Interview: The Dragons w/Steve By Sabine Schenk Casbah, San Diego, CA This was my first time and my last time that I saw the incredible Dragons. They are one hot rock’n’roll band and it was a hell of a show. The Casbah is their home bar and all their friends and fans came to celebrate them one last time. The atmosphere was awesome but also a little sad because we all knew that the Dragons would never play in San Diego again and everyone had a big smile on their faces and a tear in their eyes. 13 years of blood, sweat and rock’n’roll — what a party, man! After the show Steve was kind enough to spend a couple of minutes with us outside the Casbah after the show at 2 am to talk about the time of his life. Thanks again, man! Here is what he had to say: This was your last show right? We have two more shows after today. But this was our last show at home. And this is quite a big deal for us. The Casbah helped us so much in the past. We did a lot of shit for them and they did a lot of shit for us. It’s been great. You guys were all smiling on stage but didn’t you feel like crying? That was during the soundcheck. We played some songs during the soundcheck and I got really choked up. We played a song and I looked over to Mario and I had to think about the time when we wrote that song and all the things that we have gone through. And you can’t help it but you are feeling some kind of emotion, you know. Whether it is anger because it’s not done but it’s done. Or it’s respect for everybody else like we wouldn’t be this band without all four. So I want everybody to look up and be happy, you know. And why did you break up? Ken is moving back to Japan. Why? He needs to find himself again, I think. He’s from Japan and he moved here when he was 16 or 17, I think. He has to re-discover who he is, you know. And I applaud him for that, for having the guts to say, you know what, I gotta go. But you have never thought about keeping the Dragons alive just by replacing Ken? It wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t be the same. All for one and one for all like the three or in our case four musketeers, you know. And what are you guys up to now? Mario is going to record a solo album, Ken is obviously moving back to Japan, I have been working with another band for about a year, we have been writing songs and stuff. It’s a different type of music but it’s fucking cool and it got me excited about playing music again. So we’ll all do our thing and we’ll keep in touch with each other. Are you planning on putting out something new on Gearhead? The last record, the Kamikaze record, was the last record on Gearhead. Has Sin Salvation anything to do with Riot Salvation by the "Demons" which was also released on Gearhead? No, but I wouldn’t say that the "Demons" had no influence on us because they had a big impact on us. The "Demons" are fucking great guys. When we went on tour with them, they were touring in a mini van and it was too much. The dates they had booked for us got us fucked up. So we took Mathias with us one us. We took more of them but we took Mathias first. We were going from Nashville to like Atlanta or Atlanta to Nashville or something like that. And we had the rock’n’roll summit. We were driving down the freeway with 80 miles an hour. We were just kicking back and talking about rock’n’roll and like helping each other out, you know. It was great. Just to be able to meet them and to have that kind of connection. It was fucking awesome. I think that was pretty much it because you probably want to spend some time with your friends and stuff. This was the first time that I saw you because I am from Germany and you guys never made it out there. But the show was great. You know what, we got a call last week from a promoter in England. He wanted us to play five shows and he would have paid for all expenses. He was about a week late. Otherwise we might have done it. But thank you anyway, to all our friends in Germany and England and Scotland and Belgium and Spain and all these places that we didn’t get to go to. We had the chance to go to Japan which was great. We did a lot of things here but that’s a sad thing that we didn’t make it to tour Europe. Ok, thank you very much! -Sabine Schenk photos by frank