Introducing Riverside Music Festival winners...
How did Chasing Tigers come to be? Dylan: Well I lived in Sweden and played in bands in Sweden, came back here where I met Laurence at work, realised he played guitar, played a bit down in Cornwall and then back here, and Laurence found JJ at a wedding.
I was interviewing another band earlier and I was saying that it’s one thing to want to form a band, and be able to play instruments, but there has to be that common ground, like ‘Yes! I like that. Tat’s the kind of music I want to make.’ Was that the case with you guys? Dylan: I suppose there was common ground because otherwise we wouldn’t have done it, but at the moment we’re split as to what we like. JJ: I suppose that’s the thing, in my opinion, why it works because we come from such a varied background musically and we all like such different styles of music between each other that it just seems to work for us when we bring it together. Dylan: I’m more aligned to JJ’s type of music than Laurence’s, or maybe Lee’s –
JJ: It’s gangster rap isn’t it? Mainly gangster rap and R&B, hahaha. Laurence: No, Incubus was always my favourite band; I was quite Indie.
So you’ve got quite disparate influences – how does that reconcile itself when you come to writing the songs, and who writes the music and who writes the lyrics? JJ: It’s a group effort from all of us most of the time, but they work to different ways, I mean, I’ve written the lyrics before and between Dylan and Laurence they’ve written the music to it, then I’ve brought in a beat that I think goes with it. It’s just a build up from all our minds. Dylan: It’s a big organic, like there’s no set routine to it. I might be sitting at home with an acoustic guitar or something and come up with a riff, or he might be sitting with his and he’ll have something in his mind, and have a riff somewhere, so that’s how it works.
Obviously Lee Vann has sashayed into 48 /May 2012/
outlineonline.co.uk
the line-up – how did that come about? Lee: I met them through gigging in Norwich and since we met, they felt like they wanted to try something a little bit different just to fill a gap. I really love the music that the fellas do and I said, ‘do you mind if I come up with a few ideas and have a jam’, and we played together once and it sounded really good and everyone started coming up with new ideas.
We’re doing this interview because you won the Riverside Music Festival Saturday show – it was a while ago now, but do you still remember it well? Dylan: Yeah, we do remember it. JJ: We were pretty shocked! Laurence: I just thought not to expect anything and just play our set and it went really well. Te sound engineer there and the quality of the sound was amazing. At that time, we weren’t used to such a big set-up; that was big for us really. Dylan: We went on to do the Project after-party as well, so it was chaotic. We’d done the rounds and done untold open mics, wherever they would have us really, then – Laurence: Tat was our biggest thing really…
With each of those big live performances, and festival appearances, is it a game-changer in terms of growing your fanbase? Dylan: Yeah, since we did your music festival, this summer’s packed with festivals now for us, everything from Jelly Fest to god knows, it’s just packed. Laurence: Yeah, Jelly Fest, we’re doing this thing at Playfest now… JJ: VW Whitenoise, Dubs at the Hall and Holt Hall…
Tat’s a really strong summer of festivals, so tell us, what are your festival essentials? JJ: Alcohol, instruments and being
together. Baby wipes – wipe off and start again, hahaha!
You guys can switch it between acoustic and plugged in and it’s allowed you to play in different places – how do you think you do down in both respects? Laurence: We’ve recently done an acoustic session at EPIC studios and for us, when we were all there and doing that with Lee for the first time on acoustic, it seemed to work really well. We had a really good response from that going on to YouTube and people looking at that. Dylan: We chuck in a few cheeky covers here and there; I think it just makes us more accessible.
Are we looking at any releases from you guys? Dylan: 22nd December is release date for us really; we need to get the festivals out the way then we’ll knuckle down towards the end of the summer. Laurence: We’re gonna book in and do our recording at Mill Studios; we’re looking at four songs.
You’ve got a big gig coming up at the Waterfront Studio – are you looking forward to it? Laurence: Yeah, really looking forward to it; it’s gonna be the biggest one we’ve done with Lee and we’re gonna be breaking our songs down and changing them round a little bit, so we’re really looking forward to bringing something a bit different…
Witness the show for yourselves at Te Waterfront Studio on May 18th. For tickets, go to
www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk
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