The Recession has affected all walks of life; from banks to the price of beer but what about bands? After their credit crunching anthem, ‘Tell Me‘, we caught up with Thomas Maher, Alistair Morrow, Stuart Morran and Ryan Rimkus of Scottish four-piece The Echo Session.
R13: How would you describe your own sound?
TM: I dunno really, old but modern. I don't really know, it's kinda a pick n mix of oldies.
SM: It's a difficult one to call due to the fact we all like varying styles of music but we definitely have a kinda rocky poppy jangly feel.
AM: A mixture of our own musical influences, mostly bands from the sixties like The Kinks and The Beatles. We’ve been compared to The Coral and The Zutons which is great because we’re into them too. The album has a good mix of styles; happy beat-pop, dark/psychedelic stuff, folk/country. The setup is normally two electric guitars, bass and drums but we also experiment a bit; some songs sound better acoustic and we sometimes use different instruments such as banjo, organ, harmonica, flute.
RR: I would have to say sixties based folk/pop with a hint of skiffle and
The Kinks but what would I know, I’m just the Goalkeeper.
R13: You've been playing gigs for a fair few years, why the delay in
releasing your debut single?
TM: A) We never got round to recording anything properly. B) We all work
and have other things going on. C) We needed to find someone who wanted to
record us not just for ten a penny demo purposes, then we found Jim, our engineer for the album and Stephen (McKee) our manager... So I suppose these two things helped us put something out something at last. The good thing about this is, they actually wanted to do it!
SM: Laziness!
RR: In a word.. laziness. We’ve always had aspirations of releasing
something and even got as far as recording things, but when the time came to do something about it, we had grown bored of the tracks and basically couldn’t be bothered. We now have good management in the name of Stephen McKee, who keeps us on our toes and heading in the right direction.
AM: Time and money (as the album is titled)
R13: You've taken your time to release a single, how's recording for the
debut album going?
TM: It's finished and it's sounding pretty nice, very pleased with it.
I really enjoyed the process and look forward to doing it all again second time round. There are lessons learned as well from the process, maybe a more mature approach next time, who knows.
R13: That debut single is called 'Tell Me' and is about how money only seems to go into the pockets of bankers and MPs. Do you find such global occurrences as the credit crunch stimulating to your song writing or do you prefer more personal matters to write about?
TM: Not really, I do and have written songs about these kinda things but I don't choose to, it just happens. I don't take it all seriously, in fact some of the songs we have written are just plain bloody daft, and i like that. It's basically just opinions and how you see things, other peoples ups and down, little stories. I’m not entirely sure but I know I enjoy it. I wouldn’t say its all personal, maybe there are elements of personal stuff coming through but it's mainly just a snapshot of how I see things, right or wrong.
R13: How has The Recession affected you as a band and individuals?
TM: I don't know really but I don't think we're getting credit do you?
Well I work and I'm still skint but that's life! Funny thing is they (the bank) wouldn’t extend your overdraft by 20p but would lick yer boots for you to take a credit card, bloody rats!
RR: You do notice that crowds are smaller than normal at gigs as less
people can afford to come out to play. I just hope they have the 79p available to buy the single. Did I mention its available on itunes?
AM: We were skint before it and still are so no change really, but I think we all get wound up about the people in high places who have more money than they could ever need. The rich really are getting richer...
R13: With festival season finally over a tour of banks and building
societies is in the offing for yourselves, looking forward to it?
TM: Well these will have to be very random as we don't really want PC
Plumb and co popping down to cart us away on a breach charge, but we're playing in "Frasers" in Glasgow for their 160th birthday, I suppose that will be weird since we all go to Primark, ha.
R13: Any more random choices for gig venues in the future?
TM: Not really thought about that, but if anyone wants to give us a gig
somewhere random then drop an email…
AM: Stuart lives in Inverness now so he fancies us doing a gig out in the
sticks.
R13: Looking to the future, who would be your ideal act to support and why?
TM: It's more like looking to the past with us, The Zombies, The Kinks, The Coral, The La's, The Beach Boys, The Byrds, Del Shannon, because they are all great! I'm not up on the latest bands sadly, too busy finding more old stuff that is great. I would like to support Fleet Foxes, seen them a couple of times and think they are good but like I said, I’m not up on the latest. There’s some good bands in Scotland I would rather play with to be honest.
AM:Ray Davies or Brian Wilson
R13: What acts or people do you count as influences?
TM: So much stuff. I had loads of pirate tapes from Saudi Arabia when I was growing up since my dad worked there, so everything from The Hollies to
The Beatles to Jethro Tull to The Kinks and back to The Stones. The stuff I didn’t have I bought from itunes; like The Zombies, The Beach Boys and Del Shannon.
R13: Finally, money is as tight as ever, how would you persuade readers to
see The Echo Session?
TM: We're quite good and we'll even buy you a water!
Despite their laziness, The Echo Session will finally release their debut album early next year whilst their current single, 'Tell Me', is available on itunes. Catch them on their bank and building society tour soon, if they get in that is.