Russell and The Wolves
FLOOR CRAWL
FAULT: What is the most challenging aspect of being a musician?
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Russell: It’s trying to be inventively unoriginal. Everything decent has already been taken to it’s extremity so we currently live in the “they sound like BLANK x BLANK” generation. When you’re in a band with four music geeks, you’ll bring a riff to practice and one will shout, ‘oh that sounds like this obscure b-side of an unknown psyche band from 1963’ and the other will say ‘it’s like synth part in a Krautrock song’. It’s just trying to get that mix of something that’s original and sounds good too.
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Ned Heulen Hogan: Finding other people that like similar-enough shit to play with you and to help each other learn more shit. That the challenge.
Danielle Velterelle: Money. I just want to get in a damn van and tour every place we’ve been asked to play. It’s awful turning down great support slots because you just can’t afford to get there. And that’s before your amp sets on fire or your main pedal packs in. We’ve been really fortunate to get free studio time with a guy who mixes us how we like, without him we wouldn’t have been able to release our vinyl.
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Great Scott: Mine is being able to adapt to your ‘own style’ to you surroundings so you can connect with the vibe that both the band and audience are giving off. Only that way can you give a performance that you can be happy with.
FAULT: Tell us about your musical background? How was it growing up in Middlesbrough?
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R: My formative years of music was spent going to local gigs, trapesing the web for obscure 60’s garage songs and forcing people to be in bands with me against their will. I’m still doing it.
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DV: My Dad and Nana are a really music obsessed pair. Through them I nerded over the buzzcocks and Joy Division before finding my own way. NHH: Started playing guitar at about 10 or whatever. It was at about the same time nirvana nevermind came out, i seem to remember? And as for growing up in Teesside, well that was great, shit, fun, painful, sexy, ugly, drunk and sober all in different measures at different times.
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GS: I only started playing drums because I used to receive so many detentions for banging on tables in every lesson. Growing up in Middlesbrough has been a real learning curve. I wouldn’t change it for the world becuase everyone is so hilariously common and heretic. R: Middlesbrough’s a total throughway; people don’t go to it, they go through it. We never had a music scene with major touring bands, it feed off pretty much local bands, so we’d grow up seeing the same load of crap constantly. If we wanted to go see bigger band we’d have to migrate.
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DV: Luckily we always seem to have one or two mental promoters who will put interesting gigs on now and then. We don’t have the population to sustain much of an underground movement so it’s pretty bland most of the time. It seems to be the general consensus that if you want a wild, garage appreciating bunch, gig in Berlin. R: However I do think that we are a definite product of Middlesbrough. The fact that it’s so backwards and separate from anywhere and anything ‘cool’ or ‘now’ has lead us to making the music we do. We’ve had to go looking for music we enjoyed, so London might as well have been as far away as Texas and when we found, if we didn’t think it was amazing it wouldn’t have enough of a presence to penetrate our influences.
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FAULT: Who has been your biggest influence?
NHH: Musically it would have to be Jon Spencer, but for guitar alone it would have to be Eddy Angel. His shit’s simple-ish but just always sounds great. Or maybe Link Wray, or maybe Vince Ray. I dont know anybody that plays the stuff I like, the way I like it. GS: I grew up listening to the general legends, Zeppelin (Bonham is still my hero/icon), Zappa, Canned Heat, Santana, Sabbath, etc.
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R: I found myself inspired by the few good local bands who made too much noise and caused too much havok. It was those three or so bands that drilled into me not to make generic mainstream rubbish, but more a slighty more subversive rubbish.
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DV: PJ Harvey altered my ideas about what a girl could do and be in a band when I was about 10 with ‘Rid of Me’. Again thanks Dad for getting that and playing probably unsuitable content around me!
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FAULT: What is your favourite Russell and The Wolves track?
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GS: ‘Congo Dining’; it’s a real treat to play live and Ned’s guitar pretty much wails and cries all the way through. NHH: Id have to agree with Scott, I just mess on all the way through Congo Dining at the moment and I love it, so thats my fav song at the moment.
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R: ‘All Eights’ (which we’ve just released on vinyl) is real good, but live ‘Mr Obsession’ is my personal favourite. If it aint got wild by that song, you can bet it will before it’s over. DV: ‘Call the Tribe’; it always makes me laugh, we had such a great time recording it that we made it one of the b-sides on the ‘All Eights’ vinyl.
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FAULT: What is your FAULT?
R: It’s my FAULT countless soundmen have to bring out a back up mic after the headline band won’t use the one I’ve had inside my mouth.
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DV: It’s my FAULT the venue stinks of Armani Diamonds and is sticky with spilled Mead.
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GS: There’s a couple of FAULTs in this tie I need to sort out. NHH: It’s my never my fucking FAULT!
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