Smudge

Check out Smudge, who we reviewed in this months Voltcase (review online soon), who take on the Voltcase "10 questions" below!

VOLTCASE SMUDGE INTERVIEW:

Hi, welcome to Voltcase - how are things?!

Things are great thanks. Were super excited this summer with our EP release and the tour.

So, how would you describe your sound to a stranger in three words?

Hmm, according to our myspace were 'pop' 'rock' 'alternative' so I'll go for that.

What could you say to convince the lazy general public that they should check you out, turn up at your gigs and buy your music?

We need your money...nah ha ha. We'll give you a night to remember and make sure you leave singing our songs for weeks, plus being lazy isn't a good idea!

What do you guys think of the Internet as a way of promoting yourselves – is it an essential marketing tool, or just another way for people to steal your music without you knowing about it?

Ha ha it is certainly a way of stealing music without us knowing, there's different programs that allow you to download anything from internet pages, but at the same time I think it's a small number of people who really use these so over-all I think the net is a great way. Sites like youtube and myspace are great for promotion, fans can come to your shows and video a bit of your set live, and when they put it onto there site its more publicity for yourself.

When your a new band trying to get some attention, these sites are a big help.

We try and promote as many local scenes as we can here at Voltcase, what can you tell us about your home town/s and the music scene there? Any bands that we might not have heard of that you think we should check out?

From Wigan there's a little band called the Verve...you might of heard of them... I think they got lucky and headlined Glastonbury? We'll they certainly set the scene in Wigan, for a while if you weren't playing what they play, people didn't want to know, which for us starting off was awful! We've managed to stick around for long enough know for people to have had no choice but to listen. There's a large amount of bands and musicians in our town, not to mention that were right in the middle of Manchester and Liverpool, so the live music scene is pretty song.

And, for anyone out there just starting out in a band, is there one piece of invaluable advice that you could give them to help them on their way?

Find the right people who are on the right way length as you and want to create what you also want to create. There is a lot of bands who split because of 'artistic difference' so in that case, find an artist you can work with and stick to it. Nothing comes for free in the music industry and your very lucky if anything comes easily. Take the roller coaster of ups and downs and hope to get your foot in the door one day!

So, what's the most extreme rock-star type story that's happened to you while on tour or at a gig?

We took a 1987 ford escort estate with a trailer on the road for about 16 summer tour dates. The car couldn't go 2 miles without over heating and coming close to setting alight. We just thought, if we die we die doing what we love, so we ran the thing for the whole tour with steam and fumes everywhere. On the last night of the tour on the way home we dropped off our drummer in the town next to ours, and the car died just past his house. We had to push it all the way back to our town around 3am. At least it didn't set alight with us inside like we thought it was going to do every 2 miles.

If you were interviewing yourself, what question would you ask yourself? And what would the answer be?

I'd fire out "What made you want to be in a band" and the answer would be: because i fell in love with live music! My older brother had a friend named Rob, he came around to our house one day with a bunch of CD's.
At the time i was a big Oasis fan, but it never made me want to play in a band, I just loved the fact that I weren't listening to 'pop' music. So around comes Rob, with his music and sticks on a CD. When the first chord stuck, and this rough but ready noise came at me, I new I had found a new path to my life. He'd brought around early Blink 182 albums, Offspring and Green Day. It was this, new to me, fun pop punk music that made me want to be in band, and when i met Dan in high school, that's were my new life started when we started our first band.

So, what have you got planned for the rest of the year?

Were hoping to have several EP releases to build up our media exposure, to get us in magazines regularly to really get our name out. Come June, were hoping to be hitting the road constantly to put our live show with our
reviews to prove what we are made of.

And finally, the question that we ask everyone that appears in Voltcase - what does the word 'Voltcase' mean?

Voltcase: This is a new slang word for the skull. The skull is a 'case' for the brain, and the brain has message 'volts' running through it so our body is active...does that even make sense?