In-depth interview with Joe Holmes about Farmikos, his time as a student of Randy Rhoads, his stints in Lizzy Borden, David Lee Roth and Ozzy as well as the impact his Dad had on his life as a musician

January 30, 2015 | By Crash Crafton More

Since his departure from Ozzy Osbourne’s band in 2001, many fans in the Hard Rock and Heavy Metal community have wondered where Joe Holmes was. There were rumors he had died as well as rumors he was a born again Christian who had given up music. Both were false. 2015 sees the return of Joe Holmes with a new album with his own band, Farmikos. Legendary Rock Interviews caught up with Joe by phone to discuss his past, his hiatus and his shreddin’ return in this very in-depth interview!

Legendary Rock Interviews: Hey Joe!

Joe Holmes: Crash! Joe here, how are you?

LRI: I am good. How about yourself?

JH: I am doing great! I’ve been busy, just got back mailing off a couple CD’s to Europe & came back, played some guitar for about an hour & a half and now I am talking to you.

LRI: Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this interview!

JH: No problem! Thank you for all you’ve done for Farmikos with the review and everything. I like the way you word stuff and your approach. I’m ready for this interview if you are.

LRI: I’m all set, I figured I’d ask you for a little background info for those who may not be aware of your history. I didn’t want to focus in on it because I could only imagine how old it must get answering the same questions so I figured this interview would focus on Farmikos!

JH: I was born in Neptune, New Jersey. I lived out there until I was four then we moved out here to L.A. We kind of bounced around a lot because my Dad was always planning on going back to New Jersey. I moved back there when I was twelve or thirteen & went to Junior High there.

LRI: Had you started playing guitar by this point?

JH: I started playing guitar when I was eight or nine. I think I was nine and I got an acoustic guitar for Christmas. I started taking folk lessons. Nine is when I got my guitar so I was always around music. That was always my thing was listening to music and then playing the guitar.

We ended up moving back here to L.A. when I was fifteen and as soon as I got back here….even back when I was in New Jersey I was listening to The Beatles a lot & playing a bunch of different little songs. I always loved the guitar but I wasn’t always that serious but when I got back here to L.A. I got really serious. I got my first electric guitar when I was thirteen so I’d say from that point on is when I got really serious.

When I moved back out here, it was all on. When I was going to High School out here, one of my biggest influences was Michael Schenker. That ‘Strangers In The Night’ record, that record I used to play all the time! My Dad built a music room in the garage, a double walled music room and I’d just lock myself in there for two days learning that ‘Rock Bottom (Live)’ lead. I had a little band, we played parties and stuff. We got really good and were packing them in….we’d play just covers. He ven sold his car to get me a PA system and took the bus to work til he got enough money for another car. He was just the best, a special special person & always very supportive and encouraging!

LRI: Were you taking lessons from Randy Rhoads at this point or did that come later?

JH: I ended up & I don’t even remember the guys name but this guy came into my life for about two weeks, maybe three weeks but he was taking lessons from Randy Rhoads. He brought me to The Starwood. I don’t know if it was his last show or one of his last shows with Quiet Riot. I saw Randy there and was blown away! I hadn’t been to any clubs or how I lucked in to going to this thing but this guy drove me because he was a little older so we went to this show. About two or three weeks later, I got to go where Randy was teaching at Musonia, at his Mom’s music school which is in North Hollywood.

I was sitting in the room with my Sister & I am telling you, it was so intimidating that I didn’t even want to go in there. I was like “Let’s get out of here!” I would have wanted to come back another time. He got done with his lesson and here came Randy walking out there & once I started taking lessons from Randy, I always really loved music but now I really wanted it. Taking lessons from him, he gave me such a great foundation. I stopped going to school for like forty-three days in a row or something like that. I was just working on what he was showing me. It was a while and the truant officers were calling the house. My Dad was cool with it but my Mom was freaking out and ended up crying about it a couple times.

I ended up going back. I walked in and they were going to send me to another High School. I said “then I’m not going to go to school then.” They kept me in that school because they want you to keep going. That was one of the experiences when I was taking lessons from Randy is that I was just really going for it! His love for music was so contagious that it really rubbed off on me. I loved music but he put it in a way for me to really understand where I was going with it. I was already in to the Michael Schenker thing so I already kind of knew how to play but he really set me off in the right direction too & in just the right time because a few months later he got the Ozzy gig.

When he got the Ozzy gig, the night before he was leaving to do the records, I was helping him take out a couple of Anvil Cases, like the long pedal board that he had. I was so happy for him but so sad. I would have taken lessons from him for years. I lived for it, I loved it! It was great because my Dad used to go with me all the time too, he would sit in there!

My Dad was such a huge huge support, my whole family was but my Dad, like when I was telling you about the High School thing. He bought me a Marshall head & he ended up going to New Jersey for something & when I walked back in to school they called my parents when I was at class so I had to go in and meet the Principal with my parents there. They were showing these report cards & showing them all this stuff. When I left there, my Dad was like “Hey! When you get home, I want to hear that Marshall!” (Laughs)

LRI: (Laughs)

JH: He knew where I was going and what I wanted to do with it so he was cool. That was it, from there, I had a really great band called Terriff when I was like nineteen or twenty. It was really cool, the first lineup, just the musicianship in the band. We had this bass player name Emil, he was from Europe. He was out here, just a really great bass player. The drummer, Tim Cosmo that was just amazing, a pounder. A guy name Michael Aaron. It was a really good band but it didn’t last, we just couldn’t keep it together due to personalities and stuff.

We were playing around L.A., packing them in and doing really good so that was just a really great experience for me. I got to get out and play the Country Club, The Whisky, The Roxy, The Troubadour and all those places. There were a couple different versions of Terriff after that. By doing that is when Gregg Bissonette and the David Lee Roth camp had heard about me. I got a call from Gregg to come down and audition for Dave. I got that gig and a whole bunch of stuff came.

LRI: When was it that you played with Lizzy Borden?

JH: Oh ok, let’s back track a bit then. I was around 22ish, I was really good friends with the guitar player of Lizzy Borden and the band. I used to hang out with Gene all the time. Max Norman, who did the first two Ozzy records, “Blizzard Of Ozz” & “Diary Of A Madman” was doing the “Visual Lies” record. They needed another guitar player and when Gene told me about that I was like “Are you kidding me? I’ve got to go do that!” That was a great experience! After Lizzy Borden, I came back and did the Terriff stuff for a little bit.

Being here in L.A. and taking lessons from Randy and what he taught me, it really set me up for those type of gigs too. Getting to do the Dave gig, playing all the Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai and Jason Becker stuff, it was just incredible! That was a real learning experience for me because I was brought up on the Michael Schenker and the Randy stuff. All the technique stuff, the alternate picking, the vibrato and everything that Randy had taught me really helped me for everything that came my way from then on.

After Dave, I had this band Dogma that had to change names because some band from New York already had it. We became Alien Ink and we were out showcasing for management and labels around L.A. We ended up getting management but I could tell with that band that it needed to grow. We needed a producer or something. There wasn’t a bunch of solos, it was more like Muse and going through all this trippy pedals and experimental stuff. It was cool because I got to experiment with a bunch of different pedals and e-bows.

LRI: Was this around the time that the Ozzy camp contacted you?

JH: It was Deen Castronovo who called me telling me about the Ozzy gig. He came down to one of the rehearsals then he brought Sharon one time, maybe with some people from the office. Ozzy came down a week later and about a week after that they had me go down to a rehearsal room down in Burbank or North Hollywood, I can’t remember which. I got to play with Ozzy. When I was auditioning, it was Mike Inez and Randy Castillo who auditioned me.

That was it, I got to get in there. I had like three weeks to learn a bunch of songs then we were off to South America. We did one warm-up show in Texas then off to South America to do these huge shows.

LRI: The South American Hard Rock and Metal fans are crazy!

JH: Oh, it was unbelievable! I could not believe it! They are very passionate about music out there. It was just a great experience down there with Ozzy!

LRI: You played with Ozzy from 1995 to 2001 then took a hiatus til recently. What prompted you to step away from the music scene?

JH: I’m on guitar all the time, twenty-four seven. By the time 2001 came. I had all these years of doing these tours, my own band, all the rehearsal rooms, recording. You’re just always gone doing it. In 2001, I ended up buying a house and getting married. Both our clocks were ticking so we figured we better have a baby now because we aren’t getting any younger. It was time & I was ready at that point too because I’d been gone and been all around the world a bunch of times. That was the next thing that I wanted in my life.

We had Hailey, first, let’s go back, I’m playing guitar at my house all the time and when I got out of Ozzy, other bands had called me to come check out their band to see if I wanted to play with them. At that point, I just want to take a break and decide what I wanted to do. I decided that if I was going to anything, it had to be my record and be what I wanted to do.

Around 2002, at Eric’s Guitar Shop where I get all my guitars worked on, I met Brent Hoffort and became great friends with him. We were hanging out a lot. We’d get together and I said to him “why don’t you try singing?” So, I talked him into that! I had a bunch of riffs, we were working on all these riffs and finishing these songs. He’s very well read & very poetic. If you listen to something like “Exit Stencils”, look at the lyrics in the booklet of the album and the lyrics are just really really good.

So, I started doing that around 2003-ish and in 2004, we had my daughter Hailey. It was off-and-on that we’d get together and write. We had Hailey so I was doing my thing & he was doing his thing but we’d get together and work on these ideas but it is not like it was every day. I had a bunch of these riffs and when we finished them, we finished them pretty quick. We did some demos for them.

Then in 2006, my Dad got ill. He had two broken hips and when they did the hip replacement surgeries, they didn’t even work. Then he was diagnosed with dementia and got C.O.P.D. from smoking his whole life. It was my Sister and I who were with him every day. He had that for four or five years. It is going on four years since he passed away.

LRI: So, all this happens around the time you come to know Robbie? How did you guys meet?

JH: Around 2009, my friend Dave at L.A. Sound Design, he knew of Robbie or heard his CD & said “You’ve got to hear this guy!” but Robbie was in Laidlaw so I didn’t go after it until I knew he was out of there. It was six or eight months later that I found out he was out of that band so Dave got his number for me. I ended up contacting him, we talked on the phone a few times. I sent him some songs and the first song he sent back to me was “The Sound Of My Gun”. Right when I heard that, I knew, there it is, there is the voice for this thing! I love his voice, just the tone, he’s real soulful, bluesy, heavy, he can get up real high, he has just got “it”! When that happened, I knew this was it.

Even when my Dad was ill, he was always asking me what was going on with my music and was really into it. So, after he passed and Hailey was older, I just really wanted to get out and make some records. That is why I dedicated Farmikos to my Dad is to thank him for being so supportive throughout the years.

When I met Robbie, I could tell it was the right match, it just fit perfect so I just married both worlds and brought in what I had done with Brent. What is really cool about it, with some of the stuff Brent had wrote, Robbie would come in with a different chorus, like “Spoon And Sun”, that is Brent’s verse and Robbie’s chorus. They married together so perfect. It ended up really working out.

Robbie, he’s been out here multiple times now. Each time he comes out it is for like two or three weeks. We’d got up to The Mouse House, Rich Mouser’s place. I’ve been recording with Rich for like twenty years. He breaks out the two inch machines then he edits it on Pro-Tools. We just get in there and we came up with this record. I’m really proud of it, to me, it is a success because you know how hard it is because you write something and you are off to the next thing.

So, anything that happens from here with this album is just a bonus. I love the way it turned out and honestly, I wouldn’t change anything on it. I’m just really proud of how it came out and everyone’s contribution to it.

We’ve got such a great little team together, my wife set up the CDBaby and the business side of things, Robbie’s friend Dean Wheeler, that picture of the sunset that he took we’ve had on the site. Dean & Robbie did the artwork and the layout on everything with the album. Everybody had their own roles in it. Terry Meows did all the teaser videos, he works at Disney in the Animation Department. He comes down and films us. It has been a grassroots or Do-It-Yourself approach but one day maybe we’ll get the right kind of management to take it to the next step. It’s been cool how we’ve put a few songs out here and there and see how everyone has responded to it.

Robbie is a great guy. My wife and daughter love having him around. He is like a family member. I am so lucky that I get to work with a personality like that, he is so easy going. He knows music, he is very deep with the music. He is like an old soul with it.

LRI: There is a good buzz going on the internet about it. Not just the usual “Joe Holmes is back!” but with the music. Everyone that checks it out really seems to digg it!

JH: I heard rumors I was dead and that I was a born again Christian. I’m not dead (laughs) because I’m talking to you. I was baptized Catholic & have been the same my whole life. I have friends that would see the rumors & want to respond to it and I’d be like don’t bother. In just the past year, year and a half, I just got an iPhone and got into texting. I’m far behind but I’m catching up. It is amazing how someone can get the word out like they do on the internet.

LRI: I was wondering if you could walk us through, track-by-track to talk about different gear you may have used on each song, what the song is about, how it was written etc?

JH: As far as gear, I have had these early 70’s Strats with the Jackson J-80 pickups in them. Not the ceramic ones, just the regular ones. The ceramic ones didn’t really work for me. We screw them into the body, into the wood because I feel like it just resonates more, sustains more. I use an old Floyd and I use the 6100’s on my Strats, the bigger frets. The necks are like a compound radius.

I’ve got an old Charvel that I’ve had since back in the 1980’s so they are sort of set up like my old Charvel. I just got so used to that Charvel. That is it as far as the guitar set up. I love the Lexicon PCM 41’s! I’ve been using those for years so I always put that in the effects loop and use it for a little bump to with the gain. That is pretty much it, it is a pretty simple set-up. That is why it breathes so well and sounds so good, a lot of stuff is just a couple tracks. Sometimes like “Sound Of My Gun” is just one guitar track in that verse and it still sounds so heavy.

That is what I thinks makes this so special is because it gives the bass room to breathe instead of me doing four rhythm tracks of stuff. I can get more in-depth since you want to go track-by-track that way I’m not jumping all over the place! (Laughs)

LRI: Alright, we will kick it off with “Scapegoat”.

JH: Yeah, we will start at the beginning with “Scapegoat”. Back in the Terriff days, my singer knew Jose, Jose Arredondo. He was an amp builder and worked on amps. He tweaked my amps. What I love about my amps is they’re ballsy but they’re not all pre-amped out and gainy sounding. I was spoiled because since I was nineteen, I’ve been using these heads. I have like five of them. Jose, he passed away a few years ago, he was like 72.

On “Scapegoat”, if you listen right before the solo, you will hear this squeal noise. When we were recording that solo, I’ve had the same tubes in this head. I did the David Lee Roth tour, the Ozzy tours and everything with this head. I never changed them because I thought it would mess the sound of the amp up. The tubes finally went, they arced so strong that the Engineer thought they may have caught on fire! It lit the room up red! Listen to just before the solo and you will hear that.

LRI: The squeal Joe speaks of is at the 1:46 mark

What happened is, we go down because I had another back-up there but that was my favorite head so I figured I’d just get it fixed come back and re-do it another day. We go down and have coffee, I came back up and I said “Let’s plug the other head in and see what it sounds like.” I plugged it in, came up with the chords behind that solo and just threw that solo down. It was just really quick. When we started to record the solo we heard that noise and I said “Just leave it and we will go from there!” So when you are listening to it, check out that noise right before the solo, that is the noise of my tubes going out after all these years. I use the old Siemens tubes, the EL-34’s so I try to find the old-new stock & I got another pair and it has been working great! It probably even sounds better so I probably should have changed them years ago! (Laughs)

That song I just love but it went through so many different little changes like that 7/8 riff in the beginning then the verses go into 4/4. I had a bunch of different versions of it and was always like “Ugh! It is not ready, it is not done!” I sent it to Robbie and he came up with these different vocal things, this and that. Brent wrote the lyrics on that one but Robbie just puts it across like you wouldn’t believe. He is just up in that upper register and just sounds so good on it. I came up with that verse and the song was just done. I love it and that song is going to sound so good live. It is just the perfect songs to kick off the record with.

LRI: On to “Am I One” which is one of my favorites on the album.

JH: Oh, me too! That was one of the last songs to be written for the record. Robbie wrote the lyrics on that one. The music, I just love the heavy dark moody vibe of it at the beginning with the slide, just the eeriness of it when it goes into that main riff (sings riff). It just reminds me of that Randy influence. The dissident notes.

LRI: Did you play a Strat on all these songs or were there other guitars used?

JH: On most of it, I used my Charvel on a lot of it in the beginning & I used my main Strat on it, I call it “The Fork” because Ozzy took a fork to it one time before we went on stage. The one where the paint is all off, I call it “The Fork” because of Ozzy but the paint was coming off anyways because I used it all the time and I used these copper picks live. For some reason, that guitar, the paint was really thin so the copper picks and the fork didn’t help it. (Laughs)

I switched it up and used a Goldtop, I have a ’68 Les Paul. On “Sound Of My Gun”, the second solo, I used a ’74 Black Custom that I used and the rest of it is a Strat!

Back to “Am I One”, I love that it’s over eight minutes long but it doesn’t feel like it. It is very hypnotic and that one live, is just going to be a monster! Ken Schalk from Candiria plays drums on it and did a great job. We had a great team with everyone involved. One of the things I love about how it turned out is it sounds like it was all done it one session when in fact, sometimes we wouldn’t do anything for a few months. “Am I One” just has that Randy influence especially the main riff at the beginning.

LRI: “Kings Of Dust”

JH: “Kings Of Dust”, that one is like a real hypnotic bending riff (sings riff several times) throughout the whole song, bending that chord doing fifths until it gets to the breakdown. I love that breakdown. Robbie’s voice in the breakdown, the little bridge and then the solo hits you right in the face. You don’t expect it, it is just quiet and then bam, it hits you.

I love how Robbie shows his vocal range from singing just heavy and low, then when he gets up there in that second verse he’s just going for those high notes. It will really just rip your head off!

We were talking about the gear, the amps I use in the studio, my cabinets are always the same but there is a cabinet down there that is a late 60’s or early 70’s Marshall, it is an old basket weave with a metal handle one. It has got the old 25 watt Celestion’s in it. The old greenback’s just sound great with my amps so I’ve always used those.

I used my Mutron Flanger so whenever you hear the flanger effect. I have this Mutron Flanger that I just love that I have had for years. That has been my little secret weapon in there too! I used a Wah on a couple things, not much but on a few things. Basically, it was the Mutron Flanger and I have got an old Octavia….there it goes again, there is my Dad! Years ago I got it, it was like $600 and he bought it for me! That thing, I have got two of them now and I cherish that one.

LRI: “Spoon And Sun”

JH: “Spoon And Sun”, if you listen to that solo, it didn’t have a solo section it in. That song right there, I love the verse, just the tempo, the funkiness and heaviness of it (sings the part), just real heavy. I love how it goes into the half-tempo chorus. It just pulls you back and live we can just exaggerate it even more, really pull it back where it just hits you.

The solo at the end, it was going to fade but I just kept it going as long as the tape was going. We just let it keep going and it kept going through all these weird little changes, all the shifts of dropped beats and stuff. It is just a really cool solo so when I hear it I just really love it.

The beginning of that is the Octavia, I just hit on the Octavia and dive-bombed down where the strings were just flopping on the neck. It sounds like something coming through the wall!

LRI: On “Fragile”, is that Robbie or Benji that does the Middle Eastern vocal at the beginning and the end of the song?

JH: That is Benji. That riff, I had for years, that (sings the riff twice). Sometime around 2000, Benji was over here because he is really good friends with Robert. They have had that Mass Mental? project together for years. I’ve become good friends with him and got to know him. Robert & I would get together & write stuff, that is a song we had worked on that I had always loved and it was just sitting there.

I wanted that to see the light of day so we finished it & just incorporated Robbie in there. We had Robbie singing the verses and the bridges & Benji’s doing the heavy stuff, the Middle Eastern parts. Reminds me of almost a Björk thing, just really unique.

The solo is just whacky. It is just out-of-the-box. It has a lot of trippy cool diminished stuff in it which is kind of a Randy influence too! One of the last times I saw Randy, he had already toured with Ozzy and it was around Christmas of 1981. I saw him at a mall, he was walking out of this mall, Sherman Oaks Galleria. I was walking in there with my Mom, saw him and was talking to him. He asked me if I still had certain guitars & I am wanting to know what was going on with him and one of the last things he said to me was “Learn your diminished!” I’m like “diminished, what the heck is diminished?” I went home and was trying to learn everything I could about “diminished”. That has always been something I’ve loved too. I just love the way it sounds.

This was one song that I didn’t know if we’d release it digitally or even put it on the record. That is one where I asked Eddie Trunk “Do you think that this should go on there?” He said “Yeah!” and everyone else was saying put it on so that’s when we decided to put it on the album. I’m glad it is on there because it rounded off a nice ten song album.

LRI: I agree plus it throws in a nice sonic curveball between the Middle Eastern parts, Robbie’s vocal parts and then Benji’s raps, it is very outside the box in terms of what you’d expect on a Hard Rock or Metal album.

JH: I love that and I love being able to do that. For me, it is just writing the best song I can write. I’m not thinking I have to write this type of song or write that type of song. It is like “Facing East”, the acoustic song, the last song of the album which I will get to in a bit.

LRI: On to “The Sound Of My Gun”

JH: “The Sound Of My Gun”, I used that Octavia on it. On the second solo, when it is just going out on the second solo, the first solo is just dry and in your face. The second solo, this is what I was doing, picture yourself riding a wave. I was riding that wave, just cruising then all of a sudden you are cutting in and out & you are letting it take you on a journey. That is what I did with that solo. I was just milking the notes, not flying off but just hanging on to stuff. Cutting in and out. It was supposed to fade off pretty quick but we just kept just letting it go.

It is just a sludgy riff. It is the first song Robbie sent me. Love his vocals and the guitars, the bending (sings riff) in the verses in the main riff, it is just really really heavy. Sometimes it almost sounds like….people were asking me if I was using a Whammy pedal on it. I’m not, I’m just bending fifths.

LRI: “Ascension”

JH: “Ascension”, yes, I showed that to Robbie, that was one I had worked on with Brent a long time ago. It was just sitting there, I found it, showed it to Robbie and he dugg on it so we went in and recorded it. The beginning of the guitars is reversed, what I did is it is actually truly reversed so what I did was played the part, flipped the tape around, reversed it & I learned it reversed then we flipped the tape back around. So when you listen to that, I played the part, we reversed it & I ended up learning it in reverse with the little thing sliding in (sings the part).

The verse is kind of a trippy riff. (Sings riff) Very unique sounding. The choruses are cool and I love the solo, the solo I used an Ibanez Flanger on that thing, at least on parts of it. At the beginning, I’m doing this trilling thing where I am hitting the Whammy bar & it is going down, I’m just sliding up to the notes and doing this trill.

At the end of the song I used my old Martin acoustic with the electric, the part that just fades out. Actually, it doesn’t fade out, it goes for a while and then we end on a chord. That Martin, I used it on “Facing East” as well. It is a 1941 Martin 000-18 & that thing talks on its own. For the gearheads, the old Martin 000-18’s are really special.

LRI: “I Was Them”

JH: Robbie wrote the lyrics on “I Was Them”. It is just heavy heavy. It will sound great live, it is just a slow tempo, I love the way Robbie’s voice sounds on that song from the verses to the lows where he jumps up there. It’s got two solos in it. It is just a vibey, cool song.

That second solo is my Mutron Flanger. It is on but it almost sounds to me like it is a single coil pickup but it’s not, it’s my Humbucker or the pickup was broke, which it is not but I love the way it sounds and the way it came out so we just kept it. I was just going to do another take of it but Rich (Mouser, producer) loved the way it sounded so it stayed in.

The first solo, the noise right in the beginning, I come up with the Whammy bar, I hit a harmonic and I hit a Phase-90, an old MXR Phase-90. That is what gave it that sound. The rest of it is just dry. I double tracked it. Some solos I would double track and some I didn’t.

LRI: Second to last song, “Exit Stencils.

JH: “Exit Stencils”. I love how that solo there is no rhythm guitar behind it, it is just bass and guitar. It is just old school, I’d love to do some more of that! You really hear everything as it has a lot of breathing room. That solo is really cool too because it is Pentatonic but a lot of off-the-cuff stuff too.

The second solo reminds me of that Randy vibe. Classical but with wide intervals. It has a bit of delay on it. It is a really cool riff. That’d be cool if people learned it, it is a cool little drill or whatever. Brent wrote the lyrics on this one.

LRI: We’ve come to the end of the album with “Facing East” and then you are free to go! (Laughs)

JH: That thing is like a lullaby. I wrote that when my daughter was born and used to play it for her all the time. I’m glad that that one got to get on here. I love it ending the record the way it does. How Robbie sand “Goodnite” at the end of it, he sang it twice and it is an acoustic song. It just finishes the album out because I love when you hear old records like Led Zeppelin or even Badlands, they put these acoustic songs on the record, I just love that!

Whatever comes out….a good song is a good song! You can ask Robbie but I think he was hiking or camping when he came up with the lyrics for the song.

LRI: I agree! Any chance of touring for this album?

JH: Oh yeah! We are game for whatever comes our way. We just got to fill out the band. Meanwhile, I want to start working on the next record. We are looking at, maybe in February, doing some videos. I definitely want to do “Scapegoat” and maybe “Am I One”.

Once we get this band put together, we will back in the studio working our butts off for the next album. We’d definitely like to do some shows but maybe this is setting it all up for the next record and then building it up where it is so strong that we will be able to go out and tour. We are game for wherever this takes us! Who knows where it is leading but it has all been positive and I can’t wait to play live because these songs are going to sound great live! It’ll be fun just to get Robbie in a room with a rhythm section and crank it up loud!

LRI: I think that about covers everything! Thanks for taking the time to talk with LRI!

JH: No problem! Thank you and thanks to everyone who has been checking out Farmikos and we look forward to bringing you more in the near future! Of course, you can keep up with the band on all our various Social Media accounts and our website!

“Facing East” Music Video: