interview with LEFTOVER BULLETS

Have any of you played in other bands? No. In spite of many proposals that our members have received, we try to keep our loyalty, energy, and inspiration to this band. We believe that the audience deserves to have it all if you want them to follow. This is something that you don’t see often nowadays, and perhaps is the reason why you see moderate created by brilliant musicians.

How is it that you started playing music? We started off 4 years ago, having the need to express ourselves due to the economic crisis here in Greece and dealing with a massive wave of young people that left our country to look for a better future. We said goodbye to so many good friends who were parts of that wave and we somehow felt like “Leftovers” here, but we’re still “Bullets”. That’s how we started to play and how our name came up. 

Where are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?

Vocals:  John Vogiatzis "Vog"

Lead guitar: George Karathanasis "Cargo"

Rhythm guitar: John Tentsos "Johnny T."

Bass: Dimitris Argiropoulos        

Drums: George Dimitriadis

And we’re all from 37 – 38 years old

Have you had other previous members? Yes we had Spiros Kitsios on the drums for awhile the very early years of the band, and Anestis Pilatos until last year on the bass. We also had with us Alexis Tsouleas  as a session member for a couple of months.

Did you make music even when you were young? Yes, all of us ever since high school.

Where are you from? We are from Greece.

What year did the band form? In 2013.

What's your style of genre? We play Hard rock and we’re flirting with other styles at times

What inspires you? The pure guitar rock, and our difficult lives we’re living

How often and where do you reherse? We used to rehearse 3 times a week all together as a band. But we practiced individually a lot at home until 2 months ago when we rented our own studio to make more rehearsals.

How have you developed since you started with the music? Well, people say that we’re a different band. It’s a natural progress if you try and work as we do.

Do you have other interests of work outside the band from? all of us have our jobs in a way.

Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? Yes of course. We live in a country that rock isn’t it the first or the second choice of someone to hear, so, to play our music to other countries or audience, or even in a specialized event in our own country, is something that we want.

Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? Right now we have a contract until next March with a local label calling Final Touch. We think that we’re the only ones there that we play rock n’ roll… Always have our eyes open for something more focused on our style.

What made you decide to make this music? Our influences! All those rock monsters that we listen to ever since we were kids!

What are your songs about? Mostly they are about society things. How and where we stand and stare at the world at this point of our lives, but we also like to dig into feelings.

Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? George karathanasis and sometimes Johnny Tentsos  brings the central idea to the studio, and then everybody puts their own optical view and eventually the idea becames a song. It is the best part of working at the studio!

Do you start with the music or the lyrics? Music somes first, now we are about to settle on the lyrics for the second album. At least for a couple of songs.

Have you done any covers live? Yes of course. In the early years of the band we started to play only covers. Now we do it when we have to.

What language do you sing in? In English

What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? We have played in front of 15 guys and in front of 500 people. We need another 2 zeros on 500 don’t you think?

What ages are most of your concert attendants? It’s 50% 15 – 20 years old and 40% 30 – 50. We have a small 10% of ages between 20 – 30

Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? We’ve never have played twice the same show

Do you have a regular place you play live often? Yes, here in Thessaloniki where we live, we usually play in the only serious big stage in town, it’s called “8ball”, but we like some other smaller stages too.

What was your first gig like? To tell you the truth it was a nightmare. George Karathanasis learnt 4 hours before the show from his wife’s doctor that her pregnancy must stop immediately and the show took place in a frozen atmosphere on the stage. It’s all good now for George and his wife!

What was your latest gig? 15 days before

Have you had to cancel a gig? Yes, once a time George again broke his arm 10 days before the show and we had to cancel it. 

Where have you played live this year?

28/01/17 – Silver Dollar (Thessaloniki)

11/02/17 – Architecture stage (Athens)

18/02/17 – Don Kihot (Katerini)

10/03/17 - 8BALL (Thessaloniki)

25/03/17 – TITHORA Rock club (Athens)

09/04/17 - 8BALL (Thessaloniki)

21/04/17 – SILVER DOLLAR (Thessalloniki)

Where do you plan to gig the comming year?We plan to make a Greek tour.

When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale?We started 2 years ago, and we have T- shirts, wallets, tobacco bags, packet of cigarette bags, Posters, hats and we prepare some other things. And our album too

Where can people buy your merchandise?Up to now we have been doing it at our gigs as well as the facebook. But in 10 days our site will be ready, so..

What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days?We grew up in a time when we used to buy records and cassettes and cd’s and spent thousands of hours to listening to them and reading the booklets and imagining things about our favorite bands. That time has passed and we understand that, but when we hear something good we go to the record store and buy it. We know of so many people who have loads of songs downloaded on their laptops and don’t even know what these songs are. But we don’t know anyone to have a personal cd or record collection and don’t know each and every song they have by heart. That’s the difference!

How do you think the music industry have changed because of this?It changes a lot. You can see it from the album sales. You can hear big rock stars saying that it’s not worth creating new albums, and you rarely hear of great productions of albums anymore. Many productions are very good, but not great.

What do you think of my work?We think that you do it well!!!

How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? Well, you never know. The questions are many and if someone really likes you he will have a very good picture of who you are.

Do you have any role models or idols?We all had when we were younger.

Why do you think that they exist?To show you the way!

Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today?From both. The older bands inspire respect of what they created from scratch, and the newer ones makes you realize that this “train” doesn’t stop.

What have been your biggest obstacles? Time and money for sure! Haha! Seriously, in our band the biggest obstacle is that here in Greece we can’t show our work to more people. We don’t have the promotion that we deserve.  Big radio stations don’t give you the chance they don’t even listen your work. We ourselves have “gained” audience that follows us. We make the deal for every place we have played. We make all the arrangements.

How do you get psyched for a gig? We imagine that we’re going to play in front of 50.000 people. Then the adrenaline goes high, and a couple of beers bring the situation straight.

Do you have any new material? Yes of course! We have begun to compose some new songs for our second album.

What are your web sites? www.leftoverbullets.com

How can people reach you? Facebook, You Tube, itunes, spotify, napster, amazon, google play and in our site.

What are your plans for the future? We’re planning to make our Greek tour this summer, we’re preparing our 3rd Video clip  and we also looking for some festivals in Europe. The target is a bigger record company for the second album, and Europe tours.

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