James caught up with Tremonti in Wolverhampton to talk about their debut album, life on the road and plans for the future.

First of all can you tell us how this project came together?
Tremonti: Myles was on tour with Slash so I thought it would be a great time to get down some of the ideas that had been building up, Eric was in town at that time and we’d always talked about doing something so we decided to put our heads together. We called Garret to see if he wanted to join in, got some studio time and knocked it out in 3 months, then Wolfgang joined us when we took it on tour.

How do you find time to manage all these different projects as each of them individually require an extraordinary amount of time?
Tremonti: You just have to plan ahead, writing is the hardest part. Once you record a record you stop listening to it and start writing another one, at the moment I feel like I’m writing 2 albums at the same time, I’m trying my best with it haha.

Explain to us what life on the road is like?
Tremonti: We wake about 3pm, come in for sound check they normally wake us up to sound check, 4-5 hours we have a show it feels like we’ve just had breakfast before our show, after the show we have a meet and greet with everyone that wants to, back on the bus about midnight, stay up till about 5am watching shows and playing guitar, then do it all over again.

How have you found the press for your new album “All I Was” and what do the fans think?
Tremonti: All positive, I haven’t seen any bad reviews for the record apart from when you see it on iTunes and it says “this is shit” haha so we’ve done pretty well so far with all the professional reviews.

How has the tour been so far?
Tremonti: It’s been wonderful; we’ve been to Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Copenhagen, Holland and now we’re here!

How do you organise your set list with only 12 songs?
Tremonti: We rearrange the order of the album and throw in 2 unreleased songs so we play a 14 song set.

What are your plans for the rest of 2013?
Tremonti: I get back to writing the alter bridge record after this tour, record it in April. Stay in studio till we have shows starting May 25th. Wolfgang is going on tour Van Halen.

Wolfgang: Yeah I’m going to Japan in June, other than that I’m pretty open.

Friedman: I’m having a baby! I’m going to be a dad so I’ll be doing Mr Mom for a while haha.

Garrett: I’ll be at home playing drums and video games.

[Everyone laughs]

Do you think illegal music downloading is hurting bands or aiding them?
Tremonti: It makes it very hard for bands to make a career out of this nowadays, the younger bands that didn’t rely on album sales to start with have adapted to it, when you didn’t have it to start with you’ve got all the YouTube, Social Media to spread the word, you don’t really need record labels anymore. But for guys like us who relied on CD sales are finding it really hard to survive.

One last random question that we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a zebra or Giraffe which one would you be and why?
Tremonti: Probably a zebra, because they don’t get attacked by Lions as often and they can eat leave high off trees that nobody has pissed on

Friedman: I’d be a giraffe to be above the bullshit

Garrett: Mark I think you’re getting your zebra’s and Giraffes mixed up.

I was going to say something...
Tremonti: Did I say zebra? I meant Giraffe!

I was going to say that’s a next level mutated zebra
Tremonti: Plus my wife’s favourite animal is a giraffe so maybe I can still get with her, she might still be into me, possibly more in fact.

[Everyone laughs]

Wolfgang: A Zebraffe

Garrett: [Redneck accent] Baby would you be more into me if I was a zebra or a giraffe.

Tremonti: Look what you’ve done; this giraffe thing is now huge.

Thanks for your time, is there a message for your fans reading the interview?
Everyone: THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

Interview by James Webb