Thom caught up with Shiny Toy Guns bassiest, Jeremy Dawson at the Guildhall in Southampton for a little chat about how the bands tours going and whats planned for the future.

What have you been up to today?
Erm, just hanging out. Sleeping. A little tired.
Where did you play last night?
Err, Brighton? Brighton's cool. We went to a lesbian bar afterwards, quite interesting.
Sounds fun. You're part way through a massive schedule of gigs, how's it all going so far?
Oh it's great, it's great, totally great. It's cool, we've never been down the south before, this far down, so it's cool.
You're off to Europe with The Sounds later this month aren't you?
Yeah, 26th?
Have you been over to Europe, like that part, before?
Yeah I was over there years ago in another band. This is the band's first time to play like outside of the UK. Besides Ireland.
What do you think of the Sounds, are you big fans of theirs?
Yeah they're great, we've been fans for ever and ever and ever. Before they got their deal you know, great people, great band, great manager, some really cool people, awesome.
The final few gigs of that tour are actually sold out, so...
Yeah I know Germany sold out yesterday. They had to move the venue out, somewhere just down the street, it's like a much much bigger room this time.
Yeah I know Sweden's sold out pretty much.
Really, they are? (To Carah) Hey all the Swedish gigs are sold out Carah.
(Carah) They are?
(Jeremy) And Frankfurt to.
How do you think you're going to fair against a bunch of crazy Swedish people?
I have no idea, I don't know what it'd going to be like, I mean, Daniel's from there so he would know, he doesn't think it's going to be a problem though. But you know, we've never played central or northern Europe ever, so I'm not sure what the reaction's going to be.

And then you're back here to support Fall Out Boy, on their tour.
Yeah.
You looking forward to that, or... Are you fans?
We're friends with them, we're good friends. We're definitely two different bands, I don't have their whole album collection or anything, but it's good to be given the opportunity to play Brixton and Manchester Academy, like huge, huge.
They are going to be massive shows. Are they going to be the biggest shows you've played?
In England yes, not in America. We're doing one in a couple of weeks with forty thousand tickets sold. I think we're supporting The Cure. It's going to be a big big big show.

If you could choose anyone, absolutely anyone, who would you choose to support?
In my opinion, probably Muse.
You legend, they're my favourite band of all time.

How did you all meet, as a band?
Chad and I have known each other for a really long time, and the band came together just through friends. I met Carah first, and then later on Chad met Mikey through his brother. And we all just gelled together in LA about three and a half, four years ago.

What's it like being away from the States for so long? Do you miss home or is it nice to have a long break?
No, because we didn't really, well, it depends on the day. Some of the crew, every time we come over here we have someone new that's never been overseas. Which is cool. But erm, going home, to us, is not going back to the States, it's actually going home, to family and stuff. Because in the States we're still on tour, too. So, missing home, could be missed from 80 miles from home or 8000 miles. The geographical reaction from each point in the world has been like, numbed, because we travel so much. Not in a bad way, but it's not like, "oh we're so far away," that sensitivity is... Well we're used to the food, we're used to the culture, we're used to being in Japan, or Canada, and we're about to go to Australia and New Zealand. Missing home is when you've been away from your home home for a long time, but not your home country, you're actual home.

You've been refining and revisiting your album for two years?
Well yeah, which is pretty normal for any band. We made a demo, played, toured with it, tweaked it. You write a handful of songs and you play it live in bars or clubs, for a week or two and it starts to grow and twist a little bit. And then it's cool when you don't have anything distributed you can go back in and capture that on tape, what you grew organically into the song, live. So we did that numerous times until it was time to make the record, which is the final product.
Are you happy with the final outcome?
Yeah, it's the best that we could do.
Do you have any particular favourite songs?
Yeah, it's called Shaken.

Are there any festivals in the pipeline for this Summer?
UK Festivals? The only one I know we're playing for sure is T in the Park.
Sigh. That's all the way in Scotland.
I would love to play V, is that far away too?
Yeah one's up North and one's over in Essex.
Ah, I think we've missed the... Well I don't think we're big enough to do Reading or Leeds.
I reckon you could, one of the smaller stages.
Shiny Toy Guns are up on a rumours website for Reading.
Really? Well I don't know, I haven't asked since I got told about T in the Park a few weeks ago. So for all we know maybe we're playing a couple more, hopefully we are. I know we're doing a really big Swedish festival in July. I don't know the name of it though. And hopefully we're going to do Dour in Belgium.

Do you think the music you're making is quite unique in today's music scene? And who are your influences?
I hope it's unique, it would be flattering if it was. I think that we have some habits, or make choices that aren't necessarily common or normal for bands to make. Like, erm, we have a very hand on peer to peer approach to fans and people. Very open and communicative digitally, online and in person. Go out after the show, even if it's to a lesbian bar or someone's pissed up flat. You know, just hang out. And then, in production, recording, performance, everything. We're just a rock band, drum bass guitar and mic, but we take quite good notice of what year it is. It's 2007, so we implement technology that, you know, the modernisation of, being able to manipulate and bend electricity to make music. Drum machines, algorithms and synthesiser software, and we fuse that inside the rock band to create like a future forward rock band, that uses technology to make music with. In addition to guitars and drums and... Anyone can do that if they want to, we just choose to make that a 50/50 uncompromising relationship.

Your artwork as well is quite abstract and creative. Do artists submit their work to you, or do you have a lot of input yourselves?
They're like other members of the band, we have like a specific designer, a specific web guy, specific photographer, they've been there since almost day one. They know us personally, they know the music, you know, the two primary senses involved with music, or the ones that matter, are ears and eyes. If you hear something and like it you go look for it, online. When you go to a show, you go to see a show, not hear a show. Taking that in effect, it's just as important to see the show as it is to hear the show. Then the photography, everything we put into making and performing the record, that exact same effort we need to put into seeing and visualising the record. That's why we try hard to make this look the best it can, within our own abilities, and the abilities of the people we work with.
Every song's got its own little picture, hasn't it.
Right.
Do you have any favourite artwork?
As far as the website and stuff?
Yeah.
(To Chad) Which one do you think is the best picture, you know on shinytoyguns.com, each song has a...
(Chad) Oh, which one of those?
(Jeremy) Which one's your favourite?
(Chad) I don't remember, I haven't seen them in like two months.
(Jeremy) It's been a while. Starts With One is still the... You did that one
(Chad) Yeah we made that one.
(Jeremy) I don't remember, there are some really cool ones though, Starts With One, Le Disko.

You produced a few of the song on the album, is that right?
We actually produced the whole album.
Really, on the sleeve it says that three of four were produced by you.
Oh, that was three or four that were only produced by me, but Chad and I did the whole thing.
Is that something you're really interested in?
Yeah, both me and Chad produce, and are interested in producing other stuff too, for other people. We actually got offered Britney Spear's demos, to work on her album, which we don't have time to do, and Rod Stewart son's new album, which is funny because he's a real bad-ass, and a really good singer, and he wants to do this cool electronic thing, that could be a cool idea. But again we don't have the time, we don't have time to work on anything. We've got our album coming out in a week, we're going to stay here, work it, do festivals, to Europe, then we have to go home, or back to America, to do our single tour, then go to Canada, we're actually doing really well in Canada so we're going over there to play. It's like a minimum of ten hours drive every day, it's so vast, it's huge.

I think that's about it, anything else you'd like to say?
You guys from here?
Well we're from Swindon, which you played.
Oh really.
Did you get a good reception?
Not so much. Great venues, tiny venues, but no, nobody promoted that show. It was an odd night, everyone was there for the dance party and nobody knew us, but, it wasn't that bad, it was actually fun. And the after-party too, loads of hot girls running round.
Yeah but we're at Uni in Bournemouth where you're playing Thursday.
Hopefully they'll be people there, because apparently people have been taking their tickets back and getting Fall Out Boy tickets, so they can see both bands. Which sucks.
It's only six quid.
I guess that's a lot of money for some people.