 Thunder have always been one of the powerhouses of the UK's rock scene. Dating back to the bands debut 'Back Street Symphony' in 1989, an album which spawned 6 singles, and the classic hits 'Dirty Love' and the albums title track among others, and now since their return from a 2 year split in 2003 working and releasing on the bands own label, STC Records.
With a UK tour about to start, and with the having just released a new EP, 'Six of One', and with the release of their latest DVD 'The Devil Went Down To Huttwil', Komodo Rock's Mike Elliott caught up with front man Danny Bowes to find out more about where the band are today, and what the future may hold for them.
Mike Elliott: Earlier this year you went on your first European Tour in 12 years...
Danny Bowes: Not strictly true actually!
ME: Ah! Can you enlighten us then?
DB: We came back five years ago, after being
split up for two and a half years, and we did some festivals in Europe,
and then we did a couple of minor tours in Europe, but this year was
the first full on tour of Europe we've done for probably ten years.
ME: And now your back in the UK for a tour starting on Saturday. Is that something you're looking forward to.
DB: Absolutely yeah. We've toured twice a year,
every year, for the last five years. We're very chuffed to be able to
do it, there's a lot competition out there, it's testimony to the
quality of the fans and their loyalty.
ME: And obviously the quality of the material your putting out, that they want to keep coming to see it live.
DB: Well hopefully, we do our best to make sure the shows as
entertaining as it can be within the constraints of the music we play.
ME: You've got Lauren Harris coming out on tour with you.
DB: The daughter of Steve yeah.
ME: Was that your choice?
DB: Yeah absolutely. Basically when we announce a
tour we're flooded with potential support bands, because we've made a
point of not necessarily taking out in the past the record labels or
the agents choice. You get lobbied left right and centre, and we've
always made sure we've taken who we wanted to, bands that we liked, and
because we've been very proactive in those choices, I think people...
ME: Have a go?
DB: Well yeah, they think it's worth a go because
you never know, the band might like what we do. It does mean we have to
plough through an awful lot of stuff, so we do make a rod for our own
back. Last year we ran a competition and bands got their mates to vote
for them via text, it worked out really well.
This year though, literally we looked around to see what was available,
and to be perfectly honest Lauren could do the whole tour. Most bands
wouldn't be able to do the whole tour because it goes up and down the
country, it takes place of ten or eleven days, and you need the
resources to be able to do that. So to find an unsigned band in a
position able to do that wouldn't be possible. Lauren has the
resources. I don't quite know where she gets them from! [laughs]
ME: Does it really matter?
DB: Doesn't really matter to me no, but she
wanted to do it, and so we thought yeah. There's only one date she's
not doing, the Stone Gods are doing the night in Norwich, they're the
guys from the Darkness. Hopefully they'll be good, and they're local
boys so hopefully they'll sell us some tickets!
ME: Which is always important!
DB: It's gotta be done.
ME: You put out the 'Six Of One' EP in October, can you tell us a little more about that.
DB: It's there to stimulate interest to be honest
with you, between now and when the next record comes out. We decided
that we didn't really want to release another album this year, mainly
because we've been so busy promoting Robert Johnson [Robert Johnson's
Tombstone – Thunder's latest album released on their own STC Label in
2006], that we just haven't had the time. So, having already started
with the writing of the material, it became apparent to me that we
needed to do something, because otherwise we're looking at 2- 2 ½ years
between albums.
 ME: And that's a long time these days.
DB: In the current climate it's a very long time.
Also, we've got a lot of very vociferous and demanding fans that are
always on at us to release new stuff, and because we bought our own
mobile recording rig a few years ago, so we are in a position where we
can record pretty much every live show we play, and because we have a
lot of live material it seemed to me that it would be relatively simple
to take 3 of the new songs and 3 of the live songs, especially songs
that haven't been released before, and maybe bolt them together into
something.
And of course as all things Thunder, it starts off as one thing, and
then becomes another idea, then another, the next thing you know it's a
full blown monster.
So, instead of doing one EP, we're actually going to release a series
of EP's, there's going to be three. This first one, 'Six of One' was
released at the start of October, there'll be another one in the Spring
next year, March or April, and then they'll be another one that will
hopefully be released at exactly the same time as the next album. The
cynical marketing man within the record company that I am, I've decided
to make that third EP available only with the next album.
ME: So it'll be buy the new album, get the third EP?
DB: Get the final EP for your set. The sexy bit
is it will come in a nice little box that other two EP's will fit in
to, it's a nice little incentive for everyone to get them all.
ME: The collector in me likes that.
DB: That's the whole reason we're doing it. We
know that there's a whole lot of Thunder fans out there who really like
that kind of aspect of what we do, so we try to make things as 'must
have' as possible, and as collectable as possible.
ME: Like in the days of vinyl when you'd put out a red vinyl issue, a gate fold issue.
DB: In those days we didn't have much of a choice
in that, that was very much EMI's [The bands old label] thing.
Nowadays, because we run our own label, if we can think it and can
afford it we can do it. It's a case of working out what we think is the
right thing to do.
ME: That must be great for you having that kind of freedom.
DB: It is, it's great. Obviously you have to able
to pay for it all, you have to be able to make good on your promises,
and obviously it gives you a stock problem when your trying to sell
stuff, but hey ho, it's all part an parcel of getting that freedom,
there's always a trade off.
ME: Nothings ever free, and you have to balance one side off against the other.
DB: What we get in return is the fact that we
don't have that constant “Oh we don't know if that will sell”
conversation with the record label, which we used to have. We used to
take them in god knows how many ideas for marketing, none of which
necessarily needed to cost very much money, but towards the end of our
time with labels, to be honest with you that was part of the reason why
we split up, it was very frustrating because of the fact that you would
go in with a massive great list of ideas, none of which had to cost a
load of money, but the record company effectively had shut up shop, and
said “well we've kinda sold what we thought what we'd sell, and we've
made our money and we don't really want to spend any more money”. You
just think hang on a minute, we're trying to sell records, we've just
started here.
ME: We've just started, and your saying your finished, there's something not right there, your not working for us any more.
DB: There we were touring away like mad, trying
to go to loads of different territories to open it up, and keep the
thing moving, and the record company had kinda stopped. There are
market forces at play, and economies of scale and all that rhubarb, and
I understand how all that works, and to be honest, now, to an extent I
play that game myself, but then I found it very hard to understand and
I found it very frustrating, and part of the reason we split up.
But now we're back, and we can do it ourselves, it means we can make
those decisions ourselves, decide how far to go, when to stop, how much
to spend, and we can see the results; it's hard work but we can see the
results.
ME: Everything you do, you get without having to share with someone else?
DB: Well you have to share it with other people,
because you have to employ other people to do the work. It's less about
the money and more about the control and the freedom, and the ability
to make those decisions without having to go cap in hand to a record
label.
ME: I think a lot of bands are following that route now.
DB: Well the internet has come along and changed everybody's lives in so many different ways.
ME: And opened up opportunities even if it comes with downsides like anything else.
 DB:
Absolutely, the digital age is here, and obviously has threatened
record companies left right and center, and they've been bleating about
it for years, but now I think it's really biting them. But I think most
of the reason is because they haven't invested in talent, and they're
allowed bands to make mediocre records with only one or two decent
tracks, and now they find that only one or two tracks are being
downloaded from albums, and they only have themselves to blame.
ME: You've got a new live DVD that literally only just came out, that's got live footage on it.
DB: Yesterday! Yeah it's got two shows on it.
Both shows were filmed in Switzerland. The main show was filmed at a
festival in Huttwil, and it was filmed for Swiss TV, and they gave us
the option to look at the footage afterwards with a view to buying it.
We get offered this kind of thing all the time, and it's not always
that high quality, but when we saw this we were blown away, and I bit
their arm off to buy it.
We've put it together and released it. We've added to that a show we
recorded four years ago, which was almost like a corporate thing which
is very odd. It's almost like atmosphere free, but by the end we've got
them, and there's one point where I've got them all jumping up and down
on tables to a ballad which is very interesting!
ME: A complete balancing act of two different kinds of shows?
DB: Yeah, but that's very much the bonus
material, that one. It's 2 hours, it's all live, the menus I have to
say are a triumph. I like a silly menu on a DVD, I like them to have
funny sounds, bells and whistles, and all kinds of bits and bobs, and
we've excelled ourselves on the silly stuff on this one.
The performance is good, there's two songs on there that hadn't
been on video before because they come off the Robert Johnson album, so
it was the first opportunity to film them, and they work out really
well. Hopefully there's something on there for everyone.
ME: Earlier you were talking about your record label, and you've just
released the new EP from the Tygers of Pan Tang. Is that going to be
something your looking to do more now, working with other bands?
DB: Yeah I don't see why not. We're in a
situation now where we have an infrastructure, we've got the ability to
be able to put stuff together. A lot of bands don't know how that
works. The bass player in the Tygers of Pan Tang, a guy called Brian
[West], is a mate of mine, and came to me and said “How would we
release our own record?”, and I explained to him how to do it, and once
I'd told him, his curly hair got even curlier! And he said, “Oh my god,
I had no idea it was as complicated as this”. And I said, well, it's
not really that complicated, but you do have to invest a lot of time
and effort in learning how to do it all, joining the various bodies,
and it can be very dull if you're a creative person and you just want
to make music, it's the kind of thing that would leave you cold and
your head reeling.
So I said to him the alternative is you could let me do it, I could do
it for you, I already do this kinda thing all day long anyway. We don't
have the money to pay other people to make records like traditional
record companies, and we're not in a position to market it for them,
it's a very straight forward proposition. What we said was, we can help
you get it made and make sure it's all completely official and above
board, and you got a proper job there, and then we can sell it for you,
but we can't market it and we can't pay you to make it.
Basically they have to create the demand, and we'll satisfy the demand for them after helping them make it in the first place.
I've been approached by a lot of bands as a result of the Tygers of Pan
Tang thing, it's working, I'm having discussions, some people don't get
it and we can't reach an agreement, but other people do get it, and I
dare say it's something we'll be doing more and more as time goes by.
It's not a big deal for us, because it's relatively simple for us to
do, and it helps them, and they get what they need and they don't have
to get involved with it.
ME: Everyone helping each other out.
DB: Yeah it works really well, obviously they
have to pay us to do it, but not enormous sums of money, and certainly
cheaper than it would be if they were doing it with a much bigger
organisation.
A big thank you to Danny for taking the time to talk with us.
You can catch Thunder on tour from Saturday. The bands full schedule stands at:
NOVEMBER:
Saturday 24th : ENGLAND, Newcastle City Hall
Sunday 25th : SCOTLAND, Glasgow Academy
Tuesday 27th : ENGLAND, Wolverhampton Civic Hall
Wednesday 28th : ENGLAND, Bristol Academy
Thursday 29th : ENGLAND, Norwich UEA
DECEMBER:
Saturday 1st : ENGLAND, Manchester Academy
Sunday 2nd : ENGLAND, London Astoria
Monday 3rd : ENGLAND, Sheffield City Hall
Wed 19th Dec : ENGLAND, The 2007 Thunder Xmas Knees Up: Nottingham Rock City
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
