Not Many Experts

I hope you noticed the way that I passed over the opportunity to make a painfully poor pun in the title of this article… I know, I know, I’m growing up. Anyway, having posted about We Have Band twice, even before they have signed a proper record deal, we thought it was a good idea to interview our favorite new band from down South and see what they had to say for themselves.

Hi We Have Band! Would you like to start by introducing yourself to some readers of Not Many Experts who are new to We Have Band?

Hello. We are Dede, Tom and Darren. Dede is from Manchester and Tom and Darren are from London where we all now live. Tom and Dede are married to each other and Darren isn’t married to anyone. We have a band called We Have Band and we played our first show, in London, at a club called Club Motherfucker last year in May. We write and record together and on stage we all sing, Tom plays bass, guitar and beats, Dede plays sampler and percussion and Darren plays drums, percussion, sampler and synthesizer. That’s the basics!

That’s ok! There was very little decision making actually. Dede came up with the name before we ever played a note and its really just a simple fact. We. Have. Band. Its grammatically incorrect of course but it makes it more to the point. And “We Have A band” would be a really bad name!

Well we have to say that it was actually the Guardian newspaper that said that about us and we’ve never been entirely sure what they mean. Its funny because we hear it quoted a lot but we’d never discussed it and then the other day we were all asking each other what we think they meant. We’re still not sure!

The influences thing is a difficult question to answer though. We listen to a lot of music and go to lots of shows so we’re kind of immersed in it all the time. For us its more about inspirations perhaps. I mean we listened to ESG’s ‘South Bronx Story’ a lot in the early days and the story of the band coupled with the music they produced was so inspiring and it had a lot to do with us getting started. And we all watched a Quincy Jones documentary on the BBC over Christmas and that was mind blowing. He’s such an amazing man and he’s worked across so many different genres and eras and that was really inspiring too. We also take a lot in from our surroundings and each other and as we’re touring more and traveling around it all feeds back into the music.

We love Wave Machines and they’re really nice guys. We met them when we did our first festival last year at Secret Garden Party. Its kind of a small boutique festival but Grace Jones was headlining! Then they asked us to come and play with them in Liverpool. It was a really special gig because they had a residency in a church, called St Bride’s, for 3 months and each month they put on a night with music and poetry and art and it was great. We played the closing night show.

Its funny you ask that because we didn’t think we’d been on so many. There are some acts that we’ve seen on hundreds of lists. We were thinking we’d escaped! Its not such a bad thing of course but the weight of expectation isn’t always a positive thing. These lists kind of fall into two categories, the brave lists that are really trying to find good and interesting music to listen to and watch out for and then the lists that are just looking for the next superstars. And it seems like lots of people draw up lists for there own benefit, so at the end of the year they can look like all their predictions were right. We hope that we’ve been on the good lists.

But you know we are so pleased and grateful to people like you that have found us early and are talking about us because its really kept us alive and its one of the main reasons we’re able to spread so far without a record deal. Its great.

NME are fine. They really are. People bitch about them but their audience want what they’re offering and that’s cool. The thing that’s always said is how they seem to be tipping a new band every week to be big, which is sort of true but there are so many bands now so they can really do that. Its up to bands to turn hype into something real.

We were really surprised the first time they contacted us because we hadn’t even released the single yet. It was great for us because it introduced us to a lot of people. They’ve been playing our single on NME radio and blogging about us too and that’s nice.

Working at a label was good on a personal level because we got to hear music all the time and go to gigs and stuff but in terms of making music its really no help at all. You have to feel it and believe it and that’s it. If there’s one main lesson we learnt its that there’s absolutely no formula to making something successful. We’ve seen lots of money getting slung at piles of shit and it doesn’t work. Luckily we don’t have any money so we have to try a bit harder! It kind of depends on what you call successful too. People talk about radio singles and stuff but daytime radio, in the UK at least, is so alien to us. We don’t know anything on it and we don’t really like anything on it so that kind of thing isn’t of any interest to us. We’d call Animal Collective a band that are successful but the term almost doesn’t fit them. Maybe to call them accomplished or respected would make more sense and that’s what we would like.

We’re on a somewhat never ending tour and we’re writing and recording the album at the same time so no definite release date but it will be out this year. We’re remixing some good people too which we’re excited about. We just want to travel a lot and meet people and have fun and make good music that people can enjoy for a long time.

Many thanks to Kip at Tell All Your Friends PR for setting this up, and the band for being so open! Best of luck.

We Have Band are embarking on their first US dates next month and going through the buzz band rite of passage by playing SXSW. After that, they’ll be touring round Europe. Will they “do a Beatles”? Will they be superstars by the time they hit our shores again? Who knows…

Monday March 17th 10pm The Delancey – New York

Here you can download the early demo version of recent single “Oh!” in 160kbps quality. That means… it’s only got half the We Have Band goodness as the full 320 kbps version (or so my GCSE maths tells me) so go and buy it here! Or even here if you have a conscience.

We Have Band – Oh!