Here's a first class interview with a very promising band - Laconic,  by Duncan Mangham, Rock of the North's South Yorkshire Correspondent.

 

 

The band consists of Lee,(Percussion), Sime (Lead Guitar), Michael (Bass), and Jenny (Guitar/Keyboard/Vocals) picture right copyright  of Duncan Mangham.

 

 

 

DPM : Let's start with when and how the band originated.

 

LEE :  Jenny formed the band with a friend of hers, then she met up with Michael who started playing bass guitar so they were an acoustic three-piece. It was some time later when I came along and started playing drums with them, one member left and then, about two years ago, Sime came along, who plays lead guitar, and it's been two years of writing songs and developing the band whilst playing around various pubs and clubs.

 

DPM : Did you play in other bands before Laconic ?

 

LEE : Simon, Michael and myself used to play in a band about ten years ago.

 

DPM : What kind of music was that ?

 

MICHAEL : Indy, groove rock.

 

DPM : Original stuff ?

MICHAEL: Yes   

DPM: It's always been original stuff then? 

MICHAEL -Yes

 

JENNY : That was before I was born !!!!!

 

DPM : So, can I ask you what sort of influences you have ?

 

LEE : I kind of went from pop to rock. I wasn't into rock music until I was about sixteen or seventeen when I started playing the drums.

 

DPM : What, any kind of rock ? Well, soft rock, Heart and Bon Jovi that kind of stuff.

(We then realised we'd met some years previously when he'd been a member of " Uninvited Guests " whom I'd photographed in the studio )

 

DPM : What about you Michael ?

 

MICHAEL : Well, Tom Waites really, through my Dad  (Michael is the son of John "The Enforcer" Law who has been a well respected member of the South Yorkshire music scene for many a long year ).

 

DPM : Was your Dad an influence on you  ?

 

MICHAEL : He was actually, he started teaching me guitar when I was eight or nine but he had this great big Fender - well it seemed that way to me at the time - and he used really hard strings so it took me a couple of years to learn songs like that ! But he also played bass and I've got a picture of me in about 1975 with a Fender Precision and I'll never forgive him for selling it !!! Other influences were a teenage Goth period of listening to The Sisters of Mercy but now I tend to listen to stuff like Pearl Jam and general rock music, anything that's good really but that seems to be very rare these days.

 

DPM : But it's getting better. isn't it ? Yeah, but the bands do hark back to like The Stones and that sixties sound.

 

Lee : A lot of revivals now, those Ordinary Boys, they're like The Jam.

 

DPM : How about you Sime ?

 

SIME : The first thing I can remember listening to , albums my Dad had, was Supertramp and from that I had to listen to Depeche Mode, The Cure and now basically what everyone else is listening to.

 

DPM : Right, Madam !! (Duncan cues Jenny)

 

JENNY: Well, for me it's always been big vocalists, the major female vocalists really and with my Dad being a massive Fleetwood Mac fan, for me it was always Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie. Dolly Parton, massive songwriter, I used to love her songs . I did piano lessons and used to hate it, I couldn't sight-read or anything like that so I thought I'd start writing my own songs cos I couldn't sight-read anyone else's !

 

DPM : So when did you start writing your own stuff ?

JENNY : I was about fourteen when I wrote my first song and that was on the piano and I didn't really think much of it, didn't really pick the guitar up till I was seventeen and it's just gone on from there really.

 

DPM : So what made you want to start writing ?

 

JENNY : I have absolutely no idea , it just sort of came, I sat down one day, I used to write a lot of poetry and I thought that it could be quite cool to put some of this stuff to music, so, honestly, I sat down at the piano and it just came.

 

DPM : How would you describe your style ?

 

JENNY : Well, the big thing that keeps going round at the moment is " Old country rock ".

 

DPM : But it's not though, is it ?

 

JENNY : Well, that's what everybody's classing it as !

 

LEE. : A lot of people say we're a cross between Fleetwood Mac and The Cranberries

 

JENNY : Yeah, we always get that don't we, what that kind of music is I don't know.

 

DPM : I don't see that really, I think it's quite hard to classify cos I don't think it's like anybody's really.

 

JENNY : It's a mixture, it's a massive mixture.

 

LEE : It comes from us all having different influences

 

DPM : So did the style evolve through the culmination of four people's input rather than someone saying,

" Let's do ............. "

 

JENNY : Absolutely, we reckon we've only just started getting our proper sound and style within the last twelve months really, it's taken that long for , like, Sime to get in there and really create his own kind of sound on the guitar and it's just basically gone on from there.

 

DPM : And how do you see this sound evolving cos you've gone from acoustic bass to electric, is it getting heavier ?

 

MICHAEL :  It does seem to be getting more , um , intense.

 

JENNY :  I wouldn't say heavier but, maybe a bit more mainstream, less poppy but maybe more .......

 

SIME  : Mellow .

 

MICHAEL  : I think it's more adult cos when we first started, like our early songs, you can tell  they are quite simple and not that well structured and not sort of thought out and where we've got to now we tend to sit and think about it a bit more and get the right sound .

 

LEE : Also our songs now demand a good bass sound , a good positive bass sound and you get that from an electric bass.

 

DPM : I've now been to see you three times and I've brought a couple of people along from other bands and they said that, although they loved the songs and the band, they thought it would benefit from a bit more oomph from the guitar, in other words more electric as opposed to acoustic guitar. Do you see that cos you're an acoustic fan, aren't you, Jenny ?

 

JENNY: Not necessarily I mean we always said "Play it on electric, and then it comes on acoustic .

 

DPM : Don't get me wrong cos I'm fed up of widdly widdly guitar players so  I quite like a laid back approach but I do think that on some numbers I could see a bit more clout to the guitar, do you see that, Sime, or do you think the acoustic one adds something the Les Paul can't ?

 

SIME : I think it does but obviously some songs do need an electric guitar.

 

JENNY : We never like being put into the acoustic bracket , as an acoustic band ,and  just because the main instruments are acoustic doesn't mean that you have to have that kind of folky sound, country sound. You can really kind of blast it out as much as you need to.

 

LEE: Depending on where we play, we play according to different audiences ; if we go to a place where there's a lot of old folk in and it's a small room we really tone it down and play laid back and more unplugged style, if we play in a big hall where you can sense the atmosphere then we'll really punch it and play to the crowd.

DPM : Is it intentional then that the songs can be played in different styles.

 

JENNY : We didn't do it intentionally but, yes, it can work like that.

 

LEE : It's just how you're feeling at the time as well, it can come across with a different style, a different flavour.

 

MICHAEL : I think as well, now that we've got a back catalogue of songs , we can change the feel of the set by picking certain songs and obviously as we write more and more we can tailor it to wherever we're playing, like Lee said if it's a small venue we can play the more  quiet laid back songs, if it's a big stage we can pull out the more intense stuff.

 

DPM : So.....do you play to a diverse age group and what's the span?

 

LEE : Well, from like sixteen year olds have come up and said "Oh, that's brilliant " and sixty-six year olds have come up and said “Oh, that's brilliant ".

 

JENNY : That's exactly it, we get so many people across the spectrum who just enjoy it.

 

DPM : And do you think the younger end are becoming more fussy about what they listen to ?

 

MICHAEL : I just think that they just want to listen to something else because they are interested in music and most of the music that's available in the charts and stuff is quite bland and it's mass produced and you can tell that the people who're performing it are not the writers and you can't get behind a band  as such anymore because even like the new bands that NME and such have lauded as the next big thing have one  song, one album and then that's it you don't hear of them again so there's no band out there  you can follow cos they don't have the time span, they just have one album and then they're gone.

 

JENNY : Bands that have actually worked round and got themselves a fan base that have liked them from the word go but that's a difficult thing to do anyway, get yourselves a broad enough fan base, like no one seems to be bothered about the local scene anymore.

 

DPM : What would you say was the best area of the country, for response , do you find the Southern audiences are more into original music ?

 

JENNY : It depends on the venue really.

 

LEE : They like the music but they go crackers up here for it too.

 

JENNY : The audiences that we do play to are very ..... they love it, I  mean they don't have to come up, we can tell from the clapping and the noise they make but they do come up and it's really nice when they tell you, and they say things like it's nice to see a girl in the band it's usually four blokes bombing around with electric guitars blasting their way through their amps and it's a bit different and it's nice to be able to hear the words.

 

SIME : Nice to be able to hear the music as well, you just seem to get bands now that put loads of distortion on and you can't even tell what they're playing.

 

DPM :  So what about record company interest ?

 

JENNY :  well, we've had a bit, it all seems to be rather slow. ( Big chorus of YEAH !! ) Becker, the manager, (Rebecca Porter) has had a few meetings with people that like the sound of the music and are willing to come and see us  : Sony, Universal and Parlophone so hopefully, the next two big gigs we're doing which is the Leadmill and London, they'll be there.

 

DPM : Where's the one in London ?

 

JENNY : It's the Archway Tavern in North London but it's a Club Fandango night which is one of the big nights they put on for record company interest. Fingers crossed.

 

DPM : So…. Is someone coming from Sony ?

 

JENNY : We don't know, Becker knows all that but she won't tell us .

 

DPM : Yes, well you don't want to know beforehand, do you.

 

JENNY : Absolutely not  but, fingers crossed, it will be at one of those but, if not, we're looking at putting a single out ourselves.

 

LEE : Yeah, we're going to go into the studio and produce a couple of tracks and put it out on general release and try and get some interest that way.

 

JENNY : Get the profile up really, get people talking about the name , I think a lot of the bands do make it by just getting someone to say the name somewhere and then all of a sudden everyone says ,  " Oh, yeah they're a name these days " and then that's it . But I'd prefer not to do that although obviously I wouldn't mind if it happened that way but I think to be built up so much like that you've got a lot to live up to, I'd rather do it this way, quite slowly, steady, get your feet in, know your stuff and then ... hopefully fingers crossed.

 

MICHAEL : It is frustrating when you see bands at Glastonbury and things like this and they're just dire and you think how the hell did someone go and see them and think " Right ! ", you get frustrated when you see that happening to other bands and you think we must be doing something wrong but from the feedback we get we're obviously not doing anything wrong.

 

JENNY : It could be like off the back of all this Pop Idol stuff, crying out for decent  live bands and they'll latch on to absolutely anything , but some of it is pretty decent stuff, some of the bands that are coming out are really really good.

 

DPM : I think it's better now than it's been for four or five years

 

JENNY : Oh, absolutely.

 

LEE : I think it's that Pop Idol that's done it, everybody's saying we're fed up of this karaoke rubbish let's have live bands back.

 

JENNY : Which is great, which is really good.

 

DPM : I think there is more awareness of original material now and a slight swing away from cover stuff .

 

JENNY : Definitely, there is a strong demand for original stuff.

 

MICHAEL : Well, there's got to be because there's only a limited  amount of times  that a certain song can be covered by so many bands, you've got to have original songs so that people in the future can cover them !

 

DPM : Well I think that's about all, is there anything else you want to say ? Come and see us Steve Lally ?

 

" YEAH, COME AND SEE US STEVE ,AT THE LEADMILL, 14th AUGUST, WE LOVE YOU "

-Steve's note, give up you lot, I'm embarrassed now!

 

Amen, Duncan.