Sons of Silver began as Pete RG (vocalist and guitarist Pete Argyropoulos) as a solo artist with a backing band consisting of keyboardist and engineer Brina Kabler, guitarist Kevin Haaland (Skillet), bassist Adam Kury (Candlebox). Sitting behind the kit for Pete resembled Spinal Tap with each revolving drummer just waiting in anticipation for that big explosion to happen. Feel free to Google that if you don’t understand. After a few releases and a bit of tour mileage, the solo Pete RG began to morph into more of a band. As they morphed, so did their sound. The name also morphed into Sons of Silver. The band dropped two EPs, Doomsday Noises(2020) and Ordinary Sex Appeal (2022), to critical acclaim. The band got to go out on the road in 2024 opening up for Dogstar which is Keanu Reeves’ band. That run of dates proved to be a huge opportunity for the band as it grew their fanbase tremendously. 2025 is looking to be an even bigger year for the band as their full length album Runaway Emotions dropped on 1/10. The band was practicing and packing up to begin their new tour. What a tour it will be! Sons of Silver are opening up for Myles Kennedy (the voice of Alter Bridge as well as Slash feat. Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators) and Tim Montana. I managed to somehow steal some time with the very busy frontman Pete Argyropoulos who caught us up to speed on all things Sons of Silver.Pete! How’s life my friend?

Pete: Argyropoulos/Sons of Silver: Life is good; life is busy. The band is doing really well and is a lot of work now. I thought it was a lot of work before but it is really a lot of work now on a completely different level. I knew things would get harder as it grew but I thought it would reach a point of stability and self-sufficiency in a number of ways. That’s probably not the best way to start an interview (laughs). Honestly it is a lot of work. The labels don’t do anything; we’re just on a distribution deal. You put together your own team, you make it up as you go along in the business and it falls entirely on my shoulders. Let’s just say it’s a daunting task.

Your merch has really grown! The number of designs and the items available like hoodies are really cool. That’s growing with the band as well as your popularity from being on the road. Being a fan of the band, I try to keep up with what’s going on and I can see from my end your popularity is growing. How do you even sleep at night? You lay down, close your eyes and I’m sure your mind is still going a million miles an hour.

It’s funny you say both of those points. I spend so much time on merch and it has added pressure on me. My dad had a shoe and apparel company when I was a kid and sold it. I grew up in that business and now he has restarted a company. He just turned 80. He is in amazing shape and he’s doing it for fun. Sometimes I am like wait a minute. If I’m going to spend this much time doing the merch stuff, why don’t I just go work for him? His business is doing better than mine and he gets to stay home and take vacations (laughs). Saturday I’m sitting there with my dad and he was telling me some of the numbers with his business. I’m telling him about a merch line and he’s asking us about production and how many we’re going to reach out for big online. I’m sitting there and I’m thinking we should combine forces (laughs). This will be a very pivotal year for us. We’ll get a really good idea of what level this band should go to as far as audience size in a streaming sense and in putting butts in seats. Right now things are looking pretty darn good.

You guys are starting out the New Year with one hell of a bank. You have this amazing new album Runaway Emotions coming out on 1/10. You’re also starting the year by going out on tour beginning 1/17 with Myles Kennedy. He is such an amazing artist whether he’s fronting Alter Bridge or Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators or doing his solo thing like he is this run of dates. He always drawls a good crowd matter what.

I had my head in my own world so much that I wasn’t aware of the popularity of some of these artists. I think it is going to be the same this time. You know we are pretty excited about it. It’s daunting in the sense that it’s a lot going on for me. I haven’t had a chance to get my head out of the hole with this preparation. You just mentioned and everyone else has mentioned to us that Myles is a pretty notable name and I really didn’t notice that. It’s kind of like with Dogstar. That was kind of a work in progress for 8 to 10 months with them and we did 15-16 dates with them and they asked us to do 30 dates. I wasn’t able to put it together because the primary reason was I couldn’t get a tour bus because everything was sold out. We were playing for a couple thousand people each night Myles was a great get for us.

No joke Pete, when I read that you guys were going out with Myles I was like what??!!

Really? Honestly? To hear that from you probably means more to me than anyone in the industry probably outside from our normal day to day circle. We’ve known each other for quite a while now and you’ve always been very supportive.

Not just Myles but also Tim Montana. He’s really created such a buzz with his new album over the last year.

Right!

Speaking of albums, you know I have a couple of music nerd questions of my own when it comes to the new album.

Alright, hit me with them!

So why the delay?

We started releasing singles in January-February of last year and they were all doing really well and we just kept rolling with that. We had a Dogstar tour and that took up a lot of time in preparation for the tour. So by the time we were done with that tour, we had planned to release the album then. Originally we were thinking late spring, early summer then it was late summer, early fall. By the time we were done with the Dogstar we still had a lot of unfinished business such as artwork and we didn’t have the merch prepared. We were approaching the holiday so our label Universal suggested just waiting until the beginning of 2025. Not only would we start fresh in the new calendar year it would coincide with the Myles Kennedy tour so it was all for good reasons. Even with the Dogstar tour we were pretty caught off guard with the response we got from the audience. That really caught us by surprise that made us rethink how people are going to react. That made us rethink our promotional plans for the album. Merch was also the cause of us taking our time because of where things are good right now and people are still discovering us. So it’s important to do things right.  We have a bunch of new songs worked up and we would probably save those and when we get back we will get in the studio and start working on some of the new songs.

It just never stops.

I tell ya’ man, it is great and it is concerning. I think about the whole Tom Petty thing. He was finally going to take some time off, an indefinite leave of absence. He wanted to spend some time with his grandkids in particularly. He said he had 40+ years of write, record, promote tour, write record, promote, tour. He never let his foot off the pedal and I can see how it is really easy to get caught up in that and not take time to smell the roses. Myself, I am very conscious that I won’t get caught in that trap and I know it will probably hurt my career a little bit. I want to spend as much time as humanly possible with my son. Nothing on the map is as relevant and that will force me to slow down in the coming weeks and months.

Isn’t it crazy how different the industry is now as opposed to then with that cycle that he was talking about.

It is and I don’t know if you could do that type in today’s world. If you look at how many stars are burning out especially young ones. It’s a lot harder on the young ones because they don’t know any better so they don’t know you have to slow down. They get caught up in the machine and they get grounded down to nothing. I don’t know how he survived. I know one good friend who worked with him who said that Tom was one of the nicest men that he knew. He was also one of the unhealthiest men that he knew with all of the smoking, drinking and the drugs so he wasn’t surprised that he died so young. The pace today is much faster than it used to be even in the different types of art. Look at television and movies today as opposed to 20 years ago. Things are so much easier and more intense now for good or for bad.

Television is so consumable today; once they finish binge watching something on Netflix they want to know what’s next.

Although I think some people are starting to wise up and getting a little burned out now. I’m sensing a change and I am personally seeing it happen now. Some of my son’s friends are getting tired of that want to get outside and play.

That’s a great change.

Indeed.

Hey, I have another music nerd question since I’m such an old school kind of guy who loves album art and liner notes. I used to study those liner notes back in the day better than I did for exams in school. You mentioned one of the reasons that you delayed the release of the album was because of not having the cover art ready. The art on the cover that you ended up using, where did that originate from?

It originated with our graphic artist Alex Tenta who is the art director at Warner Bros. Records. We were introduced to him about a year ago and he has done all of the artwork associated with all the singles associated with this album as well. Brina and I, particularly Brina, lead the way on our visuals. We had a few conversations with Alex and the main point of those discussions was that we wanted things to be pulled from the postpunk era from the late 70s and early 80s and into that new wave spirit followed. In fact this piece of art that we use for the cover with the dead brown roses reminded us of something you might see from REM or The Smiths. It really symbolizes taking the idea of runaway emotions and how it burns you out and stuff like that. In fact this piece of art was originally one of the final choices for the cover for “Tell Me This” which was the lead single for the album. We really liked the piece but we didn’t think it was appropriate For “Tell Me This” but we immediately knew that we were going to use it for the album cover.

I love that and again it falls back on my love of info on stuff like that. Again, I’m such an old-school music nerd.

No, cool, I totally get it. The inside photo of the band is something I took. Here’s something for your music nerd knowledge. It’s actually a composite and I don’t think that any of us were standing in the photo at the same point. I put the camera up on the tripod and we took a bunch of pictures and I pieced together each of the positions of the puzzle that I thought was the best to go with as whole. If you look to the far right there’s a window and there is someone peering through the window from the outside and that someone is Julian. He was with us on the shoot that day, he has been with us the whole time, and he is in fact the sixth member of the band. I was like we gotta get him in this photo at the same time. I brought him outside stood him up in the window and then someone on the inside snapped the photo. If you look at the picture, we are all serious and then you have this little kid with this big smile on his face.

Oh my goodness, I cannot wait to see that! Speaking of members, I don’t know how far you were in the process when Dave (Krusen) left but how did that affect making the album?

The long story is Dave had been on the way out for a while because Dave is Dave and he doesn’t stick around too long. He would get really excited if we were working on something new but then he would get a little anxious, to say the least, when the workload got a little more intense. I’m not saying it went from two days a week to five days a week. It went casual and working on a new track to we have three months to bang out 10 songs and fine-tune them. That was not something that was Dave’s forte, much less the thought of going on the road. Dave is older than all of us and he’s been through things that some of us haven’t. He was at a point in his life where he wanted to slow down and spend more time with his kids. He didn’t want to be tied to anything particular. He left when we had just started working on the album. He had some ideas for some songs set aside but nothing complete. In the album sense, it really didn’t affect us at all. In fact when Mark came in it was beyond a breath of fresh air. He was a professional as well as the talent and the excitement we had not realized we needed. I kind of needed it but not the rest of the band. We miss the chemistry and the hang that we had with Dave as well as his writing ability because he’s a great writer and it’s great to work with. He’s extremely creative but not like I’m just gonna play what I play and damn the rest of you. He’s not that guy at all. Most drummers tend to be a little bit like that; right many I should say. So we were shaken and we didn’t know if we could replace him in the chemistry sense. We were fortunate in that our production engineer who mixed our second EP Ordinary Sex Appeal recommended two guys: Mark Slutsky and Isaac Carpenter. I called John a little in desperation and didn’t want to break the news to the industry that Dave was officially out. We have been working with David Goodstein who was a good fit playing but personality wise he didn’t fit rest of the band. I reached out to John because he knows our stuff and he knows the circle that we travel in. That’s how we found him in the first place. So John recommended Isaac and John and both came down for auditions and blew us away. Isaac, even though he did not become the full-time drummer, contributed to the writing on track two “Just Getting Started.” In fact we all knew when Mark came in plus he also brought it. Mark was more enthusiastic about being in the band. Isaac had one kid with another on the way so he was a little reluctant about being in a band especially with as much touring as we wanted to do. Mark’s personality really fit like a glove and we wondered where this guy was all along? One of his favorite drummers growing up was Dave Krusen and his approach is different than Dave’s as he’s a little more rock and punk oriented. Dave was more of a Charlie Watts type of guy. This is the longest answer to a question (laughs). To finish it out, we really miss Dave and really couldn’t have reached this point without him but we needed someone of the caliber of Mark to be able to take us to the next level and he has. Mark also contributed to the songwriting. I am the principal songwriter but everyone has their input. He had a heavy hand in every song but the one that stands out to me is “Running Out of Words” which is probably the best song on the album and probably our best song today.

Not to take anything away from the other albums but on this album it really sounds like you guys have definitely hit a groove that was missing on the other ones.

I agree. I think we had some lessons learned. I appreciate you being willing to say that. I think with the first EP we were a singer-songwriter outfit that was just becoming a rock band. We were afraid to let go a little bit and become a full on rock band. Even now I think are still learning. I don’t think will ever be a heavy rock band. We’ll never be a modern rock band so to speak but more of a modern rock band but holding onto a singer-songwriter thing. The second EP we turned it up a notch. I love songs from the first EP “Read ‘Em Their Rights” and “Deep Division.” I feel like the second EP was better overall. We were starting to figure things out as far as who we were. With the second EP, I wanted a much broader rock statement so it was very serendipitous that we were able to bring in like Mark, as well as Isaac to play on the one track. Mark, as I mentioned earlier, is a more commanding drummer. He’s more of a rock drummer and can groove. He’s a bit more like Max Weinberg. That’s who I would compare him to and I think he would too. There’s a little more theater, a little more stadium in that style of play. If we’re going to play bigger stages, the song needs to be a little bit bigger. It’s that crossover point. If you’re going to play for bigger stages you can either get bigger in your sound and play for bigger audiences or you can become much more intimate in your sound to play for “““““““““““““““““`bigger audiences. I really didn’t think that was in our wheelhouse to get more intimate. It just didn’t seem to suit us too well. We are not going to be a rock thing like Active Rock like a Tim Montana or Myles.

That’s the cool thing about this billing is all three of you are rock but each brings their own element to the show that makes each one different from the other. An entire show for five hours where each band sounds exactly the same would make for a very boring night but this isn’t because each of you has your own sound.

You know a number of people have mentioned that including Adam who has played shows with Myles Kennedy over the years and the last which was supposed to be the final Candlebox run, we’ll see, they played a couple of shows with Bush and Jerry . The opener of those for a couple of weeks was Tim Montana. Even though he is more Active/southern rock kind of thing it’s not too crazy. Then you have Myles who is somewhere between us and him so it should be a good bill.

It was actually interesting with the Dogstar thing. We didn’t know what to expect from their crowd. About five shows in we were noticing on social media a lot of people popping up saying make sure you get there on time to catch Sons of Silver. They were saying that we were really good. We were just a different band that is a really good pairing. It’s nice to see that. If anything, you see the people are really paying attention. One of our shows was an outdoor show in Portland for a few thousand people. My brother lives there and came to a show. We were hanging out backstage and he had to run home. He said he would go to the main entrance line when he got back. He said he wanted to walk in the crowd. He called me when he was standing in line and he said people were shoving people out of the way because it’s close to showtime. They wanted to make sure they got in to see Sons of Silver. We could hear people saying it on his phone and I thought how cool is that? There were about a dozen people trying to run him over.

I have to tell you that I was like a ninja watching all that stuff online. I was watching the posts, looking at the pictures and watching the fan film video of you guys performing. I saw the line waiting in front of your merch table to meet you.  It was a pretty amazing thing to see. Word-of-mouth can help you or hurt you very quickly online.

That’s true; I don’t always think about the hurting thing but that is very true.

It was remarkable in that the footage only captured a couple of percent of that. It happened every single night from the first two shows and then the third show it really kicked in. We were outside of Oklahoma City at a big casino and I think we played for about 1200 people that night. The line was an hour and a half long for us. We literally could not get to everyone which we felt bad about. We were so unprepared on every level. We were almost sold out of all of our merch. We were bringing out drum heads to sign and sell. I went to Guitar Center to buy drumsticks. We brought like 100 hats and we cleaned out in three shows. We were completely unprepared and at the same time happily surprised. The cool part about it was Dogstar could easily have done stuff to undermine the excitement for us or sort of put us in our place so to speak. They did the exact opposite. They could not have had been more supportive, more helpful to us. No band could have been as helpful and supportive as they were to us and I will be forever grateful. Keanu Reeves to the drummer Robert Mailhouse to singer/guitarist Bret Domrose. They were just so cool to us. Keanu at one point was like ‘you know they’re showing up to see you as much as they’re coming to see us?’ He was showing us a post he had of screenshots he had that he put up from the side of the stage and video of the band. Then he was so sweet to Julian and I really appreciated that. We could have gone on for another hundred dates and then maybe we’d be selling out our own thousand seaters.

I think these people are showing genuine appreciation to you guys.

I think so.

I think people are craving that genuine rock from real musicians playing real instruments.

You know we are who we are. The banter between us all is who we are and it became very clear that people appreciated that. There’s a scarcity and a yearning for people just being straight up and not having any heirs about them. They appreciate that, they appreciate us being at the merch booth hanging out with them every night. We’re like you appreciate us? We appreciate you! We felt that way and we always feel that way.

How the hell did that Matt Pinfield thing happen? I love that guy!

Rob Gordon is acting as sort of our manager right now. He knows Matt and Rob also handles Dorothy. Matt called about doing an interview with Dorothy and Rob said ‘hey can you let me know what you think of these guys? Just let me know what you think cause I’m curious.’ Matt called him right away and said ‘where the fuck did this come from? I love this, especially the lyrics. I haven’t heard anything like this since (Joe) Strummer thing.’ Rob called up and asked us if we could have a camera crew set up and film it. He called on a Tuesday and asks if we were available on a Thursday and it was one of those things where we are now. We just thought it would be a bang bang thing where he would come in and interview us. Matt came in and his girlfriend is his manager. The two did about an hour and a half worth of interview but he hung out for about four or five hours. We were just talking the whole time and he is the nicest guy. He is like an encyclopedia, not just an encyclopedia but a passionate encyclopedia of music and of artists.

It’s amazing to hear the guy talk. The guy has a voice that is so recognizable.

It’s even more amazing when you’re in person with him and you hear the guy talk. He is an encyclopedia of all this knowledge and he knows the context what was going on with the artists in the world around them. He said he was appreciative of me and the lyrics to the music which were really current world. He had also gone back and done his homework on previous songs. He was very appreciative of the lyrics and I was very appreciative of him for doing all that.

I love those pieces and cannot wait to see the next one.

We will have the full thing up once the album comes out.

Here’s another one for you! Tim Palmer, do how the hell did you make that happen? Did your head explode?

Dude you have no fucking idea. Tim has been on my radar since before this band. He was on my radar for producing as one of the top two guys that I would want to work with. We thought that John Fields, who mixed Ordinary Sex Appeal and introduced us to Mark, was going to mix the album. We sent a couple of tracks to him and they just weren’t where we wanted them to be. On a Saturday morning I am at the playground with my son and one of our guys from universal calls and said ‘how about Tim Palmer? We think Tim Palmer could be a good match so should we get you in touch with him?’ So, I can thank Universal for lining that up for us.

So then you guys talked about the album?

Tim and I are on the phone the next day. I sent him the track “Running Out of Words” and he said he really loved the track. He did say that he needed to warn me because he was slow. So I asked him what does slow mean. He told me that it might take him a week to mix the song, sometimes a little bit more. I told him as long as it was good that I don’t give a fuck. Just make it great but you can’t take a year. He asked if it was ok if he wanted to add extra guitar, keyboard percussion or extra vocals on there. I asked him how many gold and platinum albums he had on his wall. Then I asked him how many did I have? I told him you do whatever you want Tim as long as you are cool with me saying no I don’t want this. You can say ‘guys I think you’re making a mistake by not doing that.’ About a week later he sends me a mix. In the meantime the band was growing frustrated particularly Brina process as we were two months and trying to get finished. So I bring her in and she’s sitting in front of the speakers and I’m sitting to the side. I play her the mix and about 60 seconds into it and the first chorus hits and she has tears streaming down her face.  I said you hate it? She said, ‘no it’s perfect.’ I get him on the phone and told him what happened. He told me his wife cried too and she works for the RIAA. He said this was the best song that he had mixed in at least the last 10 years. He said it was one of the best songs ever so coming from him, I was blown away. I asked him if he could just do the whole damn album. He said that he really booked and I told him I didn’t care, just get it done and you have three months. So our goal for the next album whatever we do next is to bring him on to do the mixing and maybe even some producing on. It was this seamless passing of the baton. He got what we were doing and we got what he was.

Next up, you go out on tour with Myles Kennedy just a few days after the album is released. What did you guys learn on the Dogstar tour that you’ll make sure to use on this tour?

That’s an hour and a half answer (laughs). We need to be better prepared on our merch and bring greater quantities. On this tour you will have a merchant person. Second, we did not bring any crew out with us except for our tour manager who also did front of house for us. That means we run our own monitoring rig which means we did floor monitors which is a total nightmare especially when you’re doing it yourself. We went and built our own monitoring rig. We’re bringing a monitoring engineer who is also a stage person to handle things on and off stage to give us more time to handle and spend with fans and with radio as well. We had a couple of nights were Adam had jumped from playing bass to doing mixes in our monitors while we were playing on stage. It was great for banter with the audience but I think Adam lost a quarter of his hair and the rest went gray prematurely. We also gained some confidence playing for these bigger audiences.

I know we need to wrap this up soon, but I forgot to ask about the last song on the album called “Friends.” I know art is up to its own interpretation but I was wondering if there is a story behind that song

Yes there is; what did you think about that song?

Honestly, dude I loved it. It was something that I was not expecting. After I listened to the album in its entirety for the first time had to go back and put my headphones on to get totally immersed within the song because it’s something that I felt a lot of emotion when I first heard it. I needed to hear it undistracted from all the outside elements that were going on.

Wow, thank you. That song has a great story. That has its roots in our Dave Krusen days and I think the very first idea for that song came along in 2021. We were jamming in the studio and typical of our sessions in the studio we are always recording. We were working on “Friends” and we tapped into a hard rock song, probably harder than anything we’ve ever done before. I came up with the chorus on the spot; Adam and Dave in particular, were not into it. They thought it was just too heavy for us and not the right vibe but I liked the chorus part. So I kept the chorus part in my mind and I keep a private Soundcloud for us. I can hear a bunch of different snippets of ideas that we have and save. It’s kind of like a catalog of ideas that we can pull from kind of like kindling to start a new idea. It’s also a reminder to go back and finish up that and bring back. In this particular case it was something for me to finish off or to run with a little bit more. I turned it into an acoustic song and I played for the band. I thought we could do more with it than just that and I put a verse to it. We spent a half day on it but it sucked so fast forward several months and that’s still in there with their own out ideas for songs for this album. I figure we have a new drummer and I opted to the band again. Everyone said that’s a cool song and we should try to do something with it especially Mark. He said it was a great song especially the lyrics and the tag line. We tapped into this Tom Petty meets Neil Young kind of thing that actually came out really good really cool. Kevin had some really good guitar lines to it. In the spring of 2023 we were sitting there (Kevin, Brina and I) with our marketing person listening to several tracks that were finished up and getting ready for mixing. This one stuck out like a sore thumb; it didn’t seem to fit. I was kind of mad because I thought lyrically it was a good thing to have on the album. Kevin and I were talking about it. Kevin was like ‘How about we turn it into a piano song?’ He brought up the David Gray song “This Year’s Love.” The three of us sat there, me on piano, Kevin finishing up some guitar parts and Brina doing some background vocal parts and we sketched out a rough draft as a piano song. It worked and it seemed like it really fit the album. Then Brina created a piano part. I’m a good piano player when it comes to writing but I’m not a virtuoso. So I did that and brought it back and we tracked. Kevin did the string arrangement and we told Mark about it. We told him we were going to try something different but we did not tell him what it was. We send it to the guys, Adam and Mark, and they loved it, so that’s how it came to be. So the song had a journey from a heavy rock song to a Tom Petty thing to a piano song.

With a journey like that, it deserves to have a home on an album! Ok, even though we could probably talk all evening, I’m going to end this talk with our infamous Three For The Road. What’s one personal item that you have to make sure to pack with you when you go out on tour?

Leight pink and yellow earplugs.  Not very personal, I know but, very essential.  I can’t sleep without them.

Are you a good cook and if so what is your go to dish?

I’m great with eggs.  Sunny side up or scrambled.  My culinary greatness ends there.

Eating on the road may not always be healthy. If you stop at a convenience store, what is one snack that you always pick up?

It’s much healthier than it was a few years ago.  In fact, there’s really no excuse now not to eat healthy on the road.  If I’m at a convenience store, I’ll go for the apple or banana at the counter, first.  The backup is a KIND bar or RX bar.  Third choice is junk food abstinence.  Better hungry than poisoned.

As they say in Hollywood, that’s a wrap. Pete, congrats on such a killer album, the previous tour with Dogstar and the upcoming tour with Myles Kennedy. I know you guys work incredibly hard, so it warms my heart to see good things coming to good people. I can’t wait to see you guys later this month on this tour.

Thanks Johnny and thanks to I’m Music Magazine for all of the support you’ve given to us in the past and continue to give to us. See you soon!

Interview by I’m Music Magazine Owner/Editor Johnny Price

Connect with Sons of Silver online:

Follow Sons of Silver on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Website