After Gig Chat With The Surfin’ Birds

In a small, packed bar in the middle of the Falmouth high street, an unfamiliar sound could be heard luring people in. The sound of fifties rock ‘n’ roll colliding with punk and blues made something more fun and energetic. That sound, I found out, was the sound of modern surf music and boy is it entertaining. After an hour of dancing an inch or so from the stage on a small, crowded and overly happy dance floor I interviewed brothers Paul (Singer) and Liam (drummer) with bassist Dave about playing live as their band The Surfin’ Birds.

Q: What do you think of playing in Falmouth and playing here in toast?

 

Paul: I absolutely love it. There’s a friend of ours who invited us down in the first place, Simon Davis (who I’ve known a long time), so he just invited us down to do one show two years ago, and we come back; this is our fourth time we all gathered a crowd on the way so it’s all good. Every time we come to play its always alright and a good reception and people dig it; they like their surf music.

 

Q: What would you say to people who haven’t seen you play, what you say to expect?

 

Paul: A big, fat, sinister surf sound, it’s not necessarily a surf sound in the traditional concept of it but you’ve got the Fender guitars and the Wang bars and all that from the sixties which I love personally but were trying to revamp it. My brother, he’s into punk, ska and new wave and things like that and then you’ve got Dave on the bass who’s into Motown, James Jamerson and stuff and I love blues and I love blues and surf rock and stuff like that.

 

Q: People were dancing and were packed so close to the band; almost dancing with you. Is that something you look for in a gig?

 

Paul: I love that yeah, when the crowds ten centimetres away and you see them sweat just as much as you that’s a great feeling, of course it is. No matter if you’re playing in front of a thousand people or a hundred people I always prefer the closer crowds.

 

Liam: I like any gigs but I do prefer when it’s more intimate; you do get more of a reaction out of the crowd.

 

Q: What’s you favourite gig to date?

 

Dave: Today, it’s about as far back as I can remember and I’m the driver.

 

Paul: That’s a hard one because different situations, different gigs. One on the nicest ones was when we supported Wanda Jackson because we love Wada Jackson a rockabilly star from the 50s I do know though because I prefer little clubs. Simon has seen us so many times, he’s the one who got us the gig here.

 

Simon: My favourite gig of yours, probably the first time you played here, it wasn’t even the gig it was just playing at my house after.

 

Paul: We went to a student house after and we did a gig for about two and a half hours after and we got a bit pissed.

 

Q: When you  walk away from a gig what makes you think if it was a good gig or not?

 

Paul: The crowd, we get more into it if it is a crowd that is enjoying it. We’ve been to these gigs were people just stand there at the back and clap and say “oh my God you sound so close to the Sonics or the ventures” fuck that man, we just love the music and we play in our own way.

 

Q: What do you take influence from as a live band?

 

Paul: It’s like psychedelic Punk music, that what I call it. Were into bands like Cream and Hendrix and all those bands from the sixties, the Stooges, we love how they bowed everything together in the mid-sixties garage scene. Garage bands like the Sonics and we are the people. All those kind of bands that put it into a three minuet track. That’s great for an album but live you have to give it something else, you have to play off the sweat of your pants.

 

Dave: All about the crowd if, their into it you can really feed off of it and get in the zone a bit more, when it’s more tame, your tamer in your performance . As influence where trying to bring back the power trio, Cream and all that.

 

Q: What are you doing for the rest of the year?

 

Paul: Were just in the middle of doing an album and were recording that with ambassador records and that will be out around spring time so you can check it out on the internet and check us out on Facebook. We have some gigs coming up and we play all over, last year we played in Sweden and that’s the first time we played away; we had to bring our game to Sweden. That was quite nerve racking for us three country boys.

 

Q: Which do you prefer live or studio work?

 

Paul: Live! I love the studio because you can create, you can think about things and go through things and be bit more creative in that sense but I think live were its more off the cuff is more exciting because you don’t know what’s going to happen next.

 

Q: Does it surprise you that many people from bands prefer studio work?

 

Paul: Not at all, that could be their creative source. My creative source personally being into Blues and Jazz, I like to play and improvise.

 

Liam: With music you have to affect people. I prefer live because when you’re in the studio you’re not performing to anyone; were here to entertain.

 

Dave: Especially in our days how the markets going, an album is used as a tool to get people to go to your gigs, it’s gone on a roundabout circuit.

 

Q: Why should people come and see you live?

 

Paul: I’d say psychedelic surf music. It’s stuff to dance to but be prepared for the unexpected.

 

Liam: it’s not popular music but when you hear it your love it

https://www.facebook.com/TheSurfinBirds?fref=ts

We’re no heros interview

An unused interview with We’re no Heroes for Holdupnow.com, filmed during the 2013 Mojo rising festival in Falmouth.

Tall ships interview

An unused interview with the Tall ships i did for Holdupnow.com, filmed at the 2013 Mojo rising festival.

The Other Tribe inteview

An unused interview i did with the Other Tribe for Holdupnow.com during the 2013 Mojo rising festival in Falmouth.

The Hit ups Interview

On the last day of Mojo rising festival in Falmouth, in a venue that promised to be the best of all the locations the festival was held at over the previous few days, the Electro rock, synth packed beast of The Hits Ups were scheduled to headline but the event was cancelled due to noise level problems. Instead of an energy fueled mosh I sat down in the corner of the emptying bar with lead guitarist Charlie Torrible and lead singer Josh Hughes-Games to have a chat about playing live, musical influences and a friendly yet rival band.

Q: Has this ever happened before?

Josh: Yeah it has actually once before, its just one of these difficult things when theirs miscommunications between people, we’ve got to be diplomatic in these situations. Its one of those hollow things for us that we get paid for what we do, we like actually doing shows, so its like a real drag when you turn up and can’t play and in this case your ready to play, were ready to go, but anyway cant be too bad.

Charlie: When it happened before we were in the basement of a hotel and they’d booked it all up especially, it was all amazing and then in the second song in the hotel manager came down and was like you’ve go to turn it right down and it sounds like a real easy thing to say I guess but when you base your whole vibe around kind of in your face punk rock.

Josh: Its quite difficult to explain to someone that you can’t turn that kind of music down, and you especially can’t turn lyrics down because its just loud, that’s all it is just loud.

Q: What are people to expect when they come to see you live?

Josh: If people come to see us live they can expect a lot of energy, we do play really loud, our intention is just to make people dance and get people having a good time, let people go a bit crazy. Its an experience for us, we like going nuts and involving people as much as we can. So a very interactive show.

Charlie: Yeah because there is a lot of traditional ways to experience the whole the live scene, I’m not talking about us I’m talking about gigs in general. You go there, you do this, you do that and I guess your supposed to walk away saying that yeah I loved that song or I loved that thing and we wanna totally freak people out in the best possible way and for them to go fuck that was the best thing I have ever experienced, not just the music but you were right in my face in a sexy, sexy way.

Q: What has been your best gig to date? Which was the most fun?

Charlie: Yesterday was sick, got a bit hectic but …

Josh: Yesterday was amazing. Its one of those interesting things, Its always difficult trying to pick out your best show because their always amazing for different reasons. We’ve played like a festival shows that have been like massive crowds and their insane. But last night we were in Bristol and we had loads of people crammed into this tiny room and it was just kicking off, going mental. We played London as part of this tour, that was crazy as well.

Charlie: There’s different reasons, like a festival is a completely different thing theirs like a sea of people that are half baked anyway. Canterbury was a weird, awesome show because it was this tiny little narrow bar.

Josh: We were on the floor just playing, I was on the table.

Charlie: It was just really cool and that’s the best way people vibe off it and that’s one of the amazing things about this tour because it was the first time properly taking in everything like stop, stop, stop nationwide and it’s the best feeling.

Josh: People have really been reacting well to it which is a really flattering thing because when everyday we have people sending us messages on Facebook and to our email saying we want you to come back and people who were in the crowd who really enjoyed the show and its such a nice thing to hear. All good shows for different reasons but Bristol was grate, London was grate, Canterbury was grate and all the other places were grate to.

Q: What festivals have you got lined up in the summer?

Josh: Were being a bit sneaky about what’s going on in the next couple of months because we’ve got a lot of different things planned, some of it we can’t talk about yet because were still sorting it out but were be disappearing for a while, we might be making some festival appearances and a couple of little shows but were be announcing about it all soon.

Q: When did the band start? When did you all get together?

Josh: Its been a strange progression in away because we’ve all played music together for along time under different guises but me Charlie, Samuel and Lewis so Drums, guitar, bass and vocals we’ve played together for a long time and me and Nick who’s the synth player, we used to do this hip-hop thing together so we brought him into the band about two, three years ago. So the incarnation of the Hit Ups as we are now, about three years. Before then we did a load of different stuff and all stuff we were really proud of  but it was not what we are now so we view what we are now as three years.

Charlie: When your little kids you’ve got to spend a lot of time being shit before you get anywhere and actually can put on a good show and play some good songs

Q: Is that advice to anyone trying to start up?

Charlie: Its advice to anyone trying to do anything, this is Charles motivational speaking hour welcome. Everyone starts up and are like yeah were shit and I’m like of course your shit you’ve only done it once. I’m trying to think back to the first gig we ever did, to be fair we were pretty good, but its like anything, you’ve got to go through that.

Josh: I think its one of those weird things for us to be giving advice because people have asked us that question before like what advise would you give to up and coming bands and I’d say I don’t know because were still learning it all. But just doing it for the right reasons and continuing to try and do it is the best thing to do.

Charlie: Listen to awesome music, listen to awesome bands.

Q: Another question you may get asked a lot: who are your music influences? What music has influenced the band?

Josh: This is another of one of these things for us, all of us come from such different musical directions it’s a nice thing. We have loads of bands we all like but we all bring in different things like I’m a big fan of the southern hard-core stuff like Every Time I Die and some more American hard-core influences like The Bronx and those sort of guys.

Charlie: I’m a mega Foals, electro and indie music so all the elctro heads, producers like Wolfgang Gartner.

Josh: Then from that you’ve got Nick whose a huge hip-hop fan, he always has been like that really experimental end of hip-hop he’s into Flying Lotus and them kind of guys. That’s how we write, we want our music to appeal to as many people who it can get to really.

Charlie: Lewis Jamiroquai and funk head and Samuel is a grunge guy with his punkish; you can definitely smell the punk in Lewis’s drumming.

Josh: I think its one of those things, we try to bring in as many influences from as many places we can. I wouldn’t want to cut off any of the influences, apart from drum and bass, he (Charlie) might thou.

Charlie: This is the thing were have an argument about that

Before the interview with Josh and Charlie, just an hour earlier we had met up with another band playing at MoJo Rising, The Other Tribe. After saying we were heading down the road to interview The Hits Ups they couldn’t help but add a few questions for us to ask.

Q via The Other Tribe: Charlie, has being a “suit” in the music industry helped in the music far?

Charlie: It hasn’t helped any of the music definitely not but its helped my understanding of the bis has gone tenfold, its gonna be so valuable that and also what he means by suit is that I work in legal and business so I’m always dealing with contacts and the negotiations and stuff and so for me I really understand when you gonna get fucked over in the contract and what parts of the contract you can negotiate and what parts you can’t and its like if we got a deal I’ll be doing the legal aspect of it, when we’re dealing with our managers, agents stuff I know the kind of framework  could potentially fuck us up. Cuz a contract is their to make you feel secure but its full of little twists and turns so its kind of like false promise like here now you can feel relaxed because you’ve signed this contract, when the reality is now we’ve totally fucked you over. But that’s the rant, I love the company and I love the business but its not helped with the music one drop cuz I haven’t got the time to write. On that point I’m looking forward to taking some time out and coming back to the music which I’ve missed a lot.

Q via The Other Tribe: Denim cut offs?

Josh: Denim cut offs yeah still sexy baby.

Q via The Other Tribe: Josh, you have been nicknamed the illustrated man. Explain.

Josh: The illustrated man, I didn’t know I had that nickname. I have a relative amount of tattoos but not that much, I have some quite intense tattoos. But I don’t know if that’s talking about tattoos or drawing but either way I have some silly tattoos and I also do draw so thank you very much.

Q via The Other Tribe: Who looks up to who between the two bands?

Josh: Obviously they look up to us. Obviously I mean look at them.

Charlie: Their the new boys on the scene, we’ve been there for years.

Josh: Were the patriarchs man, we’ve been around.

Charlie: You can write that down CC them in and put it in bold.

Josh: Just tell them any time they want an arm wrestle were waiting. We’ve know them guys for a while and we love em. 

Small town Dub

Falmouth, a small sea side town on the banks of an estuary. It has a picturesque beach that sits on one side of town while a cobbled street of shops and restaurants winds down the other. Not a place you would think would have a booming dub-step scene then.

Yet constantly speakers in clubs and pubs rattle to the unmistakable sound of dub-step bass week after week. If there is no Jungle, drum n bass, dub-step DJ playing at the rugby club then you can bet your last pennies that there will be one down the other end of town in Waterman’s.  Other Falmouth clubs/bars such as Underground and Q bar are not scared to test the capability of the plaster on the walls with the occasional dub mix.

The dub-step scene down in little, old Falmouth is bigger than that of my home town and of the towns and cities of many people who I have spoke to. Is it the fact that Falmouth is a student town and dub-step is one of the sounds of the current uni goer’s generation? Is it just because Falmouth or the south west in general has embraced the music more than others?

I know there is a lot of people, a lot of music lovers who do not like the racket that dub-step makes but I think I can speak for even them when I say its much better than your general nightclub pop-dance shit.

Land of the Giants self named EP

Land of the Giants are a band I have previously written about after seeing them Live in the Kings Head pub, Falmouth. I gave them a raving review as they created such an energetic, fun and warm atmosphere. The band have trumpets, trombones , guitar solos and fun lyrics that combine to make a lively sound.

I have always thought that trumpets and guitar solos make a good, full sound live but converting that sound to disk is hard. I think the Land of the Giants have fallen into this problem, the brass instruments sound too subdued and you can pick out the repetitive nature of their tunes. As for the solos, they have been dropped completely but many modern day bands leave guitar solos for the live stage these days.

However the EP still manages to capture the emotion and energy of their live performances; the sound is still up-beat and makes you jig about to the music. Lead singer, Andrew Wonderwick Quick’s vocals are impressive and give a gravelly edge to the free-flowing music.

Land of the giants picture tacken from http://www.facebook.com/landofthegiantsuk

” I didn’t come in a fancy car, it was a Ford Fiesta” – Lyrics from track one “Best days”

All in all, for a first EP the band have done a good job. With some fine tuning and a slightly more complex brass section, Land of the Giants are well on their way to a good album. After I saw this band live I had high expectations of their EP but unfortunately it does not live up to the standards they set in their live performance. That it is not to say this EP is bad, it shows the band could definitely be on their way to bigger things.

Yes Sir Boss live at Gylly

Gylly beach cafe was the venue for Bristol based band, Yes Sir Boss, on the 12^th of March. Their music is quirky, with complex riffs and horn based rhythm. The band have recently been signed to Joss Stones Stoned records and are thought to be on the rise in the music world.

They were the first band in Falmouth I paid to go and see but it was also on a Monday night so I wasn’t expecting the crowd to go as wild as previous nights. Yes Sir Boss are also the first band that I had heard music from before I went to see them so I knew a little of what to expect.

The venue was hot and stuffy but the warm up act did well to get the crowd interested. It was around half 9 when Yes Sir Boss made it on stage and they went straight in with one of their jazzy up beat records. Out  of all the bands I have seen down in Falmouth it showed that Yes Sir Boss are the most professional, their crisp, eloquently executed music was definitely that of a signed band.

The crowd wasn’t exactly bouncing up and down but they were definitely dancing and having a good time. Lead singer Matt Sellors was bantering with the crowd and applauding, the atmosphere was fun and quirky. After the show lead singer Matt said: “Its a Monday night, everyone had already turned up and were up for it, it didn’t really go mental but what do you expect on a Monday night, we didn’t go mental either.”

He also agreed that Falmouth was a destination they didnt visit often enough “I think we should play down here more often as every time we do a gig down here its always so well received, everyone loves us and the crowds are brilliant, they make us feel happy”.

He gave the Falmouth Crowd another 10/10 but highlighted it was only 10/10 for a Monday night (so I don’t know if we can add that to the tally). If you missed Yes Sir Boss they are playing at many, many festivals this summer, just keep track of their tour dates.

Tom First and Jehan Abdel-Malak on the horns

Lead Singer Matt Sellors

Falmouth crowds get 10/10 rating from bands.

The Kings head pub in Falmouth has been the venue for some high energy rock music in the last few weeks. Black Friday, a fast tempo folk band and Land of Giants a rock, ska band have both got the inconspicuous pub jumping and both rated the packed crowd 10 out of 10.

Black Friday who played at the venue on the 17^th of February got everyone dancing to their upbeat Irish sound. Lead singer Tom O’Reilly said they play in Falmouth regularly “We play down here quite often really, once a month”. Tom went on to say that the night had been “Very busy, great fun” and the crowd had “been brilliant, 10 out of 10.”

Land of the Giants came two weeks later on the 2^nd of March. Despite a slow start the crowd was literally jumping to touch the celling and dancing with the brass players who jumped into the packed dance floor. Lead guitarist Sam said that it had been “The best gig we’ve done in a while basically” and the drummer said “I’d give this 10 out of 10 … the crowd here were amazing tonight.”

If Falmouth starts building a reputation as a thriving, energetic town then more and more bands will want to come and perform, more well-known artists may venture down to the south west. Land of Giants said the night had been “Good fun, really good fun”. Even two of the Kings head’s bartenders were jumping at the front of the crowd, if there are more nights like that bands will surely want to come and perform.

You will be able to see Black Friday in Finn Mcouls, Falmouth on the 16^th and Land of the Giants are playing in several festivals around the south west this summer including Bristol fest, Volksfest in Plymouth, Shambala and Super Cardiff party.