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Kenny Hickey: A Rock And Roll Fables Conversation

“A hope, a prayer, and a plane ticket and a couple of riffs! For fear of letting down my buddy who spent all this money we had to come up with something…”

The “buddy” in question is a former Danzig merch guy and the reason you have a veritable supergroup of Metal/Sludge/Doom talent featuring members of Crowbar, Down, Type O Negative, and Silvertomb according to EYE AM vocalist/guitarist Kenny Hickey recently via phone:

“Now Drew (Spaulding, founder of Corpse Paint Records)… two of his favorite bands are Danzig and Type O. I met Drew while I was doing the Blackest of the Black tour in about 2008 when I was filling in and playing guitar with Glenn (Danzig). He was the merch guy. I was staying at the hotel with everybody else and I think I ran into him at the bar, we ended up getting a bottle of vodka, going back to the room and drinking all night so we became quick buddies that night. We stayed up until 4 in the morning and had been drinking buddies ever since.”

“And it just so happens that Drew was from New Orleans and was good friends with Kirk (Windstein, EYE AM guitarist/vocalist), was drinking buddies with Kirk, and a big fan of Kirk’s stuff (Crowbar, Down, etc…). He was very close to both of us and it always sparked his imagination: ‘I would love to get you both in a room and see what you come up with musically.’ But all those years he was too drunk to get that accomplished. He just got sober, I got sober about three and a half years go… and that led him to start Corpse Paint Records and his first wish was to have that entire idea come to fruition, get us into a room together and see what happens. Drew automatically included Johnny (Kelly, EYE AM drummer) and then Kirk brought Todd (Strange, EYE AM bassist) in.”

And from that came debut single “Dreams Always Die With The Sun” which dropped at the beginning of June (Which we reviewed here) with the Type O Negative/Silvertomb vocalist/guitarist elaborating more on what the band hope to accomplish with their sound and if their debut single is a good indicator of what’s to come:

“It’s indicative of what’s to come. You get four guys who grew up in the same era, we grew up in the ’70’s as kids listening to music, and we just sort of clicked with that. It rings with all of the music we grew up with. Zeppelin, Sabbath, all the great ’70’s bands… I’m writing riffs now and we’re going to be getting together on the 23rd (Of June) to write and record more. I’m doing everything on my Les Paul in 440 with the tuning because it has a Hard Rock element to it. So I think it’s going to be driven more towards a Hard Rock kind of format but a little darker and heavier.”

“I’m trying to keep the same kind of way that we came up with ‘Dreams Always Die…’ because it came out really well. I wrote a few parts, sent ’em to Kirk, it triggered ideas in him to write a few more parts so right now I’m compiling a verse, chorus, verse, riff, y’know… as many ideas as I can and send them over to him while he’s in Europe. If we can compile enough material in 11 days to fill an EP, that would be awesome! An album? I mean, that’s really hoping for a lot. Bands don’t do that anymore. They did that in the ’70’s. I mean Zeppelin did that and recorded in two weeks but the drugs were way better back then (laughs). It would be great if we did but I’m hoping, at least, for an EP. Let’s say we come up with four songs but we hate two of ’em then we’ll just keep releasing singles until we can compile a whole album.”

Inevitably when it comes to a group of this magnitude and the talent involved, the question of if a tour is in the works would eventually come up. But with said talent, there’s also a lot of schedules to manage so Hickey offers the following when asked if they were indeed going to tour soon:

“Not yet. We’ve been approached by agents and stuff to play Europe next year. We’d love to and it’s the ultimate goal but there’s a lot of crazy schedules with everybody in the band so it’s going to have to fit right or maybe tour with Crowbar or double up or something! It’ll be complex but we’ll make it happen. I mean, we made this happen. And we’re making the next group of songs happen. Where there’s a will there’s a way!”

With both Windstein and Hickey being lead vocalists in their respective bands outside EYE AM, the question of how the vocal duties will be split on upcoming music arises with Hickey acknowledging how he’d like it to be handled:

“I would like them to be split up equally. I tried to split up this one but Kirk was all like ‘You sound good, why don’t you sing the whole thing?’ I got him to do harmonies and stuff. I at least got him at the end of the song, that’s all his riff the whole outro of the song, the solo riff. We wrote the chorus over it and I made him do counterpoint and sing it off and on. I was like ‘You gotta sing this at least!’ It went like this: Whoever did it best right away, that’s who did it. Even with the lead on the end. I was kind of screwing around with a lead then he picked up the guitar, screwed around on the lead and it sounded great so he did the lead. And that’s how we divvied it up. I think whoever’s strongest at whatever we’re doing… but I definitely wanna split it up. I don’t want to be the lead singer in this band.”

Part of the reason EYE AM is working so well right off the bat is the shared history of the people involved with Hickey having known Windstein and Kelly in particular the longest:

“I mean I’ve known Kirk forever. First met him in, uh, I think ’93, the first time we ever played Texas with Type O. He’s been a Peter (Steele, vocalist/bassist for Type O Negative) fan, a Carnivore/Type O fan for many, many, many decades. We’ve been friends ever since.”

Regarding Kelly, with whom Hickey has the longest musical relationship with having played in TON together since 1994 when he replaced Sal Abruscato on drums as well as numerous projects since, Hickey admits that Kelly is his go-to guy:

“My first choice, yes. Absolutely. Look, I met Johnny when he was 17 years old and I was 20. This is, like, 1987. That’s how we met: I walked into the rehearsal studio in Brooklyn, he was sitting behind a desk and I heard he’s a drummer and I was, like, ‘Hey, I heard you were a drummer. I’ve got a bunch of songs that need a drummer!’ And that’s how we met. There’s not much we need to say to each other when I start playing a riff. It just happens. He’s been my best friend forever, he’s my longest friend now. I believe he’s my oldest friend living now. He’s definitely my oldest musician friend. We grew up together, dude. We’ve been through everything: Hell and back.”

Speaking on their shared history in Type O Negative, the legendary Goth Metal outfit has celebrated many an anniversary as of late with several early albums hitting milestones which saw a slew of new merchandise and vinyl reissues among other things and Hickey assures us that the surviving members are indeed still in the loop when it comes to the legacy of their former band:

“Everything gets filtered through us. Mark Abrams, our manager, compiles the ideas and sends them to us and we yay or nay them. We try not to do anything too stupid and there are things that we’ve chopped down and gave the kibosh to. But yeah, everything filters through me, Johnny, and Josh (Silver, keyboards).”

Shifting to Silvertomb, who features Kelly on drums and released their debut full-length towards the end of 2019, Hickey concludes with the following update on their highly anticipated sophomore album:

“Right now I’m mixing the record for Silvertomb so that’s going to be coming out this year as well.”

“Dreams Always Die With The Sun” is available now through Corpse Paint Records in a variety of formats which you can peruse and purchase by heading here. For more from EYE AM, follow their socials here and here and then head here, here, or here for the latest from Kenny Hickey.

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