The Junkyard Birds were born in Samatan, France (Southwest France) in 1996. The play a blues-rock amalgamation and are pretty honest about their origins.

"We were not very skilled musicians," says Mathieu Bézian, singer/bassist. "The band was named after The Yardbirds, as we played blues rock, quite crappy, unskilled, with bad gear sometimes looking as it comes from a dirty junkyard, so I added 'junk' to Yardbirds, I cut 'birds' and here we are."

But over time they corrected this tiny flaw of not being able to play very well. The band sort of had to since Bézian started the project because he was bored of the other local acts. It took years and a Spinal Tap level of line-up changes but the band wound up a three piece (David Authié on guitar / backing vocals, Bézian on bass / lead vocals and Dave Persoglia on drums). The music is characterized by John Bonham meets Dave Lombardo drums with strong dirty bass lines. And while they certainly nod to the blues rock of the seventies they have as much in common with nineties metal.

"And if blues is still the root of all evil in our music, it's ten times louder [than] it was in the past," says Bézian. "We're clearly stage oriented, but now in studio we work well and hard to give our music all the headroom it needs to live."

Drummer Dave Persoglia uses Noble & Cooley drums.

"They are very good indeed acoustically and on tape. Cymbals are turning-over too fast -- he breaks so much metal," says Bézian.

Authié has been playing -- for a couple of weeks -- a new blue Rickenbacker 620.

"It is a very beautiful guitar, with a good sound, lots of brightness and easiness to play," says Bézian. "Before this he used to play a Fender Esquire GT because of the mahogany body and the Seymour Duncan invader pickup, but the sound was quite messy sometimes in low mediums."

The 620 is a solid body guitar and a fairly small one. The guitar has a rosewood fret board, maple body neck and twin single coils. It also comes in a 12 string version. It seems like all Rickenbackers do (or am I crazy). Interestingly Rickenbacker is one of the few large companies that make all their guitars in the United States.

Bézian himself plays a Rickenbacker bass.

"I play a cherry red 1973 Rickenbacker bass live, 4001 model, with lots of scratches and hits, the bass was very tired of many years of heavy playing at the time I bought it," he says. "It took me a lot of money to bring it to pro-level, as fret-wire, tuning machines, the bridge, the truss-rod and some circuitry were nearly dead. The sound of the rick lacks a bit of low, and the output is not very high, but this bass looks awesome, its very easy to play, and people met at the gigs like to talk about with me! And for the driving rhythms it's very good as it's a very dynamic instrument."

The 4001 was first produced in 1961. At one point Paul McCartney played some version of a 4001. There was a reissue of the bass but the Rickenbacker website does not list the model as currently available.

When it comes to effects guitarist Authié uses a Line 6 echo park, a Boss line selector to drive more or less gain to his JCM 800, a Morley Classic Wah and a Fender Tuner.

Bézian is an Ibanez man when it comes to effects with a nod to Morley and Electro Harmonix.

"I use an Ibanez OD-9, the best chaotic distortion unit in the entire universe, two IBANEZ flangers FL301 and FL9, an Electro Harmonix Small Stone , a Morley ABY box to drive my two amps (next), some fuzz boxes from time to time (Fuzz Face and Boss Fuzz), a BBE sonic Maximizer, which is a very good unit to bring out of the mess the attack of the lower notes you play, useful in club gigs where it's very difficult and a real-pain-in-the-ass to hear what is going out of my old Ampeg 2*12 inches cab, and at last Boss TU2 tuner." says Bézian.

More on amps and studio stuff with Junkyard Birds soon.