nouse, 31st January 2001
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Lowgold's Miles Willey speaks to Andy Plowman about silly names, van sickness and Americana

Miles Willey, pint sized, full bearded bass player of Lowgold looks expectant and nervous all at once. "This is a first for me I must say because usually the rest of the band members do this stuff."

The dingy arches of the venue might not seem much, but tonight Lowgold are a long way from their humble beginnings, when Miles and guitarist Dan had rival bands at college. "His band....this is really bad, I've never said this before. His band was called Quadpiece, but 'piece' was spelt 'p-e-a-c-e'." He then proceeds to show us hand actions which are worthy of Spinal Tap. "So you kind of make the peace sign..." hilarity ensues. Realising he has just dropped his friend well and truly in it, getting the title of his own band name is slightly harder. "Nah, you'll have to do some more researching...I am not making myself look like a twat..we were called Foetus Eater. See how quickly I folded there? It sounds like some kind of hardcore band, but we just did covers of like, shit pub rock style songs. It was just a laugh, just...awful stuff. I went to university aged eighteen and within the first two weeks I had lost my virginity, learned how to play guitar and done a gig." Taking notes at the back?

The band in their current incarnation were assembled by lead singer and guitarist Darren Ford, who, in Miles' own words, is "the driving force behind the band." After being in various other bands without success, Darren decided he could do better on his own and asked Dan to provide some guitars for a four track he would send to record companies. Nude loved what they heard, and after roping in Miles, on Bass and Simon Scott on Drums, they signed to the record label in the winter of 1998/9. However, if all this seemed to good to be true, there was trouble around the corner. "The record company had a lot of financial problems. So we sat on our arses for a long time, nearly splitting up."

Miles brushes aside the near implosion of Lowgold before they had really got started quite easily, but you sense it was a very difficult time for the four. "...we had to borrow and beg. We were all determined to make a go of it. We didn't have any money to do anything and yet we were sitting on this fantastic album."

The band's biography, "It's boring isn't it?" compares the band members to various football stars past and present. Would the band's struggle for survival mirror that of the plight of any of the clubs in our own divisions, for example our very own York City, stuck near the bottom of the football league? "Nah. We are...Charlton Athletic. We're newly promoted to the Premiership, we're the underdogs but we're everyone's favourite for next season. Next year we'll be challenging for a place in Europe." You sense that Lowgold could do it. But then Miles would say that. And Charlton are his team after all.

In fact, the football comparisions don't stop there. When nouse spoke to Miles near Christmas, just as the Premiership was preparing for it's busiest time, Lowgold were halfway through a major tour of the country. It won't stop there though. Next month sees them embark on a tour supporting Grandaddy, before they head out on their own again in March. Is this hectic schedule taking its toll on the band? "Now, at the moment we're finding it a little bit gruelling...When you sit in a van for six days and only do two gigs. That was Amsterdam to Dublin. So after the Dublin gig we'd been in a van for six days, a real shit one as well, and it's like..I'm getting van sickness and van madness hear and we've only done two gigs!" But I'm not moaning about that at all 'cause it's fantastic. We've all been in bands for a long time, just wanting to do this, and I'd much rather be doing this than any nine to five."

The feelings of warmth synonymous with Lowgold's songs is conveyed to the whole crowd tonight. You sense a really close knit atmosphere, as if people really care about the band, and vice-versa. Their tour manager, Vern, ("All these people in the music industry have stupid names. Our manager's called Tank, our tour manager's called Vern and that's not his real name either. But they're like proper nicknames as wall, noone calls them anything else. I've met Coldplay's crew, there was a guy called Hoppy and a guy called, er, Bash. Nicknames are rife.") is also selling the t-shirts. In quiet moments between songs Darren banters with the audience, whilst Miles passes a tin of biscuits around the fans and offers towels to the rather warm looking front row. The songs take on a classically harder live edge, first single proper 'Beauty Dies Young' gets thrashed out to a noisy crescendo and new single 'Mercury' swoons over the audience with a purposeful driven edge.

Ah yes, the songs. An obvious statement maybe, but Lowgold are a band that are about songs. People have attempted, in the wake of 'sensitive' acts such as Travis and Coldplay to lump lowgold in with a whole host of other British 'New Acoustic' bands, even though their songs are distinctly American in flavour. Miles seems unimpressed. "Is that new spelt N-U? Because I refuse to be a part of some mispelt movement. I don't really think that we fit in with the whole Doves, Badly Drawn Boy, Coldplay kind of thing. And we've never ever played an acoustic guitar like, ever. Any of us.

I think basically there's a slight similarity in that we're a band that's based around songs, and that kind of sounds obvious. But there are a lot of bands that aren't. Whereas, the music is key... and that sounds kind of cheesy and cliched, but our strength is the songs. There is no kind of hidden agenda and we don't to become part of any kind of movement at all, because it's just good old fashioned, well written songs and you could wrap them up in any shape or form or anything and they will still shine through.

I don't think we sound like anyone else around at the moment, which is good."

Now only one thing remains unclear. Why didn't they stick with QuadPeace or Foetus Eater? Just what is Low-Gold? " Well, this is Darren's story but I'll tell it. He was looking for a name for the band...he was reading some kind of historical thing 'cause he's...quite a clever lad right. And he read this word from Old Norse, of which the literal English translation is 'Low-Gold', but the actual meaning is something that is of hidden worth, something that is not obvious to start with but has great value. It just jumped off the page at him."

You get the feeling Darren might have to plunge inside that book soon.

Andy Plowman


Typed out by Paul Kelly for www.lowgold.co.uk



 
 
 
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