Interview
Interview
Stage Times: The Twang
From headlining Brixton to post-show rejection by an American label, The Twang’s Phil Etheridge takes us through his most memorable gigs
Raised on a diet of The Stone Roses, The Happy Mondays and the indie greats of the 90’s, The Twang rode the crest of a wave of guitar bands that made their names in the noughties. They’re now heading out on tour as they look back and celebrate their second record, Jewellery Quarter, by performing the album live in full, including songs that have never made it into the set list before.
“There’re six or seven that we’ve never played, but they’re sounding good,” says singer and guitarist Phil Etheridge. “It’s a laugh, isn’t it? We’ve been jamming them and I’m like ‘Why did we never play this’? I think that sometimes in the early days when you’re just trying a song, if it didn’t click straight away, we just moved on because the set was getting too big, but they’re getting really good now we’re trying them out. I reckon a couple might become staples in the set going forward.”
It’s been 15 years since they released their sophomore effort, and it’s caused some reflection on Etheridge’s part about the making of the record.
“I listened to it all the way through recently to prepare for rehearsals, and I realised how happy and proud I am of what we did. We were making records together, and we were having a laugh. If you’re going to do that for a living, it’s the best thing in the world, isn’t it? bar playing for the ‘Villa… It did just take me back to that time. The album was quite a long process, we’d done that whole rock ‘n’ roll thing of booking a cottage and living together for a month writing, then off we went to Granada to record in Space Mountain studios. Then we came back and scrapped the lot, instead working with Neil [Claxton] from Mint Royal in Manchester, with songs that made the record like ‘Barney’ and ‘Twit Twoo’ coming from those sessions.”
With the success of the first album Love It When I Feel Like This, came a lot of pressure for album number two.
“It was a strange era for the band,” says Etheridge. “I didn’t probably realise it at the time, but we’d been hyped massively, and around that album it just started to switch a little bit. No one wants to be told ‘this is the best band in Britain’, because there’s no such thing. As soon as someone tells you that, the pressure can get a bit shit. It’s just a natural reaction. But we rode it out, put on that record, and we’ve gone on to make more and still sell out big rooms.”
Before they head out to perform again this month at more of those aforementioned big rooms shows, Etheridge walked us back through the most memorable performances of The Twang.
The gig that made you want to play music
I remember seeing Ian Brown at the Civic in Wolverhampton with Regular Fries. We had to travel over because there were no 3000 cap venues nearby. The Hummingbird had shut down, the new Academy was still The Dome. So all the good gigs were at the Civic. I loved the Roses like everyone did, and I loved his solo stuff; I just thought he was the coolest man in the world. This is going to sound really weird, but I was sure he looked at me during the show.
We waited outside to try and meet him after too. This car pulled up and it was him, so we jumped in front but his people stopped us. Luckily Brown was like “no, no, no, they’re sound”. We bought this big poster outside the venue and asked him to sign it, then realised we didn’t have a pen and neither did he so he just got in his car and f*cked off. Meeting him early doors, that was really where I knew that’s what I’m going to do. I remember sitting in the car on the way back from that gig thinking “we have to try and start writing”. We weren’t even musicians at the time, but it made me want to get a guitar and put our lives into words.
The first
The first gig that we actually did was like 2002 and it was a place called Dirty Bets, which was a function room in the back of a pub in Bearwood called The Talbot. The ones they’d use for weddings, birthday parties, all that stuff. We were awful, but I’d gone out and bought myself a new pair of Air Max, and I had this wicked Henry Lloyd jacket, and I felt brilliant. I thought, “This is it”. At the start of that gig, Jon’s [Jon Watkins, Bassist] cousin said, “Can I do backing vocals?” He hadn’t rehearsed with us at all but he insisted and I don’t know what he was doing, but he sounded like a cat being strangled. We didn’t care, it was funny. It was really the first taste of it.
We were shocking, but at the time I thought we were great, I still thought there was something about it, that we were quite cool. I’d gone to so much effort, I got my now wife – she worked in an office at the time – to print off posters and everything. That’s the beauty of it, we were really trying to do something with ourselves, spending time in a rehearsal room with your mates instead of just at the pub.
It gets more intense after but those early days when you’re just having a laugh, you’re not worried about how you’re singing, what you play, you just truly, freely express. It’s afterwards when you start going, “oh, would this be a hit” and that’s when it gets a little… it’s not as much fun. So to go back to those times when you just didn’t care, they’re the best times, those early gigs.
The biggest
I think the pinnacle of what we’ve done, in terms of production, is that we sold out Brixton on our own, and I think that’s always been the aim to get back to Brixton. We’ve played it with other bands, like James, and in 2019 with Shed Seven, so we’ve played the room quite a few times, but we’ve only done it once with us as the headliner. It was a moment, and one that I probably took for granted. It was a special show, so to get back to that level, to headline there again, I’d be so happy. Then obviously festivals, especially if you get a good afternoon slot, where you walk out and we’ve got the whole festival in front of us and you’re thinking “gentlemen, this is brilliant”, but our actual own gig, it’s got to be Brixton. And what a room as well; I’ve seen some great bands there myself, but those rooms, they’ve got such history, everyone’s trod those boards, and then you’re there doing it, so you’re absolutely buzzing to be part of the club.
The weirdest
Corporate gigs. I always find it weird, where you’ve been paid a horrendous amount of money to play for some work do. I remember we did one with, I can’t think what the shop was called it, but they sold computer games and we were supporting The Hoosiers, or maybe Scouting For Girls. These gigs are so weird because those people aren’t into your band – you have literally been paid shitloads to stand there and just do the money dance. Though I’m not complaining, and if any corporate people out there want us on… I’m there, but they are definitely strange shows.
The worst
There was one for XFM actually, who were behind us all the way, but they did a competition gig and we had a label over from America, because we hadn’t signed an American deal at the time. It was a big thing, and we sat with him in The Cumberland hotel all day, and I thought it was a good idea to get drunk and entertain him. I ended up so, so, so, so drunk at this venue in London, playing in front of this weird crowd who weren’t really into us, so when we walked out it was silent. Because I was drunk I just couldn’t get it back round in my head to just do the gig; be nice, be pleasant. We’ve got this tune that we end with, ‘Cloudy Room’, and I always walk off before the rest of the band, and then the band kind of play it out before finishing the set. I get off stage and I saw this geezer from the American label and I’m like “How was it?!”, I thought we were about to sign this huge American deal. He said, “it was good when you walked off stage”. And that was it, we never heard from him again. I lost the deal. We never signed an American deal until a few years after that and it was tiny, but this guy was big, he had offices where Jay Z is based and he told me earlier in the day “I played the record back to front I don’t care about the order, it’s brilliant”. And then I ruined it with one gig. So that’s probably the worst.
The best
I can’t remember a lot of the great gigs, because when you come off stage they’re a blur because you’ve been lost in the music. I remember Glastonbury – we headlined the John Peel stage and we’d come straight from a tour in Germany so it was all a bit hazy, but it was brilliant, man. You couldn’t get in the tent it was so packed. I always talk about that Glastonbury because it was, like Brixton, a pinnacle for us.
We’ve done some acoustic shows over the last few years in little venues like St Luke’s in Glasgow and The Glee Club in Birmingham, and they have been some of my favourite ever gigs, because they’re so different; the connection with the crowd is different. I’d just be having a chat with people mid set, which I’d never do on stage, and they’ve been some of the best gigs we’ve ever done. It adds another string to our bow that we can go out with just a few guitars, a trumpet, whatever, and go and do shows and travel around doing that. I think they show the songs in a different light as well, if you can strip a song back to just an acoustic and it sounds great, then it’s a good song, isn’t it?
The Twang start their UK tour on 7 December, playing venues throughout the month. Find tickets here
Photo credit: Andy Willsher/Redferns/Getty Images
