The three-piece from Texas talk about their many gear endorsements with several brands, including Ibanez Guitars, their plans at NAMM and reveal EXCLUSIVE information about their upcoming album and music video.
Music Connection: We know that you guys have a lot of endorsement deals. Can you tell us a bit about those and what's going on with them?
Tim Henson: Scott and I endorse Ibanez, DiMarzio, Dunlop and Fractal Audio. And Clay endorses Ernie Ball, Music Man, Dunlop and Darkglass. With Ibanez we just actually got to do a really cool Mozart video with them, [Watch here: https://youtu.be/RiRd0EG_jS4] so that actually came out today. And then with DiMarzio, we got a bunch of stuff going on in the works. And then with Dunlop, this summer we got to go to the studio and do some crazy-ass 20-minute long video of some shit we're just playing and doing interview-style questions. So some cool stuff going on there.
MC: When you guys decide on a company you want to pursue being endorsed by, is that like a band decision or who makes the choice there?
Henson: It's kind of more so like each of our personal references. Scott and I have been playing Ibanez guitars since we were little kids, you know, so we’re way stoked on getting to play all brands we've been wanting to play since we were kids.
It's just one of those things like, hey, what size is this company, what kind of products do they make, what can they do for us, what can we do for them, that kind of relationship going on and everything. We're pretty passionate about the brands we do endorse, so it's nice to be apart of their musical artist roster families and stuff like that.
MC: Can you tell us a bit about the deal? Do you guys have to promote the products, put them up on your Instagrams, use them...?
Scott LePage: Yeah, of course.
Clay Gober: Yeah.
Henson: Yeah, I mean, sometimes it just depends on the company. But you know, it ranges from, “Hey, we'll give you this much stuff for this much blah blah,” or sometimes there's gentleman's agreements where it's just like: we'll post you guys and you post us and that's how it is, we're not gonna hound you or anything. And that's always pretty cool when we're able to do something like that.
MC: What's the game plan here at NAMM this year? What are you guys here for?
Gober: We are here to meet up with some old friends we've made the past few years and drink…pretty much.
MC: Any upcoming tours? What are you guys working on now?
Henson: So we have a new album coming out on March 11 and that's not released yet so, ooh, exclusive!
LePage: It's all done though. All finished.
Henson: It's all finished. It's completely finished. We have a new music video coming out Feb. 12, which is also not announced yet so, ooh, exclusive! It's got a Playboy model in it, so we're pretty stoked on that. The whole thing, we're really fucking excited about it. The whole thing is really fucking sick. We think the fans are gonna love the shit out of it. If you were a fan of “Inspired” if you were a fan of “Muse,” you're gonna to fucking like it, cause we really like it.
The whole thing is just really cool, and it's coming out March 11. We have a tour going on with CHON. The tour starts then, the album comes out then so we got a big couple months coming up for us so we're really excited about it!
Gober: It should be a good time, looking forward to it, definitely!
