Sure it helps that the reformed rhythm section of the classic 80’s LA GUNS lineup gets back together, but this is a tale of a purely organic occurrence. Rock vets Steven Riley and Kelly Nichols reconnect to form a new version of LA GUNS, still full of that classic, straight-ahead, ballsy street rock from the LA strip. 40 years of living and thriving on the west coast, the accent-ladened New Englander talks about the events that leads up to him reconnecting with his old band mate, his days in WASP and the importance of equal partnerships in a band .
Steven talks about working with Kelly again keeping the classic LA Guns sound on the new record "Renegades".
"I gotta tell ya, me and Kelly Nichols made a real conscientious effort to do that. We are a classic rock band. We know we have fans that know our sound and like our song writing style, so we made an effort because we don’t want to drift to far from that sound or do anything out of left field. We really wanted to stay true to our sound. LA Guns have always had eclectic records where one song was moving on from another song. We never really wrote 14 hard rock songs for an album. We kinda moved around with different styles within our albums and maintained our sound, and we hope we have done that on this album. I think we did and the fans are streaming it, it shows us that people are really digging it, which is making us feel really good."
Steven adds about how LA Guns got re-signed the old way or rock and roll. Get Discovered!
"When Kelly said he wanted to come back in and we got together, I told him about the offer from M3. They wanted me to come out there and play some LA Guns songs and I said to Kelly, “Lets go do this and have some fun,” It’s just a one off. Me and him co-wrote alot of the classic material with the other members, so we felt secure and confident about doing that. We weren’t going out as the rhythm section that we played on an album. We co-wrote alot of those songs, so I said let’s go have fun and play M3 and it really was just that. After the response from M3, it snowballed from there. Kurt and Scotty Griffin did such a tremendous job. The show was well received by the fans and other people. A friend of mine ended up filming that from the front on one of his cameras and it was all over the internet. With that show going over so well it scored us a management deal with New Breed Management out here in LA. Just weeks later they brought us to Golden Robot and said they wanted to do a record. We immediately went
right into pre-production that summer. There was no master plan of us doing this. It all happened really fast. It just really fell into place organically. With the 4 of us playing together we knew we had something special right away. We knew something was gonna be cool and something was happening here and the chemistry was just so right. I can’t believe it because
I’ve been doing it for so long and nothing like this has ever happened that quick, from management, then record deal, then right into pre-production and then right into the studio. Everyone was sitting on all these songs, so yea that’s really how it happened. It was really a quick turn around from doing M3 to finishing the album, like 6 months later."
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