What was the beginning point for your music career? How did it all start?
We had known each other for a while but we hadn’t figured out it was a good idea to be in a band together until a bit later on.
Jack (lead vocals, guitar, bass, keys) and Henry (bass,guitar, keys, backing vocals) are brothers so they’ve known each other quite a while. Jack and Ed (drums, backing vocals, guitar) met in primary school. Fast forward about 5 or 6 years, Henry (14 at the time) and Ed (12 at the time) met at an after school music club and had a jam. They decided they wanted to start a band. Henry asked Jack (11 at the time) to come to a session but he said no because he didn’t want to be in a band with his brother. He was later convinced by his mum to go to a session and the first song the band ever played together was a 25 minute version of “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ever since then we knew we had something special and haven’t looked back.
Were there any bumps on the road? What kind of challenges did you have to deal with?
Like most independent bands, we’ve had our fair share of runnings with con-people. It’s actually bizarre how many people there are in the music industry that are out to screw you. It’s like the Wild West, with seemingly no regulations to stop it. We have probably been more vulnerable to it than most because we started out at such a young age and were therefore quite impressionable. We worked with this one promoter a few years back who told us a string of lies. He’d signed Robbie Williams to emi for $60 million, he put on Williams’ Knebworth shows, Keith Moon was his godfather. We couldn’t find anything about him when we googled him but we just went along with it because we weren’t paying him anything and said he could help us. Fast forward a few months and he hadn’t really achieved any of the things he’d promised and we had set up a meeting with him where we were probably going to tell him we’re not working with him anymore but he called us up and told us he couldn’t make it because he was drumming for a studio session with Jamiroquai. One twitter search showed that Jamiroquai was actually doing a gig in Argentina the same night! He even told us once that his sister committed suicide, which turned out to be another lie.
What was the most fulfilling and satisfying moment so far?
I think every single time we get on stage and people are there singing back our lyrics to us and having a great time dancing to our music. That is always the most satisfying thing. Music is about connecting with people and to see that our music is having an effect on people and people are identifying with it is really fulfilling, more so than any one particular moment.
How would you describe the music that you typically create?
We do tend to struggle when it comes to describing our music, because it is so diverse. Our music is truly like nothing else that is going on right now. It is uniquely us. It’s essentially a hub for our vast array of music. It includes elements of pop, rnb, funk, soul, rock, punk, indie, gospel, opera, hiphop, rap, blues, country and Motown. So if you like any of those kinds of music, you will absolutely love us. We like to say that our music sounds like the feeling of putting on a new suit, lighting up a cigarette and heading on a night out to a wine bar. We feel that incorporates how cool, smooth and sexy our music is.
What is your creative process like?
As the main songwriter for the band, Jack doesn’t really have a set creative process. He’s a firm believer in that songs are already written and the job of a songwriter is just to get them out into the world. If something comes to him, he’ll go with it until it feels right. He won’t try to overthink it. If it feels right, He’ll know, and if it doesn’t, he’ll also know. Songs usually do start with the music side of things though, and then Jack will come up with lyrics to match the melody afterwards. Also, with every song he writes he’ll record a demo and mess around the production side to really see what works so we can get a clear vision of what we need to do when we take a song into the studio and record it. We’ll then come together as a band to figure out how to play the song for the record, and also for live shows. We find that live shows need to be different to the records and so that requires us play the songs in a slightly different way on stage.
If you could change anything about the industry, what would it be?
We would get rid of all the con-people. There’s so many of them, more than any other industry we know of. It’s really sad to see and experience. Artists have a hard enough time as it is without being messed around and lied to. We never actually got conned out of any money, but we have had people lie to us and say they can do certain things for us and that they have a lot of connections (which they never do). We even had someone lie about their name to us once. We don’t even know why people are like this with independent artists in the industry, they rarely gain anything from it.
If you were asked to give a piece of advice to upcoming bands, what would that be?
Before you start a band, have a real search of what the real reason is that you want to do music. The reason should be because you can’t imagine yourself doing anything else. Being in a band is a lot of hard, hard work, despite the stereotype of partying and all of that. You actually have to sacrifice a lot of things to make a band work. All of us in this band have sacrificed free time, time with friends, relationships, time for education, time to work on more “normal” careers, to make sure that this band is successful. You’ll also realize quite clearly who your real friends are. You’ll be subject to a lot of ridicule from people you thought were your friends, but when you start to get some success they’ll pretend like they’ve always supported you and start expecting stuff from you. If you are prepared to put in the work and sacrifice, then absolutely you should start doing music, it’s the best thing ever and makes all of the sacrifice and work worth it!
What has been the best performance of your career so far?
We’re really lucky in the sense that we’ve had a lot of really amazing and memorable shows. We’ll never get used to or bored of the feeling of being on stage and looking out to a crowd of people who are having the time of their lives and singing back our lyrics to us. That’s always extremely special. We played a show at the Tunbridge Wells Forum back in May, which is an iconic venue really close to us so it felt like a homecoming show to us. It was sold out and it was just an incredible gig. We look back fondly on that one.
If you didn’t become a musician, what would you be doing now?
We have no idea. We’ve been doing music together for such a significant period of our lives now, since we were 11-14 years old. It’s shaped our lives and we have given up a lot of things to make it work. Ed is really into cars and racing so maybe he would be doing something to do with that. Henry would probably go further into estate agency as he quite likes the property market. We have no idea what Jack would be doing. Music and performing is basically what he lives for. He’s never really showed that much of an interest in anything else, apart from going to the pub! He has a part time bar job, so maybe he’d just be doing more shifts at the bar.
What is new with the band at the moment?
Our new single “Joy Ride” is out now and is receiving a lot of love. It’s a funky-rnb banger about car sex. We’re fully convinced that it’s the song of the summer for everybody who hears it. We’ve also got our next song ready to be released in a couple month’s time. We’re also about to head into the studio and record a couple more songs which we are really excited about. We’re also going to start planning a tour. Lots of things to come for Wild Horse, that is for certain!
What are you currently working on and would like to share with the world?
As mentioned, we have our next single ready to go and we are about to head into the studio next week to record some more songs which we are really excited about. They’re quite different to anything we’ve released before and therefore the recording process is going to have to be slightly different. We’re extremely excited to see the outcome and it is going to be hard for us to keep the songs under wraps because we already want the world to hear them because we know just how good they are. The best is yet to come!
