1. How did you become interested in music? What influenced you?
For me it was when my sister made a copy of the first two oasis albums for me. she copied the 2 albums on2 a cassette tape, side 1 was 'definetly maybe' and side 2 was 'whats the story (morning glory)'. I listened to that tape constantly for about 2 and then started to get in2 other britrock bands such as manic street preahers, stereophonics, radiohead etc. also one of my older brothers had been learning guitar on and off throughout his youth and i started just picking up his guitar and got comfortable with it and then started to teach my self to play by the time i was 13 with the help of magazines and guitar books.
2. When and why did you become a band? How did you begin?
for me and luke it all started back in 2002 when i was 16 and luke was 13. we had both known each other for a couple of years and we were both determined to be in a successful rock band. so we started working on writing songs and did some local gigs and recorded some rough demos in a studio down by elesmere port. we have been working on music ever since then and we even use a few things in our songs today that were writen over 6-8 years ago. we spent alot of time over the years studying the music industry and we have been excerising our abilities so that we would eventually get to a point that we could take the band very seriously. we formed MERGER in 2009 during my final year of university and we were originally a three piece but after hiring and firing 5 different bass players in that 1 year we decided to persue our musical careers as a two piece band and havent looked back since.
3. Where did the inspiration to be a band come from?
It all comes from being mesmerised by music. I have had a huge passion for music for as long as i can remember and even believed from the age of about 8 that i would be a singer/guitarist when i grew up. It also has alot to do with wanting to make something of my life and be remembered in the future instead of being tied down to a job that demoralises your spirit and forces you to abandon your dreams.
4. Why did you choose the name Merger? What does it mean to you?
It originally refered to the 'merging' of different styles of music within our sound. But over the last year it has been interpreted to refer to many other things such as; the MERGING of mine and luke's instuments to make one sound. It has a reference to corporations and the business world and how we interpret the music industry as one big MERGERING business corporation. and the other reference is a political reference which was taken from a quote by Mussolini "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini
5. How did you make yourselves known?
recently facebook has been our biggest marketing tool and has projected the bands name into alot of peoples subconsious. It is amazing how many people have heard of us without even listening to us. between all of our social networkin sites we have well over 3000 followers and is always increasing.
We also have the 'word-of-mouth' factor working for us as well. we have been playing gigs around liverpool every month for over the last 2 years. this has obviously played a huge role in our publicity as everytime we play a gig we play to a club full of approx 300 people that then go and tell their friends about us. Also when i was in university the word spread almost over night after one of my lectures sat in on one of our jam sessions and the next day everyone on my course (thanks to my lecturer) knew all about us, whether they liked us or not. by the time i left uni practically the whole music department knew who MERGER were which gave us alot of confidence. Back when we were in school we had a pretty decent following and there was even a case when someone vandalised the boys toilets with our band name, i think back then we were called 'DIMENSIA'. so the wall read somethin like "DIMENSIA RULES!!!" free pulicity and it defo helped lol.
6. How do you get ideas for your music? What influences you?
We listen to a very wide range of music so we have a very good understanging of how music works across the board and not just in rock music. we listen to alot of ambient stuff, classical, jazz, hip hop, blues, pop, retro stuff any and everything. We always try to put alot of differnt musical elements into our songwriting. its hard to do when we only use guitar drums and voice. but there are ways of taking inspiration from say a saxophone solo and transposing the feel on to a guitar solo. we always belive that if u can undertand how a pop song works then u can write a very catchy metal song. afterall every style of music still uses the same rhythms and notes..they just swing differently, play faster, or use different musical instruments to alter the sound. but they all work on the same level so we just throug it all together.
I spend alot of time working on guitar sounds and fx so i can create sounds that havent been done b4 (eg intro to our song dodging bullets). Because im always playing and experimenting with sounds i will come across riffs or chord progressions that i like the sound of and use those progressions to fit with my originall fx that i have created. then when i have a full song strucure i show it to luke and then he shapes and forms the tempo, speed and rhythm of the song which then i shape my lyrics and vocals around its a long process but thats the best i can do at explaining how we get our ideas to sound the way they do.
7. What attitude do you want your music to give out?
For me its always about standing up for youself, not leting anyone put you down and following ur dreams.
8. If you had one wish what would it be?
Its hard to answer that question without sounding selfish lol. I think it is fairly obvious that if i had a wish it would be along the lines of sustaining my musical career for as long as i can possibly keep it going. but my unselfish cheesy liberal answer would have to be world peace.
9. Was it your dream to be in a band and a musician?
yes an no. i always thought to myself "id love to be a musician/singer" but my big dream like every other young boy was to be a professional footballer. I used to play for tranmere rovers school boys when i was 11 and played for Wirral and my primary and secondary school teams. I even played against wayne rooney when we were both 10-11. so my big dream originally was football and remained my big dream until i was about 13 which is when i started to play guitar.
10. How many gigs/concerts have you done? Which one was your favourite?
I honetly cant answer that as i have no idea. its a number that cant even work out as we have played consistantly every month for the last 3 years and we did loads of gigs b4 we started MERGER so who knows? i couldnt even work out how many gigs we have done since i left uni. Its roughly the amount of months that we have been a band as we gig every month but some months we have done 2 or 3 gigs in a month.
11. Did you ever have anything weird thrown at you whilst you were on stage?
I dont really want to say as it its so disgusting...but seemin u asked il tell ya anyway. years and years ago when we had a bass player a girl though a tampon on stage (dnt worry it wasnt used!! it was a new one) so our bassist at the time picked it up and and tied it to his bass!!!!! less said the better....
12. What do you do in your spare time when you’re not performing?
I teach guitar leesons at a music shop called Wirral Music and i play alot of football and go running when ever i can. The band takes up most of my time and keeps me very busy so not alot but mainly exercise. lukes the same.
13. Which famous musicians do you admire?
here is a list of our favourite bands........tool, radiohead, nirvana, smashing pumpkins, sonic youth, foo fighters, sikth, ...and so i watch you from a far, cinematic orchestra, steve reich, oceansize, ....and you will know us by the trail of dead, jimi hendrix, jeff buckley, vessels, godspeed you black emperor, god is an astranaut, at the drive-in, taproot, dub fx, mars volta, a perfect circle, incubus, embrace, soundgarden, led zepplin, rueben, metallica, faith no more, and of course LADY GA GA...................................................................
14. Do you write your own songs? What was the first song you wrote?
everything we play is always our own material. I personally wrote my first song when i was 13 and havent stopped writing ever since. and me and luke 2gether wrote our first proper song after our first ever practice. between the two of us there wasnt really a first song as we worked on about 4 songs at the same time and they all evolved to the point where they could be played live.
15. Do you get nervous before performing? How do you tackle those nerves?
Its more of an adrenaline rush for me and its about calming my self down so i play coherently and stay in control of my performance. at university they ran workshops that taught us how to deal with stage fright and anxiety attacks. its all to do with how your blood is pumped around the body much faster when dealing with anxiety
16. Do you have any singles or albums?
we realeased a live ep and also have a live acoustic ep that can b downloaded from our website but we will be releasing our debut album in january 2012 which will be our first official release. we have set up our own label called 'Papillon Productions' so we can release it and we will make videos for two of the album tracks that we feel our strong enough to release as singles. because we are independent it is alot harder for us to get mainstream airplay on radio or mtv but it is what we are working towards. we will get airpaly on bbc radio mersyside on the 'Dave Monks Show' and we will then go from there. our new music videos will start on our website and youtube and we plan on building up the profile from there and look for some gigs outside of Liverpool.
17. What is your favourite colour(s)?
Mine is blue and im pretty sure lukes is red
18. What is your star sign(s)?
mine is virgo (sept 3rd) im not sure what lukes is but his birthday is amazingly on 31st december
19. Where did you both meet?
We both met in cash convertors in liscard when I was about 14 and luke was about 11. I was at the counter selling some old cds and i could here someone behind me in the queue responding to all the cds i was putting on the counter. The person was luke saying things like 'wow' or 'i like them' etc. so i turned round and said, "do u wana buy them off me for the same price and then u dnt have to pay extra to cash convertors?" we bumped into each other a few times in the street and always remembered each other til we realised we knew alot of the same people and started hangin out and going to parties. i was also in a band at the time called 'Osiris' which luke had been listening to and when osiris split up luke asked if i wanted to start a band with him. so we did.
20. What is your favourite take away food?
we dont really eat take away food but im sure we would order a pizza if we did lol
21. How do you cope with your fans?
Iv never been stressed out or annoyed by fans im always greatful for every person that likes our music. we keep in good contact with anyone that contacts us and we keep everyone updated on our upcoming events, news and releases. I must admit there have been a few weirdos along the way especially on facebook. we get people that we have never met leaving really strange messages on our page which we end up blocking. but we never block any one that we know likes our music its just every now and then we get someone tryna be clever and cheeky or we have people complain that we are sending out group messages and they report as spam so there have been a few incidents but nothing to major that i can recall. In fact the only thing worth mentioning is when we fired one of old bass players (who really deservered to be kicked out) and his girlfriend in retaliation wrote on our wall "I HATE MERGER U GUYS SUCK!!" which was very mature of her, dont you think??
22. Do you go on tour? If not would you like to?
We have only played in liverpool so far but we get offered gigs all the time for us to play venues outside of liverpool, such as manchester, london, leeds etc. we basically want to build up a bigger fanbase and sell our album first b4 we start travelling. we also want to raise up a bit of money as well before we start travelling around the country.
23. Do you have any pets what are there names? Tell us about them.
yes i have cat called 'Genie'. She is a tortoiseshell breed and her face looks like gene simmons from kiss with all the makeup hence the name 'genie' and luke has a black rottweiler that looks scarier than it actually is, he's harmless really. also lukes mum has about 8 cats (no joke)
24. If you could not be a musician, what would you be or do and why?
I probably would have studied english or history at uni and probably gone in to teaching. luke would probably get into central heating and plumbing and get an apprentiship something like that. but then what we do is what makes us who we are, so its hard to imagine doing anything else.
25. Looking back when you are 60 years old, what three things would you like to say you have done in your lives?
well my list of things to do b4 i die is nearly complete so i will need to update it soon. basicaly when i was about 10-12 i decided that b4 i was 30 i would learn to play guitar, form a band and write and record an album. so i will get to look back on those three things b4 im 30!! i think by the time im sixty my three things will be like; get married to a loving woman, buy a house, start a loving family, but they wont be on my 'to-do' list for about 10 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment