Mickey Finn: Former Jetboy Current Cold Blue Rebels Frontman Interviewed　

　After I read this press release on Blabbermouth “JETBOY Singer Quits, Says Band Should Change Its Name” I thought I should give Mickey a buzz to clear the air and find out what was going on. I thought the headline Blabbermouth put on the story was slanted just to make people click. I have noticed they do that a lot.

Read On:

RN: I interviewed Billy shortly after M3. He seemed excited that a label in Europe was going to re-release the Jetboy CD Damned Nation. He was working on a tour to be booked over there. And everything seemed pretty good for you guys. And now. You released a statement saying you were no longer with the band. What happen?

  Mickey Finn: Let me start at sort of the beginning to what led up to where we are at now. Basically the Jetboy organization has been mismanaged for the past 4 years. When we reunited in 2006 things just never came together 100%. We were really stoked for awhile, we had a great relationship going our song writing was great and we played some great shows. We just never had a solid manager. Just the whole team that makes the machine turn was never completely sound, too much internal drama. Everything with the band took to long, every decision took to long, and we procrastinated a lot. And I guess there is always two ways of looking at things, you can look at the bright side or you can look at the down side. For me it got to be a too much of a strain and not so much fun. I’m 47, I work a full time job and play in a band on weekends, ad in photo shoots, some out of town gigs, band meetings, and always back to work on Monday with no time off. I have to be honest with you, in the last four years and all the shows we’ve played I didn’t make a penny. Neither has Billy or Fern. We made money but it all went right back into the costs to keep the band moving, studio costs, van rentals, gas, paying guys to do our web site, buying merch so we have merch to sell. All the money went into the band account and was used to keep the wheels turning but in four years not a fucking penny.

I also think some of the things that have worked against us are that Billy and Fern live in San Francisco, I live in L.A. our current drummer and bass player live in Fresno. I think when we reunited in 2006 if we all lived in L.A. we could have made it happened but having that distance between us it was a chore just to get together and rehearse or accomplish anything. Sometimes we would do a show and we would rehearse an hour or 2 before the show when we had not played together in months. In my opinion things were not moving in a direction where I felt confident in our getting past this point anymore. I started to really lose my faith in the band. Not that the possibility isn’t there, and I do love Jetboy I believe that it could happen for us. But a lot of things would have to change. We would have to live in the same city. We would have to have a good manager and there are so many other factors that would have to take place for me to feel like it would succeed.

In the mean time my life is in L.A. I live with my girl friend here, my friends are here, I work here and I just started feeling like I wanted to try something else with my music, something closer to home. Sometimes I felt like I’m in a band but I don’t get to hang out with my band and rock out at rehearsal and that’s some thing you look forward to doing being in a band. Until recently when we had Mike Butler and DP Hovan on bass and drums they all lived in NORCAL and I would literally be jealous hearing about them rehearsing without me all the time. That was another issue with us also, I mean 4 drummers in 4 years, and then losing Butler who is a great guy, and bass player who absolutely destroyed the stage every show!!

RN: Why did you decide not to do the European tour?

  Mickey Finn: We all agreed to do it but there was certain things I was told and certain things I expected that in the end it didn’t turn out that way. One of the things that bugged me was that when we contacted the promoter there and when he started planning the tour there was a couple months or more that went by that we had no report from him. And by the time he came to us he had half the tour booked already and the numbers where low. I heard bands go over there and do good but the guaranties where coming back and average of 250 to 300 Euros. Than I was told that there would be a van there for us with equipment. But I find out in the first email that we would have to pay 120 Euros a day for the van and 50 Euros a day for the driver. That’s not including gas and food, and air fair. This was not adding up. The bottom line is the tour was not a good business decision and we would most likely be losing money digging into our own pockets to pull it off and spending what little money we had saved up from the summer shows to do it.

RN: I read a press release on Blabbermouth that you’re out of Jetboy, they are going on tour with a new singer and you said that they should change the name because it’s not Jetboy any more. Why do you think they should change the name?

  Mickey Finn: OK, I didn’t mean it’s not Jetboy with out me. I meant with only two original members its just not the same. We would always kind of make fun of some of these reunion bands that go out there with just the bass player or sometimes no original members . You know, you go to shows and you hear people saying “ who’s playing guitar this time or who’s singing for them now” you know how it is, its like a bunch of cover bands. And that was what people focused on from that press release “JETBOY Singer Quits, Says Band Should Change Its Name” I didn’t mean it egotistically like that. In fact they might have a better chance with a new name. The band is great and as tight as ever, I love Jess and Jessie and Billy and Fern. They are the most talented songwriters I’ve ever played with next to my new band of course!

RN: So to clear the air, you have no hard feelings toward those guys.

  Mickey Finn: No of course not. Those guys are family to me and my family my dad has been helping out and he and my mom handle our accounting and shipping merch from there house. It’s just a ruff a spell especially between me and fern. When I told them I couldn’t do the tour because when I get back I wouldn’t have a job and all my bills would be due and we would lose money on this tour, Fern jumped all over me and was very disrespectful, he pushed way to far and I snapped and realized I had enough. I’m not going to ring up my credit cards to go on tour for a month to party with my friends. IM 47, it sounds like a great adventure but I’m not losing my job, getting my car repossessed and ruining my credit to do it. If we cant earn enough to go over there and make money playing than obviously there are not enough people that want to see us over there. I guess we’re not a hot commodity. And sure you can build it up, play there a few times and make more eventually, (maybe). But I have bills to pay, I’m not some kid content to couch surf and bum around in between tours.

RN: So how did Cold Blue Rebels come about?

  Mickey Finn: Cold Blue Rebels. I’m not saying I approached this just for fun, I wanted to keep my voice in shape in between Jetboy shows and I have always loved blues rockabilly and punk rock. But I didn’t expect it to develop as fast as it did. I thought this could possibly turn into some thing great and that’s exactly what happen it turned into something great and than it snowballed. The phone doesn’t stop ringing with gig opportunities everything is working beautifully for us. We’ve done really well over the last year playing probably 50-60 shows. We have a great live show with a coffin and zombie go go dancers. We have a good following and a real good buzz going. And I really believe in the product. The songs and the song writing are key. And we have such good chemistry between us. We are all old glam guys that do our blend of horror punk, psychobilly rock n roll. It’s bluesy I play harp on a few songs. It’s cool. Some times we do a stripped down version of our show without the dancers but for the most part we do the zombie make up, and destroy the stage, its just bad ass rock n roll. It’s good, it’s animated but most importantly the song writing is there. We have a new record deal with Horror High records, a new Video “Cold Blue and Beautiful” and we are working out our marketing strategy for next year after the release of the album 1/11/11. It seems that good things are always falling into our laps, and everything is working perfectly its like the rock n roll gods are supporting us and we have been working our ass’s off, so we’ll see where it goes from here. One thing for sure is its all fun, no drama, and everything just seems to be working, unlike the struggles with Jetboy over the last couple years.

FOR MORE INFO CHECK OUT:

COLD BLUE REBELS

JETBOY