The Sheffield Scenester

We arrived at The Lescar, a venue which is slowly becoming our office at weekends (unknown to the owners that is!) or at the very least a regular place to hold interviews, and waited for Pistola Kicks to arrive. We’ve followed them for a while now as a four piece....but the last time we saw them down at the Leadmill one of their front men, Rich, was missing. At the time everyone was informed that this was due to the fact that he’d had a baby and was otherwise indisposed, but now, that has become a permanent state of affairs, so we wanted to find out how losing a band member affects the remaining group. Was it a good, bad or was it just a downright ugly situation; Joe, Jamie and Ed came along to give us these answers.....

Scenester: So what’s new with Pistola Kicks?

Joe: Since we last saw you Rich, who was our other singer, has left the band so we’re down to a three piece now, so we’ve done a bucketful of gigs as a three piece, getting quite good reviews from it as well, a shed load of new material that we’re ready to launch and then going into a winter tour as well

Scenester: Has Rich left for good then, since your MySpace blog says he has left for the foreseeable future?

Joe: Yeah, at one point we were very careful how we worded things because we didn’t want any bad connotations or anything. Unfortunately Rich is a lot older than us, we’re early twenties and Rich is in his thirties...so there was always an age gap there...and then he had his first child with his girlfriend and it put more of a strain on his commitment to the band....so he decided to leave for those reasons.

Scenester: So how has it been working as a three piece?

Joe: It’s such a bizarre feeling to lose someone from a band, when they leave it’s like.......it’s not unnerving but....it’s new territory, so we were not reluctant....more anxious to carry on as a three piece. We obviously knew we could do it, we were writing songs before Rich left anyway, so we thought the best way to deal with it was to book ourselves into a load of gigs around the country and carry out what was basically a baptism of fire. We found that, don’t know if it was excitement or nerves, but we had so much energy on stage that a lot of people picked up on that....

Ed: It was like being a three piece was a challenge that was forced upon us and we took it in our stride very well, which created this energy that hopefully we’ll get noticed for. It’s a lot more connected than it was before and it’s a lot more personal now that it’s the three of us.....

Joe: I think going back to the age thing, not meaning this in a bad way but, when Rich left it was like three naughty kids left to do what they want. So because of that we were just having fun, having a laugh and writing more material than we’d ever written really.....

Jamie: I think in the face of adversity it can bring people together sometimes.....

Joe: I think that’s what happened with us, I definitely feel the best is right now and I’ve definitely been inspired to write again, it’s just a brilliant situation to be in really. When Rich was with us, a lot of people saw the band they saw Rich as the front man and I allowed myself to slip into that comfortable situation, sometimes I stayed in Rich’s shadow on purpose. When he left it hit all of us...but we kinda knew it was coming but it was such a big thing for me to decide whether to fold the band or I buck up my ideas and start getting into the spotlight a bit. Most of the songs towards the end before he left, Rich was singing my songs....which I was totally comfortable with, but I guess I never really tackled my fear of being at the front. As soon as he left it quite an abrupt push to the front.....

Jamie: It was quite a short time between knowing he was gone and then having a gig that we wanted to still do, so we had quite a short time to jump in with both feet.....

Joe: A few people commented when they came to see the band Rich would probably sing fifty percent of the songs and I’d be singing fifty percent, but he’d talk to the audience....so there was always that confusion as to what was going on and where, then there was even more confusion in the last year as Rich wasn’t writing any music, because of his commitments, over whose song was what....and so it was just a bit confusing to have that type of thing going on.

Scenester: Did you ever think you were going to get another player or singer?

Joe: We immediately thought we were going to get somebody else in didn’t we?

Ed: Yeah, at first it didn’t seem a very possible task to carry on with just the three of us, but as we played the first few gigs and started writing again, we seemed like more of a unit.

Joe: It’s quite bizarre because you’d think the more members you have the more comfortable you are and the more complicated you could make your music. I mean I wouldn’t say we’re minimalistic in our sound base, but we’ve sort of scaled back..... I mean we have so much energy on stage and people really pick up on it, they always have done with the band, it just provides you with more room to come off the beaten track, even in live circumstances you can just go where ever you want because there’s only three of us.... I don’t know if we can read each other’s minds, I hope not cos there’s some really weird stuff in here!!! So if someone does something we immediately react and I don’t think we ever really had that as a four piece. So we thought if someone else comes in the band then they won’t know what they’re dealing with and it’s kind of the emotional thing, you know the progression of a relationship. We thought we’d have to spend too much time having to induct someone into the band that we thought ‘sod it’ let’s just play as a threesome.

Scenester: We also noticed that you didn’t cancel any of your gigs at the time either, so you didn’t give yourselves much time to rehearse did you....?

Joe: No, but I think that was partly to keep in contact with venues, we didn’t want to get a bad name, also we love playing live music...so if we didn’t play any gigs for a long time I think we’d be climbing the walls, and lastly although it was sort of spontaneous how Rich left, it was always in the back of everyone’s minds. So we didn’t want the fact that he decided to leave when he did to interrupt what we wanted to do, because we were going full steam ahead, and so we didn’t want him leaving to stop that.....

Scenester: You’re putting some new material together, can you tell us a bit about that?

Joe: We first knew we were on to something was when we went and saw our producer, Dave Sanderson; we were reluctant to ask him what he thought of it. We’ve worked with him over our existence, we’ve got great friends at Yellow Arch...but Dave really does take pride in our music as well and he really did think it was some of the best material we had ever written, immediately we thought ‘Oh thank God for that!’

Jamie: Because it was the first of the stuff that we had written, just the three of us......

Ed: Something Dave said when we were doing that recording....basically we were more proud of it, we were happier to do the song and we were pushing forward more ideas, taking more chances.....

Joe: We were already out of our comfort zone with what had happened, it very much became the mentality that we were out of our comfort zone anyway....so we might as well keep going with it and Dave really got behind that emotion and pushed us to go into what we really wanted to do, this all came out in the recordings!

Scenester: You’ve got a few gigs lined up in the coming months....

Joe: We had Leeds a while back....but that was put back unfortunately due to promoters, but the first one is September 24th at Buxton.....

Ed: A gig an a bottle of water......!

Joe: Yeah I’m really looking forward to that one because the promoters saw us in Manchester and were really up for getting us to Buxton, apparently it’s becoming quite a good scene.

Scenester: So where do you get your influences to write?

Joe: You know that’s a good question....but I think a lot of bands go into this generic reeling off like “its situations man!” So if I’m gonna break the illusion...anything that floats into my head just floats back out into the music, anything could influence it, like the sound of a ......... fax machine could for example. You can literally take influences from anything and anyone or even anywhere really.

Ed: I think we bounce off each other a lot, I mean if you play something (directed at Joe) then I get ideas and Jamie gets ideas and we sort of influence each other....

Joe: We’re not the sort of band that tries to act cool with each other or like if I was to say to Jamie “I like this Barry White song” not that I’m saying I like Barry White.....you know for the record...but he does set the mood doesn’t he! But if there was a little sound in that recording, I’d say to Jamie or Ed “I really like that, let’s have a listen to it” even if we’re not going to take an influence, but we just like a song or whatever we’ll listen and take what we think is good...

Ed: Yeah one of the new songs has a music box in it and it sounds awesome, so anything and everything goes.

Scenester: So, what sort of bands influence you?

Joe: Well, me and Ed can literally talk for a full week without going to sleep about The Beatles, even down to recording techniques and everything....but that’s like a standard for any band.

Jamie: I’m into whatever...but I do love my drum and bass, yeah, gotta like some dirty beats....

Scenester: So, what are your opinions on the local music scene?

Jamie: It’s strong, it’s good to have so many bands in one place...because for every band there it raises the profile of the area, so you get more people coming in....like recently with Tramlines. There were so many more people this year because there are so many good bands out there, and so many people are hearing about Sheffield music....

Joe: I think at the same time, which no one seems to address, is that there are so many good bands in Sheffield and they’re not getting anywhere and I think it’s down to the fact that we have this sort of binge and purge with a few bands, they’ve got signed up and become massive brilliant bands and I’m really pleased they did. Now it’s kind of like Sheffield was purged a little too much, and now people are reluctant to come here for music when there are so many good bands. Bands that we call our peers, they should be up there and they’re not, like us, we’re sort of punching to get to the next level. I’ve noticed that in other bands a lot more, because they don’t seem to be getting where they need to be!

Ending on that footnote....which has to be said....we’ve heard a dozen times especially around Sheffield by numerous bands...it’s fair to say Pistola Kicks have weathered the storm, so to speak, with one man down and seem to know exactly what they want and exactly where they want to be. We at Sheffield Scenester would like to thank Joe, Jamie and Ed for their time and wish them the best of luck in the future! New music from Pistola Kicks will be reviewed very soon.