Hi, and how are you today, what does the day ahead hold for you?
GP: Sunny and clear as the blue skies. I'm off charity shopping; not shopping for charities, that would be daft, but going to charity shops, checking for vinyl albums and non-vinyl shirts. And books.
GP: Our variously talented drummer Nick Moore designs all the animals that have adorned our sleeves - Catdog, Bluebird, and now Sharkduck. Sometimes they're mash-ups of animals - like Octomonkey! - but not always. We just let him create a few, choose the best, and then "Griff takes the raw 'Mooroanimal' image and fully designs the cover, adding other stylistic elements, putting them on a background and choosing fonts, that sort of thing. It gives us a good visual identity, which is important – any band can stand around looking moody for a camera, but our 'cartoon animals' imagery raises some more interesting questions. Besides, I'm not sure people want to look at us... Pink Floyd were never on their covers, were they?
Anglo-Welsh-American, that's a mix, how did the band get together?
GP: Griff's from Aberystwyth, and come to London to make music. He met Nick, who's from Merseyside. Nick knew me (I'm from Bolton in Lancashire). We had a Tasmanian bassist but he went home, so we advertised and one of Griff's mates recommended Steve Kennedy: Texas-born, with all the politeness of a Southern gentleman, but has spent more time in California, with the openness and creativity that can bring.
Like your artwork, your sound is very fresh and alive, how did the band find its sound?
GP: We plugged in and started. Sounds facetious but we never bonded over a love of, say, Interpol or the Swingle Singers. We've all got our favorite artists and only a few overlap, so that creates a broad swathe of background knowledge. We never say "let's make this song sound like..." but we might, for example, try a backing-vocal arrangement or secondary riff that one of us has heard - and if the others don't know it, we share the music around, so we're always cross-pollinating ideas and influence.
There is a lot of late Sixties/mid Seventies vibes in your music, is that the result of your parents' record collections?
GP: More like ours... there's so much fabulous music to discover, we're still catching up. I think we all had music in our childhood homes, and some of those earliest earworms might still be around – my mum loved Elvis and Billy Joel, for instance, and my uncle had all the Beatles albums on original vinyl – but there again a lot of it is stuff we've got into ourselves, later on. We've never been beholden to keeping up with the latest trends but the recent craze for vintage has made it much easier to get classic music. And clothes, for that matter...
Back to school/college days; what where the albums shared among friends or cool to be seen with and, do you still play those albums today?
GP: My musical tastes didn't often intersect with that of many schoolmates, but there was a cabal of us into The Smiths and Wedding Present, as I still am to this day. Pretty much everybody in the school could all agree on the Stone Roses' debut album, which is still a personal favorite, although I don't play the backwards song.
What does it mean to you to be in a band and be a musician when you sit back and think about it?
GP: It's a wonderful chance to be creative and constructive, but also to have a good time and give other people a good time too. I really like my band mates and the music we play, and I've always loved singing and playing, so if somebody enjoys what we do then that's superb. It's never felt like a job or a chore, even when doing a 12-hour there-and-back for a foreshortened 20-minute gig.
First gig and last gig, what are the memories
GP: The first Howl Griff gig was in a tiny Hoxton cellar, and overran with what we can call hilarity in hindsight. We didn't go on stage until gone 1am – and this on a weeknight – and we were kit-sharing with the band before us, who'd driven down from Hull and were driving back that night, but only after we'd finished... the recent one that stands out was the Nibley Festival in the Cotswolds – it had been raining for a week but more or less held off while we were on stage. Two hours after we played, the stage roof was bowing under the weight of rainwater and they had to close it - the bands had to play in the beer tent...
Bands of the past have had fags, beer & whisky on stage, nowadays it's just water. What are Howl Griff, whisky or water?
GP: I don't drink so it's water for me, although I often crave a cup of tea. Griff, Steve and Nick will often have a pint of Guinness, and I can't blame them - it's a meal in a glass, innit?
Any interesting things learned when recording your album that you will use next time around and any particular recording effect or sound that you would like to share with your fellow musicians?
GP: Always experiment and innovate. I was pondering a backwards guitar solo on Radio Revolution but we set it up so it was almost but not quite feeding back, which sounds pretty similar, so we went with that. One thing we did on this album that we've not done before was to record harmony vocals at the same time, three of us round a lovely old valve mic. It takes practice – if one of you goes wrong, all three have to retake – but who said singing practice was hard?
Favourite radio station and why?
GP: Depends on my mood – I might be of a mind to listen to classic rock for hours – but also the presenter. Probably BBC 6music more than anything because I like Radcliffe & Maconie, Lauren Laverne, Gideon Coe and so on, but arguably my favorite is Saturday night's Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show – it's so uplifting. I also loved the iTunes radio station Technicolor Web of Sound, which mixed 60s music with bizarre adverts of the time, but it's gone off-air... maybe the acid wore off!
The album Fragile Diamond is out on 15th October, any dates planned for then or before?
GP: Yep, we're in the process of booking places. There's an album launch at the Albany on Great Portland St, London on Thu 20 Sep and three days later we're playing in Cardiff; in October we'll be heading further afield, including Manchester and North Wales. Watch this space - or rather our website
