More about: The KillersBig Talk

“How’s Mom?”, Ronnie asks during pre-interview amble. It’s hard to tell through the phone, but it feels like Ronnie Vannucci is reclining. Being part of one of The Killers and putting all his efforts into a relatively unknown solo project doesn’t seem to sweat him.

His solo band, Big Talk, have been making music for a good four years and averaging only one gig a year since 2011. Big Talk represents a greater extension of his personality: loose, docile but driven.

The second release from the LA based rock band is entitled ‘Straight In, No Kissin’, a clear indicator, if you needed one, that this isn’t just a record of Killers off-cuts.Ronnie jumps right into the conversation telling how he accidentally built a studio in his home.

“Most of the vocals and the overdubby things were done, here, at my studio. Over the course of the record I was becoming less and less inclined to travel 681 miles to Vegas to work on a song.”

The majority of the album was recorded live in The Killers’ Battle Born studios.

“So, I just kept accumulating here, built up a studio and finished up the record here.”

Accidentally building a studio is the kind of thing Vannucci would do. The Big Talk crew is a amalgam of intrepid friends he poached from various bands. We’d be inclined to call it a supergroup but Ronnie would probably deem the term a bit overstated.

So you’ve somehow managed to enlist Brooks Wackerman (legendary drummer of Bad Religion), how the hell did you do that?

“He’s great! He and I have been friends for 12 years or so. He was actually one of the first people I told about my ideas to do a record on my own and he piped up: ‘well, I wanna be your drummer’, and I kinda held him to it.”

“I find myself laughing a lot because I can pretty ask him to do anything and he pulls it off. We have this crazy sort of instinct that drummers have with one another and it’s really fun to have when you’re on a different instrument. You can almost use ESP and figure out where to land together. Once in a while I’ll tell him to go crazy, he’ll go nuts; it makes me laugh some of these damn fills he can pull off.”

You’ve also got members of Tenacious D in your band?

“Brooks also plays with Tenacious D when he’s not busy with Bad Religion. So Brooks and the two Johns (Spiker - bass, Konesky - guitar), all write and record with the old D. It’s good, Jack and Kyle are always ribbing me about stealing their band. They were the first one’s to realise that these guys were ace musicians and, better than anything else, they’re so kind. You meet a lot of people that are great musicians but aren’t good people. With these guys, if we’re not making a record, we’re still hanging out.”

Listen to Big Talk's 'What Happened to Delisa?' below

This prompted conversation about the relationship between people and music. The Big Talk philosophy seems to revolve around a melding of the two spheres, there doesn’t need to be a divider, Ronnie explains plainly.

“Making music is a very personal type of thing for me, I think to have a musical conversation with somebody, it’s a good idea to be able to have a real conversation", he laughs.

Wholesome relationships seem to the largest influence behind the new record and it’s audible throughout. Maybe because it was recorded live or possibly the knock-on effect of the personable cast, either way, Vannucci seems elated to explain the record’s component parts, especially the artwork.

“The designer’s name is Kristina Collantes, she’s an artist from the Philippines who lives in LA now and is getting more and more popular. I heard about her through word of mouth so I called her up and asked if she was interested in making us an album cover. She originally brought to the table this underwater/space sea-kraken monster thing. We were so stoked on it, we all went out to dinner to celebrate this finished artwork she got out in a matter of two or three days. At dinner, she says, ‘As a gift, I made all you guys a personal album cover each’. We were like, ‘What do you mean?’. She said ‘It’s you and a girl version of you, at a wedding with yourself.’”

“I thought it’s too good of an idea to waste, can we try switching the album art? I left it with her for a week and when she showed me the final version I knew it was the one. She fucked up the colours and put my dog in the front, then Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair thing came out and I thought ‘this is too good’. It was a timely thing, it was funny, it was a little dangerous, perfect.”

So do you think the album art had to reflect the name of the record?

“(Straight In, No Kissin’ is) a term that’s been going around The Killers camp for a long term. Me and Brandon were always joking, at least he was always joking, I was serious, about calling one of our records ‘Straight In, No Kissin’. I think our band is a different kind of band" Ronnie chuckles, "I don’t think it would have gone over well [with The Killers].”

By ‘different kind of band’, Vannucci might be referring to the cross-dressing performance on Kimmel that took place hours after this interview.

At this point in the conversation, the topic of The Killers’ had finally arisen. It’s always hard discussing an elephant in the room, especially if that elephant could potentially obstruct an artist promoting their new solo record, but Ronnie didn’t seem to see it that way when asked if the comparisons bother him.

“It doesn’t bother me at all, in fact, I think it’s actually complementary. I write in The Killers so it would make sense the new record would sound similar to The Killers.”

Brandon Flowers recently said that The Killers were underrated, would you agree with that at all?

“It depends on who you ask. I don’t know where he was coming from at the time, I have certainly felt that way sometimes but it depends on what audience we’re talking about. I do think that we haven’t done what we should be doing yet, we’ve done a lot of great things but I don’t think we’ve reached a potential that I’m satisfied with yet.”

Do you think you’re reaching the cusp of that potential?

“I think we need to do better." Ronnie takes a moment to mull over his words, "It’s hard to say at this point whether we’re on the cusp of it but I wouldn’t be cool with the stuff we’ve done on our epitaph. I know I’d be an elderly man sitting in a chair thinking ‘We could have done so much more, so much better. We could have climbed so many other mountains. And I don’t want to have that feeling so I’m very interested to, I guess, climb more mountains.”

It’s clear that Ronnie thinks of Big Talk and The Killers as two separate entities, despite their similarities. His tone switches depending on which band he’s referring to. With The Killers, Vannucci is contemplative while Big Talk discussions evokes a fresher, more DIY sensibility out of the multi-instrumentalist.

How does it feel promoting a record with such a smaller backing than you would have with The Killers?

“I kind of enjoy having the uphill climb and letting the record do it’s thing without too much push. It’s fun to have it spread from DJ to DJ, from person to person, rather than spending ludicrous amounts on awards and shit. I think there’s enough sugar in the record to appease even the saltiest of dogs.”

By this point in his career Ronnie knows what he wants from each of respective projects and doesn’t seem to miss a beat, it’s the perk of a being a great drummer.

More about: The KillersBig Talk