Live music and touring are on lockdown right now and fans as well as artists are going through withdrawals. We wanted to come up with something fun to help bridge that distance between fans and artists right now. What we came up with is something called The Lockdown Lowdown and it’s a Q&A session with fun questions for artists to answer. They’re not your typical interview questions, so it gives you a peek inside of the artists themselves. We’re big music nerds here at I’m Music Magazine and we love learning things like this about the artists that we love. We’re pretty sure that you’ll get a kick out of these, so we hope you’ll take the time to read them. In this installment, we sat down for a fun Q&A session with Dani Wagner, vocalist of Psycho Village.
How have you been doing during the pandemic and how are you spending your time?
I have been doing OK, I’ve been with my family a lot, and also been working on a lot of Psycho Village related things like finishing up post production for music videos we shot as well as live videos, behind the scenes videos. We shot a lot of footage throughout the touring between September and March in Europe / UK and we try to put one video out every week.
Have you been working on new music?
Yes I have been working on some new songs, as well as finishing up some old ones that never made the record. So I am slowly but surely getting material together for the next Psycho Village record.
5 albums that changed your life
Velvet Revolver – Contraband
3 doors down – the better life
Alter Bridge – Blackbird
Shinedown – Sound of Madness
Fall out boy – Save Rock n Roll
5 artists that influenced you as a musician.
Guns n Roses
Velvet Revolver
Alter Bridge
Shinedown
Sixx A:M
Your 5 favorite live albums
PSYCHO VILLAGE – LIVE FROM EUROPE (our new live album that just came out!)
Shinedown – Somewhere in the stratosphere
3 doors down – another 700 miles
Guns n Roses – live era 87-93
Alter Bridge – live from Amsterdam
Life on the road; 5 of your craziest/funniest/scariest tour stories
Wow you really want to have 5 stories here? That’s going to take up a lot of space, but here you go.
Scandinavia with Nothing More:
We toured with NOTHING MORE in 2017. The first three shows were in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo. We usually drive ourselves, to safe on costs, but the way to get there already was a 20+ hour drive from Vienna, and then these first three shows, were all 7+ hours apart from each other. So we had very little sleep as you can imagine and were extremely exhausted by the time we played Oslo. This being said after Oslo, we had an off/travel day, so Nothing More wanted to go out and party. This was our chance to actually get to know them and become friends so we could not say no. So we hung out at a bar until maybe 4 in the morning. By the time we came back to our RV / tour bus it was already 4:30AM ish. We still parked at the venue, and had to leave by 6AM therefor I decided to drive out of the city and park somewhere at a rest stop. One hour later, I was still driving and could not find a rest stop, but the boarder to Sweden was close, so I thought I will just drive past the boarder and then stop. Once we passed the boarder, there was a huge snow and lightning storm coming behind me, so I was afraid that if that caught us, we might get stuck in Sweden and not make it to the next show in Berlin.So I kept driving, while I was still looking for a rest stop, which turned out to be very hard to find in Scandinavian countries. Anyways another hour or two down the road, it was maybe close to 8am I found a McDonalds and just stopped there and we slept in the RV on the McDonald´s parking place, after I had been awake for +24 hours, with maybe 10 total hours of sleep within the past 3-4 days. I was extremely exhausted, had also a very frightening dream / nightmare that night, which is a whole other story in itself, and refused to drive for the next day or two. It was the guys´ turn to get us to Berlin and Warsaw the next two days.
Puddle of Mudd – Bus crash:
In Fall 2018 we were touring with Puddle of Mudd for the second time. I was organizing booking and tour managing this tour as well and we were all excited because I brought Puddle over to Europe for the first time in 8+ years. We were in our RV and also had a trailer carrying our and the touring backline for Puddle of Mudd and the other two support bands. Somewhere in Germany on the A7 between Frankfurt and Hamburg, about 7 hours away from the next venue where we had a show that night, we had a terrible bus crash.
What happened was, a car was trying to overtake us. We were not very fast, maybe 80 km/h (50 miles / hour). So this car was overtaking us, started spinning on the second lane, and crashed into the back of our RV and also hit the trailer, ripping off our back bumper as well as damaging the back of the RV quite badly. The trailer started to rock up and eventually fell over, while we were still driving, trying not to start spinning ourselves. The roof of the trailer cracked open and all the gear spread over 3 lanes on the German highway. Luckily all the cars stopped and we did not have a bigger accident. Eventually we stopped, got out of the car, not fully realizing what was happening. I called the police explaining what had happened and we all started collecting the gear from the Highway while all the cars coming from the back stopped. Eventually we had a bunch of police and emergency cars there as well as two towing cars. Our trailer was total damage and we had to leave it behind at the AAA station close by. The RV was damaged but still drivable, so we loaded all the gear to the inside of the RV stacking the whole back up to the roof, and after doing all the formal procedures with the police and AAA we continued driving to Hamburg. We still made the show that day, even though Puddle of Mudd and us, with the gear just arrived with doors and there was a huge line waiting outside the club. Everyone was very understanding and luckily did not complain for the wait. Also surprisingly all the gear was still working during that show, and nothing was broken. Except for scratches and outside damage, but nothing major.
Saving Abel – housekeeper:
We toured with US-band Saving Abel in the UK and Europe in September of 2018. I was organizing this tour and the first one that brought Saving Abel over to Europe/UK. There was not a huge budget, so we were going in our RV and a second van, and were also driving Saving Abel, so the whole tour was pretty exhausting and demanding. We played this show in Birmingham, and had a hotel in a sketchy part of town. I believe we had an offday the next day, so we stayed in the hotel pretty late. While we were having breakfast and loading the RV, the hotel´s housekeeper was making our beds and cleaning the room. Next to that he also looked through our baggage, and stole every single pound of touring and merch money we had. It was probably a few thousand British pounds. I discovered that the money was gone while we were loading the RV, went to the reception and threatened to break shit and call the police if they did not find the money. I was taken to a room behind the reception and asked to wait there. Maybe 15 minutes later, the lady from the reception returned with the money, saying she found it in the locker of one of the housekeepers. So eventually we got everything back. I will never forget the shock I had though.
Poem – crazy singer that we had a feud with:
So in early 2019 we were touring with this 2000s band from the US, with a girl singer. I was also booking and tour managing this tour, as well as driving our car and their van in shifts so I was on triple duty. I am not going to name the band, but if you want to find out you can find it on google or our facebook page and look up past tours we did. I will just call her poet in this story. The perfect description for her, her attitude and how she treated other people is just that she is pure evil in my eyes. She preached love and respect, while she is a pure narcist herself demanding from everyone to call her BOSS, shouting and spitting for people that do their job, not accepting any rules. She ignored orders from venues about curfews, that caused the police to show up, because she was violating sound level rules, started fights in front of the boarder police in the UK, because she was unhappy how long everything was taking. We almost missed shows, we missed ferries and did not get to hotels in time because of her and her constant childish, unprofessional, princessy and bossy behavior. She insulted and humiliated her own security guard in front of the audience at multiple occasions, resulting in him quietly leaving after our show in London. I could go on forever about what she did and how unprofessional and simply evil she is, but you get the point. So when everything started going downhill, we played this show in a small town in the UK. This behavior and tension was going on for maybe 2,5 weeks at this point and every day was a bit worse. This venue did not have a dressing room, so she ordered my bassplayer to pick her up from the hotel, so she did not have to stay at the venue. Also the whole show sold 14 tickets, so it was bad. The local opener, and the other two support bands had already played, we played our set in front of the supportbands and bartender, playing songs we had not played in ages and just having a laugh, because shows like this can happen. When it was time for poet to go on stage, Max, my bassplayer drove to the hotel, that was maybe 5 minutes away. She did not show up, for maybe 45 minutes and finally arrived at the venue maybe half an hour before curfew. In the meantime I was locked in a room, by the promoters and venue staff, because they demanded their money back, which I refused to do because I was still tour managing her, and that was not my decision. In the end poet played her whole set, insulted half the crowd that they were fat and dumb, so about 7 people, and the venue promoters let me out of the room, because the contract was fulfilled and there was nothing they could do, to get the money back. Poet was so furious, that she started insulting me outside the venue, in front of her and my band, and my girlfriend. She walked up to me, took her jacket off and told my girlfriend that she can watch how her boyfriend gets beaten down by a woman now. My girlfriend stepped in between us and let her know that she would have to get past her, in order to reach me, resulting in poet threatening my girlfriend saying “girls like you, I don’t fuck them up, I devour them and rip all your piercings out of your face”. I ended the whole incident stating that if she did not get on the van right now, I will leave her in the side street on her own and drive home.
The next day, I was informed in a venue in Swansea, by the promoter that apparently I was not the tour manager any more, which I did not know about. I also have to say, that said promoter and I are friends not and also closely work together, so there is no bad blood at all. Poet´s drummer asked me to join him downstairs to talk. We walked downstairs in a boiler room, and he started screaming and shouting at me, stating that I had been stealing money, money was missing and I am a thief and off duty and should leave the tour, and my band is also kicked off the tour. I have to say, this was a tour that I had booked, organized and would not be happening without me. Anyways, was happened was poet apparently had told her drummer all the things that he accused me of. In reality he and also poet did not realize that a US dollar amount is not the same as a British pound amount. So for example if the contract stated that she would get 1000 USD for a show, and she was paid in British pounds, because the show was in the UK, she would get something like 800 British pounds, which is 1000 USD. In her eyes, money was missing. The whole situation ended after I told her drummer to not scream and spit in my face he punched me and pushed me to the grown. After that, we packed all of our gear, that also poem was using, and packed our van, that they were driving in, and left, them with only their guitars and their suitcases they had with them in Wales, without a ride or gear to play a show with. It was our gear, our van, and I was physically attacked, there was no way we would have continued after that. The next day she posted on social media, that her van and gear was stolen. Once again, to this day this is my gear, and my van. The day after that, she posted a video where she cheered the crowd in Antwerp up to scream “Fuck You Daniel” with her saying “yeah fuck you bitch”. I have a recording of that, and plan to use it as a sample on the next record as a little “yeah fuck you too, I do not give a shit what you say about me, crazy!”
Few weeks later after everyone was back home her drummer called me and apologized. He was talked into attacking me, so that was her plan from the beginning. Her whole band left her, after the tour and quit. To this day she does not have new bandmembers. Also her label dropped her, and her entire US team, her driver, agent and management left her after this tour and after they found out what she had done. Her whole band backed me and my band, and was on our side. So even though we had to miss the last four shows, and had a nightmare every day dealing with this person, in the end she got what she deserved.
Wow! You were right! That did take up a lot of space, but it was well worth it!
5 favorite movies
Star Wars (all of them, HA)
Lord of the Rings (all of them)
Lucky Number Slevin
Kick Ass
Grindhouse double feature (Planet Terror / Death Proof)
Best and worst advice you ever heard.
Worst: Don´t be the singer, you cannot sing and the music you make is nothing that can be successful
Best: I guess I still have to find out … =D
Strangest thing you ever autographed
We were messaged by this couple in Scotland. She was pregnant with another couple’s child and was going to give birth to their child a few weeks. They planned to attend our show in Edinburgh, and that was going to be the first concert this unborn child was going to witness. They asked us, if we could get them a „fanpackege“ and sign all of that for this unborn child, that was going to live with this other couple / family. I thought that was really sweet of them, yet it is definitely not something you witness every year I guess.
If music was over today and you had to go into professional wrestling, what would your wrestling name be?
THE UNSTOPPABLE PSYCHO VILLAGER
