Credit: Catherine AsanovBig Talk, the band led by The Killers drummer Ronnie Vannucci, will perform on Jimmy Kimmel Live! tonight, July 21, in support of their forthcoming, sophomore album, Straight In No Kissin'. Vannucci started Big Talk while The Killers were on their first hiatus, but he wanted to bring it back again, and this time, he's brought along a few friends.
"I always have a creative itch to scratch I think, it's just something I like doing, I like making records," Vannucci tells ABC Radio. "But I was kinda thinking, like, 'Man, wouldn't this be great to have like a real band.' Not like, you know, Ronnie and the backup boys."
Big Talk is now a five-piece, including original collaborator Taylor Milne, plus John Konesky, John Spiker and Brooks Wackerman, all of whom have played with Jack Black's band Tenacious D. While you may think that the title Straight In No Kissin' was inspired by the silliness of Tenacious D, Vannucci says that it's meaning is much less dirty.
"That's been the title that's been in my world for a few years now," Vannucci explains. "Actually, I tried to get The Killers to use it. It's a saying that we found -- probably heard it from the guy who does the lights in The Killers, he's Irish -- it's a pretty common Irish saying."
Now that he's the lead singer for a proper band, Vannucci has fully made the shift from drummer to frontman.
"It's all music to me, I could be playing a box and that would be some sort of music," Vannucci says. "Of course I had my own fears of it being weird when I got out in front, but it feels strangely natural."
The cover of Straight In No Kissin', which will be released on July 24, features Vannucci and his Big Talk band mates dressed in drag. The album's originally planned artwork featured what Vannucci calls an "underwater space Kraken," but when he met with the designer, she also gave him album covers featuring each Big Talk member standing next to a female version of themselves. Vannucci loved those designs, too, and thought they could be used as artwork for singles.
"And then, like four days later, Vanity Fair publishes this Caitlyn Jenner thing," Vannucci remembers. "I just thought, 'It's so timely, what a great idea, like why can't we identify as women too?' And it was nice little ribbing to the whole sensationalism of the whole thing."
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