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Dreams came true for Piston guitarist Jack Edwards when the band were handpicked to open for his hero Billy Duffy on last years tour by The Cult. Combined with festival appearances, an endorsement from Gretsch Guitars (just look at that Falcon on the header and purr) and opening slots with Glenn Hughes, it’s been an incredible twelve months for the Midlands rockers. With the world in lockdown, Piston have had to reschedule their tour with Bad Touch for later this year, but as Jack explains…it’s not all doom and gloom.
With the lockdown implemented for the foreseeable future, you must be gutted that the live dates with Bad Touch have had to be rescheduled?
What’s really gutting is that we had a lot of plans; this will put us back about 12 months, but we have rescheduled the tour with Bad Touch. That’s going to be a great tour, a lot of fun, it’s a shame that it won’t happen when it was supposed to. But, no matter who you are, you’re fucked at the minute. It’s not good right now, and I’m quite a positive person! However, this is really bad, but we’ll come through it. We’re just going to use this time to write a set of songs ready for the next album. We’ve already got four down, and they sound better than anything that we’ve done. You’ve got to just keep going. Our singer Rob (Angelico) has been friends with Bad Touch for such a long time and it was inevitable that we would tour together at some point. It will be a party tour – let’s have some fun, go out and play some tunes and connect with people!
The uncertainty surrounding the lockdown is one of the many difficulties that people are struggling with at the minute.
Yes that’s true, and it’s everyone’s livelihoods, bands included. I’m too young to remember the recession, and when my parents were going through it I didn’t have a clue. Now I’m in a position where I have my own business; I’ve got bills to pay and it really hits home. Everyone all over the world is in the same position and it’s difficult not knowing what is going to happen.
Enough of the doom and gloom for now. Let’s talk about the last twelve months that Piston have had. Jeez where do you start! Festival appearances, Gretsch endorsement, tours with The Cult, and Glenn Hughes!
It’s been brilliant, it’s been everything that we ever hoped for and more. We’re very thankful for all the support that we’ve had; from our friends, our followers, our family. Everyone has been so supportive and we really appreciate it. The Bad Touch tour will be a great show, two great bands, and one of the reasons that we are doing it is that they are good friends of ours, it’s going to be a party tour, a little less serious than the tours with The Cult and Glenn Hughes! This tour will be a nice stepping stone for us, another chance to grow the Piston audience. The tours with The Cult and Glenn were once in a lifetime experiences, but we can’t sit back on our laurels and say… we’re only going to play big venues now… because those crowds weren’t there for us. We nicked some fans, which was great, and now we’re going to nick some of Bad Touch’s fans! And then we’ll sell out our next headline tour… that’s the plan!
Got to think big!
That’s it, yes, we’ve got to stay positive and think positive, this time off gives bands a chance to relax a bit. It’s a highly, highly competitive game, very cut-throat, so this gives all the bands, especially those where a band member manages them, a break. In a way that will be quite nice.
Every cloud and all that..
Yes. Put it this way, if it’s a six month lockdown then we’ll come out of it a better band, we’ll be raring to go! I’ll be shredding like Yngwie Malmsteen on the next tour, just you wait and see! But I won’t be wearing leather pants!
Yngwie! No… don’t go down that route!
I’ve only ever seen Yngwie live once, and it was at a guitar show… and he sound checked for four hours! For four hours all you heard was neoclassical shredding around the venue!
We touched on the tour late last year with The Cult; not only were you touring with your hero, Billy Duffy, but The Smiths legend Johnny Marr put in an appearance as well.
That was incredible! It was funny; as we pulled up outside the venue we were told… sorry lads you can’t park here… so we were like… really, why?… and then they said… Johnny Marr is coming… so it was a case of… fair enough! We reversed back and left this huge parking space for him and his entourage and he turned up in a tiny little Mini! You’re in such a bubble that it becomes normal, you’re sat having Sunday dinner with Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy, and you’re just having a chat with them, and you’re in two minds. One is – oh my god what is happening right now! And the other is that you are in this little bubble where it’s just another normal person. When I saw Johnny Marr, I mean I’m not a huge Smiths fan but I do think he’s brilliant, on one hand it was like… oh my God you’re Johnny Marr, but on the other hand it was… how are you doing mate, you okay?… He was another guitar player like all of us. At the end of the day it was quite a learning experience.
I watched some of the footage online, and I was slack jawed!
It was cool, he came out and played ‘Rain’ and when they were sound checking it no-one was allowed to have their phones on as they didn’t want anything leaked. He was such a nice man, I stood next to him watching The Cult and it was so weird, I was thinking… that’s Johnny Marr!
Is it fair to say that the tour with The Cult was your biggest highlight of the last twelve months?
It is yes! It was pretty crazy, we were nervous on the first show as we didn’t know what to expect. It was completely new territory for us as we hadn’t played in venues that big as the main support band, but once we did the first show and we knew what we were letting ourselves in for, we were fine, and it made the band so much better. After the first show we were on a roll. Manchester Apollo was pretty crazy; one minute you are just walking out onstage, the next, you look up and there are three thousand people there, and they all seemed to be going crazy!
Another highlight would be the inclusion of Piston on the Earache ‘Presents: The New Wave Of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ vinyl.
Yeah that was really, really cool; we got approached about that last year and we licensed ‘One More Day’ to Earache for the release. There’s a lot of great new bands and they’ve put some great choices on there; they thought long and hard about it, and we’re quite honoured to be associated with a label like that. We’ve been confirmed to support Thunder at Birmingham Arena; that’s a big show for us, and we look at other bands that are doing, or have done, similar gigs, and all are signed to a label. From what I can see, we’re one of the few completely unsigned bands on the circuit opening these types of show. Even when we turned up for The Cult shows, and the ones with Glenn, we were asked… so who is your tour manager?… and we would reply… well, the bass player… and then it would be… okay, who is your merch person?… and I would reply… that’s my girlfriend Abbey, she’s doing merch… and then it would be… who is your guitar tech?… well, we’re our own techs… and it was funny to be in that position, it’s nice to be in control of your own destiny!
You mentioned Thunder, that’s a bloody big gig for a band from the Midlands isn’t it!
Yes! 16,000 capacity! We were prepared for The Cult gigs after a few shows, but this is going to be flying by the seat of your pants time! We’ve all seen our favourite bands there. I’ve seen Guns ‘N’ Roses, Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Whitesnake… Brad (Newlands, Piston’s drummer) has seen Kiss there; we are playing on the same stage as those big boys! It was really cool, it was Danny Bowes (Thunder’s vocalist) that emailed to invite us to do the gig, and it was signed… Danny. And I was like… Danny?… who is Danny? Then I double clicked on the email and it said Daniel Bowes! Then it sank in! Ten minutes after we got the email from Danny, we got the email confirming us to open for Glenn Hughes! I sat the boys down and said… right we have two big things here so get yourself prepared! Then it was…. holy shit!
Great timing, one after the other!
Yes, it’s all good, the band is sounding brilliant, as good as we’ve ever been. I truly believe that we are a headline band in the making. We’ve invested in our own stage show now, and we’ve got our own lighting technician that programs everything, it’s quite a spectacle.
Photographers everywhere will be rejoicing that you have invested in lights! Poor lighting seems to be a major bugbear amongst gig photographers..
Yes, it goes down really well, there’s a lot more that goes on from what we’ve learned on these big tours, a lot more than just the band going on and plugging in. A lot of time people listen with their eyes and that can be just as important as your sound. We take all of these things into consideration now, we’ve learned a lot and we think like the headline band. At Planet Rock Winters End earlier this year we brought our biggest show, our own lighting, strobes and everything, our own lighting technician and it was just incredible! I was like… oh man.. I wish that I was in the audience watching!… even watching it back on an iphone it looked great.
You are investing in yourselves, investing in a career, and hopefully you’ll see the rewards when normality is resumed.
That’s it yes, all we can do is keep working hard and engage with our fans, hopefully people will keep their tickets for the rescheduled dates. We’ve got more time to build our audience and promote the shows.
The role of social media is important, now more than ever.
Thank God for it! This would have been very different if social media wasn’t available to enable us to communicate with our fans.
Lastly, what member of Piston would you least enjoy being isolated with long term?
(Laughs) It would probably be our drummer Brad! We get on much better now as we’ve got older. We used to be at each other’s throats all the time; he knows how to push my buttons! He has a razor tongue, he knows just what to say to annoy you, so if we were in isolation together we would end up insane! Everyone else is quite chilled, Brad and myself are the fiery ones! Stick us two together like that and we’d end up crying!
But, joking aside, we’re all best friends in the band.
Catch Piston later this year alongside Bad Touch, all dates can be found here.
Interview – Dave
Jack Edwards pic on header, and all Piston images – credit Rob Blackham
