Christopher Shayne: ‘It was the perfect storm of just enough things going wrong and right at the exact same time’

Phoenix, Arizona rock band Christopher Shayne band have just released their riffed up cover of Tesla’s ‘Modern Day Cowboy’, with a Wild West themed new album High Noon coming out early next year.

The band, who have been together for around eight years, comprises Christopher Shayne (vocals/guitar), Mark Blades (bass), Connor Sutton (guitar) and Eric Bongiorno (drums). Think Southern Rock with a twist from the dry, sunbaked heart of Arizona. As Shayne puts it: “This is music for open highways and hard truths.” With roots in blues, country, and classic rock, they have one boot in tradition and the other stomping into the future. Shayne and Bongiorno know each other from former bands and they know Blades via mutual contacts on the local scene. ‘Mark showed up with his mohawk and that was a pretty easy hire right there on the spot,’ Shayne said laughing. ‘At a certain point you say, you can hold down the root notes, that’ll work!’

Their upcoming album – produced by outlaw royalty Shooter Jennings – is a revival and reinvention, Southern rock but with a Wild West twist, and will include their latest single. ‘The album we’re working on is very Western-tinged, so it felt kind of ironic that this idea of a modern day cowboy came into it after we had already decided on a Wild West theme! It has a Marconi sound, that ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ energy on it. It was really cool to see that come out in the studio and have that Spaghetti Western energy, which I thought was a little cheeky wave at all those fans who are big fans of that kind of sound.’

‘We were thinking of doing ‘Heaven’s Trail’ by Tesla, that’s more of our speed but everybody said it had to be ‘Modern Day Cowboy’ and, you know, I’m a big fan of a challenge!’

Of their gloriously headbanging cover of Tesla’s ‘Modern Day Cowboy’ Shayne says: ‘We wanted to do a modern take on it,’ he said animatedly. ‘It was pretty funny because Mark had played with Frank Hannon (Tesla’s lead guitarist) for a couple of gigs and we were thinking about doing a cover. It’s a hard one to sing! It’s a hard one to play, we were thinking of doing ‘Heaven’s Trail’ by Tesla, that’s more of our speed but everybody said it had to be ‘Modern Day Cowboy’ and, you know, I’m a big fan of a challenge!’ Amazingly, Jennings – son of country legend Waylon – hadn’t heard the original, which gave them considerable freedom: ‘He was such a chill dude about it,’ he said. ‘It allowed us to get into this cool space in the bridge and the outro.’

Shayne is wearing a Viagra Boys t-shirt on our Zoom and I say what a great band they are: ‘They are such a cool band! Oh my God, that was so much fun, they were just here on Saturday. My girlfriend, I took her, and she was supremely weirded out in all the best ways (laughs). You know, the question of why do they keep singing about shrimp?! I don’t know but it’s part of the brand at this point!’ (“Shrimp” is slang for speed in Sweden.)

They have been described as embodying ‘the spirit of Waylon Jennings and the stomp of Soundgarden’, which accurately sums them up, as Shayne has powerful vocals that have more than a hint of those of Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell: ‘ I get the Cornell comparison a lot,’ he admitted. ‘And the singer from Shinedown (Brent Smith). The Cornell one is a fun one because I really enjoy the comparison, although he’s a guy I cannot listen to for too long or else I’ll start inheriting too much (laughs). I have to take a break. All of a sudden, I’ll feel it in my throat. Ironically, for ‘Modern Day Cowboy’, I was very sick while we were recording it. I was propped up by bottles and bottles of DayQuil and whatever I could stuff into my face (laughs). Shooter said: “You’re really raspy, it’s really dark, and I really like it, so strap in and get as many meds in here as you can!” It added this cool flavour on top. It was the perfect storm of just enough things going wrong and right at the exact same time, it turned into this interesting piece.’

‘He was the first producer that we worked with that wanted to do it the old school way of throwing us all in the same room, looking at each other and playing the songs right next to each other’

Shayne and Jennings know each other from previous shows they’ve played together and Shayne is visibly delighted that Jennings remembered him from those times: ‘We showed up and we had about a week to do all the things we wanted to do. We were sitting there, kind of scared, but he was the first producer that we worked with that wanted to do it the old school way of throwing us all in the same room, looking at each other and playing the songs right next to each other. In modern recording, usually you’re doing your drums first and then the bass comes in and then the guitar, you’re pancaking it. He was: “No, no, no, we’re going to get as much live tone out of this thing as possible!”‘

I say you can feel that energy on the track, as if the desert heat is rising up from it and he laughs: ‘Exactly, it’s got that. That’s what makes all of that so fun was that all of a sudden, everybody got the vision. Everybody felt that. Shooter’s from Phoenix, so he’s well steeped here, it was all like minds hidden in that desert.’

We get chatting about how a lot of the best music comes together like this, as the pressure just to get it done mounts in the studio: ‘I feel like the thing that makes Chris Cornell and Steven Tyler and all those great singers great is there is this moment of tension where you think: is the singer going to be able to do “the” thing, you know? There’s this cool, chaotic energy. That’s what made Guns N’ Roses great, the fear that at any given moment, the whole thing’s going to fall apart but you show up for that moment because it’s human and it’s interesting. That’s what connects with audiences way more because you want that feeling that there are real people behind this. You want that kinetic energy, that kind of stress. Fleetwood Mac is now back in vogue, right? Seeing all of those videos of them quite literally screaming at each other (laughs), that’s the thing we all want to see because it’s interesting!’

‘I feel like I’ve learned more from falling down, from hitting the floor, than I have from any successes’

Wild West themes are not new to the band: Their track ‘Broken Scarred Wild West’, which they released earlier this year, fully taps into it, with its bluesey undertones. Originally, Shayne wrote it for a company looking for a theme song in a deal that later fell apart: ‘I was sitting there thinking I had cool ideas for it that I could take in and re-translate through my lens. It’s a song about falling over and getting back up again. You take so many hits in life but the one thing you can be is consistent in is getting back up each time. I feel like I’ve learned more from falling down, from hitting the floor, than I have from any successes. All of a sudden, you become this bulletproof thing, you can’t take anything away from me that I haven’t done to myself. That song really grasps that energy.’

‘Broken Scarred Wild West’ has a lot going on sonically with guitars, organ and keys layered up to create a very sweeping, cinematic sound: ‘That one has a lot of keys running throughout,’ he said. ‘We do use a lot of organ and keys to make things fuller. We create a shelf, then the guitars can sit on top of the shelf and then the vocals can sit on those, it creates this nice flow.’

Shayne grew up listening to ‘really old blues’ from the 30’s and 40’s, particuarly R. L. Burnside, an American hill country blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. ‘He was a huge influence on me. And bands like Thin Lizzy and those people who have taken that blues sound and done something really interesting with it. I always play in open tunings, I play in slide tunings, which is different from the rest of the band, which I think gives it this really cool colour on top of it. When it comes to writing songs, I always say that I borrow some sounds from the American South and mix it with the drama of California. We’re stuck between worlds at this point.’ I tell him that I think that’s a good thing and he grins: ‘At this point, it’s my voice and it’s my sound and it’s just going to work that way regardless of what I try to do to it!’

‘I now do a nod to ‘Thunderstruck’ with a slide while tapping the notes, which scares everybody in the band!’

One of his first early influences when he started to learn the guitar was Dave Mustaine from Megadeth: ‘In my angsty teen years,’ he quipped. And then that faded away, the “it’s not a phase, mom” actually turned out to be a phase (laughs). That was when I started doing a lot of old school blues stuff. Rory Gallagher (an Irish musician known for his virtuosic style of guitar playing) was huge for me. He does this cool thing with the slide where he taps with it, so I started learning how to tap with a slide. I think live, I now do a nod to ‘Thunderstruck’ with a slide while tapping the notes, which scares everybody in the band! Sometimes it’s successful, sometimes, I’m having one of those nights! Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top was another huge one, he’s got this cool, really underplayed energy about him. I think Chris Stapleton also does a lot of understated riffs. There’s a fun rock/country energy, old school country like Waylon Jennings, where you live on the edge and wrestle with a song.’

Does he have a workhorse guitar? ‘I do!,’ he said enthusiastically, before turning around to grab it and show me: ‘I’ve got this custom Tele right here made from a company here in Arizona called Atomic Guitars. It was my first custom guitar, it’s all cracked and weathered but I demo most songs on it. It’s always funny hearing my demos because I’m trying to get distorted guitar out of a Tele, and it has an interesting tonation! I don’t have it here with me but I’ve also got my ESP that really carries a lot of my heavier tones. It’s ESP, they’re built for metal, right?!’

‘As kids, I think it’s great to have somebody that you can play with and somebody who motivates you to want to get better’

Shayne first picked up the guitar when he was 13 and a friend’s dad came home with a guitar: ‘I’m pretty competitive (laughs). I saw him get the guitar and then immediately after I left there, I called my mom, and said we needed to go get a guitar right now! She agreed, and just said to make sure it doesn’t cost too much. I found this old beat up B.C. Rich Warlock, which is hysterical. It’s got all the points and the angles, it’s very much a product of its time. I started learning on that and then me and him would go back and forth competing on Metallica and Megadeth riffs (laughs). Each day we’d be: “I learned this one” and then “I learned this one”. As kids, I think it’s great to have somebody that you can play with and somebody who motivates you to want to get better. It instilled in me very young that if you want to get better at a musical instrument, just play with as many people as possible and play with the best if you can. I have been very blessed to play with very talented people and to see what their process is and have learned how to keep up in a situation like that. You learn a lot on your feet! There’s that tension there, that excitement.’

If he could collaborate with anyone, he is quick to say Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme: ‘I am fascinated by how he writes things and does things in the studio. There’s weird tricks, I know he’s doing something! I just want to sit there in the back, their music is always weird and different. I got really into them from Them Crooked Vultures (an American supergroup Homme also fronts, with Dave Grohl on drums). That record was a huge influence on me because I had no idea you could do something like that, with those powerhouse musicians in there. I want to ask him: “What made you think of putting an Oompa Loompa band into this part of the song?!” I live for that, seeing each person’s process.’

As processes go, Shayne’s own one sounds intriguing: ‘I like to work a lot of ideas in short increments, so I’ll do demos of songs that are anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds to hit the meat of the song,’ he said. ‘So here’s a cool riff, here’s a verse idea, here’s a chorus idea. I’ll sit there with it and if I don’t listen to it again in the next week, I know it’s a bad idea and I don’t need to waste any more time on it (laughs).’ I say that some musicians have ideas percolating for years and he grins: ‘How do they even remember them? I would promptly forget everything I’ve ever written and much less still have them in my head! I’ve got demos that have all been shoved away – one day they’ll see the light of day. I still have all my old phones because they’re littered with 200 voice memos that eventually I’ll go through. I’m the worst at it!’

‘Human performance is going to be at a premium and I think that is what is inherently going to drive people back to live shows again’

We get chatting about the dangers of AI and the detrimental effect it will have on music: ‘We’re at that Napster level where the technology’s already out, so we’re going to have to navigate this regardless,’ he said. ‘I think what’s going to be cool is on the other side of it, human performance is going to be at a premium and I think that is what is inherently going to drive people back to live shows again. You’ll never replace watching a human being doing something amazing in front of you, whether that’s sport or music. We just got to survive and get there but it’ll be cool.’

‘Pour The Bottle’ is one of their most catchy songs with the kind of energy designed to get a crowd bouncing: ‘If you see it live, that solo section goes on for extra couple minutes,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘We make that a moment because it’s a really guitar-forward kind of song. It’s a blast to play and one of my favourite riffs I’ve ever written. It’s always fun seeing other guitarists try to figure it out. It’s like: “Ah, gotcha!” It’s got weird chord progressions, it’s done in a weird tuning – open G major – I have a guitar dedicated specifically for that song and two or three others. The Black Crowes do a lot of songs in open G, so do The Rolling Stones.’ He describes the track as being about ‘relishing making bad decisions’: ‘It’s owning the fact that every now and then you are going to have that night where you decide: “Well, tonight I’m going to be everybody else’s problem” (laughs). So give me all the regrets right now. Let’s go, let’s make some bad decisions! It was inspired by this nihilistic, self-destructive moment of, you know what? Pour the bottle. Let’s go. Good luck, everybody else!’

‘It has the whole Wild West feel of “I’m going down and taking everyone with me” – it’s even got a shoot out in it!’

Their upcoming album High Noon is not inspired by the Gary Cooper/Grace Kelly film of the same name, although it will capture all of its Wild West energy and drama: ‘The title track is our take on cowpunk. (A subgenre of punk that began in the 70’s which combines punk rock with country, folk, and blues.) It has the whole Wild West feel of “I’m going down and taking everyone with me” – it’s even got a shoot out in it! It was actually inspired by ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ (the 1966 Italian epic spaghetti Western starring Clint Eastwood), one of my all-time favourite movies. There’s another song on the album that I love called ‘Too Much’ where we put Chris Stapleton in a strip club (laughs). On this album, we’ve leaned into what we’ve learned from those kind of movies and tried to make them a little bit more personalized.’

The album will likely feature 10 tracks and has been inspired by Stapleton and Jason Isbell’s storytelling: ‘They’re really good at placing you into a scene,’ he said. ‘We spent a lot of time on previous material trying to capture that. I can feel the tug for the album after this one to sing more about my personal experiences. However, High Noon marks the in-between world of those two. After this, I think the next record will be very close to the chest, which I’m terrified of but we’ll find out together.’

He acknowledges that despite the terror of laying himself bare, there is something incredibly cathartic about it: ‘I’m also a little bit cognisant of singing about the people in my life. I always weigh whether or not – and this is going to sound so petty – that person is deserving of me thrashing them on a song (laughs). I sit there and go: “You know what? You had a big impact on me, but I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of writing about you”!’

‘There is something really cool about letting people in but it can also be the death of the artist’

I say he won’t be following in Lily Allen’s footsteps then who, on her new album West End Girl, writes acerbically – and with brutal honesty – about an open marriage gone sour. ‘ Oh my god, that is next level, and I get it,’ he said. ‘There is something really cool about letting people in but it can also be the death of the artist. Equally, I really enjoy when people tell me that one of our songs has had an impact on them, like with ‘Devil’s Dues’. We had a fan that would listen to it as their motivation for the day. It’s a song about understanding your past and running from it and then deciding, you know what, today I’m going to own up to it and I’m going to start making a change. I had something entirely different in my head for that, though. At the same time, there are songs that I love that spoke to what I was going through at the time and I don’t know if I want to know what the artists were going through when they wrote them because the songs mean so much to me. If I find out that they were only writing about groceries that day (laughs), all of a sudden, my perspective is going to be a little tinged and I’d like it to mean something more meaningful.’

Over the years, they’ve shifted from old school country-rock on their Turning Stones album (2016) to playing around with gospel rock and heavier, more guitar-driven rock on recent releases, although they are also leaning in on their country roots on High Noon: ‘There’s one song on it that is “full diet” country but there are also some “rah, rah, rah” songs on there. We wanted to distill all of these different ideas.’

If he could go out drinking with anyone, he is quick to say R.L Burnside: ‘He’s got that old blues mentality. He has one of the greatest quotes I’ve ever heard, he said: “I only shot the guy. Him dying was between him and God.” Later on, he did a blues punk thing with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. And then in his eighties, he’s doing hip hop remixes of his already-released material. I want to ask him what led him to all this? I’d ask him: “What inspired you to change from strictly blues to “now I’m going to put punk elements into it”? He has a record with Jon Spencer called ‘Pocket of Whiskey’ where you can tell they just hit record and started going. As a kid, I had no idea you could record a record like that with no forethought on it or any spin. It’s messy and they’re stepping over each other but there’s once again that tension there that is just unmistakable. To me, that record is mind blowing.’

They’ve had some hilarious and also painful moments on the road, most notably when they were driving to support ZZ Top in Chicago and the axle on their trailer blew: ‘We all live in Phoenix, so we’re driving all the way up and that alone is a 36 hour drive straight! We managed to patch it up, make it to the gig on time, with our tail firmly between our legs (laughs). We get done, play a couple of shows on the way home and we are four or five hours outside of home and the entire back of the trailer just completely blew, so we’re stuck in Las Cruces, New Mexico, going to every U-Haul we could find and they refused to rent anything to us. I just remember we were parked outside of a U-Haul seeing all of the trailers perfectly available, even though they told us they were taken. And seeing the woman who worked there walk out and go to her car while our drummer is screaming the most horrendous obscenities as we’re stuck there overnight until we can get somebody to come pick us up. So we do yell at each other! There are so many weird random road stories (laughs). Luckily somebody drove up from Phoenix to grab all of our gear. It’s funny in hindsight but we were pissed in the moment!’