Talk To Angels

By paul

Can we have a little bit of an introduction?
Jamie: I play drums
Chris: I play bass and sing a little
Craig: I sing and play guitar
Mickey: I play keyboard and a bit of guitar

How do you think tonight went?
Craig: It were good. The crowd seemed to like us- that’s like the first thing ‘cause if the crowd like it I guess you’re supposed to.

How was the turnout?
Craig: We expected a few more people to be there, but with people cancelling-
Jamie: We’ve got a gig in Bradford, so they’ll probably all come to that one ‘cause Bradford’s our hometown.

What show are you playing in Bradford?
Jamie: It’s an all day festival at a place called Love Apple. Loads of local bands are playing. It should be quite good actually.

Last time I saw you was Leeds Cockpit supporting The Secret Handshake. How did you end up with that gig?
Jamie: They rang us up. They spontaneously gave us a call-
Mickey: We supported Armstrong at the Cockpit and we had a massive turnout and the crowd were going mad for it, so they phoned us up two days later and said ‘do you want to come and play a week later?’ which was brilliant! We’re playing there again on the 1st November supporting Luke Pickett.

How do you think you got most of your fans? Are you another band that’s heavily supported by myspace?
Jamie: Quite a lot are us friends, but we’ve just started gigging and we’ve been picking up more and more fans as we’ve been going along, like when we played with Secret Handshake we picked up a few, when we played with Armstrong we picked up quite a lot and just generally playing.

There were kids in the crowd tonight that were singing the lyrics, which is pretty impressive to say you’re up-and-coming.
Chris: Yeh, I love it… it makes you feel proper good.
Jamie: It’s ‘cause we give a lot of the songs away as free downloads on myspace which helps. I think it makes the shows better if people actually know the songs.

Was tonight for the album release?
Mickey: No, we’ve finished writing and demoing it. We just wanted to test the songs really. We’re gonna carry on writing ‘til Christmas, demo those and then we’ll pick the best ten or twelve and that hopefully will be the album. We’re kind of nearly there.
Craig: Every song we write seems to get better and better, so there’s no point in stopping when everything seems to be getting better.

How did Bingley Music Festival go?
Jamie: It went really, really good, but there wasn’t a massive crowd as it was raining, so that was a bit of a downer.
Mickey: The really great thing was the last song that we played there, that we played last tonight as well ‘This Broken Home’ which is the song that we’re most proud of. It kind of came from nowhere- we were rehearsing and we all just started jamming and thought ‘this is great!’ so we just kept going with it and then gave Craig a tape of it to take home.

Were there any favourite bands from Bingley Music festival?
Chris: The Charlatons were really really good.
[In unison]: Scars on 45 were really good, yeh.
Mickey: When we did ‘This Broken Home’ in Bingley suddenly all of The Charlatons road crew appeared at the side of the stage to watch us do it. Which was like brilliant, absolutely ace that they all came to watch us.

Where did Talk To Angels come from? What’s the story behind the band?
Craig: Talk To Angels have been going for about six months, we met at school- me Jamie and Chris met at school. We’re all eighteen.
Mickey: I’m not eighteen [laughs]. No, I met them through a friend. I play keyboards in Embrace, I’m having a year off. I met them through a friend of a friend. I had a party at my house last Christmas and Craig came with my friend Theo and we were introduced. Craig said ‘I hear you’ve got a studio in your cellar’ so I said well I did but it’s piled high with sh*t! so we made a deal that they would come and help clear my studio, and I would give them a free week of studio time as a favour really. We recorded Emily and two other songs and I thought they were just f*cking brilliant. It was a joy that session, so I said to them well go away and write some more songs, come here and write some songs together and then we’ll just keep going, and we’ll work towards getting you a deal, getting an album out and getting a tour. My year offs gonna run out soon!

So, what’s going to happen then? Are you going to get a replacement?
Mickey: Dunno, we’ll just have to see what happens at the time, but at the moment we’re all just having so much fun working on this record and because I’ve got a studio we don’t have any financial restrictions. So when everybody’s not studying or doing stuff, we just get together and make music. It’s brilliant.

What are the ambitions for the band? Where do you want to go? Who do you want to be?
Jamie: We want to sell millions of albums and fill stadiums! Aiming to get signed is the next step though.

Any one you want to get signed by?
Craig: Just a little label to start us off.
Mickey: Anyone who really truly believes in it really. It’s not a matter of who’s got the biggest chequebook. Sometimes when you’re on a bigger label it’s easier to get forgotton and sometimes the little labels that have got good distribution are the ones that will work the hardest to make it happen for you. It doesn’t have to be a Sony or a BMG it can be a Roadrunner or a-
Chris: Dance To The Radio…

What kind of bands are you all listening to at the minute?
Craig: Brand New
Chris: Brand New
Jamie: Mine’s Sunshine Underground and The Dykeenies
Chris: Most of the music I like is more like punk like Against Me- I love them, they’re like my favourite band.

What’s the next step from here? Any big tours planned?
Jamie: I think we’re gonna try and get a week or two-week long tour, or supporting someone just so we can get quite a few dates to get our name about.

Who would you like to support?
Jamie: Anyone that’ll have us?
Chris: Any band? Brand New! I’d love to support Brand New.
Jamie: Hundred Reasons
Craig: Weezer!
Chris: The Rolling Stones!

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