Tim Brown, vocalist and guitarist for Edmonton country and western thrash metal band Sixguns Over Tombstone, has been writing material for the band since he was 17. Even with the release of Putting Revenge on the Map in July 2009, Sixgun has already started compiling material for another album, which is set to include new material, as well as songs written back when the group was still playing the all-ages circuit.

Sixguns Over Tombstone graduated to bar shows in 2005. That year also signaled the beginning of a series of lineup changes. Tim’s brother, Adam Brown, took over on drums and kicked up the energy of the overall sound, while current bassist Robbie “RAV” Abinader joined the band in 2007. During this time of transition, Tim, who started off only doing vocals, learned how to play guitar and used these new skills to help create even more material for the band.

“My old bandmates taught me how to play one of our very first songs on guitar and I was hooked. I just picked it up and would play all day for hours on end,” Brown recalls.

While Sixgun started out with dual guitars, Brown is now the only guitarist and, according to him, it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.

“Eventually, when we needed a new guitarist, I was there to pick up the slack. By that point, I was already writing all the songs anyway, so it wasn’t much of a jump for me.”

But the change did affect the way the music was played lived.

“In some songs, I had to completely rearrange the guitar parts so now I play a hybrid of the guitar parts you hear on our album. After getting it all sorted out, I think we have a much tighter sound now, though it is much more challenging for me live,” Brown explains.

And of course, more problems arose with the guitar riffs and dual guitar solos.

“One thing we lost was the ability to have harmonized guitar solos. I make up for that now with a harmonizer pedal, but that has locked in harmonies (like playing 3rd above for example), whereas our typical dual guitar harmonies were much more complex than just sticking to a single harmony.”

Though Brown brings up a benefit to having one less band member: the beer only gets split three ways at shows!

With the album having just come out in July this year, is there a time frame in which you want to get another one out?

There is no set time frame, but I think we would like to go back into the studio when we feel that this album has met its potential. We would like to do some serious touring later in the spring/summer, and really push this album to see where it can go. So I guess as soon as we finish that it’s time for a new one. Definitely before the world ends in 2012.

You mention on your MySpace page that five or six songs have already been written. Have you played any of those live?

We have only played one called “The Beast of Talringgough.” It had no vocals, and I had to improvise the guitar solo, but everyone seemed to love it. The core song itself is four years old though, so it’s not one of the brand spankin’ new ones, but the new songs will finally be up to a level that show where we are at. Most of the time we get hindered by having to find and train new members, but this time we decided to forgo training someone new and spend our time getting these new songs ready. All I can say is that they are a huge improvement over our old songs. The first three songs on our Revenge album are some of our newer material, and the other songs will be up to and surpass that level of songwriting. I think they will really surprise people when they hear them; they are very different but at the same time very familiar.

Are there any songwriters whose styles or methods have influenced you?

We are influenced by so many writers that we could never possibly list them all. The ones that had the biggest impact on me (personally) would be Metallica, Megadeth, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.

Do you have a favourite place to write new material?

Not really. Almost all of the material is written in our jam space, so in a way, I guess it is the favourite place to write.

Where do some of your lyrical ideas come from?

The lyrics come from a variety of places. I always try to write the lyrics on two or more levels so that they can be interpreted in more than one way. I draw inspiration from movies, books, even video games. I also get a lot of ideas from the Bible. Not to say we are big into religion, it just has a lot of really heavy metal topics: all the fire and brimstone, etc. The spoken intro to “When the Walls Fell” is from the Bible, from Deuteronomy, but rewritten to fit the song. The Old Testament is pretty metal, that God guy doesn’t take any shit!

If someone brings in a riff/concept/idea how does the rest of the band work on it or contribute?

Generally speaking, I sit and write the bulk of the material by myself. When I get a sizable chunk of a song done, we jam it out to see how it sounds in a band setting. Then I go back and write additional parts, arrange, and finally write a vocal melody/harmony, lyrics, and guitar solos. I get the other guys opinions and see what works and what doesn’t and edit the songs accordingly.

A lot of your songs were written when you were 17. What are some changes in the songwriting that you have noticed over the years?

Some of the songs, like “Fire from the Sky” or “All Hallow’s End,” were the first songs I wrote after just a few months of playing guitar. Though I had listened to music before, I have a much more critical ear now and can pick up and understand things in all kinds of music that I would never be aware of before. Now, I can incorporate these things into our music, and can write them in a way that has maximum impact and efficiency. “Fire from the Sky” is a pretty long song, and I think if I were able to write it again, knowing what I know now, it would be different.

You had to change the band name from just Sixgun. Why, and what made you decide to add “Over Tombstone” to the name?

There were about a million other bands called Sixgun, and we were about to release our EP, which we got some distribution for. Seeing as how it would be carried in major retailers, we couldn’t have the same name. I wanted to keep Sixgun in there somewhere, just because we had gigged under that name for so long and people knew us. Plus, we have a certain video that we like to draw inspiration from and it had “Sixguns over Tombstone” plastered all over it in a certain scene, and I took it as a sign to use that as our name.

How did the country and western thrash style come about?

No one else incorporates that style into their sound in the metal world, and I think it’s a niche that we can fill nicely. Obviously we aren’t blatantly some red neck hick metal band, but there is a subtle influence that I don’t think any other band has. I think it’s kind of hidden in some of our songs, because of the heavy sound of the drums and guitars, but if you play our record backwards, you can hear Willie Nelson.

Do you have any favorite country bands?

Whatever is on CMT!