We caught up with Alcopop! Records all conquering Jumping Ships to discuss cakes, Bar wiring, late night jams on mobile phones and questionable music purchases. Here is what they had to say:
CM: What time did you wake up today? Was it out of choice or necessity?
JS: 10 o’clock Glasgow time! Necessity – Had a 6 hour drive to the Northern coast of Scotland ahead of us playing in Thurso (look it up on the map.. its 10miles south of John O’Groats)
CM: Describe Jumping Ships to the uninitiated?
JS: Alt-Pop-Rock! Loud and in your face – Get your chops round this!
CM: How have you been killing time on the road, hobbies?
JS: Eating cakes, singing sing songs, watching films, lots of twitter banter and some sight seeing when we get chance – visiting local castles/folies/forts!
CM: What have been your favourite venues to play? Any Venues you hated?
JS: Borderline in London is great, nice high stage, but still pretty intimate. Coalition in Brighton is great. The Milo in Leeds wasn’t really built for the Alcopop! breed of bands – too small, hot and loud. I think they need to rewire the electrics – sort your plugs out!
CM: Is there a song you are simply sick of playing? Do you think that will ever happen?
JS: We’ve toured the first EP around quite a lot, so there are some tunes that start to drag a bit. We’ve played “The Whole Truth” a lot, so it’s nice to give them a rest every now and again, that way you can kind of rekindle your passion for them. Fingers crossed we won’t hate all of our current set at the end of this tour!!! ha
CM: What is the songwriting process like for you guys? Are you able to write on the road or do you do this in your off time?
JS: Mike generally takes the lead in the songwriting process, he brings initial ideas to the table and then him and Kai start working structures and parts together to get the bare bones of a track. Then it’s on to acoustic recordings, they’ll knock a rough recording up and send it to Rich and Al, who will give their input and write parts etc before we get into the rehearsal room.
Then it’s jam time and most of the rest of the work is done in a rehearsal room full band. Lyrics are mostly done over the course of the songs writing process. We try and record things at as many stages as possible, to see how it would translate live and on record. Lots of levels of quality control.
CM: Favourite Jumping Ships track and why?
JS: I’m going to go with ‘Talisman‘ on this one. It’s the one track on the EP that I can’t really put my finger on in terms of how we wrote it/structured it/where the parts actually came from. All of the other tunes I can remember having heard quite solid bases for the tracks before we got it in the rehearsal room, whereas with ‘Talisman‘ I think it was a bit more of an organic writing process – lots of jamming sections out and working with a bit more freedom structurally. Plus it’s lots of fun to play live! We have a winner!
CM: If you could record any cover what would it be?
JS: I think if we were going to record a cover it would have to be completely different to the original. Do our own spin on it and kind of pretty much rewrite the tune. So this might be interesting!
CM: Do your songs go through many revisions via demo recordings?
JS: As we mentioned before, we try and record songs at as many stages as possible. Initial ideas are usually late night jams on mobile phones – then on to more structured acoustic records – recordings from rehearsal rooms – then it’s always nice to hear the track back from a live show before you do a pre production demo recording, prior to the real deal. So yeah lotsss of recording!
CM: What came first, the lyrics or the melody?
JS: As a rule of thumb it’s melody, but sometimes there are lines or little lyrical excerpts that will be noted down as a basis for a song. But it’s all about the melody!
CM: What are your views on auto tune?
JS: Auto tune can be cool if it’s used right. There are loads of artists who use it to good effect and when you know what you’re doing it can sound great. What we don’t like though is when people try to use it to mask a shoddy voice, both live and in the studio. Cher’s been repping the auto tune far too hard haha
CM: Any other band/bands from your local scene we really should know about?
JS: There are some great bands that we’ve gigged around with recently – Spring Offensive from Oxford and Hold Your Horse Is from Camberly are both wicked bands and great lads. Also bands from our label – Lightguides and Delta Alaska are both going on to big things. You probably know about these guys already, but if you don’t – Shame on you!
CM: Most flattering thing you’ve read about yourselves?
JS: There was a note left on our mailing list after playing the main stage at Redfest. A girl had gone to put her email address down and had proceeded to write a full page love letter to the band, pleading for us to contact her. It’s nice when fans love what you’re doing.
CM: What was the first record/tape/cd you ever bought?
JS: Kai – Tape – Prince, CD – Michael Jackson
Mike – Boyz II Men (Outhere Brothers – Party Album on cassette – too cool for school)
Al – Limp Bizkit (Significant Other) + Rage Against The Machine
Rich – Smurfs Go Pop
CM: What was the last song that got stuck in your head?
JS: Lightguides – the last song in their set – still don’t know it’s name, but it’s been rattling around my head every night of this tour. Cracking tune!
CM: What was the last show you paid and queued up for?
JS: Kai – Underoath @ Brixton Academy
Mike – Pulled apart by Horses @ Brighton Jam
Alex – Everything Everything @ Brighton Concorde 2
Rich – Jimmy Eat World @ HMV Forum
CM: If you had to bring on artist back from the dead in exchange for sending a living artist down ,which artists would it be and why?
JS: Amazing question!
Pete Doherty is going down, because he’s not going to be up for long anyway the way he’s going. Think Mick Hucknell can join him as well – We’d swap them for… Drum roll please… John Martyn and Steve Ray Vaughan.
Jumping Ships have just released the ‘Standard Bearer‘ EP on Alcopop! Reocrds
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