The Sheffield Scenester

Arriving at Orion Studios (owned and ran by Steve Ellis), the first thing we noticed was a tasty collection of tomato plants round the back, but before we could sneakily try one the door was opened by Lee Fowler, lead guitarist from Risky Heroes, so it was back to work as we made our way too the studio upstairs. Meeting the other members of Risky Heroes, namely Aiden (Vocals & Guitar), James (Bass) and Adam (Drums), while busy working at his control desk was Steve who was in the middle of putting the finishing touch’s to the Risky Heroes upcoming single. So with a fistful of questions, we began our chat....afterall interview seems such a formal word!

Scenester: Quite a lot has been happening to Risky Heroes at the moment, you’ve got a tour starting in October, could you elaborate on that for us?

Aiden: Yeah we just want to make sure everybody is there…….seriously, we’re really looking forward to it, it’s something we haven’t done before so…….

Lee: It’s the first time we’ve done a proper tour....you know...as in consecutive nights, so it should be a good experience…

Aiden: That’s what it’s all about, trying to get people to recognise us at the moment really…..

Lee: It’s nice to do something, as in release a proper single and go on tour…..

Aiden: Hasn’t really gone down well with the women like, you know a big tour….!

Scenester: You’ve also signed a record label, so how did that happen?

Aiden: MySpace, pestering emails and stuff.....

Lee: They sent us an email last year, I think saying that they were starting up this year and would we be interested cos they liked our stuff. We said yeah, then we didn’t hear anything until May this year....when out of the blue we got an email from them saying, “We’re ready now if you still want to work with us.”

Aiden: Which was nice, nice that someone is giving us a shot, so we’ll try and make the best of it that we can!

Scenester: Have they seen you play live?

Aiden: No, well I assume not, I know they’ve heard our music on MySpace…..

Lee: It’s only a one single deal though…..

Aiden: One song, one CD, hopefully we’ll be doing a big promotion...although we can't really say what it is yet because it still needs to be confirmed.

Scenester: So how’s the new drummer settling in? Well not so new now!

Adam: Like a glove, straight in!

Aiden: It’s just the goaty beard that hasn’t worked...his disastrous goaty beard…..

Adam: It shouldn’t be there, I forgot this morning, didn’t look at meself! Mates think I look like David Brent….?!

Aiden: Are you enjoying it Adam?

Adam: No, I give it six months!

Aiden: We knew him before really…..

Lee: He played with Electric Hazard and we did loads of gigs with them, so because we knew him and got on well with him we…..

Aiden: Poached him!

Scenester: So how has the recording been going then?

Aiden: Well the sound engineer is absolutely rubbish really……

Looking over his shoulder at Steve Ellis who is working on their single, Aiden and the entire room burst into laughter!

Lee: No it went really smoothly didn’t it……?

Aiden: Originally we weren’t going to do it here, the record company insisted we do it somewhere else but…..

Lee: We knew what we were getting……

Aiden: It where all to do with his stew……

Lee: Yeah when you do a recording at Orion you get to eat vegetable stew, with a bit of bread and Yorkshire pudding!

Steve: Or chilli or curry I hasten to add!

Lee: But no they wanted us to go somewhere down south to do the recording and they only wanted to do one single just one song, and they wanted to do one of our other songs. But we didn’t want to do that did we really cos we wanted to do two fresh songs. We asked them if we could come up here cos we knew we’d get a bit more time up here as well. They agreed to let us do it up here and it were really smooth weren’t it, we got everything done quite quickly and it’s just a case of Steve spending some time mixing it!

Aiden: And Bob’s your uncle.....November 1st release via download!

Scenester: So just to run through a brief history, how did you guys meet up and everything?

Lee: Me and Aiden are cousins…..

Aiden: We’ve had quite a few members come and go over the last two years…

Lee: I’ve known James since we were about five or six…..

James: Yeah our mums knew each other, then you (Lee) come to work with me dad.

Lee: But when we started it were me, Aiden and Baz, who used to be on drums, and another lad who used to be singing, then he left, but back then it weren’t really serious. Then we said to Aiden that he might as well sing since he had a decent voice…..

Aiden: Thanks mate!

Lee: I’d been pestering James for months to join, I kept saying come and play bass for us, I mean he weren’t a bass player, he was a guitar player, and he finally come and the week that he came the singer left. So the line up started from there, then a year and a half with Baz when he decided it wasn’t happening for him no more, Adam stepped in which worked out quite nice. I think how we are at the minute is right good, cos we’re all enthusiastic about it which is helpful, the songs seem to be coming together a lot faster as well.

Scenester: So what influences you all, when writing?

Aiden: It’s strange really cos I can sit and listen to Johnny Cash but you……

Lee: The sound that we’ve got, I can’t think of anyone that sounds right like us, but for me what got me playing guitar was pop, punky bands like The Libertines…..

James: Yesterday I had Muse on smashing out ‘Hysteria’ but I’ll also go for the Housemartins, then there’s Nirvana and Foo Fighters…..

Lee: But we’re not doing it to sound like somebody, we’re just doing it to play what we want to play and enjoying it!

Scenester: So what advice would you give to any other up and coming band?

Adam: Drink, a lot, just drink!!!

Lee: You just gotta work hard haven’t you…..

Aiden: Make sure you enjoy it, just enjoy yourselves when you do it otherwise there’s no point is there? We go crackers on stage sometimes……

Lee: When we play on stage and when we play in rehearsals there’s a lot of energy going on isn’t there……

Aiden: Yeah and hopefully that reverbs into the crowd as you guys know….

Scenester: Oh yeah definitely……!

Remembering my position as an honorary member of Risky Heroes having filled in on tambourine on several gigs
We were then given a sneak preview of the two new tracks, ‘Hangman’, the forthcoming single release as well as ‘David And Goliath’, for which we truly appreciate. So therefore we’d like to thank Risky Heroes, namely Lee, Aiden, James and Adam, as well as Steve Ellis for the use of his studio, and wish them all the best with their single release.