The Sheffield Scenester

Having long been fans of Elephant Keys and having seen them on numerous occasions this was an interview we were really looking forward to. We met up with Phil, Tommy and Breezy of Elephant Keys down in their plush new recording studio and rehearsal room, Fat Elephant Studios!

Scenester: We thought we’d start off by asking about the upcoming Leadmill gig……..

Phil: Basically it was gonna be our Christmas gig, something we decided to organize ourselves which we did through Higher Rhythm, who are acting as our label at this point. We went to them with the idea and they hired The Leadmill so effectively we got some control over the band lineup, so then we picked bands that we had gigged with or were friends with, like a community type gig really. The reason it got postponed was cos of the snow and public transport was off that weekend so we re-branded it as a 2011 kick start to the year and with bands to look out for this year……should be good! In fact there is already over 400 tickets gone in pre-sales…… plus, we’ve got a surprise lined up!

Scenester: Any hints as to what it is?

Breezy: Put it down as “We know something you don’t know!”

Scenester: LOL……..Sounds good though, so what else have you got lined up for the year then?

Phil: We’re just in the middle of finishing off our last recording session and we’ve also got The Sheffield Scenester Awards…….

Scenester/Elephant Keys: Yeeeeeeey!

Phil: ……..on January 31st at Soyo so that should be good! Then we’ve got in April and May I think gigs are getting booked for, we’ve already got one in Liverpool and one in Brighton, that’s Sound City in Liverpool and the other one is The Great Escape in Brighton, We’ve already got confirmed for them so that should be good, April and May were gonna be hard for gigging, the next couple of months was just gonna be finishing off releases for that. We’ve finished off most of the recording and now we’re just toying around with different mastering places to give it the finishing touches.

Tommy: The video!

Phil: Yep, oh yeah, we’re doing a video on January 10th for ‘Sebastian’, it was supposed to be the December single to tie in with The Leadmill gig but the way it works the label liked the B sides so much that they didn’t want to waste ‘Sebastian’ at this point, they wanted to hold it back until we got a bit more high profile, so subsequently we got to record some more B sides…….. So yeah a video for ‘Sebastian’ and we’ve got to record a couple of B sides to go with that. That single we don’t know if it’s gonna be February or March because Higher Rhythm want to put a PR company in place to promote it more. They want an eight week run up period to give it time to go to press and stuff until they decide which one they’re gonna go with. Last year it was pretty small scale releases that we could control ourselves so we could say “We’ve got the Scenester gig so we’ll release something on that day!” whereas now there are other people involved in it…….

Scenester: Any ideas for the video then?

Phil: Yeah, we’re not actually gonna play in this one for a change, I think I might be in it…….

Tommy: It’s just mainly one kid who’s gonna feature in it, Dan Williamson…..

Phil: We’re trying to, now that we’ve got a bit more control over our recordings, we’re gonna try and do stuff with other bands, the bands that we’ve played with and liked, you know, people like Joe from Dead Delta…..

Scenester: Talking of recording, you did seem quite proud of your rehearsal rooms during the guided tour...

Phil: This is basically Elephant Keys headquarters…but I think we’ll always refer to this as Fat Elephant Studio, like whenever we’ve promoted a night, when we haven’t played but have picked acts or if we’re recording anybody or even recording ourselves that’s the name we use. It’s not like its Elephant Keys…but it is!? It’s just another name, so say we do a video, Tommy here is usually our media guy…but we’ll put Fat Elephant Productions. We use that name essentially as not so much a business, but more of a case of what we use for our friends just to collaborate down here, making demos or whatever.

Scenester: So have you been writing any new material lately?

Phil: Yeah……however we’ve kinda been split because second to that has been the recording of all the old stuff that needs to be caught up cos last year we had a batch of songs that’s like the best songs of ‘X’ amount of time and as you know we kept some from when we were The Dodgems and then others that have been wrote as a three piece, we had more songs than recordings. So that’s kinda getting recorded….but at the same time we do practice outside of that which is what we’re using to try and jam up some ideas. One of the reasons why we’re not gigging so hard for the next couple of months, was that at the beginning of last year we took time to gig for the first time as a three piece because it took some time to get that sound right. The first six months of last year we actually did a lot of gigs, we were playing Sheffield every two or three weeks up to the point of the BBC gig with Iain, that’s when Higher Rhythm got involved. Then from that point it’s been a case of recording demos in different places cos they’ve got studios in Doncaster as well, so we’ve been using their studio and our studio. We’ve been trying ideas and recording here, then mixing there, sending it off to be mastered or record there from scratch and master here to find the right sound. We’re just starting to get to that point right now…so there’s us writing stuff while there are other people involved with us, catching up with old material and mixing and that.

Scenester: You ran an acoustic night down at Henry’s Bar last year, are you going to carry on with that at all?

Phil: No, though we do the first Wednesday of the month at The Frog And Parrot instead, the one at Henry’s wasn’t us every week but at The Frog we just take on a different support act with us so it’s more of a residential.

Scenester: Is there anything else you want to say?

Breezy: Yeah, buy the single!

Phil: You can actually still get the last single that we put out ‘What They Say’ for free by texting EK to 60444, all it costs you is the text message price and will be available from now until January 16th, but there is other stuff coming up but it all depends on how other things fall into place as to when and where they are happening…… Most other things happening are mainly recording, writing and a couple of other things, I’ve wanted to make a CD with other bands, maybe have some collaborations on there, for example Cut Your Wings might do a track and Tommy might do some organ on it. Originally it was going to be the bands on this Leadmill gig and the CD would have gone with it but as usual, all these ideas are there but there’s never enough hours in the day to do it!

Scenester: Talking of other artists what is your opinion on the music scene at the moment?

Phil: We could always make something up to create a bit of animosity, you know a bit of banter about some mates of ours, but you know for a long time I would say “It’s sh*t, all the bands sound the same!” cos when Arctic Monkeys took off everybody wanted to be like them so you had your Milburn and your LMT……

Breezy: Right there is your animosity; see you’ve done it…..

Phil: We didn’t want to sound bitter and I didn’t like bands that did, whereas now all that’s blown over, cos take The Leadmill gig, it weren’t hard to pick ten bands to play, we probably could’ve picked twenty…..

Breezy: Tell you what I think and that’s a lot of bands are good, standards are good, take Dead Delta, I mean they are good aren’t they?

Phil: Yeah, but look at the younger bands now, there are so many more resources out there cos when we were younger it were harder to get a gig and with technology the way it is now kids can make demos in their bedrooms. Bands can just get out there so easily now, even solo artists, you take someone like Emily Ireland or Emily Stancer, they’re 16/17 years old and they’re writing really good stuff!

Breezy: I tell you a band I’ve really started to like is Cut Your Wings; they have this heavier bluesy, grunge Nirvana-ish feel about them. They’re obviously influenced by a scene totally different to what we’re influenced by….but they fit with it so well.

Phil: Most of the bands that were in that ‘New-Yorkshire’ Monkeys scene have all disappeared now apart from the odd one or two like Alvarez kings……(lol!)

Breezy: That’s it…….that’s it!

Phil: What a quote!..............Oh yeah, 2011, this year, for absolute definite, there is no way we won’t be releasing…in other words we’ll definitely be releasing our album, I was gonna do it as a mission statement but it was half past twelve on New Years Day and thought January 2nd don’t look the same does it!

So finishing on that line we carried on chatting over a few drinks before winding up with a photo shoot in the studio itself. Hilarious to the end it was a great interview to start the new year with, so a big thank you to Tommy, Phil and Breezy and we look forward to seeing you all again at The Leadmill on January 15th and obviously at the awards night!