 70 80 000 copies and then one blow my fuse finally went platinum so records these days just don't sell and and there's just the money is is touring and merch that's that the only way you can really make money yeah and here's backstage guitar tech says what did you do when grunge came out where did you work well we we we put it down in 1995 we stopped playing we decided to just stop playing and um officially the band was broken up and i just started teaching vocals and guitar and anything i could do to keep the family fed and then eventually i got talked into starting funny money and so i was playing funny money on weekends and teaching through the week and that's what that's what kept me alive until um we a local promoter came to us and said he would love to do a kick show and we didn't even know if we could call it kicks because we didn't we don't know who actually had rights to the name and we called it four out of five members of kicks and we did we did a local show and it did amazing i mean like thousands of people showed up for it and it just kind of you know it made us lift our eyebrows a little bit and go maybe we can do this a couple times a year make you know make good chunk of change and leave it at that so that's what we did for about three or four years we just stayed in our little comfort zone in baltimore dc harrisburg and and did like maybe six shows a year and that was it and then i get this call from an agent sullivan big he was a huge kicks fan he's from boston and he said i can i can get this band out toward again if you'll give me the opportunity i said you're out of your mind nobody gives a shit about us anymore in fact they never really did and he told he had me on the phone for a long time and and he he finally i relented said go ahead you know go for it i don't know but i don't think anything's going to happen and he got us um rocklahoma was the first time we played out of our comfort zone and we played in front of like 20 000 people and they all went eight shit and we're like holy hell it's amazing isn't it how it just comes full circle isn't it yeah we had no idea that people knew or cared who we were or what we did and that just opened our eyes and that gave him the green light to start booking us and that we just get more and more jobs every year wow the metal community the fans there's no nobody more loyal than the metal community and there's right yeah you're right what about overseas like in europe japan asia do you find that there's also now people are starting to take notice um i don't know i mean back in the day we played japan we went over there we i think we played over there three times we played the uk a couple of times we played uh sweden rock but for the most part we've never really taken off in europe and other than the blow my fuse album i don't think i don't think the people in japan care anymore either oh yes you got to keep touring right with no record company backing it makes it all that much harder right make it really hard because you know we can't afford to go to japan it's so amazing you sign with atlantic records which is probably one of the big guns back then right and and you're kind of like and there's no support it's just it's mind-blowing well we we were also managed by dud prager who was also managing foreigner at the time he was on atlantic records so we had atlantic records foreigner's manager how can this not possibly work it's very possible it didn't work what do you think was do you think it was just timing do you think it was not promoting the right the band the right way you know what do you think it was the songs were there definitely were there but what do you think the on the marketing perspective i think being on atlantic records which were the huge label had so many acts i mean they would put out 12 14 albums a month and if it didn't stick you know they've just moved on so it was just being probably in too big of a label and they didn't know how to promote us i mean they didn't know if we were acdc or if we were the knack they they didn't know how to they didn't know how to promote us i like this 12 pack goes i'd like to hear steve hit a note please that's a note that's that's like that's all you get see that's all you get that's pretty much it alan oh great day i enjoyed the record hope for itself uh there's more copies for you and uh you know we these labor loves to be uh rewarded for for what you've done so that's that's a part of the show today and hopefully we've generated some interest to get a few more copies well hopefully i can i can steer people in right direction you can get it at it's it's called right rock and or you can just go to the kits dot com and just hit the merch button and it'll it'll take you there so you can get you can get the physical cd or if you want the vinyl like i said it's the head vinyl shop in haggard's town how hard have you been hit by uh covid for the band like i mean is the band just like oh we all got it yeah oh wow oh yeah we got we got vaxed and then we then we all got we got vaxed and jen or february and march and we all got covid in september and then we all got boosted and now we're just you know now amicron's here and boosters don't work against that so we'll probably get that too that's pretty much everybody's it's difficult but like you said during this period it enabled you to write this album right yeah that's what we're hearing from a lot of people we're interviewing and we can't tour there's the solo album codilatory was able to do with that with queens right he took that time and biff bifert and there's so many artists that benefited from that time yeah and you got to rest your voice on top of that i did i did and it was nice because it did make enough money that i could give everybody a little bit and then take everybody out to some nice dinners that's that's what we all enjoy you know just go out with the wives and everybody and don't care about how much it costs just pick up the tab go that was fun yes yes i agree i agree so thank you for being on my buddy everybody go pick up your welcome and uh you know catch kicks at m3 right yeah hopefully that'll still be going on i'm assuming that's going to be going on it didn't last year they'll probably do it again okay all right well that's pretty much it unless you have something else you want to say maybe you have some websites or um just that you can you can also get the the digital copy off of amazon apple music all that's all that good stuff but um you know anybody that that is a kicks fan i think will like this record and it's just a it's a fun playful record that um that i'm really proud of and i hope people will give it a chance i agree i agree it's a great melodic a great listen and i was i was very surprised i thought it was really good i thought it could should have been the next kicks album that's why i'll tell the guys that tell the guys that show them this video after all right even it was a real pleasure and i'm glad i'm glad i got to revisit the kicks catalog with you with you and put out another ad who knows put another ad you never know it's only a couple hundred bucks a month hey guys thanks for having me all right thanks