Ashes Of Iron – The Bushtucker Interview

Ashes Of Iron are just about one of the hottest bands in my local town right now (and there are a few of them about, Sunderland is suddenly awash with talent) and have made a real name for themselves with their excellent live performances. The band are Alan Greener on vocals, Tom Hoad and Richard Thompson on guitars, Dean Young on bass, and Mark Cliff on drums. They independently released their self-titled debut album in February this year and though sales of the album haven’t quite got the lads living in the lap of luxury yet they never really expected it to.

Now I’ve seen these guys play live three times now so I figured it was time to dig a little deeper and find out just what makes Ashes Of Iron tick so with tape recorder in hand I headed off one very wet night to the legendary Bunker in Sunderland for a chat. Having entered the bunker and gotten lost (yes one corridor and I manage to get lost) and declined the BBQ grub thingy kindly offered me by the band once I had found them (ok was rescued by Tom) I settled down into the practice room they share with another great local band Witchcharmer.

H: So the new album came out earlier this year how is it going?

AOI: We play the music that we want to play, if people dig it then its happy days.

H: You’re also getting a lot of media coverage now too.

AOI: Yeah, we had the album out in February and people are only now writing about us, not sure where it’s come from really.

H: You got together in 2008 when you first played a show how does performing then compare to now?

Richard: I think we’ve rehearsed the songs long enough to feel more comfortable with them.

Alan: As I’m sure you noticed at the last gig.

H: Yeah.

Tom: We’ve all played in different bands in the past so you get over that initial thing. Nowadays I’m probably the one who gets the most anxious; I’m the stress head, worrying about what could go wrong.

Richard: We run on a lot of luck and juice.

Dean: It’s down to experience too, trying to be as prepared as you can.

H; you definitely seem to enjoy playing live.

Alan: It’s my favourite part.

H: It’s not just the local area that you’ve played in though is it?

Dean: Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool.

H: So how does that compare to playing for the home crowd?

Alan: It’s scarier.

Tom: You think so?

Dean: It’s like a jolly for us to be honest. Obviously the crowd isn’t our crowd. We like to play a band swap like we did with a band from Edinburgh, Firebrand Super Rock, we got on really well with them and that makes the gigs really worthwhile.

Tom: In all honesty we do get offered more gigs than we do. We get offered London gigs every once in a while but we have to turn them down because the small fee you get offered to play doesn’t even begin to cover all the costs of the petrol and getting down there and back so we have to really pick our battles and save the hits for the gigs that are going to be more targeted, treat ‘em mean and keep‘em keen!

H: It’s got to be good though that there is a buzz about the band and it seems to be building.

Tom: Well we haven’t felt it yet but we’re looking forward to it!

Dean: It’s been a gradual thing building it up.

H: The three gigs I’ve seen you at you seem to up the ante every time.

Tom: That’s the level of booze.

H: Yes there was definitely a lot of Dutch courage flying around at Noisefest.

Richard: You get given a rider at about five o’ clock when you’re unloading and then we weren’t on until about quarter to twelve at night so what else are you supposed to do but drink?

Tom: But that’s why having regular band practice is important so you can play when you’re pissed.

Dean: we get more practice done when we’re drunk than when we’re sober.

Tom: It’s important that you can combine your hobbies though ain’t it?

Dean: But you’ve got to drink them before another band does.

Richard: It was just one of those gigs though; we kinda classed it as our last gig of the year.

Tom: A party gig.

H: Yeah it was a great night, I actually remembered most of it for the review.

Alan: I was chuffed with the review actually because I’d forgotten loads of that stuff. I was like wow I’d forgotten that I had gotten carried across the room!

H: Yeah there is photographic evidence!

Alan: I had to get up for work the next day and saw all these marks on my arms.

H: The main photograph for the piece is you upside down in the crowd.

Alan: How did I get up there? Did someone carry me?

Richard: You got picked up and carried off stage.

Tom: I don’t think I even noticed. I just had my head down if I had looked up and saw how pissed you were (Alan) I would just have burst out laughing!

H: You’ve done a few videos as well who filmed those for you?

Tom: The first one was Dean’s friend.

Dean: Well, aye, the first one was filmed with my friend, who’s a great guitarist. He came down and took a shine to a particular song and that was it, off he went. A few weeks later he had a load of footage and did some recording in my shed.

Richard: Tom brought a lot of props down like face masks.

Tom: The second one was done by a mate from another band; his band had disbanded so he was looking for a project. When you have a budget of fuck all it forces you to be more creative. It started off as one idea then got a bit crazy when the girls showed up.

Mark: Fun days copious amounts of fake blood and alcohol.

Tom: So there are a couple of other little videos that are in the pipeline, one is going to be stop gap animation, just playing around to see what we can do with it.

Richard: We’re going to do one more video off the album, the first one on the album.

H: You’ve managed to make some very high impact videos with very little budget that are a lot more effective than some I’ve seen from very heavily backed bands.

Richard: Thanks to talented friends.

Alan: I think they work just because we had a good time though. When it’s a high production video you feel under pressure whereas we didn’t so we could just go with the flow. If you spend a lot of money on it you’re going to feel more pressured.

H: Are you planning on another album release soon?

Richard: Yes, we’re trying to get stuff done a lot quicker this time around now we have the time with no more gigs at the moment.

Dean: We’ll just be concentrating on practicing the songs live and not wasting our time and money on demos. We’ll demo ourselves before we go into the studio.

H: there seem to be a lot of bands who are releasing their own stuff recently.

Dean: We’ve looked through different options and we’ve had a few little approaches but there’s been nothing to make it worthwhile to be honest.

Tom: You have to resist that little pat on the back saying yep we’re a signed band but it’s more signed to what? We’re trying to be a bit more canny until someone offers us what we want and until then do it ourselves but it makes it very hard.

Richard: Maybe a promotion company or a good manager might come along and open different doors and take us to the next level but we’re in this for the long haul and doing things gradually.

Alan: I think we’re just about finding our sound now anyway, after we released the first album we changed again, it’s getting heavier. I don’t believe I’ve found my voice yet so we are still young in those terms.

Tom: The album was like the lines in the sand really, faze one.

Richard: We did the first two years just off the back of two EP’s which finally became the album.

Dean: What we talked about earlier was trying to get on festivals on the unsigned stage but it’s about a year before you have to apply.

Richard: The problem with festivals is that sometimes you have to pay to play and there’s no guarantee that anyone will be there.

Dean: No one’s really willing to help you unless there’s something in it for them, that’s why we have to do it ourselves.

Tom: One of the biggest problems is finding time; we all have to work full time to pay our way. It’s not a fairy-tale land where we can all live in a big happy house just playing all day every day.

So with the very subtle hints about time being precious I had just enough of it left to snap a very quick pic of the band in their lovely practice room and left them to it and the BBQ grub things they had offered me earlier. If you want to get you hand on their album just click here: http://ashesofiron.com/?attachment_id=52