{"id":7677,"date":"2011-08-22T07:00:26","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=7677"},"modified":"2011-08-22T08:37:51","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T12:37:51","slug":"blowin%e2%80%99-wind-w-eli-luna-of-holy-grail-%e2%80%9cyou-just-have-to-be-happy-with-the-poverty-that-your-art-brings-and-take-it-seriously-%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=7677","title":{"rendered":"Blowin\u2019 Wind w\/ Eli & Luna of Holy Grail: \u201cYou just have to be happy with the poverty that your art brings and take it seriously.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Everyone knows that Holy Grail reigns supreme here at The Great Southern Brainfart. Holy Grail was recently here in Atlanta opening for Toxic Holocaust and after their face melting set I had the pleasure of talking to singer James Paul Luna and guitarist Eli Santana. While having some Sweetwater 420 beers, we talked about the things they learned from their first headlining tour, what it\u2019s like touring in a van and what movies they totally geek out over. It was really great catching up with the nicest guys in metal and I hope you\u2019ll enjoy this one!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Congrats! You guys are my first repeat interview!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: YEAH! Count it! [laughs and fist bumps me.}<\/p>\n

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Eli, have a beer man!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: This is some good fucking beer man! I should have started with this! Where is this from<\/p>\n

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Sweetwater 420 is brewed right here in Atlanta bro.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: Right on man. If I have money and the choice to do so, I always tell people, “Give me your local shit man!” [laughs]<\/p>\n

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It’s kinda like when you go to New Orleans and you have to have a Dixie Beer!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: Man, I didn’t have that. I didn’t get a proper New Orleans experience. We didn’t go near anything touristy or fun. No Bourbon Street. No French Quarter. We got in there and played our gig and we were so far away from anything cool. We walked to McDonalds and even they gave us fucking grief [laughs].<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Next time you guys go back to New Orleans you\u2019ll have to do something.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: Oh yeah man. I\u2019ve got a whole plan for the next time we go back. If I have to ditch people, I don\u2019t care. I\u2019m gonna make it happen [laughs]. The show was actually really cool though.<\/p>\n

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You guys have been on the road with everyone from Exodus to doing your own headlining run. What tour has stood out so far as being your personal favorite?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luna<\/strong>: I\u2019m biased but honestly I think that our headline tour felt really awesome. We really got to sit in the driver\u2019s seat and it was our baby. It\u2019s like how do you pick between your best friends? It\u2019s really hard to pick just what tour we liked the best.<\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: We really learned so much from each tour and they were each unique within itself. We got to tour with Exodus, Blind Guardian, Amon Amarth and each one was a huge learning experience. They were all really cool so it\u2019s really hard. The headlining tour was definitely on a smaller scale but it was really cool.<\/p>\n

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Did you feel you learned things on your headlining tour that you feel you didn\u2019t learn <\/strong>\"\"<\/a><\/strong>on the other tours?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luna<\/strong>: Definitely. We learned that we need to advance the shows [laughs]. That was a big learning lesson.<\/p>\n

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What do you mean by advance to the shows?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luna<\/strong>: Advancing the shows is a task that a tour manager is usually supposed to do anywhere from a few days to a month in advance to get load-in times, talk with promoters and figure things out. We just never did that before and depended on everyone else to do it. I didn\u2019t want to have to do that ourselves as it\u2019s just an extra step. Yeah, we really learned a lot on that tour.<\/p>\n

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Holy Grail has been touring non stop in America and in Europe behind \u201cCrisis In Utopia.\u201d How much longer will you guys be out for this one before hitting the studio for album #2?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: We\u2019re hoping to get at least one more tour in but we don\u2019t want to force it. We\u2019re not going to just go out on our own for no reason. If something cool isn\u2019t happening then I think we\u2019ll start working on the next record but we\u2019re open to possibilities.<\/p>\n

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Do you guys have any new material written for the next album?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luna<\/strong>: Not really. We have our own riff tapes that we pull from. We each individually come up with structures of songs. At this point it\u2019s just been us throwing around riffs. We haven\u2019t actually got together to jam anything out.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>So you guys pretty much just have a collection of riffs that you pull from to get the writing process started?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luna<\/strong>: Yeah. Well sometimes it\u2019s a number of things. Sometimes it\u2019s a melody, sometimes it\u2019s a riff or a solo and sometimes it just all happens at once.<\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: Sometimes the song just happens to you. Sometimes you just can\u2019t get a song idea out of your head so you have to record it and those are usually the best ones.<\/p>\n

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I have to say that for as long as you guys have been out on the road, you\u2019re still playing these songs with so much energy and oomph. It never sounds tired. How do you keep that excitement up?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luna<\/strong>: It just gets easier to do actually. It\u2019s been almost a year since our album came out and to see these kids out there singing along with the songs is just crazy.<\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: A lot of it has to do with the fans. Sometimes you might be saying, \u201cOh man, I can\u2019t believe I\u2019ve got to play this song again\u201d and then you see the people out there getting excited from the first note and then you just say, \u201cIf he\u2019s that pumped on it, I\u2019m going to try and play this really well\u201d and you just go back and forth feeding off of their energy. Then you start jumping off of speakers and trying to play it clean [laughs]. When we play that opening riff to \u201cCall of Valhalla\u201d and the people go nuts you just get into it. We\u2019ve been playing that song for nearly three years [laughs].<\/p>\n

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The word about Holy Grail has been spreading with all the constant touring. Are you seeing the fan base growing every time you revisit a city?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luna<\/strong>: Yeah, it\u2019s crazy.<\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: Every time we come back to a city we see more Holy Grail shirts and we realize that this touring thing actually works [laughs].<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s true man. I\u2019ve bought three so far so when you come back with new designs, I\u2019ll buy another!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: [laughs] Man, thank you so much!<\/p>\n

Luna<\/strong>: That rules!<\/p>\n

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You guys filmed a video for the song \u201cMy Last Attack\u201d and that seemed to really open some doors for you guys. Now people had a visual of Holy Grail to go along with the music. Have you guys thought about doing another video or single release?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luna<\/strong>: Yeah, definitely. We haven\u2019t actually talked much about it but it\u2019s something we would love to do. We just haven\u2019t actually figured out our next game plan yet.<\/p>\n

Eli<\/strong>: We are really just going for that grassroots approach of touring our asses off and getting our music out that way. That was the basis of that video as an introduction to us. It was just us being a live band and that\u2019s what we wanted to show the world. Hopefully it will escalate from there.<\/p>\n