Back when we were at SXSW earlier this year, we did an interview with Atlanta, Georgia rockers Gringo Star. Amazing (or ridiculous, depending on whether or not you like puns… we like puns) band name aside, the southern blues/rock quartet has been garnering acclaim from the Onion’s AV Club, Spin, Blender, and um, High Times. The band’s short bursts of heavy melodic blues and swagger bring to mind all the excitement of a perfectly filmed bar fight in an over-saturated Western. Simultaneously polished and apocalyptic, Gringo Star has just released its fifth full-length All Y’all, and begin touring in earnest soon with Iggy faves Best Coast.

Dubbed the “hardest working band in Atlanta” in a film about the band, Gringo Star took 20 minutes out of their day to do a quick interview with us. We were surprised by how mellow the guys were — Nick and Peter Furgiuele, Chris Kaufmann and Pete DeLorenzo spent the majority of the interview reminiscing about the Atlanta Braves and getting way more into harmonicas than we ever thought possible:

What can you tell us about Ringo Starr? All we know is that he’s the ugliest Beatle and had a bunch of rings. Plus he was tone-deaf?
Chris: He’s a great drummer. Ringo’s a great drummer, and he’s a wizard in the kitchen.

Nick: He cooked lots of really good food, primarily beans, pork…

Chris: Paul didn’t go vegetarian of his own accord. Ringo was a vegetarian first.

Are you guys baseball fans? Do you play with each other a lot?
Nick: We had a huge baseball game yesterday, over at the Krieg Softball Complex, off of South Pleasant Valley Road.

Chris: We originally tried to challenge Austin, Texas. As a city. To a game of baseball.

Nick: Only five turned out.

Chris: They were only able to cook up two players—

Nick: Three showed up late.

Chris: One left, approximately at the top of the fourth.

Nick: It turned into ATL versus ATL.

Chris: Which was a lot more fun, a lot less competitive. But we really were hoping for a bloodbath out there.

Peter: We all got sunburned.

Pete: It was not a fair match.

Nick: It turned into 20 to 6, maybe.

Chris: The team selection got a little janky I suppose–

Nick: Because only two guys from Austin turned up, we ended decided to make them the team captains so they knew nobody else from Atlanta, but everybody was from Atlanta, so it was just a random picking of teams.

Chris: It’s a crapshoot with a pick-up game, you know? You never know who should be playing first base.

Are you guys tight as a baseball unit?
Peter: We’re actually in the process of trying to get a modern farm league going, with high stakes gambling, and we’re gonna try to start traveling around and double our tour over as like a baseball tour too… we’re trying to put together teams in other cities too.

Nick: I’m really into baseball. I like just going out to feel the air, tossing the ball, doing little suicides in the outfield, maybe practice stealing second… catching… the whole crackerjacks and peanuts thing.

What other hobbies do you have? Movies, or–
Nick: Field Of Dreams, with Kevin Costner. Probably one of the greatest films of our generation. Should have been nominated for an Oscar, but…

Chris: Let’s not talk about the Oscars. The Oscars are not one of my hobbies.

Is there anything you collect? Or…
Chris: I used to collect baseball cards.

Nick: I have a lot of Atlanta Braves baseball cards. Dale Murphy, Greg Olsen, Worst To First, Mark Lemke at second base… my mom was on a plane one time he was sitting next to her.

Chris: I went to school with Dale Murphy’s kids. Big Braves fan from day one.

Peter: Our friend got sued by Terry Pendleton for breaking his windshield one time.

How are the Braves doing these days?
Nick: I don’t really watch anymore.

Chris: We’re more into our own baseball, you know? We’re into ourselves. [laughs]

Pete: I’m more into the Falcons, actually.

Chris: [laughs] The Falcons are terrible.

How about Peter, you have hobbies?
Chris: Yeah, what do you like to do, Peter?

Peter: I enjoy walks in the park. I enjoy sitting in the park. Running too, running in the park. I do that often.

On a completely unrelated note, what is your favorite underwater sea creature?
Nick: If an enchilada had fins…[laughs]

Chris: In Atlanta there’s this one Mexican restaurant that has a lot of pictures of fish on the wall, and those are my favorite sea creatures. Tropical fish, coral reef-dwelling colorful fish…

Nick: Organisms that don’t seem to be actually intelligent life forms, but they are.

Peter: My favorite’s the clownfish. They’re real colorful and they look neat.

Pete: I’d have to say whales, I just always liked them since I was a kid, I used to draw them, and I like the music that they make. They’re just big but kind of friendly. I used to hang out with them a lot when I was a kid, when I didn’t know any better. We’d go for rides, man, I’d just like get on his back, and he’d take me high up and then deep down in the ocean, and I just felt so safe and free.

Are you describing the plot of Free Willy?
[band laughs]

Pete: No! I haven’t even seen Free Willy! Does he do that? Well now you know that movie was about me.

What bands are you guys excited about seeing at SXSW?
Nick: Jim Jones Revue.

Chris: That’s probably one of the only bands we’ll actually have time to leave and go see. The Jim Jones Revue.  Kenny Crucial. Matt Messiah. They’re an Atlanta band, not sure if we’ll get a chance to see them, they’re playing at some inconvenient times. But they’re a local favorite of ours. It would have been cool to see Ray Davies but we dropped the ball on that one.

Pete: Lightning Ray Jackson. He’s one of the most amazing songwriters and pop icons of this era. He’s just waiting for the right time and he’s gonna blow up. He’s awesome.

Peter: I like how he came by SXSW, supposedly he doesn’t even have shows. Like he’s gonna play shows, but it’s still gonna be revealed where they’re gonna be at.

Chris: He’s a total mystic. Some call him a shaman—

Nick: Lightning Ray Jackson. Is a shaman.

Pete: It’s just rare these days that you have artists that have this kind of impact on his surroundings, whether it’s on a stage, or—

Peter: He’s from Atlanta, too.

Chris: You know that quote about the Velvet Underground, you know they were never a big band, but they say that everyone that saw the Velvet Underground ended up starting a band. And that just carries over to Lightning Ray. He hasn’t blown up yet, but I think his effect on music will be so lasting in like 40 years… it’s intense, man.

Pete: If there’s any contemporary artist that’s influenced us I’d say it’s Lightning Ray Jackson.

Nick: He’s 23, he taught me how to sing harmony.

Chris: Yeah, he’s super young man. It’s gonna be intense to see what he can do by age 25.

[At this point we're not 100% sure if Lightning Ray Jackson is in fact a real human being.]

Have you played or collaborated with him?
Chris: He doesn’t have a lot of time. We don’t really see him too often. We’d love to pin him down for some guitar solos on the next album, for sure. He plays a sick harmonica. Get him on some backup vocals for some tracks. He refuses to play rhythm guitar, it’s just kind of his thing.

It’s beneath him?
Chris: Well, no… it’s just, real guitar players sing through their guitar. And he sings with his voice while he sings with his guitar, it’s like two voices going at the same time, like Jimi Hendrix but better.

[Yeah...He's not a real human being.]

What’s one instrument you wish you had time to learn how to play?
Chris: Pedal steel, for me, no question.

Nick: If I had time, I would love to learn to play the trombone.

Peter: Guitar, drums, keyboard. I wanna know how to play harmonica too. It seems like it would be easy but it’s hard to figure out how the notes work.

Pete: [With the harmonica] they do that breathing thing, like Paul Butterfield, they just continually breathe and play the harmonica and have this continuous flow. That blows me away how they do that. For me, guitar, piano and drums. I’d like to know how to play those.

Chris: Like, for real know.

Doesn’t John Popper from Blues Traveler have a crazy circle harmonica or something? It’s like a ball?
Peter: I think he’s — Nope. Can’t say that. I was about to say something real bad.

Nick: I think that’s an amp that he holds up to the harmonica maybe that makes it look thick.

Peter: He’s got multiple—

Chris: Yeah, he’s got like a vest full of harmonicas.

Peter: The style of harmonica playing I like best more, is when it’s over slower, bluesy minor [chord] sounding stuff. Kind of dark. I don’t know how they do that.

You guys are all pretty opinionated about the harmonica and John Popper.
Peter: John Popper is like the Kenny G of harmonica playing. [laughs]

Gringo Star’s MySpace (including audio streams and tour dates)
More videos by the band on their official site