The Chairmen Interview

Jonny Gavin - Vocals
Matt Walker - Lead Guitar, Vocals
Luke Walker - Drums, Vocals
Owen Crutchley - Bass
Liam Houchen - Guitar, Vocals

James: You beat 11,000 applicants, for the Surface competition, that was brilliant, a Leicester band doing well!. How tough was that for you guys? What were your thoughts when you were doing that competition?

Luke: Well, our main role was just to get to the regional finals, that was the fourth round in, that was our target when we first started so as long as we got there we’d done all right really. We got there through some really good gigs and, once we got through to the regional finals and saw what the competition was, we thought we were genuinely in there with as much chance as anyone else, so we knew what we had to do, we knew we had to just go out there; I think it was as much to do with the show we put on as to anything else.

Matt: You just had to do a gig at a time, that’s the way we did it. When we entered, it was, like, you can’t predict how far you are going to get, you take a gig at a time, and we put a lot of effort into it and rehearsed a lot, and you try to promote it and stuff like that but, as I said, we just did a gig at a time and we seemed to progress all the way through. We didn’t think we were going to win it.

James: How were the nerves, I mean, did you get to the finals and think “Wahey”?

Luke: Yeah, the last one was scary! As I say, when we walked out on stage there was a balcony at the top and all the VIPS, the judges basically, that’s where you could see them all lined up along the top.

Matt: We were on at, like, 4 o’clock in the afternoon and we thought we were a bit late, so we got there about 20 to 4, and there was a load of people already in, and it was a bit weird. We weren’t just sitting around, so the nerves didn’t really get a chance to kick in. For me, it was literally straight in, setting up - and when we came off – it wasn’t the best was it, but it was good enough!

James: (pointing to Liam) What’s the story of being late? You sort of laughed, did something bad happen!

Liam: I took the blame for that ‘cos I’m always late, I’m terrible. Yeah, it probably was my fault actually, it usually is anyway.

Matt: Yeah, we put on our 2 coaches and it was difficult to co-ordinate that amount of people, you know what I mean, like people turn up late and the time ticks away and we were aiming to leave at a time and we were half an hour late. Then we had problems with tickets and it was one thing after another. We were really stressed out and by the time we, ah ..

James: So how did you get your sound check sorted in to less then half an hour?

Luke: Yeah, it was all sound checked on the fly. It was literally off the bus and on the stage.

James: That’s excellent. That really does have me impressed.

Matt: To say we were surprised to win - you know is a bit of an understatement!!

James: Well okay. I was going to say, so where do you go from here? You’re probably going to get a record deal – you’ve probably got one going by the stuff I’ve read on MySpace and the like.

Luke: We’re looking for a manager at the minute, trying to get a stand-up guy. There are quite a few meetings; it’s just trying to find the right manager for us and then, hopefully, once that’s sorted, we reckon things will start to kick off.

Matt: We need to just keep going together for the next 18 months or so, we’re just trying to, all along, just keep it together and steadily going up and up. Probably the next step for us is to get something released, get some stuff out. It’s difficult to really do it.

Liam: I think that’s why we want a manager, someone who’s got the right sort of contacts, and can point us in the right direction. We know what we want to do, but without knowing

Matt: At the minute we’re just trying to keep it going, so it’s just, like, looking for the right group to do it through.

James: So you need a manager who understands your music, I heard you just there and you seem to be kind of uncomfortable with being stereotyped or boxed into one category.

Matt: Yeah, well, a lot of people try to realte our sound to other bands, but the song or whatever, the sound is something else (all laughing)

Liam: It’s hard to pinpoint it, but sound is something else, but even the people who are doing certain sounds are, like, that’s it, that’s why we’re here, our band cruising or losing, but even they say, as it goes on, you’ve got to find your own sound.

Matt: Every band likes to say that they’ve got their own sound and they are being completely original, but obviously they claim that. Obviously we’ve got influences and we’ll take bits from other things, but I think we have managed to maybe create things slightly different from what’s out there, that’s what we’re trying to do. We aim not to sound like anyone.

Luke: We’ve always said that we take quite a lot of our influence from the local bands, ‘cos we play a log of gigs around Leicester, we’ve got a lot of mates in bands around Leicester, and a lot of our influences come from our mates in other bands who have got different sounds. There are loads of good bands in Leicester, there’s some really, really good bands in Leicester and you play with them, and you say “That sounds good”, and when you play with them every, like we do, every month, you start taking influence from them, so we’re probably taking more from local bands.

James: Obviously we like to support the local music scene in Leicestershire, but sometimes it seems Nottingham gets more coverage, but you guys seem to be bucking the trend.

Luke: We were at this radio station the other day, at BBC Nottingham, and he said the complete opposite. He said a lot of bands in Nottingham don’t like it because he always goes on about the Leicester music scene and they like us better.

Matt: We see, we need to get back into them …. it might be a really good venue but, I mean, we play a lot of gigs with local bands, doing club nights. We played one recently, The Heroes one, like, there were The Heroes and two other bands and it was packed out, and I’ve been to the Charlotte to see big bands and it’s not been that busy, and it was, like, packed out for The Heroes and us. It’s all about networking with the right bands and doing favours for each other, which we try and do, we try and get on with the other bands. There are good nights if you go to the right places and you know who you’ve got in – there’s good nights going on. There is a thriving scene about; there’s a lot of bands who have good music, so it’s only a matter of time before somebody picks up on a band from Leicester.

James: Have you played Nottingham?

Matt: We’ve never played there. We’d really like to but we’ve not been together that long, and we have sort of got about a bit, but that’s one of the things we want to do, is to get out more and more, like. We’ve played quite a few gigs in Birmingham, Bar-Fly is an amazing venue, it’s probably the best sound system we’ve ever played, a great venue, you know. But we haven’t capitalised on Nottingham or Coventry or anywhere, like, you know, so we’ve really got to sort of get Leicester now, done in a way – well, we’re well known in Leicester. We need to get out a bit more and try to do the same things in other cities, and I think Birmingham maybe through that. We’ve got some gigs coming up in Birmingham, but we need to look at other places and try to do the same things we’ve done in Leicester – that’s all something to aim for.

James: That’s fantastic. What are your personal interests? You mentioned earlier – can I drag you back there - to little bands, what about big bands? What sort of things do you draw on from there?

Luke: We’re all into different stuff, we’re all into a lot of music so – the main difference for me probably, is just from the older bands that my Dad used to listen to, so you listen to all your Dad’s records and because you grew up on them they’ll always remain your favourites; like the Who, bands like that, Led Zeppelin stuff. But Jeff Buckley and people like that. I don’t think any of us has a particular music choice. Listen to all sorts of stuff, guitar stuff and do on.

Liam: It is hard, like, to put an influence, like these and these, you know what I mean?

James: I think a lot of the bigger bands have, they have actually – you guys are still fairly new - and they have sheets, they have all the standard answers, and they read it out – you’ll get to that stage (the lads laugh) You’ll hate doing it, but it’s one of those things – so there’s a limit there for a start. What made you start to play drums?

Luke: Well, I was actually a guitarist. I started playing guitar when I was 9, and then Matt started playing after me

Matt: Yeah, he’s my brother – legal!

James: I saw the surname is the same but you don’t look anything like each other. (Laughter)

Matt: You’ve got to follow in the footsteps of your older brother.

Luke: But then he got better than me so I chucked the guitar in.

James: What about you two, how did you start?

Andy: I dunno, when I was a kid I reckon.

Liam: I started off when I was about 10 I think.

Luke: His Dad’s got about 15 guitars.

Liam: My Dad was doing what I was doing, he was in bands and stuff. I was into Bob Dylan and then before I joined Chairmen I was doing acoustic stuff.

Matt: We were actually a 4-piece for the best part of a year, we did a few gigs and got going, and we did a few gigs with him, so got to know him through his solo acoustic stuff. Then we decided we wanted to have Johnny as a front man, so Liam was the obvious choice. Obviously, we regret it now :).

James: Have you got any words of advice for young people trying to get into what you guys are doing, what would they be?

Luke: Getting your own practice room.

James: Really? Are there any decent practice rooms out there?

Luke: Well, we practice in the bottom of a pub, it’s like a room next to the cellar, that’s brilliant.

Matt: Actually, we practice in the Prince of Wales at Hinckley for free...

Luke: Yeah, he gives us the room for free. We’ve got our own room, it’s set up for us any time of the day we want. It makes such a difference, just being able to turn up here, you don’t have to pay anything or set up your gear when you get down here, you just turn up, and that’s good.

Matt: The thing about being in bands is, it’s ridiculously hard work to get any level of quality, I’ve got respect for anyone who does it. Its’ a lot of hard work and arguments, going ape, tension. Practice, practice, and we work harder when we have gigs coming up. We’ve started to get to a level we’re happy with, and starting to enjoy a bit of success, a reasonable bit of success, so it’s well worthwhile, when you realise the amount of work you’ve done.

Luke: To be fair, in 3 months we’ve played main stage Summer Sunday, that was main quality, we've played main stage Carling, then we’ve played stages like Bar-Fly. In the space of a few months we’ve certainly stepped up, you keep playing these gigs.

Liam: and your gigs have gone from, like, a base level to the next level, as far as venues go anyway.

James: I guess you guys are into internet savvie, ‘cos you use MySpace – you’ve got a lot of friends. I lost count and then felt jealous (how many friends?!), but how useful do you find MySpace? Because some bands are using them to circumvent the usual road to record companies.

Luke: Yeah, it definitely does help, but I think people are starting to move away from it a little bit more now.

Matt: I don’t think we’ve capitalised on it as much as we have been doing.

Luke: I think maybe we’ve missed the boat a little bit, because, to be honest I don’t think as many people use MySpace as frequently as they do maybe FaceBook these days. It seems to have taken over, but FaceBook’s not as user-friendly for bands as MySpace, so it’s difficult.

Matt: It’s definitely a useful tool. You can record a song and then you can have it on the internet the same day, and if enough people go to your page then you can have that many people listen to your song the day after you record it, so in terms of that, it’s brilliant. You can release a song and get it out there, so in terms of that it’s absolutely awesome. But it’s hard work to get it running you’ve got to be on there talking to people, doing this and that, and again, it’s time and effort. We’ve got a lot of gigs through MySpace, talking to bands, who have promoted us, kind of thing. It’s just part of being in a band now; if you’re a band you have to have MySpace sort of thing.

James: You’ve not got your street team sorted out now then?? I’ve talked to our friend, Gareth from Oadby. If you give him a job, you can pay him in badges.

Luke: We’ve got a merchandise man. He’s not sorted it out yet.

Liam: He should be here, but he’s probably forgot! (There’s a bit of merriment)

James: Anyway, if we could leave you there guys. Thank you very much. You’re probably one of the better bands we've heard on the Indie music scene, to be honest. I wish you all the best of luck, maybe we’ll see you gigging at Rock City or bigger!