The Sheffield Scenester

We met Alvarez Kings on a cold windy Sunday afternoon down at The Wick At Both Ends on West Street and sat in a quiet corner of the bar to find out what they had planned for the new year, Paul Thompson (bass player) had hinted at some juicy gossip so we were eager to find out what all the fuss was about;

Scenester: So after your successful set at the ten band Leadmill gig what have you got planned for 2011?

Paul: Yeah it went well that gig we really enjoyed it, seems to have got some good praise, but 2011 is going to be quite a busy year for us...

Simon: Yes we’ve got a European tour coming up in April, Italy, Germany, France, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland I think?

Paul: Yes twelve dates so far with another two maybes, so its going to be a pretty tiring couple of weeks, there’s no day off either its literally twelve days night after night!

Simon: We’ve never done more than three dates in a row so….even at Texas we had days off in between.

Will: The three day run, that was when we did a run of festivals, the first night we did a festival in Crewe, we were headlining for the opening night so we were bombarded with drinks……

Paul: It was a free bar which set the tone for the rest of the weekend…….

Simon: We were trying to be sensible but whenever they saw us without a drink in our hand, or even if it were a quarter of the way down they would come back with a tray full of beers, and shots as well….

Paul: We had a mad party back in our Travelodge as well afterwards, too many shots of Jägermeister….

Simon: At Travelodge Paul thought we could get away with smoking in the room because he didn’t think the smoke detectors would pick it up, but we stopped him from doing it!

Paul: Stopped me…..??? They had to pin my arms behind my back! No but coming up in April we’ve got this tour which is in support of the brand new EP that we’re releasing, its actually a five track, and it’s called ‘Patience Is Strength EP’. On it we’ve got a few old ones….but there’s two brand new tracks as well which we’ve been playing live, we know them really well so we thought we’d get them released. In this month we’ve just signed three record deals as well, we’ve resigned with Of National Importance Records here in the UK, they’re going to be releasing in the UK and then on-line worldwide, then there’s two labels in Europe, that first found us in Texas last year at the South By South West, they came forward and said they really wanted to work with us, that’s where the tours come from and the release. The idea is that we’re going to release the EP on all three labels at the same time with a worldwide release on April 11th. The Italian label is called Black Nutria Records and the German label is called Popup Records based in Hamburg, and together they’ve worked together sorting out this big tour for us!

Simon; So we’ll be spending the best part of the New Year trying to get our stuff together, get all the artwork done and get the tracks together and finalizing it all. It’s the hardest part really getting it all together, getting that finished product ‘cos organization is where we kinda lose it I think.

Paul: I think another thing as well is a lot of bands talk about DIY, which we don’t mind and stuff….but in a way its been forced on us, we’ve got to give everything ourselves, we’ve not had that back up team behind us, we haven’t had management, so all this stuff that’s happening, everything we’ve done so far, including festivals and things, has all been sorted out by ourselves, and its working well for us.

Will: We’ll probably appreciate it if we ever get the chance to sit back and concentrate on the music, touch wood! The easy part is rehearsing, doing gigs and writing songs and stuff, but the hard part is all the organizational stuff, even just sitting down at a computer and going through all the emails and responding, trying to sort out gigs.

Paul: Don’t get me wrong we would like a nice high flying manager who could take the workload off of us, but for us, because we’re doing it all ourselves, the further you get in your career, fingers crossed it will go even higher this year, the amount of emailing and paperwork and ringing you have to do is hard, especially when you’re working full time. But that’s what you’ve got to do if you want to make it….sacrifices!

Scenester: How does it work fitting in a job as well as fitting in a pretty successful band?

Simon: Because our managers are really understanding of it, they know we’ve got that commitment out of work, so as long as they know that we turn up when we say we’re gonna turn up and get our work done and stuff, they’re happy!

Scenester: You mentioned artwork for the EP earlier, who does that for you?

Paul: A friend of ours called Dave Mullen, from Doncaster, Dave Mullen Jnr to give him his full name, yeah he’s been a big fan of the band for the past few years now, and we took him down to the Isle of Wight Festival with us and had a good time down there with him. He introduced himself to us, big fan of the band, graphic designer and we really liked what he was doing…….

Simon: He really liked our music and stuff and he kinda approached us and said “I like your band, can I do your graphic design and your artwork” cos I think we were lacking an image as such. I think it’s important to have that sort of edge about you, to have a marketable image!

Scenester: You mentioned the Isle of Wight Festival just now; do you have any lined for this year?

Paul: Not yet, we’ll get to know in the next couple of months, we’ve had some approaches and stuff….

Simon: We’ve had some correspondence with the company that put us on at The Isle Of Wight Festival, they’ve got their own stage, The Strongbow Stage, that they put on at different festivals….so we’re just waiting to here back from them cos they don’t decide what festivals they’re running till February, but we don’t usually find out while March what festivals we are doing and what we’re not doing, though we can guarantee we won’t be doing Leeds or Reading. For the past three years I’ve been gutted that we haven’t been asked to play, it’s all about who you know……!?

Simon: We still like playing with our mates really, with local bands; we still look forward to doing gigs like that cos we’re doing your Birthday Bash at SOYO on March 14th……!

Scenester: Yayyyyyyyyyy!

Paul: Matt Cottrill from SOYO is so passionate about what he does and it’s his passion that makes us want to keep coming back and playing!

Scenester: Lastly with more new bands around…has your influences changed at all?

Paul: Funny you should say that, cos I was talking to the lads a couple of week back and I think 2010 was a pretty poor year for music, me personally…I always liked discovering new bands and going out and listening to new stuff but there’s nothing much that really grabbed me. One thing we all agree on is that around 2001 when The Strokes released their first album that was the time when we thought ‘This is it, this is what we want to do’, and that was when our passion for music first started, quite a lot of bands say that really, but can’t deny the fact to be honest!

And so finishing off with a quick photo-shoot in the bar before the crowd became too big, as it was, the noise had reached a point were we could no longer record. So with a big thank you to Alvarez Kings for their time, and wishing them well for their European tour, we look forward to what they have in store over the coming months as well as for the rest of 2011.

Photos by Mickelmas Youngus