Interviewed by Kenny Collazo and Stella Mages
Photo by Stella Mages
This is your second time in Lawrence. Is there anything new from today that you have seen so far?
Luke Mark: I went to a really cool guitar shop. I didn’t know it was here, which is cool. I’d have to find out for you.
Georgia Ellery: You said Richard’s?
Luke Mark: I think it might be called Richard’s. It’s Richard’s or maybe Andrew’s? It was Richard’s. Great shop, really cool. Weird stuff in there that I’d never seen before.
Have you checked out the record store?
Luke Mark: I haven’t been in, but (Charlie) and Lewis were in there.
What are some of your biggest musical inspirations right now, as a band or individual?
Tyler Hyde: You know what, it’s a tricky time to ask that question. The 3 of us were having this conversation earlier.
When we’re travelling, you spend so much time with in-ears in, or every day, you play a gig and you’ve got these things in your ears that, when we’re not playing, we don’t really listen to anything at all. To listen to something is some form of disconnect from where we are.
So, we’re on a complete quit from music, apart from our own, which sounds terrible. It’s, like, terribly self-absorbed, you know. So just connecting with other things that aren’t music really. And we haven’t really talked about what covers we want to do. We want to throw some things into the mix, and I definitely don’t have any suggestions right now.
Luke Mark: You got any ideas?
Were there any epiphanies or realizations while making “Forever Howling” that you want to incorporate into your music moving forward?
Georgia Ellery: I think we recorded it in a certain way that we didn’t want to do again. We recorded it not all live in a room. So this time around, when we do new recordings, we’re gonna record them all together.
Tyler Hyde: We just tried to give something new a go.
Georgia Ellery: And it wasn’t quite us.
Luke Mark: I think it could be that it was sort of in the middle. We sort of just let ourselves do whatever the hell we wanted the whole time. Limitation, one way or the other, is maybe good, maybe. Because then you fiddle with it less or you fiddle with it so much that you kind of polish it into this perfect thing. We kind of did somewhere in between, where we did loads of stuff, but we still had a time limitation rather than a specific creative one. So, it was not the best with either world in mind.
How did you come about redefining your sound into what it is now following lineup changes and previous releases?
Georgia Ellery: I think regardless of who’s in the band, every album has been made in a different way. It just seems to be what’s in the nature of this band, whether we like it or not. It’s just whatever the cross-section of all of our personalities and tastes are that’s just what is the end product, kind of no matter who’s in the band, really.
Luke Mark: That’s probably the truth. There was no mission statement or any kind of search; we just did something, and we thought it was good.
What motivates you to make music and choose this career?
Georgia Ellery: It’s a really lovely thing to make music, and I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. I’ve been doing it for X amount of years, and it’s like, “Okay, this is what we can do, and how we can have it be in our lives?” I’m really happy that I make music for a living. That’s what keeps me going.
Luke Mark: I agree with that for sure. It’s like, why would you stop? Just keep going; it’s obviously great. Sometimes, it’s like “This is a hard job,” or “Maybe I’m not good at this job as I’d like to be,” like today, or this week, or something.
Tyler Hyde: When you have something like this, it’s very lucky to have it. It feels very precious.
What drew you into coming to Lawrence for your tour in the first place?
Luke Mark: Honestly, I didn’t even know where it was, if I’m being totally honest. But our booking agent suggested it as a stop, and we never played in Kansas, so why not? We didn’t think it’d be as cool as it was the first time we came here. We were really pleasantly surprised; it was a highlight of (the previous) tour, at least for me. It just feels very cool and also manageably small and walkable, which is really familiar in a comforting way. So, I was looking forward to coming back for that reason. It, honestly, wasn’t any of our decisions individually; it was more of a suggestion that we were down for.
Which songs are you excited to perform tonight?
Tyler Hyde: We got some new tunes we’re playing in the set for this tour.
Luke Mark: We got two new ones we’re going to play.
Tyler Hyde: There’s one that is really strange, but it still feels very much like a new song.
Georgia Ellery: Two new ones; they’re not even named. They’re so new.
Luke Mark: We started playing them partway into this tour, and they’re still very fresh, and it’s good to have a bit of risk. Hope you like them.
You guys are pretty consistent with releasing new records. Is there a new one in the works?
Luke Mark: We got these two new songs, but there’s no album in the works right now. We’re doing this tour, and then we’ve got one more tour, and then we’re having some time off of touring because we’ve been doing it so consistently for a long time, just to do whatever else anyone wants to do. Just be at home more, or whatever people want for a while, and then we’ll come back and see where we are with new ideas and stuff. We haven’t started planning yet.
Check out the review of Black Country, New Road’s show here.