What inspired the name of the band and what are your influences?
The answer to this depends on how we feel as we generally tend to fabricate something. We’ve been named after the 19th century mayor of our town, a famous Canadian motorcyclist and a pirate, but in all honesty the name of the band is just a collection of our surnames.
You can hear traditional American genres in our sound – rock, blues, country, etc. When I was fourteen I discovered the album “Exile on Main St” by the Rolling Stones. My dad convinced me to listen to it and on the first play I hated it. I couldn’t make out a word of what Jagger was singing and it sounded vulgar and raw to my naive ears. I don’t know why, but I decided to give it another play the next day and then I couldn’t stop listening to it. That’s what really got me into listening to music of that genre. Maybe it’s fitting that it was the Stones that first influenced me, since we are a British band attempting to emulate American music. Besides that I’d say big names on the list of influences are: Captain Beefheart, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Taj Mahal, John Lee Hooker, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac.
How do you approach songwriting? Are there any themes that you are keen to explore when you start off?
I’ve definitely changed as a song writer over the years and I think it’s a craft that can never be mastered. When I first started off as a teenager writing songs, I’d pick really simple themes (mainly songs around girls) and I think there is an honesty and purity to that which is difficult to replicate when you move into adulthood. I was just about to say “Now I’m all grown up, I don’t write songs about struggling to pay the bills” and then I thought shit, the title track on our new Album “Waster’s Regards” actually has a line about that! Maybe my lyrics are a lot more superficial than I thought! Perhaps I should go back and audit the rest of the album and make sure I haven’t added lyrics about washing the dishes too! Seriously though, I think getting inside somebody else’s head space is a good idea when you are writing lyrics. It’s easy to do that if you observe other people’s situations and relationships. And let’s be honest, a single human experience is never going to be an infinite well of inspiration.
Why do you write the sort of music that you do?
I’ve been in a fair few bands over the years, covering a variety of genres. Although I’ve enjoyed them all, I think Thomas Wilby Gang is the first band where I really attempted to write something that sounded American. I grew up listening to a C90 cassette of the Eagles on repeat. My parents played that tape to death and by the time I was a teenager I hated them. Years later and for some reason I felt their influence creeping into my song writing. My parents had some pretty decent taste though (I’ve already mentioned Exile on Main St) – they also had a lot of blues and soul on frequent rotation. Maybe its the comfort of nostalgia, but I feel really good when I write songs that fit into these genres.
How do you decide what songs to perform live and how do you transpose them into that live setting?
We have a pretty big repertoire of songs now (around 30 songs) and we tend to play the songs that are on our most recent release. Our live performances sound pretty close to the studio recordings – although we do use overdubs they are generally sparing. However, we do experiment with different versions of songs in rehearsal – for example, we tried doing “Calder” (a song off Waster’s Regards) acoustically and it just sounded amazing. So that’s how we are playing that track live at the moment.
What are your plans for the future?
To date we’ve had two releases and they are both albums. I think it’s time to release some singles instead. Up until recently I’ve hated the idea of doing singles but I think it’s a great way to keep momentum going. An album can take two years to record and mix (or more). When we record we don’t compromise on the vision. If we record a song and it’s a perfect performance but the tempo is slightly off we will simply bin it and re-record. Hopefully we could do a decent single in a week or so. There’s also plans to do some videos and another album ready to record, so watch this space!