| Jack and The Beanstalks |
 It’s Sunday afternoon during the Tramlines weekend and I catch up with Jack & The Beanstalks
and get to know the band who will be headlining our Launch on 15th August @ The Boardwalk Sheffield.So who are Jack and The Beanstalks? "I’m Jack from The Stokes, I do vocal”. “I’m Mark, I do drums”. “My name is Casey, I play guitar”. “I’m Joseph AKA Beanstalk Beanstalk, I play guitar”. “I’m Reece, I play Bass”. So how did you all get together? Jack: “Don’t know, dole queue”. Mark: “I was sat in the pub and was told a drummer was required and could I come and practice? That’s kinda’ how I got involved! Joseph: “We were on the verge of getting a drum machine until we saw Mark”. Any of you play in any previous bands? Jack: We have had many line ups because I started when I was 16, we had eleven members. Mark: “We’ve all played in Sheffield bands before as well that have all done pretty well for themselves. Yell, The Saga, Avida Dollars, it’s good to get people from all different groups, we’re all out casts that come back together again..!” Jack: “Out casts?” Who are you’re musical influences and why? Jack: “We’re influenced by anything. I go through a lot of phases, the idea earlier was like to do a punk sort of thing. Like listening to old Buzzcocks, Spells Scratch. I like Captain Beefheart as well. You know obscurity and Cam that rock group, a bit Dadaesque”. Mark: “Where as Jack likes all Beefheart 60’s stuff, in the bands I’ve played in I’ve played metal through to indie as well but my main influences are 70’s punk stuff. I think that’s what gives the bands its main perspective and Joseph with his views on bands”. Joseph: “We are kind of the perfect match because my favorite bands are the Velvet Underground and Pavement. I think the best groups are the ones that make pop the sensibility of extreme and we’re trying to do that, actual crafted songs”. Your songs have some interesting titles and lyrics, how do you write the songs? Where do you get you’re inspiration from? Mark: “We lock Jack in a room with a packet of fags!” Jack: “The cellar”. Mark:“Yeah cellar with a bottle of brown ale, see what happens!” Jack: “You see bands now who just write about ex girlfriends and how much they want to kill ‘em. I want sing about abstract interpretations of some things like ‘Orange for a Head’, that’s actually an idea of a pub joke. Like catching their personality and putting yourself into their shoes, the best way I can describe it is by saying that sort of joke, one really gets it though orange heads”. Casey: “I thought you were mocking ginger people?!” Jack: “Oh no, could be a political thing but I don’t want go into that”. Mark: “Another thing is we don’t want be one of those bands that preach about things right obviously in your face, its better if you do your lyrics that are a bit more different, slightly more subliminal messages rather than saying “this is what you should do!”. We don’t want tell people what to do, music should give you that feeling whether its telling people not to vote for the BNP or whatever – that seems to be the fashionable thing at the moment – they should know for themselves” Jack: “My sort of style is poetry based, I want do it like that. I don’t want think of it as a song, I want put a bass down and sort of rant words over it sort of like Captain Beefheart or John Cooper Clarke has done”. Who are your local favorite bands then? Jack: “Ourselves”. Mark: “We are friends with a lot of bands, and respect a lot of bands like Alvarez Kings and Elephant Keys, Plush & Plastix”. Joseph: “They’re our favorite band, they’re my favorite band in the entire world. Its these old dudes, wives and kids, they’re amazing!” Mark: “Come out with really weird stuff, they have 25 keyboards all doing one note so it sounds random and different. They sing about sitting in the shed while hiding from the wife”. What do you think about the local music scene? Mark: “I do a lot of promotional work and tend to see a lot of local bands and Sheffield does have a really strong scene. A lot of bands are prepared to be different and put themselves in the line of fire whether it be from the press, their mates or other bands. There are certain bands who just want do it for what they love, and I think that’s a positive thing out of the Sheffield scene. Joseph: “I think it was Richard Hawley that said every live gig is like a semi circle where people just sit around and judge the band, it takes them a couple of times to see them before they actually like them. But I think this weekend has re-vitalized it because I haven’t seen anything like that in Sheffield for a long time, especially Frog & Parrot last night – people going crazy, I’ve never seen anything like that in here before”. Mark: “I’ve been doing sound all weekend and seen every band in here, but last night just took the roof off the place, there were people diving over the barriers!!!! Phil from Elephant Keys had to stop singing and hold his microphone because people kept smashing it to the floor, he lost all his guitar pedals as well at one point and that kind of reaction hasn’t happened in Sheffield for along time, its like Sheffield’s been crying out for a festival”. Jack: “It’s a good thing but I think if it’s a Sheffield Music Festival I think it should have Sheffield bands playing. You’ve got the Main Stage and you’ve got all these pop groups playing, why don’t they give some local bands a chance. They do but they just shove us in a corner – we’d kill for a chance to play on a stage like that!” Mark: “I think the big thing about the Main Stage even though they have pop bands on it, whether they’re from Sheffield or not, you do need a big name to pull people in. This weekend they’re pulling thousands of people into Sheffield, and if you’ve got bands like The La’s that will come and play a free festival, this means they will see local bands as well which is a boost to the Sheffield scene”. Are you looking forward to tonight, whats next for Jack And the Beanstalks? Obviously you’ve got tonight and I know you’re doing the 15th August at the Boardwalk. Joseph: “I think its going be good because we’ve played the Frog And Parrot before and its always been a bit crazy” Mark: “Yeah we’ve also got a headline show at The Plug on 4th September and then hopefully get a single out if we can get it recorded” Recently its been announced that Little Man Tate are splitting up, playing their final shows at the O2,what are your thoughts on that? Mark: “As much as I’m not into LMT’s music I do respect them because they do get that much shit in the press and from other bands saying how crap they are, they still sold out O2 academy for two nights running doing the music they’ve been playing for the last ten years, so full respect. They can only make the Sheffield music scene stronger and hopefully another band will take their place”. Jack: “You’re talking about the next Arctic Monkeys”. Mark: “Every band that breaks up loses its space to someone else and fingers crossed it’ll be us that takes their place, but you never know do you!” Photos: Geoff and Gail Buckthorpe Words: Gail Buckthorpe |
