The Longsands have just released their great debut album Meet Me In Spanish City and are beginning to make waves on the British music scene.
I caught up with Ian from the band to talk about the new album, the trials and tribulations they went through to get it released and what lies ahead.
- Your new album Meet Me In Spanish City has just been released so for anyone who hasn't heard it yet what can we expect from the record?
I don’t think that we are trying to anything amazingly different as we like what we like and we do what we do and I think that is sounds like us. I guess you have always got critics and you have always got fans of what you do so I guess that the critics would say that it is not a super new thing or anything but I don’t think that some of the greatest bands of all time have been that out there.
I think that our influences are obvious; we are influenced by The Beatles, The Who, The Jam, The Sex Pistols and more recently The Stone Roses and Oasis and I am a big fan of The Courteeners, Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian.
I think that the music that you write always sounds like your record collection and so the challenge is to what you write and make it distinctly different from those bands and I think that we have done that. We love it anyway and I think you guys do to as I read the review so thanks for that.
I think where we differ to a lot of the bands coming out at the moment is we have something to say and there is a lot of honesty in the record. These days if you make a statement everything is a little bit politically correct and this that and the other and we just put down what we thought.
The feedback we got from fans and industry people is that a lot of people are thinking the same thing - even if the song is not directly about you you can relate to it in some what which I think is important.
And they are good tunes as well as I said we are big fans of The Beatles’ melodies, harmonies and hooks and we want to makes music that people like.
The album has the potential to be commercial, it is on a small label and the marketing is very small but I have heard this week in the stores that it is in it is one of the top five selling albums. So in the stores that it is selling in it is selling well and we can’t ask for any more than that and we will just keep pushing on.
World’s Collide is going to be the single that we release after the release of the album and it was played on Radio 2 the other night so we think it might get in s few places and in people’s faces and that is what we are all about.
- I was reading that you recorded the album back in 2009 so why has releasing it taken so long?
We had a collection of songs and then we had to change out drummer. We toured Greece back in 2008 and when we came back from there after sitting down with Warner Music Greece who was going to license it for release in certain territories in Europe.
They said ‘go away back to the UK’ and we signed a management deal and then we went on tour and during that time we were recording the album with all that in mind. Then a few things happened at once; first the Greek economy went tits up (laughs) and therefore their equivalent of HMV went bust and the whole licensing thing out there fell into nowhere.
Then our management were in talks with a subsidiary of Sony Music and again there were changes there because there was going to be a takeover with EMI at some point when EMI were on the ropes.
They basically said ’we are not going to commit to any new music for the next six months because if we end up getting involved in any kind of takeover there would be more established bands falling off EMI that could be up for signing things’ - so their budgets all changed and that went a bit sour.
Then we changed management and got a new guy in as we felt that there was a lot of this that and the other being spoken and we weren’t sure how much of it to believe, and you have to trust in your management.
So we got Steve on board and he brought things back to… we got a bit more clarity and we were more heavily involved in stuff. The thing is when you start talking to these big companies it’s not one meeting and then do it these days as they have a lot more risk as the record industry isn’t making as much money; therefore the deals that they offer are more technical in the sense that they want pieces of things they wouldn’t have necessarily had in the past such as merchandise.
So talking to one contact that you think might lead somewhere can lead six or seven months and then when it comes to a dead end you are back to square one.
And we always felt that the record was good enough to be done by a major label or a big independent but it got to the point where the new management said ‘look do we really need to do that way? Maybe we just need to get it out there for the fans’.
And they helped us set up Unknown Solider which is our own record label, there are no other bands on it it’s ours. And then to do that we had to raise some money so we went down the sponsorship route and we did a deal with a VE dealerships and a building company that loved the band so that took some time.
We had never released a record before and so just learning the process and getting the product right and speaking to CD manufactures we were heavily involved in that.
The artwork, the videos has all been done in house or we have brought companies in to do them so it’s not like we have been sitting around waiting for the phone to ring it was all a learning curve for us.
It has been good fun and we have enjoyed it but it’s definitely ours and it definitely sound how we wanted it to sound and it is true to the band.
- Well you have touched on my next question how have you found all of that creative control?
There have been a lot of fights - but that is good because too often bands fight about rubbish but when you are fighting about music that is only a good thing.
It wasn’t so bad for this album because I wrote most of the songs, some of them were written by me and Stan, but essentially we are quite democratic. At some point somebody has to be able to say ‘we have listened to everything and that is the way that it goes’ and what we normally do is give that final decision to the song-writer because essentially you always have an idea when you write a song on your guitar in your bedroom how it is going to sound in the end.
We always make it an open forum so people can have input and quite often we go with people’s ideas and we worked with a producer who was very hands on and he let us say what we thought but we had to listen to him because he knew what he was doing.
We got there eventually and I think that there is compromise all over the album, if you were making a solo record it would probably have come out sounding a bit different.
But we are two guitars, bass, drums and vocals and there is only so much that can be done with that (laughs), but you would be surprised by the arguments.
- Fred Purser has produced the record so how did that collaboration come about?
There are a lot of studios in the North East, we wanted to record close to home as some of the lads still work, in a perfect world it would have been great to jet off on some major label’s business card to LA and spent six months in the sun; when you start doing in yourself you start seeing all the costs don’t you?
There are not that many professional recording studios in the North East to choose from and we went round all of them and spoke to everybody.
One of the things that we has struggled with when recording in the past is Trevor’s got an amazing voice and live he really powers it across but it didn’t sound quite as powerful on past recording that we had done and Trevor really liked what the producer was saying.
He came to our studio for a couple of weeks and sat listen to us rehearse and record demos, we hadn’t even made the decision to go with him then and it could have been his time that was potentially wasted.
It wasn’t a case us of walking in and him saying ‘it’s £500 a day and this is what you get’ he obviously really wanted to do and we instantly trusted him and that is a big thing.
- So what did he bring to the album?
The voice of reason when all of the fighting was going on (laughs). It was nothing creative in terms of song-writing as all of the songs were written. But he certainly brought creativity in the production as he would hear a certain effect or he was keen to try this or try that and he was very vocal about that.
Probably he put the fairy dust on the end of it that makes a demo into a real record I think, which I guess as musician that isn’t really your job.
He was suggesting things that were a little out of the box and bringing the best out of us all, whether it was how we performed or if there was a feud about the way a song was going to go; we put our trust in him a few times and I think it has come out great.
- I chat to musicians such as yourself all the time and some struggle with the recording process whilst other don't like it all so how did you find stepping into the studio?
I love it. I watch interviews with band all the time, big bands as well who are paid well for what they do, and I think musicians grumble about things far too much.
For me to be able to go down and listen to my songs come out of two speakers the size of my kitchen window and it is my music playing back to us at the end of it it’s a fantastic feeling. I think I have the most fantastic job in the world and I wound never grumble about any part of it - even when you have to the PR side of like interviews like this I don’t mind doing it.
I love going on radio and I love playing live, it’s totally different playing live as it is being in the studio because your mind is in a different place; it’s more about the performance and the atmosphere live whereas in the studio it more about the attention to detail and you are doing the same song over and over and over again.
As you said we have had this album since 2009 and so it kind of feels like… we have got a load of songs that we have been rehearsing for the new album and that feels like the new one.
But that has just been the way that it has been for us and that has been our journey but I think that it has made us a better and tighter band for it all. Ideally we would have loved to have had the album out in 2009 but I don’t think that it sounds dated, which is a testament to the songs, and I think that it shows that it will be a timeless record.
I don’t know how many people are going to buy it and I don’t know if this is going to be the record that will make us a household name or anything, if I am honest probably not, that is down to marketing and out budget is very minimal.
But we will be getting in as many people’s faces as possible and grasping any opportunity with two hands but at the end of the day we are happy with this record and for those people do buy it it will still sound great in ten years time.
- You have slightly touched on this already but I was wondering how does the writing process work within the band is there one main writer or is it very collaborative?
Nothing gets written again, well very rarely anyway. I believe the reviews about my lyrics and that is the thing that I am the most conscious about - the music comes really quickly and I could probably write tunes and strum cords all the time.
I almost feel a bit cringy when I am trying lyrics out and although I have been in this band for years it is still a very personal thing for me so I tend to… even if Stan and I have collaborated on an idea like a rift that turns into a cord progression or whatever I tend to go away and write the lyrics; he might have a melody in his head and we record it and that I take it away and do it.
All the lyrics on the album are mine, Stan has mainly had a musical input so far, we take that as a finished song and I play it to the band or Stan and I play it together or I cut a demo myself and play that to the band or send it out over email and say ‘we are going to work on this at the weekend’.
It depends what kind of song it is if it’s an in your face simple guitar bass and drums thrash it out sort of song then they come together quite quickly as they are what they are.
If I have an idea for the drum beat I will say ‘try this’ ‘try that’ and then the more that he plays it he will add a bit here and a bit there, same with the bass player - I don’t give him every not to play but I give him the cords and the baseline is based around those cords.
For the more technical songs the main thing that the band with have an input in is the format of it; so it will have a couple over versus a bridge and a chorus and they might say ‘it’s a bit long what can we chop out? What can we stick here? It’s going on a bit here’ and sometimes I will take those comments away and work on it a bit longer.
On the next record Trevor has written two songs now and we have played both of those live at our album launch as a bit of a taster as to where we are going and I think that it has been good for his confidence.
Although I am very open to other people writing and stuff I think sometimes there is a slight laziness in the sense that people expect that you are going to just do it but also people have brought songs in the past and everyone has said that they have not been up to scratch.
We have had this conversation in the past and I don’t want to intimidate anyone as I am open for it but the best songs will be picked. But I think it’s great that these two songs that Trevor has wrote look like they are going to be featuring somewhere as it is a big boost for his confidence and now he has got the bug and that can only be a good thing as the more songs you have got the better.
I guess when we first started I already had ten or fifteen songs so we sort of just cracked on with them and it became Ian is the song writer and I was like ‘no no no’.
So we are trying but when you are running your own record label and stuff you are heavily involved in other things and your time for writing and being creative is taken up by other things. But now that this is all out of the way and everything is recorded for this, all of the b-sides are done, we have got some time now and we are already planning.
So if we have got a night off from gigging we try to get down to the studio and make a night of it with a few beers and make it a bit more relaxed and get everyone going an involved - we don’t want the next record to sound the same. It is all good fun though.
- You have an ever growing fan base so for any of those fans that are reading this interview what message to you have for them?
Just thank you. I always say quite often at gigs corporate people get thanked and without their money things wouldn’t happen but if no one bought your records or came to your shows then you wouldn’t have a band.
Our #1 priority, and it should be in any business, is you customer and without them we are nothing. So thank you - it’s short and sweet I guess but without them we are nothing and we would never be as arrogant to think that.
But also we would never be as cheap to ourselves to go writing to get fans or anything like that as we are big believers that we write music for ourselves, that we enjoy and we want to play and we hope other people like it.
We would never go ‘oh this band seemed to be doing well and are played on Radio 1 so lets go and write a song like that’ and I think that is why our album is as honest as it is as it is us doing what we want to do and if people like it they like it and if they don’t they don’t but it seems like a lot of people do and that is great.
- Finally what's next for you?
Well we are doing quite a few festivals this summer; we have been invited up to the BSkyB Festival that Sky put on so we are playing Edinburgh with the likes of Pixie Lott - that is a pretty big gig for us.
We have got Kendal Calling coming and we will be on the new music stage there. If you go on the website as they are all on there.
We are waiting to hear about a couple of others but I don’t want to say anything just yet as they are quite big ones and if they don’t come off, you know how these things are.
We have had a lot of interest from Dave Stewart from Eurythmics, it turns out he is a big fan, and his management company in LA got in touch with us and we have been talking to them and we have sent all of our current tracks over to them.
He is doing a tour of the UK, he is doing four dates in pretty big stadiums; Sunderland, Manchester, London and Birmingham and we are literally waiting for a phone call on that. He is pretty much championing the and the management are happy with what we have sent them and so we are hoping to get a date of them if not the whole think - but that is not sorted yet either.
But it is one of those where we are waiting for the phone call and it has to go through all the agents and make sure that the promoters are happy with the way that we sound compared to him. We are looking to get out and tour the UK in October time so things are getting things sorted for that right now.
And we will probably be doing another big night in the North East for World’s Collide coming out and I think that is coming out in August, I am going to meet the radio pluggers in the next week to set that date. So yeah we are going to crack on with the PR and hopefully get a few more plays on national radio and we have had some TV stuff recently.
So we are cracking on promoting this album for the rest of the year and we have a DVD of the launch night of the album and that will be out for Christmas.
Then in January will probably sit down and take stock and see where the album is at, I guess it all depends on how will this sells because all of a sudden if things start to sell well I am sure that all those labels that have not been as interested or give us the deal that we wanted may change their minds.
Past Christmas it is an open canvas and we want to do bigger and better things, the record looks like it is going to make money and if we do the next album ourselves we will have more money to make it a bigger and better release. We will take each day as it comes and just keep cracking on and working hard and that is all we can do.
The Longsands - Meet Me In Spanish City is out now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw