Humm
er up until Lockdown, were a regular name on a lot of punk gig posters. A busy lot. We caught up with them for an online chat recently.
Will, Bass/Vocals,
Joe: Guitar/Vocals,
Matt/Cainy/C: Drums,
RBY, Last Stop
RBY: Who are you all and whats your and the bands musical history.
Joe: Started with me and Will, and then a guitarist was made to.play drums and the rest is history.
RBY: How old were you all?
Will: Me and Joe have been playing in a band together for 16 years now, started jamming in school (when I was 14 and Joe was 13), began gigging in late 2005 with one drummer, he left after 2 years and we replaced him, got another drummer, Cainy joined us in early 2008 as a guitarist, we changed the name to Hummer at the drummer's suggestion, fired him after 3 years and moved Cainy over in 2011, went quiet for a bit while me and Joe dabbled in Flat Back Four and we all finished up at Uni, then eventually got the band back up and doing around 2014/15, 95% new songs but couldn't think of a better name so stuck with Hummer!
Joe: Et viola! Will has a much better memory for timelines than me!
RBY: Yeah, why the name Hummer?
Will: Oh f**k the question I was hoping wouldn't be asked...
Matt: The question that no one knows the answer to....
Will: It’s not the car and it's not the act, that's a start.
Joe: Apparently Hummers are being re-released as a car, we better get our crack team of lawyers onto it...
RBY: but an ex drummer came up with it, did he explain it?
Will: Yeah but that's like the Simpson's "No Homers club" - we're allowed to have one...No he never explained it but I sussed it, and nearly ripped his head off for it.
Matt: He was a fan of Foals i think and they have a song called Hummer, thats probably the origins....its a good Smashing Pumpkins song so thats the less embarrassing version
Joe: We did think about changing it when he left, but everyone knows how time-consuming and resource draining a rebrand is...
Will: Yeah that's spot-on Cainy - Matt rang me one night in around May 2008 saying "I've got the new band name - Hummer", I was up for it and so were the others when we mentioned it in practice, changed the Myspace page and everything then found out it was a fecking Foals song. I've never fumed so much!
RBY: What got you all started playing, individually and then together?
Will: Individually I'd say - I didn't meet Joe until 2003 by which time I'd been playing bass for a year and keyboard (badly) for about 5, and we didn't meet Cainy until college, where his reputation as a guitarist preceded him...
Matt: I started off as a piano player when i was a kid, and then picked up the guitar at the start of high school....i joined the band as guitarist/occasional keyboard player after i met Joe in my music class at college, and i have zero drum tuition to my name (and it shows) but needs must, no drummer no band!
Joe: I started on the classical guitar when I was about 7 or 8, the teacher came into assembly at school and played a bit and then said you could have lessons so I went home and asked my mum if I could go. It was group lessons and I never practiced! The Darkness made me really interested in electric guitar believe it or not! It was only really when I met Will at high school that I got properly into punk of any sort and I started to want to practice a bit
RBY: Did you all like the same stuff, what influences are there?
Will: I think there's about 4 or 5 bands all 3 of us agree on!
Matt: i think we all have a similar core music taste from our youth, skate punk etc being a big influence, but i was/am more of a metalhead at heart but after joining the band i got a lot more into punk
RBY: So with quiet bits for Uni and FB4 interludes, the band have remained pretty constant?
Joe: I think the first single I had was on tape...Wonderwall but the first one I bought with my own money was Limp Bizkit, My Way. A lot of stuff I also got into through playing the Tony Hawk games on Playstation and again that got me into skateboarding which led to more punk stuff.
Will: Yeah even at Uni we'd still jam occasionally during weekends and holidays. I think this bloody lockdown is probably the longest we've gone without playing together in a good 6 or 7 years!
Matt: yeah we've been gigging like mad in recent years, some more so than others but we're started to travel further afield in recent years to keep it interesting and meet some new bands along the way
Joe: Yeah it must be 9 years ago when we started with this lineup and it's stuck. Thankfully we all have stayed living close together which aids practice
RBY: Is that the aim (as it were) of the band, go play places, meet people other bands?
Joe: I would say for me it's partly that, also it's just fun playing with your mates! It's also a great outlet for built up stress which I'm definitely missing during these strange times
Will: Yeah I'd say so, and have a good laugh on the way - never really saw it as much more than a hobby but if enough word and enough gigs allows it to be a self-propelled and cash neutral hobby then I'm certainly not objecting!
Joe: Definitely made some good mates in the punk scene too
Will: Aye, think a lot of us have been in the same band at one point or another Joe...
RBY: Ok, the big Covid question then, hows it affected you all and the band? What if anything are you doing to keep musically 'alive'?
Will: I’ve done the most moonlighting out of all of us by a country mile over the years but Hummer definitely feels the most "natural" band to jam with
Matt: i haven't picked up a pair of sticks since lockdown so I’d expect some ropey gigs when we come back haha but i'm setting up a bit of a home studio while we're in lockdown so hopefully when we can jam again it will be easier for us to jam and record some new material
Joe: We’re all lucky in the sense that it's not stopped any of us from working which is very lucky. I'm working from home fore the foreseeable future which I've got used to now, and I've saved a bucket load in petrol not driving back and to to Liverpool! Luckily we finished some recording right before we were locked down too so that's given us something to work on
Joe: I picked up my guitar for the first time in a while yesterday too, maybe I'll get round to learning those songs you wrote Will, give me 6 months...
Will: I’ve been playing loads of bass and guitar, making up for the lack of gigs with a few living-room-rock-god cover videos on my facebook page. Done all the edits on the new recordings and we compiled the gang vox from a load of people who sent stuff in (including this interviewer).
Will: recently sent them off to our mate Ant Booth for mixing
Will: Is that 6 months since March 23rd or now Joe?
Joe: 6 months from 12th of yesteryear to 12th of never
Matt: just need to decide on an album cover now after the mixing is done....but its sounding like our best work i think
RBY: of course the backing vox will be the highlight.. .ahem
RBY: Whats the new album called?
Joe: Backing vocals are of course stellar! DIY to the max due to the current situation but they came out sounding great!
Will: Aye, long live the #Coronachoirus!
Joe: and many thanks for your contribution mate. Did we confirm the album title yet? I can’t remember.
Matt: i think we've settled on "How did i get here?" as the album name, right? or it might be still up in the air, but thats looking like the contender.
Matt: TBC haha.
RBY: When do you think it will be released fully?
Will: Yeah "How did I get here" is the working title, suppose we can release that much! Reminds me actually, I never did sent that draft album cover idea off to one of our mates to do a proper version!
Will: Give me 6 months...
Joe: Release depends on how much time we spend telling Ant Booth at Kesbri Studios to turn up the [insert own instrument here].
Will: Which in turn depends on you getting your fecking notes over to me Joe...
Will: We don't want to rush it, especially since there's no gigs at the moment but it's certainly not that far off!
Joe: and a new album of course means new merch...watch this space!
Matt: i think September-ish would be realistic in normal circumstances but maybe our CD printing could take longer than usual due to covid or something, who knows....hopefully soon! might have to be digital only at first
Will: Given there's at least one lyric that makes a reference to being in our twenties that means we've got until January to release it, else 2/3 of us will be over 30 and invalidate it! I mean, there's a lyric in "Daisies" on the last EP which says "now I've hit 26 and enough is enough", which I sang when I was 27 and came out when I was 28 but that's same difference.
RBY: The gig situation is hammering the scene round Liverpool, Sound shut down as did pubs like Sanctuary. Outpost aren't putting gigs on for the foreseeable, whats it like round Warrington?
Joe: It’s not been the same since The Old Town House closed really. There were a few gigs here and there but nothing with regular stuff on. It really is a shame about the Liverpool venues, more will follow unless there is a proper plan to save them, which there definitely needs to be, Liverpool has been a great place to play for us in particular the past few years!
RBY: So if this all blows over what would be the perfect world plan for Hummer next?
Matt: theres a lot of unknowns for everyone, even if gigs start up again, unless we can all get in the mix together in a crowd it wont be any fun....but once we do come back, i think people will appreciate gigs even more and it could be a big revival for live music, its just tough getting through it now and venues still being open on the other side
Will: There wasn't really a regular gig haunt in Warrington before the lockdown - a mate of ours was putting gigs on at a pub just outside of the town centre but after they fell out with the landlord over something or other that dried-up. Hopefully the Auction Rooms (or the WA1 as we all still remember it) will survive and there's bound to be somewhere giving it a go, we hope! Aye I bloody hope Outpost survives all this, one of our favourite venues.
RBY: But, whats next?
Joe: We’ve already got a backlog of songs so it's on to the next lot I suppose, gig, em', refine 'em record 'em, release 'em!
Will: Ideal plan for me would be to just get back to gigs like they were, play regularly all over the place, rehearse plenty, new songs etc. Basically pick up where the world left-off and carry on! We have a few gigs booked in for next year already so hopefully we can keep those in the calendar and hoover up any that come our way, knock the rust off!
Matt: Get back to some of our favourite places to play like Lancaster and Liverpool, get back to Bristol some point (that was ace last year, apart from when I fell out of the car at the services!)
RBY: What have been your highlights (all of ya! ^^) during the history of Hummer?
Will: One of my personal highlights was finishing and releasing Budweiser and Butter, it just felt like a massive step up from what we'd done up to that point
Definitely agree on Bud and Butter - was made up with how that came out. My live highlights so far have been supporting Real Mckenzie's and UK Subs (both at The Salty Dog in Northwich), the two Liverpool Punk Rock all dayers we did in 2018 and 2019, the two drunk lads who we couldn't tell were wrestling or dancing when we played Chasetown, loads!
Joe: also sold 11 CDs once in Lancaster by shoving them in people's hands and telling them they were 5 quid...
Will: In Birmingham we sold loads of T-shirts, and Joe almost accidentally sold one of our mates' band "No Agenda" (from Lancaster) which he hadn't unwrapped. That was a red-face moment!
*One of our mates band's T-shirts, that is.
Matt: yeah I’d agree with Joe on that, we put a long of work into it....being in a band on stage is the fun for us but if someone in the crowd can listen to it too and enjoy it, thats a good feeling
I definitely remember playing this really weird gig in Bradford one night in early 2018 (not at the 1-in-12, that's a great place), and I swear there was someone in the crowd singing "Quarter Life Crisis" off the first EP - seeing even one stranger singing your song is a gratifying feeling!
Will: Even though the gig was crap that kind of made it worth it
Matt: yeah the bad gigs make you appreciate the good ones more....but good or bad, theres always a story to tell haha
Will: About 3 years ago - promoter had messaged earlier in the day saying the gig was gonna start at about 10 because a local darts team were playing in the pub (their usual place was shut) - we were ok with it, but when we actually got there and the match started, by 11:30 they were still at it going "this is the last game now" (next player gets up), "this is the last game now" and so on. Eventually the promoter had enough and rolled up the oche on them, we set up, played about 20 minutes, sold a CD and buggered-off sharpish!
Joe: If I was driving we would have gone home before the darts finished.
Will: The good, the band and the ugly! I still remember when me and Cainey were wasted in Nuneaton at Christmas doing air-guitar to "the boys are back in town"
Matt: if you believe in karma, we should be playing at Wembley next year after that one haha
haha
Word and photos: RBY
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hummerpunkrock/
Bandcamp: https://hummerpunkrock.bandcamp.com/