Inter­view: August 7 2014.

It hard­ly needs to be said that I’m a big fan of The Bed­room Hour. I man­aged to catch up with their singer Stu­art Drum­mond as he was rush­ing down to the stu­dio one evening. He and the band are very busy at the moment with debut album Hin­ter­land deserved­ly get­ting a great recep­tion, a sum­mer tour is tak­ing up week­ends, a pledge gig is on the horizon…

ME: You’ve all been in bands pre­vi­ous­ly, but when The Bed­room Hour got togeth­er, did you know you had some­thing special?

STUART: I think when we wrote Heart will Haunt, that’s when we realised we had some­thing. There’s a real intri­ca­cy to the gui­tar parts and the drum parts, that was when I thought, well wow, we’ve got a spe­cial song here. I don’t want to sound arro­gant but I knew we had a good song, an anthem. That had­n’t hap­pened before and then that came along.

What was the first album you bought?

I’m not com­plete­ly sure, but I think it was (Whats the Sto­ry) Morn­ing Glo­ry by Oasis. From there I start­ed dis­cov­er­ing oth­er bands like The Verve, then that led to old­er stuff like The Stones …  and of course I bought a few turkeys.

That’s inter­est­ing that your first album was by Oasis, as The Bed­room Hour have devel­oped quite a con­nec­tion with Man­ches­ter, there’s a bit of a love thing going on. 

It has­n’t hap­pened on pur­pose but we do love Man­ches­ter bands, Doves, The Stone Ros­es, Joy Divi­sion, Oasis, north west bands, The Verve …  our music, does seem to res­onate more up north. It strug­gles to trans­mit down south.  I don’t know if peo­ple have more time on their hands up there, or if it’s the fact they realise work is just some­thing you do Mon­day to Fri­day, that’s all it is. Peo­ple in Lon­don have more stress on their plate and don’t realise so much that the week­ends are for enjoy­ing yourself.

You’re a Lon­don band but before this all this pop­u­lar­i­ty with Man­ches­ter hap­pened, did you have con­nec­tions with the north?

Pret­ty much, I played Man­ches­ter with my old, old band but that was in the days of My Space, which nev­er was suc­cess­ful for us in the way that Twit­ter has been. That’s how we’ve built every­thing up. My own per­son­al con­nec­tion is with Scot­land, that’s where my folks are from.

Your social media is real­ly good, you real­ly make an effort to con­nect with your fans in a very pos­i­tive way

Being old­er guys, haha, we can’t always rely on our friends to come to our gigs, we’ve got mort­gages and oth­er stress­es going on. So we have been try­ing our best to engage with peo­ple through social media, we try to engage with fans on Twit­ter and Face­book and build it that way. We make an effort with peo­ple. I don’t like the way some bands think it’s they’re god-giv­en right to have peo­ple like them of fol­low them. You have to put the effort in with the peo­ple who are putting in the effort in to lis­ten to you. You must give that back by show­ing your appre­ci­a­tion rather than expect­ing it.

When did you first realise you want­ed to sing?

It’s a cheesy sto­ry but I was drunk… ham­mered. I was about 17 years old and in the pub with my mate. He was a prop­er karaoke whizz kid, and sug­gest­ed we sing. We got up and he coerced me into doing a song togeth­er, I think it was a Blur song, Girls & Boys. Then I found myself singing on my own. I was a bit shouty but I felt a lit­tle buzz. I was already writ­ing lyrics though, that was the oth­er piece of the jig­saw. Karaoke night in a pub – not very rock n roll is it? I did­n’t get into a band till my ear­ly 20s though.

Are you going to con­cen­trate on the north or try and get more of a Lon­don connection? 

Man­ches­ter feels like a sec­ond home, we launched our album Hin­ter­land there and the feed­back, the sup­port of the room blew us away. We get such an amaz­ing wel­come. We did a sim­i­lar gig just out­side Don­cast­er, we got such a vibe back from the crowd. But we do want to get our name known in Lon­don coz that’s where we are from but we don’t want to swap one for the oth­er. Some­how we want to bring it all together.

Your songs are emo­tion­al but every­one can relate to them. How do you go about the song­writ­ing process?

I write the lyrics, Rob [Payne] comes up with amaz­ing gui­tar parts, Mark [Dud­ley] adds the key­board parts, Andy [Cop­per] and Lew [Cosham] are like the the engine room and they knock every­thing togeth­er… every­one adds some­thing. Most peo­ple look at the lyrics as most impor­tant ele­ment, but I would say it’s a mix of every­thing. But the bass is just as impor­tant as the vocals or the melody. If you look at “I am the Res­ur­rec­tion”, The Stone Ros­es, it’s the bass line of that song that is the hook, brings that song alive. Obvi­ous­ly the lyrics are impor­tant, so every­body can sing along.

Do you get ner­vous when you go on stage?

Yes, def­i­nite­ly yeah, I don’t know why it is. The sec­ond Man­ches­ter gig at Night and Day Cafe I was real­ly ner­vous, I think it’s because there was a big build up. The first time we played there we got such a great recep­tion, so you don’t want to let peo­ple down. We’ve had a lot of sup­port, and pas­sion for us, it’s amaz­ing to get this from fans. We are Keep­ing on and cap­i­tal­is­ing on the amount of time peo­ple have invest­ed in us.

The new album Hin­ter­land is doing real­ly well. What are your plans for the future, after the sum­mer tour is finished?

I think we are going to keep writ­ing, try­ing to build up anoth­er batch of songs, as and when they come out I don’t know. But we want to keep Hin­ter­land fresh. We’ve noticed that sales of Themes have picked up since Hin­ter­land came out, which is also real­ly great. So when we get to the next step, hope­ful­ly that will help sell more Hin­ter­land and Themes, and that way we keep on bring­ing brand new songs to people.

Final ques­tion: as a band with some expe­ri­ence of the music indus­try…  if you could give one piece of advice to a new band start­ing out, what would it be? 

The gold­en rule for a new band is first of all to write your own songs and keep on writ­ing them. Don’t set­tle for a sets’ worth, make sure you have at least 10 – 15 num­bers before you even think about gig­ging. And make sure they are as tight as they can be. Be well-rehearsed before you get out on the cir­cuit. The sec­ond thing is use social media. Reach out to poten­tial fans, and don’t be too proud or arro­gant to make the first move. Lis­ten to what your fans have to say and take an inter­est in them, build rela­tion­ships and friend­ships with them. Take the time to treat peo­ple how you want to be treat­ed. And the third thing about start­ing out with a band is: do it because you real­ly love it, and only because you love it.

Big thanks to Stuart…

The Bed­room Hour are play­ing at Wigan Live fest, Sat­ur­day August 30, Glas­ton­brew­ery August 30, The Lomax Liv­er­pool, Sat­ur­day Sep­tem­ber 13.

Are you a fan of The Bed­room Hour? What is your favourite track on the new album?