For a long time my brother has been in a band, they have been trying and trying to make it big in the music industry, they’ve been gigging all around Liverpool and someone from Delta Sonic Records has noticed them and finally they have been signed and now they are writing their album and ready to make a name for themselves. The band consists of five members, they are Mike Ellis, 22, (vocals), Jamie Roberts, 22, (guitar), Ryan Ellis, 18 (guitar), Lloyd Shearer, 20 (bass) and Ben Robinson, 16 (drums). I went along with them to a practice to have a listen to their stuff and I loved it, I’ve been looking forward to doing the interview for a while now so here it is.
So first of all, how did you get noticed? How did you actually get signed?
ME – well a friend of a friend recommended us to someone who was trying to work with Delta Sonic and he knew Alan Wills who’s our manager at the moment, we got him down and he sort of said ‘do A, B and C and we’ll sign you’ so that’s what we did.
So Delta Sonic has The Coral and The Zutons on the label doesn’t it? So does that feel good to be on the same label as them?
ME – Yeah it’s good like
JR – It’s a good thing to say to your mates like, no one’s heard of the label so you just sort of drop the Z bomb.
ME – yeah you have to tell people about them otherwise people aren’t gonna know what you’re talking about when you say you’re signed to Delta Sonic.
I’ve heard a few songs so far and they’re really good, is the album looking alright?
ME – We’ve finished all the tunes!
LS – Just have to record them now. Writing more and more songs.
JR – Starting the second album now.
Last time I came to a practice, there was different people here, how did you all sort of meet?
BR – We’d rather not talk about them like.
JR – Yeah, some people just didn’t pull their weight so they had to go.
So how did you meet up with Ryan and Lloyd then?
LS – I was pretty well known round town, I was kind of a big deal, and these had to ring me, get the best musicians about and get to it.
ME – We needed a good bass player and another guitarist and there was a good bass player and a good guitarist practicing next door to us so it was quite easy really.
So have you been through a lot of line ups then?
ME – Me and Jay have, quite a lot of jokers like.
JR – Yeah about 4 drummers, 5 or 6 bass players.
ME – You’ve seen them all Ad, you’ve probably been in the band at some point.
So gigs. Have you had a best gig?
ME – There was a particular one we did in The Shipping Forecast, we got the best reaction we could and we were just feeding off the crowd.
Have you had a worst?
JR – Performance wise, The Kazimier. It was the worst we’ve played.
ME – It was still good though, so even when we’re bad we’re good.
Jay and Mike, you’re the oldest, how long have you been trying to get into the industry for?
JR – Since we were about 14 so 8 years.
ME – But not actually achieving anything until a year, a year and a half ago.
Have you met anyone along the way? Any famous people?
ME – We’ve met Dave McCabe a few times like, I saw him on Bold Street trying to put a bottle up someone’s car exhaust.
JR – Yeah this is Dave McCabe, by the way, the lead singer of The Zutons, you can put that in the interview no one’s gonna be
Have you had the chance to meet any famous people?
ME – Yeah we’ve had the chance to meet Liam Gallagher, we were asked to play with Beady Eye in Abu Dhabi but due to the record funding we couldn’t go, they just didn’t have enough money for it.
What was your reaction to that when you couldn’t do it?
ME – We threw our toys out the pram like, we weren’t happy.
BR – You know those riots that went on in Liverpool, yeah that’s what caused it, that’s how angry we were.
Would you say you have any influences?
ME – People like The Cult and The Smiths, it’s just different bits of everything really.
LS – We’ve all had different influences; it’s just when we put them all together that’s the final product, that’s our sound.
Would you model yourselves on anyone?
ME – We wanted to be BRMC (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club) for a bit like.
LS – But now we’re our own thing.
JR – We’ve got a bit of everything in there, a modern style to us.
ME – Yeah a modern style with a bit of biker rocker in there.
JR – Not the gay kind of biker though, that’s not us, more of Ben’s kind of thing.
When you’re writing songs do you all do it together or will someone start it off?
ME – A bit of both really.
LS – Someone will just come in with a riff or something and we’d build it up from there or we’d just be having a jam in practice and we’d get something out of that.
JR – We could have something from a few weeks ago and bring it back and start working with it again and even sometimes we’ve used parts from songs from years ago and just merged them together to create something else. It’s a lot easier than writing from scratch.
So the music comes before the lyrics then?
JR – Most of the time yeah, unless Mike comes with lyrics and a few chords for a melody then we’ll just do what we do.
How would you describe your music?
ME – It’s just rock ‘n’ roll isn’t it really, you can try and come up with a catchy one liner but at the end of the day it’s just rock ‘n’ roll.
So the single is nearly done isn’t it?
LS – We’ve been working on it for a while now, it’s getting there.
ME – I think the longer we spend on it the more indecisive we’re gonna get about it. But it will be out this century like so just keep posted and it’ll be there at some point.
Do you have any ideas for the video?
LS – We had the idea of driving round in a car like but none of us can drive so that ideas gone out the window. But we’ll see what happens.
ME – We haven’t got any ideas of yet but one of the gurus will come up with an idea.
JR – It’ll be decent.
What do you plan to do next? What are your plans for the future?
LS – Make loads of money, get the music out there and get people to listen to it.
JR – Get the single out, get the following single out and get the album out.
ME – Give the rock ‘n’ roll back to the people.
BR – That’s about it really.
Interview by Adam Roberts
