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An interview with The Shotguns

Posted on 18. Sep, 2009 by GabiGoldberg in Band Interviews, Music, featured

“The Shotguns. The name is in honour of my [Warren's] flesh and blood and that’s where these songs come from…my own flesh and blood-it’s marrow music-it’s got a heartbeat to it that’s going to be around for a while. I had the unexpected arrival of my first born son earlier this year – so it seemed like the most obvious name to go for…a shotgun baby you know. It was important for us was to stick with a name that would never change and that suited us and our music.”

The Shotguns dub themselves as a band “filled with old heads and wise souls, hot heads and open hearts…a band that has a crazy, relentless passion for backing themselves and their work.”

The band met when Warren and Stuart (the drummer) “played in a band in Cape Town together called Soulja. Stuart and Mark (the guitarist) had played in bands together before that;  as for Merwe (the bassist) “well,  it’s a long and complicated story.” Warren says laughingly “I found him in a gutter in downtown Bellville, passed out with an empty bottle of Kilipdrift in his hand. I took him under my wing, fed him by means of a straw for a month or two – he then did the designs for one of the Soulja album sleeves [and the rest is history]…”

The band “all listen to pretty much the same music” but as for their influences “it comes down to Rock n Roll and the odd slice of reggae-major influences would be Dire Straits, Bob Dylan, Led Zepellin, The Stones, The Beatles, Johnny Clegg, Brenda Fassie and ourselves obviously.”

Warren, Merwe, Mark and Stuart all started out making music for different reasons, Warren says “I was about 13 when I started playing guitar and I started writing my own songs when I was about 15 – but seeing Springbok Nude Girls one night in 1998 really put some serious fire under my ass and made me realise what I wanted to do- I moved to Cape Town the next year and got involved more seriously in music. Mark and Stuart also started playing at a very early age. Mark actually started playing because he was told he couldn’t even hum in tune, let alone play a guitar-so he went out and bought himself a guitar and proved the powers that be wrong. Merwe started playing because him and all his mates like Snake (of Fokofpolisiekar fame) felt they needed to curb suburban boredom I guess…”

The band have just finished the post production on their album, Dust To Dust . Warren explains “We gave it about a month’s post production. We’re just waiting for the DVD to be completed in edit and we’ll then package it and swing it around as hard as we can…we’re already working on new material and will record an EP towards the later part of this year. We’re hoping to do one or two London shows with the Fokof and aKing boys – which will be a cool way to close the year. There’s a definite plan for The Shotguns to do a South African tour in April next year – which will be really cool.”

As to what they would like achieve in the music industry their “main aim is to get a decent label behind us, a decent booking agent and publicist and play gigs every night and make great albums for the next decade at least.”

Warren’s favourite thing about performing is “when you know that you’re nailing the songs the way they’re supposed to be nailed – because that directly translates into the crowd giving that energy back to you.”

Working at Abbey Road and with Chris Bolster was “a lifelong dream come true. We did the recording of the album in Studio 2 – where all The Beatles hits were recorded, Pink Floyd have worked in there, Oasis…the list goes on – so it’s a very special space. It’s still got all the original fittings; the room has amazing acoustics, it was awesome to say the least. Chris Bolster has worked with the best bands in the world, so was a bit ‘windgat’  – but probably knows how to operate that room better than most ,so all in all  we left with what we went there for – which was to give the songs the credit and quality they deserved.”

Recording Dust to Dust was “an intense process to say the least. We tracked all the songs in two days – we would have loved to spend a few weeks in there – but a real Rock n Roll budget of an independent band doesn’t really allow that. So we played for 12 hours straight each day. But we did enough takes to choose from (some songs were done nine or ten times – so we could choose the real gems) and got to do all the vocals over at Abbey Road. I’ve never really given enough love to the vocal tracks on my previous albums and I think it shows on this one: We’re really happy with how it’s all come out and I know in my heart I’ve done the vocal melodies justice – which is important closure to have as an artist.

The album name, Dust to Dust “is a good reflection of a certain point on the human life cycle – some things die and get put to rest, others grow and develop. Emotions, feelings, things, people, life all chucked into that cycle and at the end there is surely another beginning and at the beginning there is surely another end.”

They filmed the entire recording process and ending up with The Abbey Road Sessions DVD. Warrens explains that “filming the sessions just seemed like the obvious thing to do – it’s really going to bring the entire package to life and helped burn the experience into our own memories – as it was all too intense to sit back and enjoy it while it was all unfolding. The Director of the filming process – Craig Moore and myself go back a long way, so he knew exactly what we wanted and worked around it all.”

The band chose to upload raw and unproduced actual takes from the recording process and decided not wait until they were worked on as “We had worked relentlessly for almost a year in our practice studio and had never had anything to show for it…So felt compelled to leak something out to the public – it was also necessary as we were about to start playing live shows, so we needed to give people a little taste.”

There wasn’t actually time to get really crazy in studio- although there was “talk of doing a few Rock n Roll things. Abbey Road was all about work. Warren jokingly adds “we certainly did bend it when we left the building if you know what I mean…” Ultimately they are all “really proud of the entire album – but the two tracks that deserve a mention are “Camden Rock” and “First you too Late” and the first single off the album will definitely be a song called “Other Girls”.

They all take a long time to get ready before a gig (as they “wear suits”) but it’s a race between Mark and Merwe as to who takes the longest. None of them work on musical side projects as “this is a big enough beast for now” as to whom talks the most rubbish, it is Stuart -but “it’s rubbish that makes a whole lot of sense.” Merwe is definitely the messiest. His nickname is “Varkie.” As for the craziest thing that has happened at a show Warren takes the high  road and says “no comment – you wouldn’t be allowed to print it and we’d get into too much trouble.”

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Tags: band interview, Music, south african band, south african band interview, South African music, The Shotguns, The Shotguns band