Tailgunner Founder Shares One of the Biggest Things He Learned From K.K. Downing — Interview

On Tuesday (Jan. 27), founding member and bassist of Tailgunner, Bones, joined Loudwire Nights to dive into the band's next album, Midnight Blitz.

Listen to the full conversation in the player near the end of this article.

In addition to discussing the new record, out on Feb. 6, Bones spent some time reflecting on why he started Tailgunner in 2018.

"With Tailgunner, it was me having played in a few different bands growing up and never really been fully in control of what I was doing," Bones explained to Loudwire Nights' Chuck Armstrong.

From who he was playing with, the style of the band and a number of things, Bones felt like it was time for him to take control of the future of his music.

"I'm going to just say screw it and put together the band that I've had in my head since I was a kid, without compromise," he said.

"Without apology. Just really try to do it exactly what it is that I want to do and see if it goes somewhere."

And the band has definitely gone "somewhere," including a dream gig early on opening up for K.K. Downing's band, KK's Priest.

"Somehow, someone, someone — I don't know who, if I find out, I owe them a million beers — put [our EP, Crashdive] in front of K.K. and he heard it," Bones recalled.

"He really liked the band and he was making a comeback and he asked us to open that KK's Priest show ... That was our first exposure to something real in metal and in music and it really was the spark that led to everything else."

Bones said that Downing told him he'd been waiting for a band like Tailgunner to come along from the U.K. since Def Leppard and because of that, stepped in to produce their latest album, Midnight Blitz.

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"He was our friend, but we learned so much," he said about the experience of working with Downing in the studio.

"It's impossible to work with someone with the experience and the legacy that he has and not learn a million different things. The big thing that really rubbed off on me as a musician and a songwriter, learning from K.K., is that no detail is too small to be considered. He really thinks about every single second of the record, every single note, every single guitar solo, melody, whatever it is. Everything has to be thought about in detail and sometimes to the point of insanity — but it was worth it."

What Else Did Tailgunner's Bones Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

• His big dreams for Tailgunner: "I want to take heavy metal forward without compromising on the identity of what we're doing. We're not just trying to worship at the altar. I want to stand upon that, too, and that might be a bold thing to say ... We should be trying to be one of the biggest and greatest heavy metal bands of all time, because why aim for anything less?"
• How long he's been working on Midnight Blitz: "If you trace back where any one part of any song came from, [it's] as far back as 2020, because there were certain songs on the back burner that didn't quite work for the debut — not stylistically or anything, but there's things that you couldn't pull off yet as a band ... Really, though, I started to write this new album even still before the band was public."
• Why he's grateful to have worked with K.K. Downing: "It's not just that he's produced this album, it's that he'll have such an effect on the rest of our careers just from working with him. It's always going to influence what we do on record."

Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below

Bones joined Loudwire Nights on Tuesday, Jan. 27; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.