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“The Last Vegas will tour North America consistently throughout 2006 supporting "Seal the Deal", expanding upon their cult following of kids, rockers, stoners, metalheads, hippies, hipsters, punks and various youth degenerates who are ready for the 2nd coming of the raw.” from www.thelastvegas.com
Now that I have your attention…
Formed in 2003 in Chicago, Illinois, The Last Vegas line-up consists of John Wator - Guitar/ Adam Arling - Guitar/ Nate Arling - Drums/ P.W. Rubino - Bass/ Chad Cherry – Vocals.
Upon stumbling across the band’s debt album “Lick ‘Em and Leave ‘Em,” which peaked my interest, I found myself unable to get their trashy sex soaked songs outta my head. I decided to do some rock n’ roll research. First I checked out the band’s website. There I found plenty of pictures from live shows, as well as, an ass-load of candid band photos depicting shenanigans from the road. I was also able to listen to some mp3’s from the band’s newest release, “Seal the Deal.” Though I was fond of the sound of the former singer on Lick‘ em and Leave ‘em, new front man, Chad Cherry seems to fit the band like a tight pair of old Levi’s. So let’s smack that ass, and welcome guitarist, John Wator, who stepped up to the plate and fulfilled my request for an interview.
Hey John what’s up? You recovering from Fat Tuesday?
Yeah, something like that. Just been runnin’ around all day.
Did you guys go out last night or play anywhere?
Nah, we had practice, then we went out, had a bunch of drinks and stuff.
So fill us in a little, you are a relatively new band, how long have you been together?
This is the third year.
On your previous record, Lick ‘em and Leave ‘em you had a different singer correct?
Yeah, our singer played bass.
Who came up with the band name and is there a particular meaning behind it?
The meaning we don’t really say, but our drummer came up with it back a long, long time ago. It was our first show, and we didn’t have a name. Everyone was pretty hammered, and they just kinda came up with it. The meaning itself is an inside joke, but he won’t tell anybody what it is.
So we are left to our own interpretation or imagination?
Yeah, that’s right. Only the drummer knows and he always has some excuse why he can’t tell people, so…
(laughter)
Lick ‘em and Leave ‘em was recorded in two days and the original mixes were used, producing a really raw sound. How does the new record, “Seal the Deal” compare?
Well, it was kinda weird. Me, Adam and Nate, we kinda found ourselves at the end of 2004 without a singer or a bass player. We said “screw it” and started writing “Seal the Deal” at practice and pretty much wrote all the songs. Then we were planning on just goin’ ahead and getting a bass player and me and Adam would sing. I sang in my old band. We were just gonna make it happen that way. We had a tour already in February, so we really didn’t have much time to put a band together. So we got Anthony, who was one of our buddies, to play bass and we had to go to Europe and we did like a four week tour of Europe with us singing and playing some new tunes and Lick ‘Em stuff. Came back, did another tour for like a month and a half and then we said, “Let’s just record it and see what happens.” We recorded in June and then took some time to re-work some things and we met Chad over the summer and said let’s go back and re-record the vocals with Chad. It turned out really good, and that’s kind of where we’re at now. It’s taken us a while to actually get the album done and out and all that stuff.
By the looks of the pictures on your website it looks like you guys have a blast on the road. How was the European tour, was it your first time there?
Yeah, it was pretty good. We were there in February, ya know, wintertime going through the mountains and stuff. It was a good experience; I think you kinda learn a lot of things in Europe. We ended up losing a chunk of money because, ya know, when it’s your first time you gotta figure out how to do certain things. Like, we ended up having to pay a bunch of money for shipping our t-shirts there and then the last day of the tour we totaled our van. Frigin’ horrifying, we were stranded in like a cornfield in the middle of Germany for a couple hours in a blizzard.
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Oh, Jesus!
That’s where we ended the tour. That cost us 1000 euros right there. It was like, for lack of a better term, a crash course in rock. But, it went really good. In Europe people are more responsive and go really crazy. You get a lot more food, free beer and great places to stay and stuff too.
Free beer is important!
Yeah!
There were also some pics from Venice Beach and L.A. from your West Coast tour. Any crazy shit go down there?
We tour the West Coast at least three times a year. We have a pretty good group of people that we’re regulars with out there, clubs and stuff. The first time we went out there, it was just me and Adam. We kinda got “hired” or “volunteered” to drive…we started doing a tour in 2004 with Urge Overkill a lot, so in January of that year, me and Adam took the van and literally drove straight from Chicago to Los Angeles, 28 hours straight. We spent like 5 days in L.A. just not doin’ anything, just cruisin’ around and Urge played their show out there, all the hotels and stuff, everything was paid for. We just had 5 days to just go crazy and party. Went to all these crazy clubs. We played the Viper Room. It was pretty good. Things have gotten better. We just played a couple of shows out there in November. We played the Viper Room again. It’s a lot more fun than playing in Boise, Idaho or Oklahoma or somethin’.
As far as the crowds go, are there a lot of younger people there checkin’ you guys out?
Well, it’s pretty even across the U.S. unless you get to the college towns. It’s definitely a bit of a hipper audience or at least in NY, Chicago, or L.A. People are more on top of what’s goin’ on currently. I mean, that can either help you or go totally against you.
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In what way?
Well, it’s almost like if you play in towns where people aren’t beaten over the head with a million bands and stuff like that, like you go to Europe and play these small cities where people might see a band once every month, so when they get the chance to see someone, they don’t care what it is, they just want to have a great time! Then you play in NY or like, Chicago, where they’re notorious for people just standing there and staring at you while you play.
(laughter)
You recently played a show with Buckcherry, how did that go?
That was great. That was probably one of the most fun shows we’ve played in a while. We haven’t played much this winter because we were busy getting the record done. Already wrote a lot of material for another record, trying to get things together. So that was our first show in awhile. We had a really good response.
Let’s talk about the videos for the new tracks “Seal the Deal” and “All the Way.”
For “Seal” we did a New Years Eve show at the Double Door in Chicago and we had one of our friends from LA come out and videotape the show live. We kinda did it that way to give the people who haven’t seen the band a feel for what our stage show is like a little bit. I think it worked out pretty good. It’s the first time we’ve done something thats actually been edited and released (or is gonna be released). All the stuff in the past that we’ve tried to put together ourselves has kinda crashed and burned. She’s a pro, she does it for living, so... the video is cool. I don’t know what “All the Way” is gonna be yet. It might be kinda more of the same. The original plan was to put out a DVD with both of those videos and a bunch of tour footage cut in between. Eventually that’ll be done and we’ll get that out.
What is your stage show like? Very high energy & crazy from what I can tell.
Well, now we have a 5-piece band instead of a four. I think it’s a lot more exciting. We’ve always wanted to have a lead singer that could just do his thing, run around, get the crowd more into it, make that connection. Especially when we had to do it before, singing and playing guitar at the same time, it’s a lot of work, and you gotta concentrate, you can’t have too much to drink or do too much crazy stuff. We’re all very relieved to be in this situation, we can concentrate on playing guitar and back-ups and Chad’s just a natural front man. He’s wild. It’s good cause we’re all on the same page and everybody’s just having a good time.
Other than Chad, have you all known each other for a long time?
Yeah, Anthony’s been our buddy in Chicago since we all moved up here. He played guitar in a couple other bands that we’ve known. Then, me, Nathan and Adam all lived in the same town in Illinois for like 5 years. They were like the only cool rock band in town, so I just started partying with those guys back in like ’98. About eight years, we’ve been buddies. Then my first band split-up and one of their original dudes left, I was Chicago with no band and I was like, “hey lets put this together,” and that’s kinda where “Vegas’ started out back in 2003.
So you are headed up the East coast this spring and then on to Europe in May. Any plans to join a summer tour package?
We’re tryin,’ that’s what we’re working on right now, ya know, um, Europe’s being finalized right now which is gonna be up until July 4th. We’d like to put together a big West Coast run sometime, maybe late summer, early fall. It’s always great to tour with bands you know, or just having somebody else that’s there, it’s a comradery thing, ya know.
Who are some of the bands you have toured with? Who was most memorable?
The first one that we did, the Urge Overkill thing, which we toured on and off with them for like 7 months, that was probably one of the craziest tours we’ve done so far. Then we did a tour with our buddy from Chicago and his metal band, Bible of the Devil, last April. That was cool. We also played with The Cynics, Bad Wizard, and Nashville Pussy.
Anything you wanna say to our GlamMetal.com readers?
Check out our website, www.thelastvegas.com and watch the video for “Seal the Deal.”
Cool, thanks John, take care and continue to rip it up out there!
Thanks.
www.thelastvegas.com www.myspace.com/thelastvegas
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