We had the pleasure of sitting down for a quick chat with our friends The Outlaw Orchestra at Hella Rocks festival the other week. Check it out below!

How was the set?

Dave: Fantastic! Great sound up there, really good sound! It was our first time here and was excellent!

It’s been a couple of years since we caught up now! How’s the last few years been?

It was Call of the Wild! 2022? 2023? Time flies!

Ryan: Really good! Some really good progression and upwards trajectory.

Pete: Festivals have been crazy. We’ve had a really good live year.

Dave: Phil Campbell passed the buck to us to go do a gig in France, a headline slot… albeit at 1:30am! They said headline but I’d give that to the Guns n Roses tribute band on from 9-11. It was more the graveyard shift! But when we walked on stage there was still 20,000 people there.

Yeah, I’ve done Graspop the last couple of years and it seems to be such a thing in Europe where you’ll have a headliner and then people will still keep going for three, four hours after!

Dave: It’s great! As a musician… someone said to me before take a moment, take it in, and take a photograph with your eyes. And I did! I remember seeing people miles away and then down at the front, but seeing that many people was crazy! I couldn’t take a moment, I was concentrating!

Pete: We had the tour before that with the Gypsy Pistoleros. Done a number of really good gigs. I’ve taken a moment at each of them to kinda go ‘this is not a normal life, this is great!’. It’s a privilege to be here and enjoy it!

Dave: Next week we’ve got one down on Glastonbury farm. 10k ticket sold already! It might not be for us, but that should be fun! That’s in the more commercial pop circuit too, what the hell?!

I feel like there’s more crossover than ever between genres these days!

Pete: I think that’s part of the reason we got the gig; variation. You’ve got Raye headlining, you’ve got Inhaler, Bonos kids, so more indie rock, and then us doing the pub stuff! Up there with a pint of beer and a packet of scampi!

Dave: Then again saying that you get bands like Chaz and Dave who used to rock big and people love it! It’s good time rock’n’roll!

Ryan: Everyone says you guys look like you’re having a good time, smiling, and that’s almost the difference!

Dave: I know I’ve faked it before!

You guys have also put out the last album since we last chatted!

Ryan: Yes! You did your reaction videos that we loved, too!

Dave: I watched it with my mum and when it got to the end and you like ‘fuck yes’ she was like “is he allowed to swear?”! I was like ‘Hell yes!’

I was wondering how you guys write stuff. In terms of inspirations from that album alone there’s all sorts!

Dave: I think that was different in that Alessio, the vocal coach and engineer, sometimes sings with Dragonforce, we literally walked into the studio and Ryan set up in one room and us in the other. He says ‘wait, I’m going to record the drums, keep playing it’. Once we were warmed up he was like ‘now Ryan’s mapped out we can tinker. I want to capture you live’. You get a lot of influences from everywhere, but he would shout things out too. As a vocal coach he’d be saying ‘I can hear a harmony here’. The only thing is, he sings in Dragonforce, so he’s like ‘Dave, try and do this’ and hits some Bruce Dickinson-like note. I’ll tell you what Alessio you come in here and I’ll go and record!

Ryan: We’ve worked with so many different produces but Alessio, he’s got some different kit. His ear is different! Instrumentation too, he’s got loads of good effects and would be like ‘try and play it with this chord’.

Pete: From a songwriting point of view we’ve approached every album a bit different. First album you play the songs you’ve been playing for years. Second album you kinda experiment a bit. It was a lot shorter timeframe this time, we didn’t sit with the songs very long. This album we’ve got a nice long timeframe, really lived with it. We’re also much more collaborative with the new stuff. We’re had a really good writing session last night actually for some new stuff, looking at ideas and reference tracks.

Dave: get YouTube up and nick that bit from that song and that bit from that one, put it all together, they’ll never know!

You’ve got a few more gigs in October I saw, right?

Pete: Yeah, we’ve got Black Deer (sad), that’s gonna be really good! This is the thing, we’ve had some great gigs this year, and have got even more great ones coming up!

Dave: I really loved playing over on the continent. Nobody knows you but it’s such a great vibe!

Ryan: The food as well! And you can have red wine at like seven in the morning!

Pete: You can do that at home!

Ryan: Before we went on at 1:30 in the morning they had what they called a sexy show. Strippers, pole dances, fire breathers, and you’re just stood there!

Dave: The funniest thing. This one French girl, very natural very beautiful and confident. She goes out there in front of 20,000 people, so classy, like burlesque. Goes all the way down the catwalk, right out there… and whips her thong off. She’s now just wearing her heels, spins them on her finger. She walks off stage, stands between me and Pete, lights a cigarette. Pete’s saying to me ‘play it cool, play it cool!’. She’s stood there completely casually as we’re both riddled with being English, we didn’t know what to do!

Pete: A few days later when I was telling the story I said I didn’t know where to look! I went ‘I just looked at my wedding ring!’.

Ryan: We went for a swim at the local theme park, it was so good, honestly brilliant!

Pete: Ryan lost his sunnies! A wave hit him and as he came back I was like ‘where’s your sunnies?’ And he was like ‘NO!’.

Dave: Prescription too, prescription sunnies!

Ryan: Honestly I’d loved to have been there a few more days, done a few more dates. Europe is completely different!

You’re pretty active on social media. It seems to be going well!

Pete: We’re trying! It’s tough isn’t it, social media! It’s not really anyone’s natural thing. We’re trying to be better!

Do you have any advice for people in that area?

Pete: Honestly we are the worst people to ask! For me the thing I respond to is when I see people being authentic. We’ve recently tried to do more than share a gig poster, we’ve tried to capture what it’s like to be around us.

Dave: It’s mad. When we did the Phil Campbell tour, our biggest hit rate was the three of us eating a bag of fish and chips! It’s real!

Pete: You can’t predict what videos are gonna pop up. We had one outside a gig in Chesterfield where me and Dave were just busking Kiss. Ryan sort of turned it round and sang. I don’t know why but that kinda randomly caught on as a video!

Dave: I’d love to watch Iron Maiden just having a laugh! But then you cannot get backstage footage of AC/DC, and I’m hungry for that!

Pete: Have you seen the video of James Hetfield doing the rounds recently? Obviously they play on that big circular stage and there’s a big instrumental section and Hetfield just sits down, his roadies made him a cup of tea, and he has his cigar. And then he goes back up again, it’s really weird! It’s obviously a massive video because people want to see that!

Dave: All I heard is the only advice was do three posts a week and one reel. Do them at the same time each week, and it will start to get out there. I’ve certainly found when we’ve done preorders and stuff, don’t do it on a Tuesday morning. Friday mornings do okay!

Pete: We always try to put it out after 6pm if we can!

Dave: Consistency, and as painful as it is, be yourself.

Ryan: People can tell if there’s a facade. People watch musicians through a filter. That’s fine, but you have your onstage and offstage personas, and people want to see the offstage.

Dave: Unless you’re downright gorgeous and then you can do what you want!

Pete: I’ve seen bands do dance routine, can you imagine us doing a dance routine?! It would be so stupid, it wouldn’t fit! It would be awful!

Dave: But there we go, there’s the advice! Album recorded January/February, hopefully out end of summer, and then we’ll see you again in a couple of years! The grind. But then that’s why we do it, because it’s better than sitting at home channel hopping!