We had the absolute pleasure to sit down with guitarist Heber Pampillon and bassist Chris Taylor of the amazing Kickin’ Valentina to chat about their upcoming UK and Europe tour, plans for new music and their touring life! check it out below!

So, you guys are touring the UK and Europe in May, right?

Yeah!

Are there any comparisons you can make between the scene here and back home?

Heber: I think all of us are on the same page with this one. We love our American fans as much as we love our European fans, but the difference over there is that European fans go to the shows right at the beginning to see every band, and stay all night. Here in the US they really don’t do that. They’ll call us and send us messages of ‘what time you going on’. Well, 10pm, but there are bands in front of us, you know! They show up for the band they want to see and that’s it. Then they’ll split. So that’s kinda the big difference!

That’s crazy! I’ve seen you’ve done Call of the Wild and Hard Rock Hell and stuff before, must be nice to be on these bigger lineups where everyone is there from the get-go!

Chris: Yeah, those are fun! We’ve done Call of the Wild three times, HRH twice, Stonedead. When we did Stonedead we did that earlier and then HRH sleaze later on. Two festivals in the same day! We did Stonedead at 12:30, then HRH at like 6:30. It was fun, but we hated having to leave Stonedead, we wanted to hang out. So we got off stage and got to the merch table and there was a line of people and we had to go. It was fun, just a very hectic day!

We’re going on a year now since Star Spangled Fist Fight. How’s the last year been since then? I imagine pretty full-on, tour wise?

Heber: Yeah, April I think! It’s been great! We’re going back for the second leg of it, we’re able to tour this album proper. Obviously we like to do more shows. I think it’s done pretty well so far!

I imagine there’s probably some writing going on still for something in the future?

Chris: A little bit. We’ve got ideas that bounce around. We’re not in full album writing mode yet, but we’re throwing some stuff out there!

And I saw you’ve got a B-Sides release coming out soon, too?

Chris: Yes, on May 2nd! When we did Star Spangled we had three extra songs, we ended up tracking 13 songs and wanted 10 on the record. We were trying to figure out what to do with the three left over. We liked the songs, we knew we wanted to release them at some point, so we figured why not put them out with some live stuff, some demos, just package it up that way. I think it turned out pretty good! It should be a fun record for people to listen to.

Heber: Just keeps them hanging ‘till we write a whole new album, right? Just the tip!

It’s a nightmare these days just trying to keep stuff rolling, even on social media and stuff.

Chris: Yeah, trying to keep stuff out there and fresh and new, yeah it’s hard!

Have you got quite a busy rest of the year planned?

Chris: We’re working on some US dates right now. When we’re done with this I actually have to call our agent! We’re trying for some stuff for September/October in the US this year. We do have a warmup show here May 10th, though! Then we’re in Europe for pretty much all of May, we come back in June. Then we have some stuff in the US for later in the year.

Do you have a dream tour lineup you’d wanna be a part of?

Heber: For me the big bands would obviously be Kiss or Metallica. I mean, who wouldn’t? Guns’n’Roses, obviously. We would love to go out on tour with all the big major bands, no brainer.

Chris: We’ve talked to bands like Hardcore Superstar about doing stuff, it just never lines up schedule-wise. We’ve played with them a few times. UK bands, South of Salem, we would love to go out with The Treatment, bands like that! Someone’s just gotta put it together!

Do you have a song you wish you’d have written?

Heber: I would say any song that Taylor Swift does that makes millions of dollars! That’s a tough one man, I’ve never even thought of that. There’s so many. You could start with like ‘I wish I’d wrote every single GnR song. ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ or something like that. ‘Bark at the Moon’ maybe, I love that album! A Beatles song, maybe.

Chris: Someone just asked me this in another interview a couple of days ago. I picked kinda randomly… I’m a huge Marilyn Manson fan, his early stuff. For me, I picked ‘Lunchbox’. When Manson came out everything in the US just fucking sucked; everybody was so anti-rockstar, anti-image. Then bam, he comes out with ‘Lunchbox’ and when I first heard it I was like ‘what the fuck is this’, and I saw pictures of the band and listened to the record. Lyrically it went against everything going on at the time and it blew up, and I was like ‘this is the shit, right here’. I love stuff that goes against the grain.

Heber: Do you know how to play it?

Chris: Umm…. no…

Heber: We should, we should learn it and do it at soundcheck. Make it a medley of that and ‘Bark at the Moon’! Or ‘I Was Made for Living You’ by Kiss, throw that in there too!

Yeah, I saw Kiss have just come back, too!

Chris: Yeah, I saw they’re supposed to be doing some reunion show or something.

Heber: it’s the farewell farewell farewell farewell tour.

Chris: I remember seeing the first farewell tour back in like 1996.

Heber: you know you’ve gotta give it to guys like that who are still going in on a higher level at their age. Rock’n’roll keeps you young. It keeps you motivated. From our experience we’ll walk around like ‘man, my leg hurts, my back hurts’ but as soon as you hit that first chord on stage now you’re jumping around on stage like a madman, and you’ve forgotten about every single pain and bullshit that’s bothering you. You just go there and rock.

Heber: Are you coming down to any of the shows?

I should be in Birmingham! I think I saw you once or twice at Call of the Wild, they’ve kinda blurred into one.

Chris: They do, yes!

Heber: yeah, all these shows do blur together. Sometimes they’ll ask us ‘hey did you?’ and it’s like ‘alright, if you say so!’

Chris: We have to go to Jimmy [Berdine, drums] because he’s like fucking Rain Man with that sort of stuff. You can ask him a question and he can tell you where we played it, what day.

Heber: he could tell you what he was wearing!

Chris: everything kinda runs together sometimes.

I can imagine. You guys are doing a pretty big amount of dates in May.

Chris: I think it’s like 14. A couple of years ago we had some friends fly over from the US to Europe and follow us around for the last week of tour. A couple of days into it they’re like ‘how do you guys do this’,we were like ‘fuck, we’ve already been doing this shit for two and a half weeks!’

Heber: It’s true. People think it’s all this glamorous life and it’s really not. It’s a lot of hurry up and wait. ‘You’ve got soundcheck at two, you don’t go on until 11’.

Chris: The drives over there are usually shorter than the US. A two hour drive is easy.

Heber: We say that to five hour drives!

Chris: I think the furthest drive we’ve ever done to get home after a tour was like 15 hours. We drove back from Wisconsin. We did a 14 hour drive back from Texas one time. You’re delirious by the time you get home. You’re like ‘don’t speak to me’ and go straight to bed.

Heber:When we finally get home we look at each other like ‘I don’t want to see you now for a couple of weeks. Don’t call me, I don’t want to hear your voice!’. Then the next day you’re like ‘Hey, what’s up’!