PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Planetmosh.com caught up with Attica Rage frontman Jonny Parr to talk about the band’s recent touring success, 2011 highlights and future plans for 2012.
You’ve just finished your debut UK headlining tour which has taken you all over the country, including some towns you’ve not played before. How did they go and was it a conscious decision to take in new venues?
The tour was a great success, a lot of fun and there were many highlights along the way. It was definitely a deliberate decision to play in new locations – the only downside was we couldn’t get to enough new places on this tour. We knew Glasgow and Manchester were going to be particular highlights but London was a surprise success. And we had great nights in some of the smaller venues in new locations for us like York and Brighton. Finishing the tour at the Diamond Rock Club in Ballymena, Northern Ireland was a total blast – amazing hospitality from the organisers and the audience and it was one of the best nights on the tour.
The “showcase” gig of the tour must have been the Glasgow show at which you went all guns blazing to put on a memorable night. When and how did the idea for that night come about?
There were a few factors that made the Glasgow show the one-off event that it was. First of all, we wanted to do something special for our hometown crowd – these guys have been following us since day one and we don’t play there as often as we used to, so we wanted to put on a full-on headline Attica show and make it a proper event rather than “just another Attica Glasgow gig”. We also wanted, at some point on the tour, to be able to play the full album in its entirety – we had done this when we launched the last album Ruin Nation. But this time it wasn’t just about playing all the songs. We wanted to recreate all the additional parts on the album live – the strings, piano, organ, samples….We also had the idea of inviting the guest artists on the album onstage to recreate their parts live as well as involve the album producer RoddyMacaudio to engineer the live sound on the night, so it became clear early on that it made sense to do all this at the Glasgow date of the tour. We started discussions about the show in May, giving us about 3-4 months of planning and rehearsals until show night. In addition, we were approached by our friend and film director cohort Colin Wood interested in filming a promo video single for one of our album tracks…..after we explained the full extent of the what was happening, it turned into a multi-camera full-on live concert film shoot!
How difficult was it to get all the guest musicians together to reproduce the current album “Road Dog” in a live setting?
Thankfully it turned out to be fairly easy but there was a lot of planning involved. We were recommended Stephen Lightbody who is an amazing pianist and keyboardist – he currently plays in the Marillion tribute band StillMarillion and had done some session keyboard work for tribute band Maiden Scotland, playing the keys parts for their Seventh Son of a Seventh Son full album live show. So we knew he would be ideal for the Road Dog show and he was interested when we contacted him. He did an awesome job of recreating all the strings in ‘Lost’ and ‘Ashamed’ as well as the piano & organ parts in ‘Through the Inner Eye’, ‘Road Dog Forever’, ‘One Minute Silence’ and even the small synth part in ‘High’. Christie Connor-Vernal is a local singer/songwriter who had played the cello part on ‘Altea’ on the album, so she was up for the challenge of performing it live. Our good friend and alt. blues artist Dave Arcari had been roped in to play his signature National slide guitar on the recording of ‘Road Dog Forever’ but our biggest worry was whether he would be available on the actual Glasgow show date. Dave tours the UK and Europe all year round – about 150+ shows a year – but luckily his schedule was free on the night of the show and he was up for the onstage jam, so we booked him in early on. We felt we needed our own sound engineer to bring all this together and our first choice was the album producer RoddyMacaudio. He knows the songs inside out – better than we do probably! – and he had been a live engineer in Glasgow for many years before he concentrated on his studio projects so he was definitely up for the challenge of recreating the album in a live setting. He worked with us in rehearsals, tweaking our sounds, creating the vocal effects for certain songs and editing the album samples & triggers to work within the live show. We actually took him out on the 2nd leg of the tour before the Glasgow show to give us all a chance to “rehearse” the set with the new settings & samples. We went into the rehearsal studio during August and in between the tour dates in September, mainly for Roddy to work out the sound engineering and also with Steve to rehearse the keys parts (this was the first ever time Attica had had a keyboardist in the line-up and we loved it!). Dave Arcari was only in Glasgow for 2 nights in the lead-up to the show, between his own tour dates, so we booked rehearsals around his availability and Christie came in for the last two ‘dress rehearsals’ before the big night. The funny thing was, once we had engaged the guest artists to re-learn and perform their own parts, we realised that the band ourselves actually needed to re-learn and rehearse quite a few of the songs that we hadn’t ever played live or played since we had recorded the album, such as ‘High’ and ‘Lost’ in particular. So it was less about worrying whether the guests could do their parts and more about whether Attica could actually play ours! It all worked brilliantly in the end – we all enjoyed it, the audience loved it and it was all filmed live by Colin Wood Media, so expect to see some or all of the show in the near future!
Apart from playing the whole album live you also jammed onstage with NWOBHM pioneers Praying Mantis – how did that go?
That was brilliant fun! Again, the whole idea of having Praying Mantis on the show bill was to make it a bit special and an event rather than just another gig. We got to know the Mantis guys out in Ibiza earlier this summer when we were both playing the Hard Rock Hell RoadTrip festival. They are great guys and really down to earth. Their recent album ‘Sanctuary’ is definitely worth checking out and they are a really strong live act so we put the feelers out through our management and the gig promoter and they agreed to come up and open the show for us. It was their first Scottish date since they played the Glasgow Apollo in about 1982 so it was long overdue! On the last night in Ibiza, Praying Mantis had been asked to do an impromptu covers set but their drummer had had to fly home already so Richie was asked to step in and they jammed a few songs, including an excellent rendition of AC/DC’s Shot Down In Flames. So, once they were on board with the Glasgow Attica show, we thought it would be fun to have them join us on-stage for a show finale for this song. An awesome feel-good rocker to close the night.
Looking back at 2011 there must be many highlights starting with the album launch at Hammerfest in March – was that a proud moment?
The album launch at Hammerfest was special for many reasons and yeah, most definitely a proud moment. We felt we had ‘arrived’, if that makes sense. We had just signed to Rocksector Records, were feeling confident and relieved to finally be releasing the new album, the early preview quotes from the likes of Dom Lawson and Tom Russell had their approval all over it and the sheer scale of the live show for the Hammerfest main stage album launch was a perfect blast-off for Road Dog. Anyone who was there will know what we’re talking about. There were more than a few sparks and flames that night, haha!
You then followed that by appearing at the SOS festival and then playing to your biggest crowd to date by opening the Metal Hammer stage at High Voltage in July. What did that feel like walking out to thousands of people? Did the nerves kick in?
Absolutely! The thing with any festival is you never really know what size of audience you’re going to walk out to. There are other bands on other stages playing at the same time – and in most cases, bands that are far more established and bigger than we are – so you just hope that there are at least a couple hundred of your own fans down the front to cheer you on. We had built up good experience of playing festivals obviously through our successful journey with Hard Rock Hell and Hammerfest – each time moving up a stage and playing to bigger audiences. Even our experiences at Metalcamp in Slovenia in 2008 & 2009 had given us the confidence to walk out on a big outdoor stage. However, High Voltage was the biggest ‘high profile’ bill we had been on….Judas Priest, Slash, Dream Theater, Thin Lizzy…..and Attica Rage! This was stuff of dreams for us only a few years ago. Our emotions were all over the place – from fanboy moments backstage to pinching ourselves to believe we were actually there to living out our own rockstar fantasies, haha! The other thing that perhaps many people don’t always realise is the pressure bands can feel at these festivals, not just to put on a good show for the general audience, but for a band like us – fairly new and still very much in the early days of our career – you have a lot of industry eyes watching from the sidelines checking you out, looking to see what size of audience you are pulling in, how you perform on the day, looking to see what is so special about the band and if or why they should want to get involved….and boy, did we feel that on this day!! We were the first band on the Metal Hammer stage on the first day – was anyone going to turn up to see us?! Are we going to flump like a lead balloon? Are we gonna skite on our arse across the stage and look like idiots? All these doubts and questions running through your mind. But on the other hand, you’ve got adrenalin pumping through you and an odd surge of confidence and self-belief that you KNOW you are going to do the business. It’s all very strange to describe to be honest.
We got a quick soundcheck about an hour or so before showtime and the field in front of us was worryingly empty….a few folk milling about but no signs of the Clan Attica and our apparent hordes of supporters. Then later on, 5 minutes before showtime, we’re standing at the back of the stage, behind the backdrop, waiting for our intro CD to start. Now, we hadn’t looked out front at this point – in our view, we always give a full-on, 100% Attica performance at every gig no matter the audience size. Whoever has come to see us deserves to get the full Attica stage show whether there are 10 or 1000 people in the audience. So we just tend to wait until we walk onstage before assessing crowd size. Our manager John is with us and takes a peek round the curtain though…and makes some remark about the decent turnout. We can’t resist it so we take a sneaky peak and holy shit, the place is packed! Where did they come from?! Before we had any more time to think about it, the rumble of the bikes in our intro roared through the PA signalling our entrance and we ran out on-stage and launched into the first song. The audience turnout for us was absolutely stunning – a sea of faces going as far back as we could see. We expected we might get about 500, we hoped we’d at least get about 200, but there was definitely far more than that and we knew this was the biggest audience we had played to. By all accounts from several industry folk we talked to later, there were approximately 2,000 there for Attica Rage and apparently we drew one of the biggest crowds to the Metal Hammer stage the whole weekend! The nerves dropped as soon as hit the stage – they always do – and we just got into our groove and enjoyed the set. The rest of the day is a bit of a hazy, drunken celebratory blur to be honest though!
You’ve always maintained a close bond with your fans and this has been taken a step further now that you’ve set up the Clan Attica groups across the UK. What was the thinking behind that and what are the benefits for you as a band and for the fans?
It’s really important for bands to connect with their fans, especially new bands – not just musically, but on a personal level too. And not just on bloody Facebook! Bands at our level should get out there and talk to their fans at gigs more, sink a few jars with them. But, as much as it can be good band/fan PR, for us it’s really just who we are as people, to be completely honest. We have always preferred to be out front meeting our fans making new friends, before and after the show, having a few drinks and chewin the fat. We’ve never understood bands that hide away in their dressing rooms all night and act like jumped-up rock stars to the very people that are there to support them and can take them to the next level. And dressing rooms are the most boring places at a gig anyway….it’s out front with the fans at the bar where the fun is! Fair enough, it’d be a security risk for the likes of Ozzy or Lemmy to wander about the venue but c’mon, at our level, we’re there WITH the fans for the show, not for them. And I think our fans appreciate that. We kinda see it like one big journey – the band and our fans working together in a sense, to take Attica Rage to the next level each time. Sounds a bit cheesy when you write it down like that, but that’s kinda how it all works for us. And that’s also where the Clan Attica idea has grown from. We have fans of different levels – some are casual, like a few of the songs, come to the odd gig and get a copy of the album from their mates and that’s cool. But then we’ve got the die-hard Attica fans – the ones who really support what we’re all about, they love the music, they know the words of the songs, come to every gig they can make and genuinely want to support and help the band where they can. And they are the Clan Attica – the inner circle, the die-hards, the core fans. Doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate the casual fans any less. But the whole Clan Attica idea has blossomed from the core fans’ own enthusiasm for the band. Up until recently, it was just a tongue-in-cheek nickname for Attica fans, with the whole Scottish heritage connection. But the fans have latched onto the Clan thing and they’re now making their own t-shirts, designing leather cuts and – as you well know yourself Simon – getting Attica tattoos! We have a Facebook group page that the Clan can interact on and we share info with. We’re working on getting a new website done sometime soon and that will have a dedicated Clan section. We recently designed a new global Clan Attica logo and individual country flag logos. One of our mates in Yorkshire requested a version with the White Rose of Yorkshire flag so we sorted one out for him and he and another mate printed it on blank t-shirts and added their own personalised text in Yorkshire dialect: “Canst thou feel t’ rage!” Our roadie Jay Griz designed his own Clan Attica Essex Chapter leather cut and Graham from Bangor, Wales has a similar one. A large group of female fans got together in advance of Hammerfest and decided to dress up as Attica Jailbirds on the night of the show, with black & white striped outfits and hats…a complete surprise to us when we walked out on stage. And some of them did it again at our Manchester tour date. All this is awesome and exactly what the Clan is about! Going forward, we’ll be bringing in Clan members to help out with street team-style promotion and tour assistance – those that want to get involved – and we’re looking at arranging some big Clan Gathering next summer….a bit of a party for Clan-only members…bit of a summer shindig to thank them for their support. We’ll keep you posted ;)
Now that the tour is done, what’s next for the Attica guys for the remainder of the year?
Well we’ve just been added as special guests to the DIE SO FLUID UK tour dates in November and we have a few headline dates in December to finish the year off. The Die So Fluid tour will be fun and we are urging all our fans to buy tickets and get along to the shows. Not only do we want to help pack these gigs out for DSF, this tour is presented by Mean Fiddler so if we play our cards right and we have the Clan Attica out in force at these shows (especially the London Garage one on 6th Nov), then it might just open doors for us with bigger live opportunities next year.
The December headline dates include Liverpool and Leicester – another 2 new visits for us – and a return to the Intake Club, Mansfield in Nottinghamshire for the MetalGodsTV-hosted “Merry Metal Christmas Party (The Kings Feast). The whole event is a medieval theme complete with a full hog roast and a free beer for all ticket holders, plus a prize raffle and stalls. Money is being raised for the Sophie Lancaster Foundation. We’re headlining the event and the full line-up includes Kyrbgrinder, Huron, Spirytus, Sondura, Mirror Black, Line of Fire (feat. Paddy O’Malley of Lawnmower Death), Beneath Hell, Def Con One & Afterdown. It’s a 16+ ages, all kicks off at 4pm til midnight and advance tickets are only £10. It’ll be a great night to round off an amazing year for Attica Rage and we hope some of the Clan can come along and join the party!
Any new material on the horizon?
I’ve started writing new material and I know the others are kicking riffs & ideas about too. We tend to write individually at home first and then bring them to the band as either fully or partially written demos. Of the material I’ve written so far, it’s still early days but it’s really inspiring to be able to get creative again and come up with new stuff. We’ll start slipping new songs into the sets once they’re ready.
Finally, what have the band got lined up for 2012?
Touring and more touring! UK and Europe. Oh, and album #3 hopefully! We’re speaking to our management team and drawing up our plans of attack for 2012. The only confirmed date we have at the moment is headlining the WizzFest in Belgium in March but the main plan over the course of the year is touring every part of the UK we can get to on our own headline dates and probably a good UK support tour later in the year; with Europe dominating the summer. We are planning to record the next album and shock, horror, actually release it within the same year as it was recorded! Which will be a first for us, haha! That’s the plan anyway. You see, once you have a team of management, agents and labels behind you, they kick you up the arse when you need it to get stuff done. No Rest for the Wicked. One of Ozzy’s best albums :P
