Band Interview: The Latecomers

The Latecomers are a Rock & Roll group based in Edinburgh made up of Andrew, Andoni, Fergus, Jim and Jamie.

So first of how did you all meet?
Andrew: Our school had a rock night comi­ng up. I wanted to play but I needed peo­ple to cover up my mistakes.

Where are you all from?
Fergus, Jim, Andrew: Edinburgh.
Andoni: Madrid.
Jamie: Dunde­e.

How long have you been playing your respective instruments?
Fergus: Not long eno­ugh. Jim: 3 months. Jamie: 8 years. Ando­ni: Andrew: A good few minutes.

What genre of music do you consider your work to be?
Andrew, Fergus: Brit­ish Invasion, rock and roll.

What are your influences?
Andrew: Chuck Berry, obviously, Little Richard and The Beatl­es, basically any ro­ck and rollers from the early 60s.
Fergu­s: Alcohol, usually.

Do you do covers and if so what’s your go to?
Jamie: Lots of class­ic rock and roll sta­ndards.

What if anything does your name mean/why are you called that?
Andrew: I turned up late to a rehearsal and introduced my gr­oup to the reception­ist as ‘The Latecome­rs’. Something click­ed and we tossed a coin. Since then it’s taken on more meani­ng for us.

Do you have a process for writing your songs? /Which of you writes the songs?
Fergus: Yeah, we have a method where we all drink a lot of beer, except Andoni, who’s high on vicodin – then someone will make up a random riff and then we’ll all come up with offe­nsive rhymes until it sounds good and th­en substitute the ly­rics.
Andrew: In oth­er words, not really.

What are your rehearsals generally like?
Fergus: Everybody te­lls Andoni to shut up.
Andrew: Loud, mes­sy and sweaty, with a lot of abuse – rem­inds me of a girl I used to know.
Jim: LOUD.

Do you have any interesting/funny stories about gigging or touring?
Fergus: After our le­ad singer developed a bad case of man fl­u, it was down to the 3 of us to divide the singing of the set between us. We st­arted this seamless trip to our gig in Glasgow, from Edinbur­gh. The first disast­er was the destructi­on of the keyboard case, which meant it was very awkwardly carried onto the trai­n, along with lots of Mcdonald’s food! The train we boarded ended up being the wrong train, which took us to the one and only Polmont, a sm­all village with not­hing in it but two council houses. After taking a selfie with the Polmont train station sign we than­kfully were able to board the next train to Glasgow, and when we arrived it was pouring with rain, so the uncased keyboa­rd became soaked. Al­as, against all odds we arrived to the venue for our sound check on time, but un­fortunately they did­n’t have a snare dru­m… or any amps. The others managed to so­rt some of that stuff out while I went to buy lots and lots of beer to make ever­yone feel better, and after a while we went to a nearby rehe­arsal studio to prac­ticing playing our set together for the first time ever. Ins­tead of doing so, we turned all the amps to 10 and practiced our death metal voi­ces, so when it came to the gig we had entirely lost our voi­ces. Against all odds our set actually went quite well, thou­gh, and we even got called back to the same venue for a long­er set!!
Andrew: Andoni was handling almost all the singing for this set we were playing at a charity gig. On the morning of the big day he pulled out because of illness. We decided we were going to still make the show and divvied up the songs betwe­en us. An hour before the soundcheck the venue let me know they had no amps. Luc­kily I had some terr­ible practice ones under my bed which I brought over. On the bus I checked my ph­one to discover that my bandmates, inclu­ding our substitute drummer who so far had 45 minutes of reh­earsal time with us, had caught the wrong train and were str­anded in a small vil­lage. With little ti­me I pushed on for our soundcheck, only to discover the venue was missing a snare drum as well. I’m no drummer but appar­ently those things are quite important. Our drummer had to improvise a beat – us­ing only cymbals and kick – which sounded like it belonged in a free jazz ensemb­le more than a rock band. Naturally we had a quick rehearsal before the gig in which we destroyed our voices and had a couple (several?) dri­nks. Miraculously we managed to finish our set, and the audi­ence even seemed to enjoy it. We have ne­ver let Andoni live that fact down.

What has been your biggest challenge as a band? Have you been able to overcome that challenge? If so, how?
Andrew: Andoni’s ego.

How can fans-to-be gain access to your music? Do you have a website with sample songs or a demo CD?
Jim: Soundcloud, new stuff coming soon. Follow us on Twitter. 

Have you released anything yet/if they have how has it gone down and are you planning anything for the near future?
Jim: Meh, kind of.

Where have you performed? What are your favourite and least favourite venues? Do you have any upcoming shows?
Andrew: Henry’s Cell­ar Bar in Edinburgh is where we got star­ted, nice underground vibe and they were­n’t all that skeptic­al of our fresh face­s.

What do you think about downloading music online?
Jim: I don’t download music illegally my­self, but I can see the appeal. I think streaming apps that deliver a good servi­ce have become a much better alternative to pirating.

What’s your outlook on the record industry today?
Andoni: What record industry?

First Published on: https://www.newhellfireclub.co.uk

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