Biker, rocker, all-around good guy and bassist for Pop Evil - Matt DiRito called in this week and discussed touring, what he does in his downtime and why he established a non-profit organization aimed at helping sick children who are dealing with something no child should ever have to endure, by providing them with a VIP transportation experience to and from chemo treatments…Check it out below.

 

Hey Matt! Thanks for taking a minute to talk with me; it’s going to be awesome having you guys back in town man.

Oh yeah! We can’t wait! It’s been so long since we’ve been down that way.

 

What’s been going on? How are you?

I’m great! How are you? Ya know we have our new album out, it came out in August.  We’re out on the road just promoting that, touring.

 

The tour kicked off last week, right?

Yep, that’s right.  Touring a bit, we had a week off at home and we’re back out on the road again now.

 

Do you do anything on your downtime you want to tell us about?

Yeah actually, ya know it’s funny….my downtime um.  I usually just end up working (laughter).  This past time home I ended up building a bunch of road cases and things for the band.   I've got a background in welding and working in shops, so I’m always working on projects and creating things; working on Harley’s, shooting guns, doing all kinds of things.

 

I can recall in the beginning when you guys lost a couple of members and had to deal with the replacement of those members, you being one of the replacements.  As an onlooker it seemed as though you guys weren’t phased by that at all..… Do you think the band’s attitude has anything to do with the resilience of Pop Evil as a whole?  

Yeah, we certainly tried to. Those were still in the very formative days of Pop Evil ya know?  Even though we have four (4) albums out, I feel like the last two (2) are the only ones that have sort of stepped up to that sort of level.  “Onyx” was the first one where we got significant attention on radio.  We’ve had the same lineup for “Onyx” as this past album “UP” and I think we’ve kind of worked out all the kinks and got the formula down as far as a group of guys that all love each other, who support each other, and work towards a common goal.

 

I heard you started an organization that helps children, what's that about??

Ya know about a year ago I started a non-profit organization called “Star Treatments”, and it’s a transportation service for kids that are sick.  So what we do is we find a family um you know with a child that has to go for chemo treatments and things like that.  We’ll go pick them up from their house in a tour bus and bring them back and forth between their house and the hospital.  And it helps save the family the out of pocket expenses of having to travel back and forth a bunch, not having reliable transportation, or having to take time off from work ya know just the cost of putting gas in your car um, and it also give the kid(s) like a cool, fun experience and a much easier way to ride.  After they get their chemo treatments, sometimes they get sick and rather than just being strapped in the back seat of a car for hours and hours, there is a bathroom for them to get sick in, and ya know, they can go lay down if they don’t feel well and their mom & dad can take care of them.

 

Has anything affected you personally?  How did you come up with this idea?

I’ve always wanted to do something to give back and I’ve always wanted to work with kids.  One day if just kind of popped into my head, I saw a family that I am really close with and they have a little girl who was going thru the same kind of thing.  I watched as their family was able to manage the hospital bills and ya know defer payments, do fundraisers and things to get them taken care of. But it was all the out of pocket expenses that were really really putting them under.  When you take a family that lives sort of lives paycheck to paycheck and doesn’t have the room in their budget for these long trips, a lot of these children’s hospitals are few and far between.  Sometimes people are driving three to five hours one way to get to these places.  I realized something needed to be done and there’s a need that wasn’t being fulfilled.  And with us (Pop Evil) working hand-in-hand with a lot of these tour bus company’s and things like that, I realized that a lot of times they have an extra bus just sitting on their lot not doing anything, so rather than having that bus sit there not helping anybody, not making money for anyone, we can offer them a tax write off on the back end, so at least if they send that bus out, ya know, they can make some money (on the back end with taxes) and help out these families.

 

Where can people go, if they want to donate?

There’s two different ways to do it. You can find us on facebook and there’s a donate button www.facebook.com/startreatmentsorg.  Or you can go to the actual website at www.startreatment.org. We offer a few different ways for you to help out or donate.  If you don’t just want to do a straight cash donation, there's a lot of things you can do.  Like right now if you go to the website you can buy a blown up print of me, that’s like signed and things like that.  Or we’ll have different rock memorabilia from other bands and things like that you can buy and those proceeds go to us (Star Treatments).

 

Back to the new album... “Up” has a little bit of a different tone than Pop Evil’s previous “Onyx”, were things pretty different with you guys this time around?

Yeah absolutely! Ya know, when we went in to record "Onyx" ya know we were all kind of in a pretty dark place we’d had a lot of turnovers in the band, as far different band members coming and going and uh, a lot of things in our personal lives, losing loved ones and things like that, where a lot of "Onyx'” was getting those things off of our chest.  Ya know, we felt like we were getting beat up by the industry and ya know, playing the whole game….I’m sure everyone hears about.  We wrote a record then, to sort of express how we felt about everything and it was like, once we got everything off our chest, we had to go somewhere from there and for us ya know, that was “UP” and that's kind of where it came from. We got to a better point in our lives and started looking at the positive outcome(s) rather than dwelling on the negative ones and that’s how it came to be.  We’re at a place in our lives now where we’re enjoying ourselves, enjoying touring, we’ve had some really great tours, we’ve been able to go overseas, and we’ve had a lot of success at radio due to “Onyx” and things like that.   We wanted to have fun with this new album and play some songs that uh ya know, put smiles on our faces when we play them live.

 

What can someone expect from you guys’ live show?

Um, a pretty high energy show. A lot of highs and lows ya know, we like to take everyone on kind of a journey, play some heavier tunes, play some fun tunes and play some ballads; we try to make it a whole experience from start to finish.

 

Thanks to Matt DiRito for the interview.  Pop Evil currently on the road supporting their latest album 'UP' along with Devour The Day and Bridge to Grace.  See their tour dates here  http://preorder.popevil.com/tour-dates/.  Catch Pop Evil, Bridge to Grace and Shreveport's very own Trepid, downtown Shreveport Friday night Oct. 16.

 

 

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