British Racing Green

• Posted: Mon 28 Mar 2011
• By: Kev

The Beat Surrender has put on 100's of bands over the last few years and we really couldn't single out anyone band as being the best or the friendliest, but it's always a pleasure when British Racing Green play for us.

We had their previous incarnation playing for us and the new line up is even slicker, a real tight live band, they have ambitions in and beyond Leeds where they all currently live.

We spoke to the group recently as they prepared for their own big gig at The Library in Leeds on 2nd April.

Let’s get some confusion out of the way first, you’ve had a name change and a line up change, so is this a brand new band now or does the name change represent a change in direction?

Wilko- Well the line-up change caused the name change really. Adding the extra guitar in and getting a bit more oomph behind the drum kit meant that the sound changed a lot. We didn't want to abandon the old band completely, hence we've kept a few of the songs. We just have to turn everything up alot louder now because Stanley’s half deaf.

Describe your band to our readers in five words....

Ted- Big, brash indie rock. Guinness.

From the recent gig you played for us it seems you’ve put a lot of work into tightening up your live sound, what do you attribute that to?

Joe- As Wilko said, with the line-up change and the name change we felt it would be best to really refresh the live sound. So we deliberately got our heads down and practiced whenever and wherever, rather than getting into gigs early on. It's left us with a bit of catching up to do in terms of gig experience but we're sounding much better for it. So giz another gig please.

What does the next twelve months look like for British Racing Green, any big tour or release plans?

Stanley- We're definitely looking to tour within the next year, build a following, maybe catch a few industry eyes.

Joe- We're having a good spell of writing at the moment so who knows, an album might form itself towards the end of the next 12 months. But mostly just figuring out what we are and who the people who like us are. We absolutely love gigging, so the more of that, the better.

Do you have any collective inspirations in the band that you all agree on?

Joe- Imagine a can of worms as big as a beer barrel. That's what you’ve just opened. There’s plenty of bands that 2 or 3 of us agree on but to get all four of us to agree on one thing, that's a big ask.

Stanley- Probably the only bands that we all like are The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys.

Joe- But it means that we're constantly stretching each other in terms of sounds we like, which makes songwriting tough, but it seems to be working well. We might be a mongrel band, but we're a very healthy mutt.

You’ve got a big gig coming up at The Library in Leeds, tell us a bit more about the night and the other bands on the bill.....

Ted-Well I’m putting the night on because I haven’t got any money and Match of the Day isn’t as good as it used to be. At the moment the bill is British Racing Green supported by The Seagulls but we're hoping to get at least one more local band in on the act. This one's all about local music, the Leeds scene’s pretty buzzin’ at the moment and we're hoping to be one of a couple of bands who take the reigns.

How do you see the music scene in Leeds at the moment? Who else do you rate that you’ve either seen or played with live?

Joe- Well I rated it so highly that I moved me and the Mrs from Scotland to get in on it. It might not have pushed as many bands to the fore as Liverpool and Manchester but there's a real honest freshness and a DIY quality about the scene here. You walk through the student areas and hear people playing all the time and there’s gigs on all over the place every week.

Stanley-We've been so far in our own little bubble that we haven't really seen or played with many Leeds bands yet and to be honest, even if one of us like’s one of the bands we play with, it’s guaranteed that another one of us won’t.

Wilko- When we’ve got our first few recordings polished off I’m sure we’ll get out there more and listen to more bands but for the next couple of months were just going to keep working our bollocks off and go with it.