Chords for Alestorm's Christopher Bowes on silly songs and dogs barking on their album | Aggressive Tendencies

Aelstorm started sort of in 2004 but it wasn't really getting started.
We had some friends and we played one rehearsal and that was it.
But it [Ab] was really in 2006 when we sort of got going for good and started writing songs and doing our thing.
And yeah, it's been a good almost 10-ish years, 11 maybe.
When we started this band, we never really expected to do anything.
We were pretty content to play a couple of local shows, release a demo and that was that.
We actually did that, we achieved that in like three months and then we just stopped for a year.
And then until someone said, hey, we're interested in signing you.
We were like, okay.
So then it all kind of steamrolled after that.
The label that tried to sign us was like some, I don't know, some random minor label.
And we thought, wow, this label's interested.
So maybe we should try sending this off to another label.
So we sent it straight to Napalm Records and literally got an email back in 30 minutes saying, yes, here's a contract.
So it was like, okay, I guess they like us.
Napalm's got a thing for legacy bands these days.
It's such a dreadful word, but like, who they got?
Devil Driver, they're all granddads.
They've got like, who else?
Grave Digger, all these really old man bands.
And they also have us, which is fun.
Like they occasionally pick up a young band and they go places and it's cool.
So it's, you know, because at first, we thought maybe we were one of the smallest bands on this tiny little label.
But now it's like a lot of big bands.
It's always good to not be the biggest fish or the smallest fish in the sea.
You've got to be in a sort of swimming in the middle.
And [Db] that's how it's, I think.
_ [E] _
_ _ [B] _ [Gb] _ _ _ [Dbm] _ _
[B] _ _ _ [E] _ [Dbm] _ _ _ [B] _
_ [Dbm] _ _ _ [Bb] When we got started as a band, [Ab] lyrically, we were like stuck in that we are a pirate band.
So all our songs must be about things pirates do, like digging for treasure and plundering booty and all these very straight faced pirate stuff.
But then we sort of realized, you know what?
People don't care.
People just want to have fun and we want to make fun music.
So we've started incorporating more stupid.
I don't want to say stupid themes, but you know, sillier sides of things, like say songs like Mexico, which is about going to Mexico and fucking a donkey.
All these just dreadful songs about very contrived situations that only tangentially involve pirates.
But you know, it's still got that yo-ho piratey edge to it.
We always will.
That's always be our thing.
I think that the humor in this band is, it's a very important part of why we just, why we still exist.
Because, you know, there's a lot of, we see a lot of bands and they take it all so goddamn seriously.
And they're all a bunch of miserable bastards and it can't be fun.
So, you know, I think a lot of our longevity has to do with the fact that, you know, we were quite happy to have a bit fun.
We don't take anything too seriously.
We don't have to, we don't feel forced to pretend that we're pirates or whatever, or evil metalheads.
We just do whatever and have fun.
And it's, you know, like saying the number one thing for this band is having fun and people like it.
[Eb] We like it.
_ _ _ [Ab] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ _ [Bb] _ So we have dogs on our record.
It's, um, it's, that was a thing like, you know, we don't like bonus tracks.
I think they're dumb.
I was just saying earlier how much I think that special editions are kind of silly.
So we, um, for this special edition of our latest album, we thought, what's the laziest, crappiest thing we could do?
I know.
Let's just remove the [A] vocals and replace it with a cheap keyboard that goes woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, you know, like that.
And for some reason people liked that.
[Abm] So I think the moral of the story is, is [Ab] the less effort we put in, the more people [Eb] love it.
The _ _ [Ab] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ [Ab] pirate words I like the most are the ones that rhyme.
Because, you know, I write all these lyrics and they're all about good, good solid rhyming lyrics.
So I like, um, plunder because it rhymes with thunder.
I like, uh, quest.
That rhymes with everything, like best and test and into the west and incest [E] and all those, you know, traditional pirate things.
So it's a good word to use in a big party chorus.
What's not a good one?
_ [E] _ Treasure.
Treasure rhymes with pleasure and [Ab] leisure and, uh, _ treasure.
And measure.
You cannot measure the pleasure I [A] get from treasure.
There's the next album written, then bang.
There's plenty more pirate cliches left to do, like I say, including eye patches.
We nearly had a song about eye patches on our last album.
It was going to be just the words, put on your eye patch, take off your eye patch, put on your eye patch, take off your eye patch.
Just over and over again.
And that was obviously not a very good idea.
But, like, we'd not actually done a song that is about an eye patch yet.
So, I mean, like I say, there's plenty of things to do.
Like, we haven't done a song about Batman yet.
And, you know, that's one of the classic pirate things is, you know, pirates fighting against Batman.
You know, it's one of the old pirate tales.
So we still haven't done that yet.
So there's a world of things we can do.
I'm sure this is going to happen that we're going to, as a joke, write the stupidest song ever about, I don't know, eye patches coming on and off.
And it's going to become our biggest hit.
And I'm going to hate myself forever.
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