I interview Henry’s Funeral Shoe and find out about their upcoming European tour, their past touring in Holland and why they lack a bass player. During the interview the thing that shined through most for me was their obvious burning passion for the music they play, which they unleashed on stage at the Buffalo Bar shortly after this interview in one of the best live performances I have ever seen in my life. A review of that performance will be coming shortly.

VC: Does the band name have any particular meaning?

Aled: It was a story I was writing, a black comedy, about this guy who killed his wife and hid her somewhere, I can’t really get to the point of it, it’s a long winded story.

Brennig: He changes the gist a lot.

Aled: But yeah it’s basically a black comedy I was writing, for no particular reason I was just doing it, and we used to gig when we didn’t have a name for the band, and we used to introduce the songs “Henry’s Funeral Shoe” and everyone laughed and it sort of stuck to the band. We gigged with out a name for a while, I think it was Cillit Bang or something like that.

Brennig: Yeah, it was something ridiculous to start with, but people think it’s funny.

Aled: It gets a reaction out of the crowd and that’s all we’re about is just having a laugh, it does have a meaning but it’s very long winded.

VC: How did the band start?

Aled: I was in a band for a while and doing a bit of session work in London, all that was coming to an end and my brother’s band was breaking up. I’d had enough of bands, I’m 30 now and I’ve been at it a long time and I just thought I can’t be bothered, but my brother kept pestering me to have a jam and we did and we were jamming as our bands were falling apart because we knew they were coming to a head,.

Brennig: It was out of enjoyment and the fact that I knew when my brother worked, he knew when I worked so it was easy, you didn’t have to rely on loads of people.

Aled: It was just the circumstances were easy, that’s what it was really, everything was easy and there was not agenda that’s all it was.

VC: You create a really cool sound, so I was wondering who are you’re biggest influences and how did they help to create that sound?

Aled: Well a lot of my influences are early country music and country blues and the idea with this band, for me, was to get the biggest sound I could possibly get, and the fattest sound. I just wanted a real deep sound and I didn’t have anyone in mind, a lot of the people I love don’t even play the type of music that I like. This music is my brother’s enthusiasm and my frustration that’s the kind of the sound.

Brennig: I think the biggest influences for me was The Who and Keith Moon. I never watched videos and acted like him on drums, it is just out of the enjoyment that comes through when you’re playing, and then you get reviewed like Keith Moon or like Animal from the Muppets. But our influences are anything, we’ve got influences in rap, country, blues.

Aled: The best thing about this band is that it has no agenda we don’t even know we’re going to do on the second album, this band was just a pure accident that just happened, so we’re lucky.

Brennig: We’re only doing it because it’s enjoyable and people like the music, and what
more do you want? To gig and for people to enjoy it, it’s great.

VC: Do you draw influence from anything other than music?

Aled: Yeah for me books, politics, well anything, everything, any writer really. It’s observational, you can only write about what you know, people can make stuff up which is fair, which is what I do, which is what Henry’s Funeral Shoe, the song, is kind of about, it’s part true and part fiction, but my influence is just like any writer, just modern day life really.

VC: So it’s stuff you pick up as you go along.

Aled: Yeah, that’s it.

VC: How do you write your songs?

Aled: It’s varies, I’m the lyricist and I’ve always got my guitar at hand so I’m always doodling on the guitar and coming up with riffs, so sometimes I’ll have a riff, I’ll take it to band practice, my brother puts drums to it and it’ll develop that way or sometimes I’ll just have a melody and come up with something, other times we’ll be jamming and we’ll come up with something.

The album is a lot of songs I wrote early on as an acoustic artist that we put together as a band and then the other half is purely us, so the album is part old and part new.

The band is really young, we were only together six months when we got signed. Alive wanted to sign us, they wanted songs and we did have enough. I’d written a bunch of songs on my own so we reworked them.
We didn’t intentionally not have a bass player, we just couldn’t rely on anyone, and we thought we’ll jam the songs, we’ll write the songs and if they’ll record them we’ll put them down and then we’ll get a bass player, but we didn’t need one.

Brennig: I think to start with Alive originally didn’t want to sign us, before I sought after Alive I didn’t know much about them, but obviously they released the Black Keys, Two Gallants, Left Lane Cruiser, a lot of two pieces, so I think they we apprehensive thinking that we were trying to be a two piece gimmick.

Aled: But if we’re honest we were looking to, at some point, get a bass player, but we were just trying to do the songs first and then get someone and say “This is the crack, this is the day we practice, this is what we’re going to do, and if you don’t do it you’re out” we were going to be that ruthless, and then it turned out we didn’t need it.

On the second album we’ll put bass on it, but live we don’t need it, and live is where it’s at at the moment, that’s where people are making their living, and that’s where we are making our living, on the circuit and if we bring another person in and there’re not cutting it, and we’ve both had problems with band members before which is why we came together, they’re going out, it’s as simple as that.

Brennig: We don’t want anything complicated, and this is not complicated. We turn up for band practice and if one of us can’t make it we do it another day, so it’s easy. It’s great and it’s more enjoyable.

Aled: For me, I’ve been doing it for a long time, and I’ve been putting my life on hold having work around other people, when they can practice, when they’re working and there are things I wanted to do, but now there’s not any of those problems. We can work around one another, we can practice when we want to practice, and it just works.

The other night we were too busy to go to the rehearsal room, so my brother brought his snare and hi hat down and I had my acoustic guitar and we were working on things, so there is always something productive. It’s more productive this way and more enjoyable.

VC: Which of your own songs is your favourite?

Brennig: Good question.

Aled: I think for me it would be Maria Maria, personally I prefer it because I’ve never been a frontman and even on this album I’m experimenting with my voice and also because some of the songs are older songs and some are new and Maria Maria is totally a Henry’s Funeral Shoe songs.

It happened in band practice, I had a delay pedal that I had bought when I was doing session work. I’d never been into pedals and gimmicks but I was playing with it, something fell out and we literally had the first verse in band practice and then it just developed so I think for me that’s the freshest sounding song because it’s something we did together.

Brennig: I think mine, I was going to say Maria Maria, but then I thin one of the most enjoyable maybe for me is Stranger Dig I just love the groove on it I love how it just stomps along.

Aled: And again that one was written because we didn’t have enough material and I had had these lyrics for a while and we jammed them and then I wrote the riff in one night and took it to band practice and I was still finishing of the lyrics and part of the arrangement in the studio.

VC: You are going on a European tour soon, and you’ve played abroad before right?

Yeah we’ve toured in Holland.

VC: Is the music scene here different to there?

Aled: I would say that it is radically different, people there are not so cool, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, they’re not based on a scene, if they like something they like it, we played a gig and there were older guys, skinheads people how looked like they were from the National Front and they were into things like Hank Williams.

Brenning: We played at this bar and it was like two or three in the morning litening to JJ Cale and Credence Clearwater Revival and it was people my age up to 60 odd, but as long as you played what they liked.

Aled: I think a difference there is that it is funded by the government so they have got money to give to bands so bands go there. And you get a really good following and play a lot of good venues and there are just really nice people there.

It gives me hope for the next album because their taste was so eclectic and I don’t think it would be healthy for us to do the same album again, which we won’t do, and we already have about half an album worth of different song, but I still think it will be embraced because they have a really eclectic taste in music.

VC: What is the best gig you’ve ever played?

Brennig: Yours differs to mine.

Aled: Yeah, I think for me it’s the smaller venues, I like the smaller venues. We played a lot of big venues in Holland, we supported the Legendary Shack Shakers and were playing 400 capacity places but the stages felt too big, I prefer the smaller places.

Brennig: I think the favourite gig we’ve played abroad was a festival we headlined called Broekrock, it was like a community festival it was on a farm in a converted barn, we’ve got the video on YouTube. I think there was about 500 to 700 people there when we played I just loved the atmosphere and the fact people were coming up on stage dancing and just having a laugh.

Aled: I was a place with 700 people, but there was no security.

Brennig: Everyone was going nuts but you felt totally safe.

Aled: And at the end of the night everyone got on their bikes and drove home drunk.

Brennig: That would have to be my favourite.

Aled: I think probably mine also but that, for me, was a little bit too big I prefer something smaller, I prefer like 50 to 100 sweaty capacity places, I really dig those.

VC: So what plans have you got for the future of the band?

Aled: It’s basically, get the European tour done, see what that’s like, see if we haven’t killed each other after two months of touring. The second album will be next year sometime.

Brennig: Trying to get to America as well.

Aled: Yeah, do some videos and get to America, just keeping the production going. Next year, I’m not sure how late or early because we are going to be on tour and it depends when we can get in the studio but we’ll have a song for free download. We’ve written a video for Stranger Dig we’ve got to film that and then a video for the new song which will be availbe for download.

That’s it really, just keep going, and tray and get to the States but just try and get on some festivals because we can play, and we’ve been playing a lot of good stuff in Europe but in this country nobody really seems to care. So we can’t get any gigs, we certainly can’t get any paying gigs and we can’t get any festivals. We want people to see us live because I think if they see us on MySpace we just look like a two piece trying to do the same as everyone else, you can’t blame people for having preconceptions, but that’s not the case.

If they see us live they’ll see what we are about and I think they have a better idea of what we do. We are not the White Stripes we are not the Black Keys we are Henry’s Funeral Shoe and we have no intention of doing things in any other way. We were going to get a bass player, but they’re not reliable so it’s their fault.

VC: And finally, is there anything else you would like to say?

Brennig: We’re just having a really good time and it’s just really nice people enjoying our music and we just want to keep it up and I hope people enjoy the second album which I am sure they will, it’s not going to be drastically different to the first.

Aled: The thing is, and I don’t mean this disrespectfully, we don’t want to be just a punk blues band because I’m not ashamed to say that I want to be able to write pop music. Not in…

Brennig: Not in the form it is in at the moment.

Aled: Yeah, not like indie pop but classic pop songs like Motown stuff, cracking pop songs and I know for a fact before we start there are to songs on the album that are songs, I want to show that we can write tunes as well as rock the place like. If I’ve got one thing to say, everyone should listen to Immortal Technique.