Army of Anyone features vocalist Richard Patrick of Filter, Stone Temple Pilots founding members Dean and Robert DeLeo, and seasoned drummer Ray Luzier.  The band is currently on tour in support of their self-titled debut album.  They will be performing this Tuesday, February 13 at First Avenue in Minneapolis, headlining the SnoCore Tour 2007.  Also appearing are Hurt, Dropping Daylight and Neurosonic.  Doors open at 5pm, Show starts at 6pm.  Guitarist Dean DeLeo checked in with HowWasTheShow.com a few days prior to arriving in Minneapolis.

HWTS: You'll be heading to Minneapolis for a show at First Avenue next Tuesday.  I hope you packed your long johns - we haven't seen temperatures above zero for about a week.

Dean DeLeo: Well, we're coming in from Toronto, so we're pretty well fresh frozen.

HWTS: How long has Army of Anyone been together?

DeLeo: The four of us have been together for about two years.  Rich and Robert and I got together about 10 months prior to that.

HWTS: Did you and Robert know Rich from experiences in your previous bands?

DeLeo: Definitely.

HWTS: How did Ray come on board?

DeLeo: It was Joe Walsh's fault. Rob and I were doing some shows with Joe, we were playing in his band, and Steve Ferrone was in Joe's band at the time and we kinda hit it off. Sabian was having an evening where they were honoring drummers, including Steve Ferrone and Ray Luzier.  We were in Steve's band at the time. After the Walsh thing, Steve put together a big 12 piece band, and we met Ray on that evening, we did a gig together. It kinda went full circle, we called Rich about one in the morning that night, and said this guy we played with tonight was spectacular. That should be our guy.  Rich had met Ray about a month earlier at a Deftones show. It kinda went full circle, and C'est la vie!

HWTS: Was a lot of the writing done by the time Ray joined the band?

DeLeo: Pretty much, yeah.

HWTS: How does the songwriting process work?  Do you and Robert come up with the music and Rich brings in the lyrics?

DeLeo: Pretty much, man. Like in typical fashion, the music usually comes first, and ya know with just Rob and I bringing stuff to the sessions and Rich kinda like rifling through it. The guy was being barraged, ya know, Rob and I were coming in with like two songs a day, he was like, guys, you gotta let up on me, man.

HWTS: Was this all new material, or did you have a backlog of material you hadn't used?

DeLeo: It was stuff that was sitting around for awhile, but it was stuff that was written well after STP had kinda shut down. It was good stuff, which, you know, was fresh in the sense that we were really itchin' to get it out of our being, ya know. It would be good to finally have it recorded.

HWTS: Was the recording process relatively fast, or were you in the studio a long time?

DeLeo: No, man. From a business standpoint, you always gotta think that a recording studio is double, or sometimes even triple the price of a rehearsal room. So we spent a couple of weeks in a rehearsal room really sorting it out and getting the songs down, so by the time we hit the studio we could really knock out a record in just a few weeks.

HWTS: Is the plan to tour on this album for awhile, or go back in the studio and make another album?

DeLeo: Gosh, we've only released one single, so we've got a lot of touring to get done. We get to Toronto the other night, and people are like, when are you coming back?, and I'm like, we're here right now.

HWTS: You guys were in the Twin Cities not too long ago.

DeLeo: Right on man, we were. We did a little impromptu show on top of a place called Solera.  It was a great time. We played Myth as well. I gotta tell ya man we're pretty thrilled because this is pretty much a homecoming for the Dropping Daylight boys, who are on the bill with us. We like those cats a lot. They're a great, great band. The whole gig is pretty nice - Neurosonic, Dropping Daylight, Hurt. We're enjoying it very much.

HWTS: Obviously, you'll be playing the Army of Anyone album, but will you also drop some Stone Temple Pilots and Filter songs into the setlist?

DeLeo: Oh yeah, we'll take some trips down memory lane. The Filter stuff was easy because we pretty much can do anything we want to do with Rich, but something we had with the STP stuff was it's baritone, and Rich is a tenor. So we had to sort out what was gonna work, what he felt comfortable with, what we felt good about. We wouldn't have done any of the material if we didn't think we were doing it any justice. We're definitely not trying to recreate anything, just doing our thing with it.

HWTS: Have you played First Avenue before?

DeLeo: We played the 7th Street Entry. STP opened for Run Westy Run back in the day. On that particular evening, our heater broke in our Winnebago, and I remember it being the coldest I've ever been... and I've skied The Alps!

HWTS: Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. We're looking forward to the show.

DeLeo: You're very welcome. See ya soon. We're looking forward to it.