Interview with Armored Saint bassist Joey Vera

After a ten-year absence from the music scene Armored Saint are back with a new CD, La Raza. Bassist Joey Vera spoke with me at great length about the CD and the writing process behind it. Armored Saint is one of the bands that I grew up listening to as a kid so having the opportunity to conduct this interview was especially cool for me. La Raza is a really good record from top to bottom and should be a welcome addition to any metal heads catalogue. Welcome back guys… it has been a long time coming.

Hey Joey, how are you?
Joey: I am doing well thanks.

First off, I want to say it is great having you guys back in the saddle again. Armored Saint was sort of the soundtrack to my younger years so it is very cool to be doing this today.
Joey: Thank you very much. I really appreciate that.

How did you stay busy during Armored Saint’s absence from the music scene? Were you still involved in the music business?
Joey: I have been doing a little bit of everything. I worked on a bunch of other projects including working on Seven Witches and producing a couple of records for them. I also wrote and recorded a solo project called Chinese Fire Drill.

So you stayed pretty busy?
Joey: Yeah there were quite lot of things I did including some engineering and producing on different things.

I have seen your name on some different records in the past few years.
Joey: Yeah I just try to stay busy. It is not easy to make a living doing one thing in this business unless you are a really big band.

Your brand new CD La Raza is set for release tomorrow. Now that it is complete, how do you feel about it? Are you satisfied with the outcome?
Joey: Sure, in general yeah. I have never been one hundred percent satisfied with anything I have done and La Raza is no exception. There are things that don’t really matter to anyone else, but given the opportunity I would have done them differently. I think in general the overall picture comes across and I am happy with most of it. So yes, I am satisfied with the disc.

What was the writing process like for this CD? Did you guys all write together? How long did it take?
Joey: This time we didn’t. We normally do that, where everyone contributes, but this time it was different. This time it started out as sort of a writing project between John and I and when it was decided that we were going to write with Armored Saint in mind it just sort of continued on in that way. The other guys in the band recognized that there was something organic happening with the writing between John and I they just said, “you guys just keep going.” It was not a situation where everybody felt the need to have musical input. They were pretty much big enough to realize we were on a roll and that is how it ended up.

When you began writing this record did you have a preconceived idea of what you wanted the record to sound like and what you wanted it to achieve, or did that come about naturally.
Joey: We wanted to make sure we were writing good music and really great songs. We did not concern ourselves with trying to please anyone other than ourselves. The thing we were trying to do was to outdo the demos. John and I made some really good sounding demos; I get elaborate when I make the demos. I have a studio and I spend a lot of time making them sound good, almost like a record. So the challenge then was to outdo the vibe and everything we had already done once. It is always touchy trying to recreate something that you have already been living with for a year or more. I just wanted the record to come across epic sounding, big and fat and I think for the most part we accomplished that.

When you guys were recording, La Raza, did you decide on a suitable sound fairly quickly, or do you tend to tweak tones obsessively?
Joey: Well I am not really one for sitting around and scratching my head a lot. I like to get something up and if it sounds good then I just go with it. I am not really one of those guys to say, “let’s try a different mic and see what else it could sound like.” I feel that if it sounds right… just leave it alone.

How long did it take to do the record?
Joey: To do the whole record it took about six weeks top to bottom.

Did you ever imagine you would be releasing albums almost 25 years later?
Joey: Hell no! When I first started out, we were all nineteen I did not think I was going to make it to my thirtieth birthday let alone be doing interviews many years later.

On a side note, I remember seeing Armored Saint open for Metallica and Wasp at Lamour in Brooklyn back in 1983 I believe.
Joey: Yeah. I remember that. We did a weekend with them. We played a matinee all ages show and then we did a twenty-one and over show that night. That was a classic set of shows. That was also a great time to be into metal. It was just beginning and it will never be the same.

How much roadwork do you have planned for 2010?
Joey: Not much. When we were younger and very naive, it was really easy. We all lived at home we could just get up and go. We could get in a van and go out on tour. Having done that for many years it is not at all easy to do that anymore. The reality is that Armored Saint is not a band that is going to be able to play enough clubs and places to make it a successful tour. We can do well in the bigger cities but we will have a hard time drawing people out at all of the cities in between, believe it or not. It doesn’t make sense for us to go on tour. Not to say that we don’t want to play shows. We just want to play the right shows. We do not want to go on a three or four week tour and out of those three or four weeks we only have a few good shows and then the rest we end up playing to fifty people. Don’t get me wrong even at those shows we still give a hundred percent. It is hard to tour and it does not make sense. We would lose money and it would not be good financially. Our whole goal is to play the key festivals in Europe and or in the U.S. over the summer. I am not quite sure that is going to happen. John Bush is going to be doing some shows with Anthrax. He has done some already and he will be doing some more in Europe over the summer. He is getting a bit tied up and it becoming a bit of a conflict so I am not really sure I can answer that fully yet.

What is on your agenda if Armored Saint is not going to be touring?
Joey: We are working on a video for “Left Hook From Right Field.” Other than that, I have a few projects including another one for Seven Witches.

Do you think the current economic slump will have any effect on Armored Saint?
Joey: I have no idea. I do not really have any expectations about how it is going to affect us. There is a shift going on now with how people get their music. CD sales are not what they used to be. People are beginning to not buy records at all and if they buy anything; they buy one or two songs.

I am from the old school because I prefer to have the whole package so I can look through the jewel case and the liner notes and credits.
Joey: So you know what I am talking about then. People are just not buying CDs anymore. They don’t hold them in their hands and read the liner notes or the lyrics. They are just downloading them and putting the stream onto their players and never holding it in their hands.

That is the thing I love the most about getting a new CD. I go through them cover to cover.
Joey: Yeah I agree. Even when I was younger, I always took note of not only who was in the band but also who produced it and where it was done, I wanted to know all of the information about it.

Any closing words?
Joey: I want to thank the fans and the loyal diehards from way back that are even curious to hear what we are doing after ten long years. We are very lucky to have a lot of old fans that are willing to check us out after all these years and I thank you all for that.