Sons of Silver had not officially been birthed when they first crossed our musical radar. Lead vocalist Pete Argyopoulos, going under the name Pete RG, was touring off of his 2016 release Tender Souls. He played a date here in Raleigh, North Carolina and we decided to check out the show. He was better than good, he was damn good. Each time he made a stop in Raleigh, he seemed to get better and better and the band got tighter and tighter. The band includes original Pearl Jam drummer and recent Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Dave Krusen, Candlebox bassist Adam Kury, former Skillet guitarist Kevin Haaland, and keyboardist and esteemed engineer Brina Kabler. Yeah, that’s a lot of talent up on that stage!
The next thing we knew, we received a press release informing us that Pete RG was now officially known as Sons of Silver. The other news included in the release was that they were about to drop a new EP, Doomsday Noises, of all new material. One listen and you can immediately tell that although the members are still the same, this is a different band. You can hear it in the songwriting and in the music itself. Pete RG has morphed into a monster of a band. Then, the pandemic happened and kind of changed most of their plans. That may sound like a bad thing, but it may have turned out to be a good thing. We recently sat down and talked to Pete RG about all of these changes, the band’s venturing into live-streaming and so much more! **A quick Editor’s note: The band will be playing its 3rd livestream show on 12/17 and you can RSVP to the free event here: Sons Of Silver Livestream! Thursday Dec 17th – 7p/4p | Facebook **
So you did a transformation from being Pete RG, kind of a solo artist with a backing band, into Sons of Silver, There is the obvious name change, but there is also a change in the music. When and how did you feel the transitioning happening?
Pete Argyropoulos (Sons of Silver): We started doing it in a couple of different ways. One, on the road it was just a little heavier music, a little more rock & roll. Once you start playing in front of people, your natural instinct will take you somewhere and that was a little different than what Pete RG was allowing us to do. We just wanted to play more rock & roll. It was that and we actually started writing together. I was obviously writing all of the songs with Pete RG and the guys would take them and run with them. We’d been rehearsing and Kevin would start playing a riff I thought was cool. Dave & Adam would play and groove with that and I said why don’t we write together? We kind of left the door open to that and as we were working on songs for Pete RG, we’d take little segue’s and start moving them on other ideas. Then, those ideas starting turning into songs and as they turned into songs that were pretty good. My interest and confidence in it started growing. Over the course of, probably a few months if that. We had written quite a few songs that were just clearly a departure from Pete RG. At that point it became obvious that we were a new entity and the name needed to reflect that.
There are a lot of different influences that have come that have come together, along with your own, and have formed what we’re hearing in Sons of Silver.
Yeah, it seems like we’ve got a lot of common musical influences between us. You could say that we all like the classic bands. You know, The Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, the likes of that. Then those mid era classic bands, like U2, Bruce Springsteen, maybe we can even throw Radiohead into that batch as well. Those are all common. Then we love a lot of other genres too. Frank Sinatra and older country music and jazz and punk and things like that. We all have those fundamentals in common, which is really nice because it keeps us in sync with each other. But at the same time, we all have our natural favorites. One’s that as individuals we’re naturally drawn to. It’s the way those instincts manifest themselves. For me, I love a lot of punk and post punk stuff. If I could have ever been in any band, it would have been The Clash. Where as Adam, his instincts may be more drawn to Mars Volta or you know, obviously Zeppelin, things like that. He’s a little more into slightly heavier rock. Kevin’s more into atmosphere stuff like The Verve or Radiohead. Dave, he loves a ton of stuff, but he’s really a big, big Stones fan, so Charlie Watts is his idol. And Brina, it’s interesting because, sweet Brina loves harder punk. Fugazi and things like that, but at the same time is drawn to a lot of stuff from the 90s. She’s a Pixies fan.
So we’ve somehow managed to pull all of those influences together. Even in those, there’s a lot of commanality and have found our way through that. I think it’s because we now have a lot of faith in each other. So we’ve now recorded a bunch of songs together and have the confidence in the process and the faith in each other.
Now the weird thing, and I think we’ve touched on this before, is how relevant these songs are even though they were written before all of this chaos. It’s really weird. I don’t know if you guys are psychic. It’s very weird and I know all of you have probably felt that way too.
Yeah, when the Covid thing first started breaking, the guys were texting like “Whoaaa.” Well, the truth of the matter is Johnny is we’ve developed a time machine. We’re going to start selling them on Instagram for $49.95, 3 for the price of 2, it’s an introductory offer.
No. (laughing) You know the reality is that, me in particular, any videos, politics, special events, that’s my hobby so to speak. It’s always been a passion of mine. It manifests itself into the lyrics. In addition to that, you know as a band we’re all very very close. These are things we talk about all the time and I mean all the time. Not just when we’re together, but even when we’re not together and trading texts. Information we may find, jokes, so on and so forth and that makes it’s way into my head and into the lyrics.
So, you know these things were coming. They were on the way. The song like “Outbreak;” I can’t say that I saw an actual outbreak coming, but I distinctively remember having a conversation with one of my family members about things that could shake up our city. I said ‘Well a nuclear war, terror events, or an outbreak of some type.’ So that’s probably how that lyric made it’s way in there. Like things that are going to shut you down, that would be it.
We’ve got some good one’s on the way!
Was the album completely finished before the whole Covid thing started?
All of the songs were written and recorded. I think we’d finished up a couple of the mixes just as everything was starting to shut down and being locked down. I think it was late March.
Did it delay the album’s release in any way?
Yeah, but not that much. Originally we were looking at a May release, early May. It ended up being late June. Obviously it put a stop to any touring plans, and it obviously altered our promotional plans. The reality is, it actually turned out to be for the most part a very good thing for us. There are some positives. What can you do?
You guys are such a tight knit group and you went a very long time without even being in the same room together because of the pandemic.
Yeah, all of us together at the same time was like six months. We had wrapped up tracking in like November and we were doing overdubs in December, moving into January. Then, we got into mix mode, so actually we were planning on all going into the studio in April. Well, that was the plan. We were all seeing each other, but separately. We didn’t all get in the same room together until after the release when we had a bit of a band barbecue. Everyone brought their significant other and we were like ‘Look guys, we’ve gotta push through this because it is not going to end any time soon. We need to be smart about it, but also try to be realistic about it Once we were together for a few minutes, that’s when we were like ‘Hey, time to get back in the studio.’ So, we got back in the studio and have been working non stop ever since. We’re starting to wind things down as far as recording over the last few weeks so we can get into mix and overdub mode and finish a bunch of new songs.
Do you guys have any concrete plans over what you’re gonna do? I know you’re going to have another release, but have you mapped out anything that you’re shooting for?
We do have an idea, I was just on the phone with our label yesterday. We’re getting a lot of miles out of this EP. The 2nd single came out I guess a few weeks ago now and it was #46 today on the charts. They expect some stations to pull it up, so we should maybe jump into the top 40. They think we have at least one more single on the EP and that wouldn’t be released until January.
So still with that said, we’re going to have our next EP and then some done around the 1st of the year, give or take a week or two. The plan was originally to put out another EP into the first quarter, but I can see that getting pushed back a little bit, just to squeeze more out of this one. We’re feeling really good about the songs we have.
Sounds like this little EP has got some legs to it.
It’s got some good legs! I say one more single, but they’re actually thinking there could be two more. I’m just a firm believer in making the most of the songs that you have as opposed to just churning out song after song after song. I like quality over quantity.
I look at how the industry has changed and the short attention span of listeners these days. It seems like some of these bands do just keep pushing out content and it just seems diluted to me.
I agree and now more than ever think. They’re making a huge mistake and I feel very confident about our passages by constantly re-engaging people with your release. You obviously have to make something that’s really good from top to bottom. In our case, being a rock band, we’re not only competing against rock bands now but rock bands of yesteryear as well. So, we need to take the effort to build something that will kind of compete with those. Once you do have a really good piece of work, piece of art, product, then you have to give it the time to be heard. For someone to put out a single, an EP, or LP and expect it to go viral overnight, that’s delusional. So what we’re trying to do is engage people every single day in a slightly different way. Be it talking in an interview about the EP or a clip behind the scenes talking about it or working on it, or a music video, a live stream performance and giving people time, giving the world time to discover.
The analogy I used a week or two ago and I gotta pat myself on the back because I thought it was pretty good. Imagine going to a restaurant for a nice meal. You sit down, put your bib on, get your fork & knife ready to go. The waiter comes out and puts the dish right in front of you. You go to dive in. Then, boom they pull away and put another one in front of you. You look around and say ‘Well this looks really good too; I’ll dive in too’ and just as you’re about to dig a fork into it, they pull it away and put another one in front of you. Now you’re saying ‘wait, wait, wait’ but they keep putting in another one and that’s what happens. You have to give people time.
I think to some bands and artists in the past and how it took them several albums to finally “break big” and how they wouldn’t be able to do that in today’s industry. Nowadays, these young and upcoming bands don’t have a comparable chance to that before they just ship them off to somebody else.
Yeah, it really diminishes the value of their work. I think it’s really good to showcase what you’re doing and give people time. Different perspectives, give them different ways to find out about you that they can actually latch on. Sometimes you may show them a new song on a Tuesday, and it’s not a good day for them because maybe they had a bad day at work or they’re tired. Then you show them on Thursday and maybe they’re a little more open to it. Maybe they didn’t share it in the right circumstances. If you rush through it, they’re going to rush through it. Give it time, and they’ll give it time.
Speaking of giving the listener another way to discover, how was the live-stream experience? Was it nerve wracking putting it together?
Yes, it was very nerve wracking especially for me because I was the one who put it all together. For no other reason than it was a one person job, but that’s not to say everyone didn’t contribute. We took a couple of weeks to get it right for the first show. We got all that set up, we got to test what it actually sounds like and made some last minute changes. It feels fucking weird because in this case we’re in our own home, our studio where we spend countless hours and we’re just with ourselves. It’s the four of us out recording, playing and Brina in the control room playing keyboards. Plus, our buddy who is switching the cameras because we have a four camera setup. So you’re looking and you’re like ‘Am I playing for myself? Am I here to perform?’ If I’m performing, I don’t want to over-perform because it’s kind of weird. The audience in front of me is a camera. And likewise you don’t get any feedback from an audience. All that said, it is magnificent because you can reach so many people. We did our second one and I think live, if I count the numbers right, we had about 600 people watching us at the same time, which is pretty good. I think in our first few hours where people are from different time zones we had about 2400 people watching. I think it was six or twelve hours, which is really good. We expect those numbers on our next one which will come in December.
That’s pretty intriguing and we’re thinking okay we’re going to up our game on this where every show is going to bring something new or special production wise. And two, we can easily take this on the road with us. We could see ourselves where we’re playing in Raleigh for instance at some venue and we’ll pull up our cameras and we’ll live stream our show, venue permitting. If the venue’s not permitting, we’ll do some behind the scenes stuff. We’ll do an acoustic song or two from our dressing room.
Anything else you want to mention what you have coming up. What you’re working on, what you guys are doing other than what we’ve already talked about?
No, you kinda got the story as well as anybody now, Johnny. We’re basically going to continue to record a bunch of new material once we finish this EP. We’ll be in the studio writing new material indefinitely right now. We’re really doing our best to build our fanbase by social media and radio as well as with traditional press, such as yourself. Music downtime is an up time for us. We’d like to take it to our advantage to spread more awareness with the general audience and likewise with the industry. I think if everything continues as it has been, we should be in a really solid spot around this time next year.
Okay. We did this last time and I want to do it again. This is our closing segment called ” 3 For The Road.” What was the first album that you bought with your own money that you had to save up for?
Ha! I think it was a Monkees album and my dad nearly died! Yeah, I think they were in syndication by then and I bought a Monkees album and my dad was horrified. He said “No, no. We’re going to fix this” and he went out and bought a Beatles album.
If you could have anybody be your inner voice like they do in a movie, who would you want to be your personal inner voice?
Anybody? Benjamin Franklin.
Now, that’s a first and a very interesting choice. The last one; if music was over and you went into professional wrestling tomorrow, what would your wrestling name be?
Uh. I don’t know. You know, I always told myself “The Odyssey.”
By I’m Music Magazine Owner/Editor Johnny Price
Get Doomsday Noises on all of your streaming services as well as the band’s Spotify
“Deep Division” – https://youtu.be/lB-02GSxuKw
“Rude Awakenings” – https://youtu.be/hlRmMJK2zOU
“Read ‘Em Their Rights” – https://youtu.be/_02wf0x4iWU
“World On Fire” – https://youtu.be/375U_GAUf10
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