A brief chat with Black ‘N Blue

Yellow Scene: You sang with Warrant for a while – why did you put the old band back together?

Jaime St. James: I started putting it back together before I joined Warrant. I joined Warrant in 2004, and I started putting Black ‘N Blue together a little bit before that. We did a record on Frontiers – it took a couple of years to get it together and get it out. I was asked to do a solo record, and I thought, “Why? Who cares?” It’s Black ‘N Blue that really matters to me. I put the band back together to try to make something out of it, and it’s going really great. It was a good move.

YS: Who’s in the band nowadays? Obviously Tommy Thayer is in Kiss…

JSJ: Yeah, I can’t get Tommy back – don’t have that much money. But, I have Patrick Young, our original bass player, Peter Homes who’s our original drummer, and Shawn Sonnenschein who has been in the band for the last 12 years. He replaced Tommy originally. Finally, a band called Brandon Cook, who replaced Jeff “Woop” Warner. So it’s two new guitarists and the rest of the original rhythm section, and me. In this day and age, for a band that’s been together for 30 years, not bad.

YS: Do you like playing Colorado?

JSJ: Black ‘N Blue played there about four years ago, and I played there with Warrant, but this is going to be a really proper show. I look forward to it, because the band is firing on all cylinders. We’re really on fire, and we’re playing more shows this last year – more than we’ve done in a long time. It just seems to be a resurgence for us, and I can’t wait to get there and play the show. It’s going to be great.

YS: You have Faster Pussycat with you too, right?

JSJ: Yeah, I didn’t know that – it happened at the last minute. Taime Downe’s a nice guy. I’ve known him for a long time. I’m looking forward to doing it. That just ups the level. Everybody’s got to go now. I mean, c’mon.

YS: What can we expect on the night?

JSJ: Old school Black ‘N Blue from us. We’re going to play one song from the new record – we call it new because it was only five years ago. We’ll play a lot of old stuff, and we’re just going to tear it up. I don’t like the term hair metal – it never existed when we put the band together. We’re a hard rock band and we’re going to go and kick ass.

YS: When the tour’s done, what’s next?

JSJ: We don’t have a new record going on, and that’s a disappointing thing to me because writing songs and putting out another record is a big task and the payoff is minimal. That’s just the nature of rock ‘n’ roll. Recorded music is not worth it anymore. I’ll do one if I feel like it and I have some time to do it, but the only way to make money anymore is to play live. Unless you’re Taylor Swift, and God bless ya. Unless I chop my nuts off and get a head change, I can’t do it.