Artist Interviews on Maverick 100.9 · Bryan Broadcasting

Giovannie and The Hired Guns Artist Interview August 2024

August 21, 2024·33 min·2 clips

Gio explains he was taking what he thought were Percocets — 'everything that everybody's overdosing on, those little blue pills' — and didn't realize he was addicted until withdrawal hit him while performing at weekend shows.

1. Maverick 100.9 host Corliss interviews Giovanni Yannis, lead singer of Giovannie and The Hired Guns, ahead of the band's return show at The Tap in College Station, Texas. 2. Corliss, who has hosted Maverick since its launch a couple months before the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, describes the station as Texas country and says she kept listeners updated on Gio's condition during his time away. 3. The episode's core subject is Gio's return from a structured rehabilitation facility and what led him there, as well as news about an upcoming album and smaller venue tour. 4. Gio describes the band's genre expansion into rock over recent years — including festival appearances alongside Rob Zombie and Pantera at Rock La Jolla — as a natural progression he embraced rather than a strategic pivot. 5. Gio explains his decision to return to smaller venues like The Tap rather than immediately resuming large tours: he wanted to 'dip his toes back in' and play rooms where he feels at home, describing it as baby steps before returning to the tours he was doing before his break. 6. Gio reveals his addiction began with what he believed were real Percocets but were counterfeit pills containing fentanyl, which he describes as 'the little blue pills' responsible for widespread overdoses. 7. He explains he used them casually during the week and didn't realize the dependency until withdrawal symptoms began hitting him at weekend shows, when he would text his dealer while on the bus back home. 8. The behavioral change Gio describes is becoming 'self-centered' and disengaged — not caring about his band, his wife, or anyone around him — which he calls completely out of character. 9. His band, management, and close support group staged an intervention in his living room; Gio and Corliss both reference the shared cultural dread of MTV's Intervention, with Corliss noting 'in real life it would be the best moment of your life.' 10. Gio reflects on male conditioning — the pressure to appear strong, not show feelings, and not ask for help — as a barrier he had to work through, summarizing it as 'we're learning to unlearn.' 11. The rehabilitation facility he attended was structured and restrictive: no cell phone contact, roommates, a commissary, walls around the perimeter, and controlled communication about who he could call and when. 12. Gio chose to extend his stay beyond what was required, a detail Corliss highlights as evidence of his commitment to the process rather than treating it as something to exit as quickly as possible. 13. Corliss shares her own parallel story about problematic drinking: realizing at an award show in 2020 that she had won a major radio trophy and couldn't remember the night because she had been drinking to manage stage fright. 14. Corliss describes attending a CRS psychiatry session in 2020 focused on why creatives like Robin Williams and Amy Winehouse hide their struggles behind performance energy, and how that session informed her own decision to stop blacking out nights that mattered. 15. Gio confirms rehearsals with the band have happened and everyone is excited for the return, expressing that the smaller venue format is intentional preparation for larger touring. 16. The forthcoming album was written during his period of active addiction; Gio calls it 'basically a cry for help' and places it sonically between Godsmack and Avenged Sevenfold, with some acoustic songs alongside the heavier tracks. 17. Gio says the album after this one, made sober, will be 'really good and deep' — implying the addiction-era record documents a specific state of mind rather than a permanent direction. 18. The conversation is conducted with mutual affection — Corliss repeatedly expresses pride in Gio as both an artist and a person — and both share personal vulnerabilities rather than maintaining professional distance. 19. Tone is warm and candid, with Corliss steering toward emotion and Gio answering with consistent openness; the format is an informal radio interview recorded via video call (likely Zoom, which Corliss references running out). 20. Best suited for fans of Giovannie and The Hired Guns or listeners interested in first-person accounts of fentanyl recovery from public figures in the music industry.

As heard by us

A candid radio conversation that moves from easy banter into addiction, withdrawal, and intervention.

Giovannie Yannis comes across as open and unguarded, and that gives the conversation more weight than a routine radio check-in. It starts with easy joking and a shared rhythm, then moves into addiction, withdrawal, secrecy, and the intervention that made everything impossible to…

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Why you'd press play

Hear Gio open up about the spiral behind the songs.

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