WAYNE RICH - DIRTY RATS

WAYNE RICH - Dirty Rats 💿Hi, it’s a pleasure for us to have on Hardrockheavymetal Wayne of DIRTY RATS!! Welcome!!

​Thanks man, it's a pleasure to be inteviewed by you.

💿 Let's start from last sad news about your mate Anthony (CHOOKA) CHAPPLE, suffered from a brain aneurysm and the consequent choice to have a break praying live..

​Yeah, that was a real shock for all of us. We have had a bit of a run of bad luck with band members health of late. First of all our drummer, Andy, severely damaged his wrists to the point where he will need surgery to fuse the bones and may not be able to drum again. Then of course, we were having a rehearsal with a fill in drummer, and three songs in, Chooka finishes a ripper solo, feels a bit dizzy and ends up collapsing with a brain aneurysm requiring brain surgery. Unfortunately he also had a mini stroke after the operation and lost some use of his right, fretting, hand, so we decided to take a bit of a break from performing till he was on the road to recovery. They reckon he should recover fairly quickly, so we are hoping to get back into it in 2020.

💿 Can you tell us somethin’about the birth and the name of your band? Which artists or bands impressed you the most as musician?

​Dirty Rats was formed in the mid 80's and the name sounded pretty cool to a bunch of 17 year olds, so it stuck. The band had some local success in the 80's, but unfortunately, substance issues took their toll and the band broke up. The Rats were resurrected around 2013 by the original bass player, Jamie, and after several line up changes and some false starts, we started playing and recording again, bringing our 80's flavoured pub rock to a new audience. All of us are heavily influenced by the bands we watched and listened to growing up in Australia. We get the usual comparisons, like ACDC and Rose Tattoo, but my heroes were pretty diverse. I was a huge fan of Kiss, Deep Purple, Richie Blackmore and Alice Cooper, but I also loved Little River Band, Mental as Anything, Angels, Hoodoo Gurus and Cosmic Psychos.

💿 END IN TEARS, your new album, will be out anyway on Dec 13th . We have the chance to listening to in preview and we were really impressed . Can you tell us somethin'about its composition process and style?

Our first album, Rock n Roll, was mainly songs that had been performed by the Rats for years, plus a couple of new ones we wrote after I joined the band in 2015. They had been tested and polished over a couple of years before we recorded them, so they had a lot of history and tended toward our more traditional sound. The new album, End in Tears, was a totally fresh start for us. In the past, Jamie mainly wrote the songs and lyrics himself, so developed his own sound. When we started writing together, we found that my lyrics fit really well with his melodies and riffs and so our sound and style evolved. I am heavily influenced by the lyrical skills of Glenn Shorrock and Paul Kelly, so I like my lyrics to tell a story and evoke an emotional response when I can. In this way, we have evolved from the more straightforward Aussie pub rock songs, to include anthemic songs like End in tears or Boss of me, drinking songs like Rat Rock or the Ballad of Hobbit Foot, bluesy classics like Rock Star and even a heavier style in Hurts like a Mother, which is about my recovery after almost losing my leg in a motorcycle accident. After the songs are written, we like to get them out on the road and perform them as much as possible to fine tune and adjust them so that when we record, we can get our sound as close to a live performance as possible.

💿 There's a great return of format such as vinyl and cassette. What's your thinking about these classic format..love for vintage or is it impossible a future for music outside digital?

I actually like digital format, I like the immediacy of the medium and I think the audio quality is fine, considering most of the time I have my music blasting out of the car speakers or my headphones. I do have a fondness for vinyl, it's warm and honest and what I grew up with. I would love to get some records pressed, but most people who buy our music are from Europe or America, so the digital download are an excellent way to get our stuff out there and remain affordable for everyone.

💿 Inside your songs what’s the role of lyrics in the composition process? Words follow music or vice versa?

I write the lyrics for our songs and they always have to mean something to me or tell a story that I like. Most times I will come up with an idea that I start writing down and will try and fit it to a riff that Jamie has come up with, or Jamie will send me a riff idea and I will listen to it over and over till the words come to me. Occasionally I will come up with words and music, but Jamie reckons my melody ideas suck, so he never uses them and just writes something else. The only one I have been able to keep as I first envisioned it was Rock Star. Jamie tried to change it, but it just didn't work, so he settled for just tweaking it a bit and letting me have that one for a change.

💿 We love the cover of END IN TEARS! Can you tell us somethin'about?

We wanted something a bit more stylized and heavy for this album and Jamie and I were mucking around with some designs involving skulls and guitars, the usual testosterone fueled bogan stuff. I thought that, since we were the Dirty Rats, we should maybe use a rat skull instead of the usual human metal style skull design. My wife is an artist and was mucking around with some of our ideas and gave us a few choices to look at. We had just decided on a totally different look, when she sent me the rat skull on smoke design and we both just looked at it and said, fuck, that's it! It was just a matter of deciding on the album name, writing it on and that was it. I really love the design, I might have to get it tattooed somewhere.

💿 Thank you so much for your time! See you soon on Hardrockheavymetal!

Thanks man, it's been a pleasure. I hope your readers enjoy the album when it is released on Friday the 13th of December, the luckiest day of the year, and make sure you visit us at www.dirtyratsband.com and give us a like on facebook and twitter.

Rock on!

#pressagent Black-Roos Entertainment