MONSTER INTERVIEW : SMALLTOWN TIGERS
Interview (in english !)
When did you start playing together in Smalltown Tigers?You have always had the same line-up since the beginning?
Valli : Me and Monty have known each other since we were kids.
We started playing guitar and bass, playing Ramones covers for fun with some friends (we still do that from time to time) and had a lot of fun.
We’d always wanted to write our music and in 2018 we started a new band, Smalltown Tigers. We dedicated ourselves to create our own sound and turned new riffs and melodies into original songs and on April 24 our 6 songs debut album Five Things was released. At that point Serena came into the picture… our drummer Antonio Perugini (Tony) just left and our manager got in touch with her and we met up for a tentative rehearsal. It was love at first sight. Now Smalltown Tigers are: Valli (bass, vocals), Monty (guitar, vocals), Castel (drums, vocals). We became friends in no time and that makes the band work better than we ever dreamed of.
What does this name mean, Smalltown Tigers ? Why did you chose that name?
At some point Gerry Ranson, our PR (promoter), came out with this name and we loved it!
It’s simple, the name reflects who we are and where we come from. We come from a small town in the north east of Italy, Rimini, so “Smalltown”.. and why Tigers? Well, the tiger is a feline and we feel a bit like that. Of course we could have disturbed cats, but Smalltown Cats sounded weird.
Your new album, Crush On You, has now been released. How long did it take to record it ? Where did you record it or do you have your own home-studio ?
We recorded the album in Forli, at l'Amor Mio Non Muore recording studio, an all analog studio with vintage gear. In the end, it took 4 days to get everything together along with Stiv Cantarelli, our producer and manager, and Roberto Villa, our studio tech that mixed all the songs on tape.
Having our own studio would be great but it’s a lot of work (and money) to put it together. We have a very good relationship with L’Amor Mio Non Muore and we love how our music sounds there, but the future is unwritten.
Did you make the artwork or was it the label who designed the cover? How all this happened ?
We are very fond of the cover photo, it was taken backstage at Alcatraz (Milan) during The Damned European tour, it was March 2024 and the photographer was Luca Ortolani.
We then passed the photo into the hands of Riccardo Bucchioni , who had already made the cover of the first album. He has his very unique way of imagining our cover just starting from a picture, and we love his work so much. It’s a perfect fit with the music we play.
It's your second record, I think, on Area Pirata, if I'm right. How did you get in touch with the label at the start?
Yes, it is our second album. The label is Area Pirata and is one of the best independent labels in the whole country when it comes to punk/garage/glam rock bands. It happened that both our manager/producer Stiv Cantarelli and our English PR, Gerry Ranson, were friends of the label’s owners. They received some material from our management team and got really excited. We signed a contract with them in no time.
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| Monty |
The last song of the album, called Killed Myself When I Was Young, sounds a lot like the Stooges to me, with its raw guitar parts and the saxophone. Are the Stooges a main influence for you ?
For that song in particular we took the inspiration from the Stooges, moreover we wanted to close the record with something wild and different from all the other songs. For sure in our songs and in our sound there’s a lot of influences, everything we listen to, but we have to say that Iggy and The Stooges are not the main influence for us. We love them as pioneers of a certain type of sound but we grew up with other bands. We thought about that song more like a tribute to the sound of the Stooges, like an ode to Iggy Pop and all the proto-punk originators.
I have seen a photo of Valli (bass/vocals), wearing the same « tits» t-shirt as Steve Jones (Sex Pistols) and Siouxsie (from the Banshees) used to wear back in the Punk day in England. Are they an influence for you ?
Valli : Yes, I really love that t-shirt, and all the Vivienne Westwood catalogue from the early days of punk, although nowadays most stuff has become a sort of clichè. Still a lot of people didn’t know that t-shirt. Anyway, as a fashion creator, Vivienne really influenced my life, as well as the music of that period did for the songs I play.
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| Valli |
Why is the t-shirt censored on the cover of your LP? Is it your own choice or the label's choice? And is there a particular reason?
Valli: Well, the record company chose to go that way and we agreed. It’s been just a way to avoid further problems.
More generally, regarding your music influences, what made you start playing in a Punk band ? What kind of bands made you say « wow, that's what I want to play ».
Valli : I decided to embrace bass guitar when I first listened to Oasis. They dragged me into the world of English punk music and that brought me back to the Ramones and all the other great American and Aussie bands. I think that Blitzkrieg bop was the first song I learned on bass guitar.
Castel: I was into playing music way before getting into punk rock but in a more classical way.. before that, I went through different instruments such as the clarinet, which taught me how to read music, and then joined the world of rock and punk by first picking up the bass guitar and later on the drums, and it’s been love at first sight!
Monty: When I was a teenager I loved Californian punk rock, especially Blink-182. Besides their music I loved the way they lived or at least what I could guess from their interviews. I used to spend hours researching news from them, I knew every detail of Tom’s guitar but then suddenly Oasis broke out in the picture and I became fond of English bands. Valli and I were completely crazy about them. I remember spending my afternoons reading their interviews, translating lyrics from English into Italian. It was at that time that Valli and we promised ourselves that we would have started our own band. A band in our own way, more just like a bunch of friends who play what they like with no self imposed boundaries.
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| Castel |
How is the tour going in England ? Tell us about it, are you going to play all across the country ? How many dates will you play?
Monty: As we write this, we are at the airport waiting for our flight back to Italy.
It’s been quite a ride. We played in the UK before, even on bigger stages, but never played 7 gigs in 9 days. We played venues all around England, we started in Brighton at the Prince Albert, a venue that we could call our home away from home in the UK, on Saturday 10 February and then we moved on to play in Canterbury at the Lady Luck. It was our first visit there and we had a blast! A couple of days off and we went to Southend on sea with our friends Fiona and Dave and shared the stage with their great band, the Tuppenny Buyers. After that, thanks to our great tour manager Steve Iles, it’s been a rollercoaster of commuting, loading and unloading stuff, greet people at the merch table, and play our hearts out in every place we’ve been such as The Bird Nest in London, The Spinning Top in Stockport, The Hive in Rotherham and The Vault in York.
We had an incredible experience, like a dream that came true. It's not always easy to keep your dreams alive as life on tour is hard but it's also very satisfying. We met a lot of people that hosted us at their home, shared the stage with some great bands that we couldn't wait to follow as soon as we get back home, and we were very pleased to see that the crowd night after night loved what we did and that is priceless. We live for that.
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| Smalltown Tigers & The Damned |
Do you have some special stories to tell us, some great events or funny moments ?
Valli: a funny thing I remember was when in London, during our second song of the set, Serena broke the skin of the bass drum and while the sound engineer and the drummers of the other bands on the bill were trying to find a new skin and fix it to carry on with our set (We couldn’t thank you guys enough for that, you saved our life!) Giulia and I entertained everyone with a short Italian language lesson!
Last year you opened for the Damned on the european tour and I have heard that Brian James is a great support for you. How all this happened ? How did you manage to share the stage with them ?
It may be something up for a good story but it’s as simple as it gets…our London PR Gerry Ranson gave a copy of our vinyl to Brian, the Damned were in the making of a reunion tour with the original lineup and he simply played our record at rehearsals to the rest of the boys in the band and the magic happened. After a couple of weeks the Damned manager called our PR to check if we wanted to be part of the whole tour
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| Brian James - The Damned |
When he told us about it we almost passed out but it's proof that sometimes your dreams come true in the easiest way and you don’t need anything more than to be yourself. Needless to say it has been an incredible thrill for us, being allowed to walk the stages of iconic rock’n’roll historic venues like the Hammersmith Apollo in London and the O2 in Manchester, we really can't find the words to describe it.
Last question (silly question, sorry): do you really like drinking Johnny Walker whisky when you eat pizzas ?:-)
Monty: Ahhaha that's not a silly question!
We took that pic at my home, the Johnny Walker is a 'must have' whiskey for us since we were (almost) legally old to drink. That night we had pizza and beer, but we ended it with Johnny Walker. Also it looked great in the picture!
Many thanks for your answers. Keep on rockin', girls !
Fernand Naudin
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