The Sheffield Scenester

The Last Standing Interview 14th January 2011

I caught up with Andy Holmes, Chris Skelton, Jim Loukes and Casey Ward aka The Last Standing before their 1st Birthday gig at The Plug to chat to them about the past year and what their plans are for the future.

Sheffield Scenester: You’ve been together for a year now, how has the past year been for you?

Jim: It has been an eventful year!
Chris: It didn’t go great to begin with but when it hit summer it got a lot better. Tramlines was good then we had a string of good gigs and more people started to like us, since then it’s been really good.
Andy: We’ve got 70 people coming tonight which is really good.

Sheffield Scenester: Do you feel that your music has matured over the past year?

Andy: Yes. I was quite new to gigging, I had done recording before, and writing for gigging is different as you get to know how a crowd reacts to certain songs, you get to know what goes down well.
Chris: It’s fine tuning all the time to what people like.
Jim: Yeah, because we started out as a straight forward rock band.
Andy: We are still playing songs that we played at our first gig though.

Sheffield Scenester: Who has influenced you and your music?

Andy: I don’t listen to modern day music; I listen to old, dead people. Like Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Mountain...
Jim: The Beatles
Andy: Yeah, The Beatles, Dinosaur Junior... and local bands like Cut Your Wings, The Monicans, Avida Dollars, they’re good friends.
Chris: We know promoters better too
Andy: Like Joolz (Julius Vernon)
Jim: And Mark Flaherty (Cut Your Wings) and Aaron Procter
Chris: We aren’t really directly influenced by local bands as our sound isn’t really similar to other local bands...
Andy: Yeah, we try to be different.

Sheffield Scenester: How do audiences respond to your music?

Andy: Well. We’ve had stalkers... well Casey has! Really well, in the summer especially.
Chris: We played The Frog and Parrott twice and Tramlines, they were really good gigs with people cheering for encores.
Andy: I think intimate gigs always have a better atmosphere
Jim: Yeah The Grapes was always a good venue.
Chris: It’s one of those places where people are actually out to see live music, its difficult to win over a crowd that’s just out to enjoy a beer.

Sheffield Scenester: Is there a song that you particularly enjoy playing or that gets the best response?

Chris: The best reaction is always from ‘Say Something’ but I don’t think it’s necessarily our favourite song to play.
Andy: The song that always tips a gig is ‘Say Something’, you finish playing a song and you know from the reaction if the gig will go down a storm or not.
Chris: I think I like playing our new songs best.
Andy: Personally I think that Japan is the best song that I’ve written, I’m very proud of it.
Casey: ‘I Want Never Gets’ is my favourite song to play because it’s nice and mellow.
Andy: If Casey was left to his own devices we’d be playing Mozart covers!
(Requiem in D Minor was suggested)

Sheffield Scenester: You have played some great venues over the past year, is there anywhere that you would love to do a gig either in Sheffield or outside Sheffield?

Chris: Leadmill
Jim: For obvious reasons.
Andy: Wembley. Only at a weekend though, not midweek it’s not worth it ha!

Sheffield Scenester: Do you have plans to branch out to different cities?

Jim: I think that will be the main thing this year, gigging wise.
Chris: We’d like to play in places like Nottingham, Manchester, York and Leeds.
Andy: The emphasis at the moment is on recording an EP to take to these places.
Chris: Yeah we need a better recording because our previous demos sound a bit amateur and we can do better than that.

Sheffield Scenester: What happens next? Is there anything new on the way?

Andy: We’re going to be on Radio Sheffield!
Chris: Yeah we are doing a live session and interview which will be really good.
Andy: We’re going to concentrate on recording as our focus was on gigs last year. Our stage presence has improved loads but we need to show people what we can do. It’s exactly year ago today that we played The Plug and we were second on and bricking it, a year on and we’re headlining and full of confidence.
Jim: The first year has definitely been a success!

Listen out for The Last Standing on Radio Sheffield on 10th February to hear their live session and interview.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A few days later we caught up with Russell Frisby and Mark Flaherty from Cut Your Wings in The Frog and Parrot, to reflect on Russell’s first full gig as vocalist for the band and to ask them about their plans for the year ahead.

Sheffield Scenester: Russell, how do you feel your first full gig with the band went?

Russell: It was good, I enjoyed it. Sheffield Star thought it was good. Would prefer it to be a headline gig first one back but you know, as I said before, we were gonna wait until next month to do a proper gig but Casey asked us to play with them so as friends do, Mark being Casey’s best mate from school.

Sheffield Scenester: How do you feel audiences respond to your music?

Mark: It sometimes gets a mixed reaction in the way that some people are gonna like it, some people aren’t but, you tend to find, like when we’ve played in here (The Frog And Parrot) before and you see a band empty the pub apart from their mates or something like that, we’ve never done that we’ve never emptied a venue, obviously you’re going to get odd people that aren’t going to like it but as a rule I think people seem to get into it.
Russell: The hardest thing we could have done that night was do what we did and that was follow Hot Soles, everyone stayed, nobody left and you know people seemed to enjoy it. We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing. People enjoy it and it’s nice because there’s a lot of fusions that you wouldn’t usually see in a band from Sheffield, obviously the blues elements there and the heavy side is there and Nick tries to put a bit of funk in. We’re all from very similar backgrounds which is something different for me from my other bands, we’re from similar backgrounds but we’re all a little bit different, like Nick’s favourite band is Rage Against the Machine whereas Mark and Matt’s is Black Keys but it’s just nice for me to be doing something that’s me. It’s what I grew up with, that heavy stuff so it’s kind of nice to put it out there.

Sheffield Scenester: What music influences you?

Mark: We’ve got a really varied influence, none of us can just say it’s this band [that influences us]. We all love Black Keys but then at the same time we all love Rage Against the Machine. Musically I came from sort of a punk background, from bands that I’ve been in before and obviously with Russ being in the Tivoli it’s a lot more atmospheric stuff, Matt comes from a grunge background, like Pearl Jam, but obviously as me and Russ do a lot of DJing we listen to all different sorts of music all the time and that always going to creep into what we’re playing. For me I like to listen to all sorts of different music and think I can take that bit from that and another bit from another and another bit from a third genre or whatever and fuse it all together to make what you want.

Sheffield Scenester: What about local bands? Are there any that influence you?

Russell: I don’t know about influence but there’s a nice little… like Sheffield for what the past 7 or 8 years has all been Indie, everyone got on the band wagon and everyone knows it, and a lot of people from those bands even say themselves that it’s just what was cool at the time but there’s a nice little thing coming through now where there’s about eight or nine bands that are playing the same bluesy rock, bands like Wet Nuns and Dead Delta.
Mark: I was really impressed, I saw The Velotones, they’ve been sharing a studio with Dead Delta and you can tell and I was really impressed with their music.
Russell: I wouldn’t say there are local influences but it’s nice to see people that are probably classed as ‘off the radar’ a little bit, even bands like Violet May. When they first came out there was no-one doing and it’s bands like that, that are actually from here, that aren’t playing what everyone wants to hear around here that do well.
Mark: I want to mention Hot Soles as one of the local bands that’s come through as well; I think they deserve a mention because they’re stunning.

Sheffield Scenester: Where would you most like to play a gig?

Russell: We’ve got this thing at the minute, not sure why we keep banging on about it, about going and doing America.
Mark: I think we keep banging on about it because we’d go down loads better in America!
Russell: There’s a few people that we know that have said we’ll get you on over there and stuff.
Mark: I want to do an American tour, if you’re talking something amazing where you’re not working and music is your full time thing, I’d love to go to America for a month and tour. Obviously that’s sort of a pipe dream that’s never gonna happen but…
Russell: I mean put it this way, when Paul Thompson told me this time last year the Alverez Kings were going to go and play South By South West, you wouldn’t have met a more jealous person in the city, but not in a bad way cos I’m dead proud of what they did last year but just to be given an opportunity like that to go and play, or Clean Air Clean Stars which Tommy runs, festival in LA, people have said give us some stuff and we’ll see but we haven’t got anything recorded yet. Either that or Japan, if I played Japan tomorrow I could retire the day after! There’s something about it being a band from England, no matter how bad you are or what you play, you go down an absolute storm!

Sheffield Scenester: What are your plans for 2011?

Mark: We’re gonna record the first single at the weekend. If all goes to plan we’ll release it at the beginning of March ready for the intake when they start booking festivals and stuff like that. I’d love to go and play some major festivals, its obviously a long shot but I think some of the smaller festivals like Kendal Calling sort of style, think we’ll try and get on the bill for a couple of them.
Russell: All that’s ideal, it’s more of a want than a plan, the plan we’ve got so far is the gig that we played on Friday was recorded so we’re gonna release that as a 6 or 7 track EP depending how good the tracks come through and hopefully we’ll have some copies for when we play on 29th [January] if not it’ll be ready for the gig after that. We’ve got some more gigs round here, we’re hoping to do more out of town, not just local, we’re planning some in Rotherham and Barnsley but we’re also looking at some in Nottingham, Manchester, Wolverhampton, and London.
Mark: It’s not about releasing a single thinking it’s gonna chart, to get the radio play we want we need the release and it’s all about sort of building a brand to a certain extent, in that people recognise a logo or they recognise a name, even if it’s just in Sheffield.

Sheffield Scenester: Finally, what’s your favourite song at the moment?

Russell: My favourite song changes every hour! Mine probably is Staring At The Rudeboys by The Ruts either that or Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack…. Or Heads Will Roll by Yeah Yeah Yeahs… or Little Sister by Queens of the Stone Age, one of them four, every hour it changes!
Mark: I listen to Blue Orchid by White Stripes a lot at the minute also I like Black Keys, but that’s obvious because everyone knows I like them!

Cut Your Wings are playing with The Hot Soles at The Frog and Parrot on Friday 4th March .