The Sheffield Scenester

The Crookes Interview @ Bungalows And Bears August 25th 2010

Get It Loud in Libraries, the award winning programme of uber-indie gigs across the UK’s libraries has teamed up with arguably the best-read band in Britain for a tour with a biblio-twist. The Crookes will play 5 library dates across the UK and are asking fans to bring their favourite books to recommend or swap with other fans’ choices to make this the most literary of rock outings. The roll-call of acts that has played the project, originally conceived to reconnect libraries to pop culture and younger audiences, is impressive. Florence And The Machine, Bat For Lashes, Adele, Mr Hudson and Professor Green have all blasted the dust off the books too sell out all ages crowds. The new series of shows will be the most literate yet with critically acclaimed Alan Pownall completing the bill and fans swapping books between numbers. The tour starts in The Crookes’ hometown of Sheffield (Oct 1st) then moves onto libraries in Lancaster (Oct 2nd), Oldham (Oct 3rd), Rugby (Oct 4th) and Bourne End (Oct 6th).

We met up with The Crookes in Bungalows And Bears on Division Street, quite an inspired location as it sets one of the most relaxed and laid back environments for an interview, rather reminiscent of Central Perk in Friends. Knowing that they were performing later on that evening at The Grapes and time was precious, we arrived slightly early, grabbed a drink and found a huge couch to settle into. By ‘settle into’ we mean sink into, as having sunk into the cushion the job of getting out again was next to impossible. Bang on time, Russell (drummer), George (bass and vocals) and Daniel (guitar) of The Crookes arrived to join us for a quick chat to find out what’s going on, Alex (guitarist) was unavailable,

Scenester: In October you start your Library Tour, where did the idea of that come from?

The Crookes: We’re not sure, our manager, Penny Blackham sprung it on us but it’s probably because we’re all English students she saw the opportunity to tie the two things together, plus the opportunity to play live in a different type of venue to what we usually play in. When we play the Sheffield one we’re playing at The Central Library……

Scenester: And you’re asking them to bring books, is that right?

The Crookes; Yeah, this is all kind of our managers ideas, we just go along with what she says, we thought we’d all gone together to Uni in Sheffield and spent enough time in libraries that it was time to have a bit of fun in them instead of reading all the time. Trying to get people involved, we like to do that bit, we’ve also started doing a fanzine called ‘Bright Young Things’ were we just write down little collections of lyrics, little short stories and things like that. We’re gonna sell them at shows and tie it in with swapping books and stuff like that, try and get people engaged with what we’re talking about in the lyrics…

Scenester: Are you bringing any books to these gigs?

The Crookes: Oh we’ll probably be taking some, we’ve got some we never read for our degrees so we’ll just get rid of them. We’ve also got some we’ve read too many times, so get rid of those and get some new ones in.

Scenester; You’re also going to New York in October for the CMG Music Marathon and Film Festival, how did you get involved in that?

The Crookes: We went to South By South West in Austen earlier this year and I think we just applied for it. We’ve got our fingers crossed really, it’s just a question of whether we can get the money together, but hopefully we’ll get there…..

Scenester; You’re releasing a seven track EP that spans your career to date, does that mark the end of a chapter?

The Crookes: Yes that is the idea, I suppose it spans our early career rather than our recent one. It mainly has our older songs that we recorded at home. We’re releasing an album next year and we’ve got a collection of new songs but at the same time a lot of songs haven’t really seen the light of day. This was a good way of getting them out there and a lot of people do request them when we play gigs….

Scenester: As far as the album is concerned, how is that coming along, are you recording or still in the process of writing it?

The Crookes: We’re always writing but we’ve got eleven, twelve songs that we’ll definitely put on and we’re playing Reading this weekend, we get back from Reading Monday morning and start recording the album Monday afternoon. So we’re not sure how good the Monday afternoon sessions are going to be after spending the weekend at Reading, but that is the plan, record it in the autumn, have it out early next year!

Scenester: So how do you write songs, does someone come out with lyrics, or maybe come up with a bass line?

The Crookes: It never starts with a bass, Dan writes all the lyrics but usually it’ll start with something on guitar, a tune or a melody. Dan will then get the sound of the tune and maybe write some lyrics that reflect that or visa versa; it’s the kind of process that’s not really definitive, it gets changed and moulded by all of us as it goes along! It’s definitely a case of four people all coming together to try and create something together, its not like one person. Dan will write all the lyrics but then everything gets pulled together, it’ll take us days and weeks to make something that we’re happy with……

Scenester: When you (directed at Russel) hear it would you for example suggests ways to arrange the drums?

The Crookes: Normally if we get a guitar part, then we’ll talk about the structure and then we might work on the drums or the rhythm section, its always changing, there’s always new parts coming in, eventually it may take an hour and a half, sometimes a few weeks but we’ll have a whole song. Sometimes we’ll have a song that we started writing six months ago and it’ll finally get finished, because we’ll think ‘That part goes there!’ So there’s no set process we go through….

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

The Crookes: We’re not sure really, we’ve all been in Sheffield for about four or five years now and it’s definitely changed a lot, bands that we started playing with, when we began, don’t exist anymore! We just concentrate on ourselves, there are always so many new bands it’s hard to keep up with it and we hear names constantly but we haven’t got the time to check out every new band in Sheffield. There are so many of them…..but we are massive fans of Bromheads, we love Richard Hawley and Heebie Jeebies, people like that. There are so many venues, when we walked past The Washington earlier and noticed they had a list of bands on, so there are so many opportunities that it gets to the point that you have to limit the number of gigs you do play.

Scenester: Is there any venue that you would like to play?

The Crookes: The Leadmill, we’re playing there soon on November 13th.….

Scenester: And the highlight of your career?

The Crookes: That is a tough question…! The last time we played at the Grapes, the Tramlines gig, that was a massive, massive highlight because we’ve played there so many times to four or five people and to end up having people queuing up the fire escape and up the stairs, there were people not able to see what we were doing when we had an encore and all that kind of stuff; it was fairly mind blowing for us! The final chord rung out and we all kinda looked at each other realising that it had been quite a big moment for us, that really was a great moment. We mentioned Richard Hawley earlier, we’re all massive fans and a few months ago we did a live collaboration with him and so meeting him and going for a pint afterwards, playing some songs with him live on the radio, very nerve racking but at the same time it was…..well you know…..

Scenester: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

The Crookes: We’ve just started a fan club, it’s called ‘Bright Young Things’, it’s three pounds a year and we’ve got a magazine we’re going to send out. We’re gonna start giving out guest lists to shows, photographs, things we’ve written, things we’ve done, just send them out to our fans. You’ll be able to find all the information on-line but it’ll be like a fanzine were we just write stuff in it then post it to you, so it’s a physical thing which is a bit more personnel. It sounds a bit cliché but we’d like to connect with the people that come and see us and not just fob them off, you’ll be able to get them at gigs or you can sign up at our MySpace and get all four editions, we do an autumn, spring, summer and winter one. The autumn one is out now, the winter one will be out next year, you can pay a fiver for a whole year and get all four. We hand wrote all the parts, scanned them and then printed them out because obviously writing hundreds would take ages. With the last single we released, we handwrote all the lyrics and stuck them in; now 500 of those took absolute ages to do! Especially since we folded each one over and sealed it with a wax seal…..doing that 500 times in the space of thirty six hours….the smell was so distinctive it will never leave us!

On that rather amusing anecdote we called it a day as they had to get back to The Grapes and prepare for the gig that night. We at Scenester would like to thank Penny Blackham for arranging the interview, as well as Russell, George and Daniel for taking the time to chat with us.