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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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