It is our great pleasure to welcome you to rockandroll.gr. At the beginning of our conversation would you like to remember when and how you started as a band…
Thank you, it’s great to be connected to Greece again – we were lucky to do some shows in Greece with The Bullets in the past and really enjoyed it! The band started in 1992 as a four piece band, so we started with two guitars.
In the meantime, however, we’ve been playing much longer than a 3-man group, and it’s going pretty well that way.
Like probably most bands from the early 1990s, friendship stood above any existing or non-existing musical skills, accordingly the distribution of musical instruments seemed to be rather random.
What were your first music listenings and what made you especially love teddy boy rock ‘n’ roll?
[Julian] I started listening to R’n’R when I was 14/15. Since there were no Teds but only Psychobillies in my circle of friends, the vinyl samplers in the local scene record store helped me a lot. Those were the Dutch Rockhouse Rockabilly samplers, and through them I got to know and love bands like Cavan, Flying Saucers or Riot Rockers.
At that time the choice was between leather rockabilly style or keeping the 70s rock’n’roll revival style of the Teds. I liked the latter much better 😉 By the way, there was no Authentic/”Hep Cat” scene worth mentioning in Germany at that time, but that would probably have been too boring for me even then, too.
You have shared the stage with many important artists and bands, do you stand out out any special moments?
In fact, we are very lucky to have had great meetings with artists from the 70s revival bands. As big Rockin Devils fans, the first tour with Mick Nash was of course an awesome experience, which was then topped by the friendship that followed and still exists today.
But of course, getting to know and then touring with Kris Kristofferson was probably the most significant thing when it comes to getting insights into the world of real stars as a small rock’n’roll band. We really wouldn’t want to miss the tour in the Nitghtliner. The way we did it wasn’t very healthy most probably, but it was an indescribable experience. Add to that the fact that Kris Kristofferson had zero star airs. He then produced our album “Rocket to Stardom” and released it on his label “KK Records”, by the way.
Would you like to tell us a little bit about your latest record titled ”Rockbox Revival”, which was released 3 years ago?
That was 3 years ago? Gee! We really worked on this album for a long time and we are very happy with the result. The first edition was sold out pretty quickly, which of course made us very happy. Kris Kristofferson gave us the song “If I Married A Hooker”, which we also included on the album. What was also a great honor for us: Mick Nash of the aforementioned Rockin Devils released the album on his iconic label “Hot Stuff Records”.
Should we expect something new right away?
Right away is probably not quite the right expression in relation to Black Raven, but yes – we are constantly working on ourselves and are currently planning the next release. We also recorded two new songs for two Remembrance samplers, which will hopefully be released soon.
Are people in Germany close to authentic rock ‘n’ roll?
Do you mean closer to authentic Rock’n’Roll then to Teddy Boy Rock’n‘Roll? If so, then yes, at the moment the Teddy Boy scene is unfortunately not very popular. Let’s hope for a revival soon… On the whole, of course, we are very curious to see how the scene has survived 2 years of Corona pandemic. The booking requests are starting to come in, we are looking forward to it.
What concerts do you already have planned?
We have shows in Finnland, Belgium, Austria and England in 2022 so far – it’s slowly starting again. By the way, we do not plan tours on our own. As soon as we receive a booking request, we do our best to fulfill these gigs, as far as work and family allow.
We hope to see you again in Greece
We really would love to, too – unfortunately, at the moment we do not have any booking requests from Greece. Would be great to be back again!
Thank you very much for the interview you gave us.
We have to thank – hope to meet you soon!
https://www.facebook.com/blackravenband
Costas Tzanidakis
