{"id":2346,"date":"2011-10-16T15:13:06","date_gmt":"2011-10-16T04:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/?p=2346"},"modified":"2011-10-16T15:13:06","modified_gmt":"2011-10-16T04:13:06","slug":"king-cannons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/2011\/10\/king-cannons\/","title":{"rendered":"King Cannons"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>“I just think that people are really hanging out for something that you can tap your feet to and relate to and get some kind of tingly feeling from, that\u2019s what I love about music and there\u2019s very little in new music that\u2019s doing that for me at the moment so I\u2019m trying to rectify that situation.”<\/p>\n

From Bio: The KING CANNONS road has been long and winding, veering through remote parts of rural NZ and the UK all the way to their current HQ: Melbourne, Australia.<\/p>\n

It’s a simple ethos that hasn’t changed since day one. Soul food. Six good friends coming together to create music crafted from their many different individual influences and inspirations.\u00a0 The result is ferocious. A constantly evolving rock n roll sound that is unmistakable.\u00a0 From Springsteen to The Clash, Chuck Berry to the ease of a Jamaican Sunday, KING CANNONS play with ferocity and passion, committed to bringing their characteristic vibe to each and every stage.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s music for everyone who shares in that sentiment. It’s immediate and impacting, always on point, and exactly what you need to get moving.<\/p>\n

We chatted to singer Luke Yeoward about the band, their unique sound, touring and their influences and inspirations…<\/p>\n

So for starters, how would YOU describe your music to someone that hasn\u2019t had the pleasure of hearing King Cannons before?<\/strong>
\nThis is always tough but I\u2019m getting used to answering this question in the best way I can.\u00a0 It\u2019s like Springsteen meets Strummer with a little bit of soul and a little bit of Jamaican music in there for good measure.\u00a0 That\u2019s my elevator pitch on the band.<\/p>\n

See the way I look at it is that no one in Australia really sounds like King Cannons at the moment, how hard was it to come up with this sound?<\/strong>
\nWe didn\u2019t really think about it, that\u2019s the funny thing.\u00a0 So not that hard but I don\u2019t want to sound like a prick by saying that either, I guess I\u2019ve been playing music since I was 10 or 11, I started my first band when I was 13 so music and me playing it and writing it has been a constantly evolving thing and this is just where we\u2019re at now and this is what comes naturally to us and it just so happens that it works ha ha<\/p>\n

Now you mentioned the Springsteen\u2019s and the Strummer\u2019s before but who would you site as personally your major influences?<\/strong>
\nYeah well those pretty much are, but as far as modern music goes, well at least music from the last 30 years, those guys are definitely up there with inspirational figures for me as front men, but it\u2019s also really broad as well because I really love everybody from Willie Nelson to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley to modern guys like Aloe Blacc and Cee Lo Green and all those kinds of crazy stuff, I just like music and I like learning things from it and different people and different walks of life you know.<\/p>\n

You recently finished a tour with The Living End.\u00a0 How were those shows?<\/strong>
\nFantastic man, you couldn\u2019t have really asked for a better support slot for us, unless it was AC\/DC or something.\u00a0 I tell you what, it was pretty special, it was great to play for their fans and all that sort of stuff, they\u2019re great guys and really professional unit and just great to be working with them for a short time you know.<\/p>\n

Did you pick up any pointers from them?<\/strong>
\nYeah, of course Chris is a fantastic guitarist, and everybody else in the band are fantastic in their own right, all it made us think was that wow we really need to practise a lot more ha ha.\u00a0 There\u2019s technical things that we learnt as well, like the way their road crew operates and their stage is all set up, but that\u2019s boring to most people but it\u2019s good for us as a band trying to make a career out of music to learn about all that kind of stuff.\u00a0 It was good to be around.<\/p>\n

When a word like \u2018passion\u2019 is thrown around when talking about a King Cannons live show, just what is it that playing live that you enjoy?<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t know. It\u2019s a good loud racket with a bunch of people alive in the one spot at the same time you know, it\u2019s like doing something that can only be taken in at that very one point in time, it\u2019s a magic thing.\u00a0 Live music is a magic thing.\u00a0 I believe in everything that I sing about so I can\u2019t wait to kind of get it out to people and hopefully get that back from the people in the crowd, that same kind of passion, it\u2019s like an ever feeding cycle if its going well you know.<\/p>\n

Your album has been noted as having an early 2012 release, do you have a firm release date yet for it?<\/strong>
\nNo specific date.\u00a0 February is the month, whether it\u2019s early Feb or late Feb it\u2019s still undisclosed, I don\u2019t know myself ha ha<\/p>\n

After having only the one EP, were the songs on the album ones you\u2019ve had floating around for a while or were they written specifically for the album?<\/strong>
\nThere\u2019s only one song that we\u2019ve had floating around for about a year and a half that\u2019s made it on to the album.\u00a0 All the other songs that are on the album I wrote at the start of this year and right up to recording pretty much.\u00a0 So it\u2019s all a brand new batch of songs and we wanted to do that as we\u2019ve grown so much as a band over the last few years of being together and we\u2019ve got a back catalogue of between 40 and 60 songs and some of them sound pretty redundant compared to the new stuff we were coming up with, so we just wanted to make the album as fresh and as relevant to this point in time that we could you know?\u00a0 So we decided to not think about \u2018oh this has been around for such amount of time that we really need to release it\u2019 it\u2019s more like this is new and this is what we\u2019re feeling right now we\u2019d put it out at this point in time you know.<\/p>\n

A song like \u2018Take The Rock\u2019 which is how I heard you first is such a catchy little track, any chance we can expect to hear that or any of the EP tracks on the album?<\/strong>
\nNo, I was very adamant about that.\u00a0 I think that \u2018Take The Rock\u2019 had it\u2019s place for the EP and I didn\u2019t want to repackage that for fans, for some reason I think that if people want \u2018Take The Rock\u2019 the EP is the place for that and the album is the album.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to repackage the same material and try and get it out to people, I didn\u2019t feel right about it.<\/p>\n

The songs on your EP go from all out rock to a reggae feel at one point, can we expect this kind of diversity on the album also?<\/strong>
\nYeah but in a more mature and refined way.\u00a0 To me the EP is what it is, the EP works as a best of our back catalogue, that\u2019s the way I\u2019ve always viewed the EP more like let\u2019s get these songs together because they\u2019re the best of the songs we\u2019ve had for the last couple of years.\u00a0 The album is a step towards something a bit more mature and a bit more heartfelt and a little bit more depth in the song writing, and it\u2019s more personal than a lot of the stuff, with the exception of \u2018Teenage Dreams\u2019 on the EP, the album is going to have a lot of story telling songs and a lot of personal stuff about me and my life and experiences, so that\u2019s what you can kind of expect for the record.<\/p>\n

How did the recording process for the album compare to that of your EP?<\/strong>
\nFor starters when we did the EP, we didn\u2019t have any producers or anything like that and it was kind of done over a couple of days and the album was done over a couple of weeks and we had a producer and an engineer and all that kind of stuff.\u00a0 To be honest, we were pretty green when we were making the EP and I think as musicians, even in the last year we\u2019ve improved ten fold.\u00a0 With Tom Larkin being the drummer from Shihad, he really worked our drummer Josh hard in the studio and really brought the best out of him and all of us, so it\u2019s a lot different, it\u2019s a lot more full on and I think the result is better because of I, it was good to go through.\u00a0 Its like a hardening up process making your first album, it\u2019s like can you handle this and if you can handle it you get to make a record, you know what I mean?<\/p>\n

I was going to ask about Tom Larkin, what did he bring to the table during recording that you hadn\u2019t thought of?<\/strong>
\nWell it was definitely drum stuff you know, we needed a lot of work in the rhythm side of things and Tom really brought that to our attention, really helped mock up all that sort of stuff, even though our music\u2019s simple, it\u2019s always really hard to capture the magic of a simple song.\u00a0 Especially because we all record live, so we all set up in a room and all six of us record at the same time, we don\u2019t do drums and then bass and then guitars and then vocals, everything gets laid down at the same time for the bed of the track and the magic has to be there you know.\u00a0 So Tom was great at being behind the controls and just being there listening and giving us moral support and really making sure the vibe was good \u00a0and all that kind of stuff and overall he\u2019s just a good dude, that\u2019s why we got him on board because we can talk to him like a regular person, he\u2019s not pretentious or anything like that, he\u2019s just very straight forward and I appreciate the straight up quality, like if something\u2019s crap it\u2019s \u2018oh this is fucking crap\u2019 so that\u2019s what you want.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re heading out for some more touring starting later this month what can people expect from your headlining shows?<\/strong>
\nA longer set than what we were doing on The Living End thing, but definitely the same level of intensity and just more songs.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to be obviously showcasing all the songs from the album, so that\u2019s really peoples only chance to see us before the album drops and get a little bit of a taste as to what\u2019s going to be on there.\u00a0 That and we\u2019ve got a double A side 7\u201d along with that and some real cool support bands, The Strums and Jackson Firebird, but we\u2019re just in the rehearsal studio at the moment working on the set list, it\u2019s all sounding pretty good so it should just be a fun time.<\/p>\n

Now I haven\u2019t had a chance to see you before, but I\u2019ve heard that your show draws from the E Street Band and the likes, did you look to anyone in regards to performing or does it just come out that way when you\u2019re up there on stage?<\/strong>
\nYeah we kind of just put everything in and it comes out that way, I mean we\u2019ve been obviously fans if music our whole lives and we\u2019ve seen a lot of groups live and we\u2019ve also now with the internet you\u2019ve got YouTube and you can watch everything on DVD so you can watch all these great old performers like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry and all this brilliant old footage from all these old blues guys and how they used to deliver things.\u00a0 I think we kind of take the way they used to do things and put it out through us, I think a lot of that is missing from a lot of modern music, there\u2019s a lot of stuff that\u2019s all kind of weird for the sake of weird and arty for the sake of arty and I think they\u2019ve missed the memo of kind of what Rock and Roll should be ha ha.\u00a0 I just think that people are really hanging out for something that you can tap your feet to and relate to and get some kind of tingly feeling from, that\u2019s what I love about music and there\u2019s very little in new music that\u2019s doing that for me at the moment so I\u2019m trying to rectify that situation.<\/p>\n

What was the decision behind giving away your new single \u2018Stand Right Up\u2019 for free on your website?<\/strong>
\nWell we just finished recording the album when we were about to head out to The Living End tour and we just wanted to have something to coincide with that and we were doing a thing where if people sign up to our mailing list and we give them a track so we can keep them informed of what we\u2019re doing and really bring them in to the family sort of thing and just kind of really make the most of playing to all these new people and really making sure they\u2019re going to come back to the show next time.\u00a0 That\u2019s all we need to make a career out of what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

Is there a story behind the song?<\/strong>
\nNo, not really.\u00a0 Lanae recorded a bongo rhythm and sent it to me and I had a guitar jam a couple of days before with a guy named Benny from Benny and the Fly By Nighters, a Melbourne rhythm and blues act and I watched some Otis Redding footage and I woke up and smashed out that song in the morning and within the next kind of few weeks we were recording it for the album.\u00a0 It was just one of those weird instantaneous dancy, catchy you know, call to arms kind of numbers and I was like \u2018fucking hell this is insane how quickly this has come together, it\u2019s got to go on the record\u2019 so it as the first one out there.<\/p>\n

Are you hitting the festival circuit this summer?<\/strong>
\nThere\u2019s a whole bunch of stuff that\u2019s up in the air at the moment, but we\u2019re confirmed to do Festival of the Sun in Port Macquarie and Peats Ridge which is New Years, but there\u2019s still some things in the air.\u00a0 I\u2019m not really sure, I haven\u2019t spoken to the guy that books us for a while so I must get on to him and ask him ha ha.<\/p>\n

Has there been any international prospects for the band?<\/strong>
\nYeah definitely but I need to make sure we\u2019ve got our home territory covered first you know?\u00a0 I\u2019ve had a lot of experience with putting the cart before the horse when it comes to trying to leap overseas before you\u2019re really worth anything and as soon as you go over to bigger territories they\u2019ll just eat you alive you know, so I really want to make we\u2019ve got a really good solid foundation here in Australia and the album\u2019s out and we\u2019re doing some good shows over here before we branch out overseas.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re also a bit of tattoo enthusiast; do you have much room left?<\/strong>
\nNo not much room.\u00a0 I was a tattoo enthusiast, I\u2019m not so enthused about them now, pretty sick of them ha ha ha but there\u2019s not much I can do about that now.\u00a0 I can\u2019t get rid of them which is a bit of a pain the ass, so I\u2019ve just learned to live with them and that\u2019s about it really ha ha
\nWell it\u2019s part of the look, it\u2019s part of the band really<\/strong>
\nYeah and I guess it is now and it\u2019s funny because some people have that as a really strong talking point about us and for me I don\u2019t even see the tattoos but I guess to un tattooed people it would come across as \u2018fuckin\u2019 hell these guys have got a lot of tattoos\u2019 but for me it\u2019s completely normal.<\/p>\n

Just lastly, is there any message to those that haven\u2019t seen you before, why should they come to a King Cannons show?<\/strong>
\nI hopefully think it will help brighten things up a little bit, I think people just need to have a dance and have a good time and just find some stuff that they can relate to and I hope that we can kind of bring that to people with King Cannons and the band\u2019s we\u2019re touring with.\u00a0 I definitely want to make sure that people come and see us on this tour because the limited edition 7\u201d of \u2018Stand Right Up\u2019 and \u2018Shot To Kill\u2019 is only going to be available at those shows and I really don\u2019t want people to miss out on that.<\/p>\n

Catch King Cannons at the following tour dates on the ‘Shot To Kill’ tour<\/strong><\/strong>
\n27th October: National Hotel, Geelong VIC
\n28th October: The Loft, Warnambool VIC
\n29th October: East Brunswick Hotel, Melbourne VIC
\n3rd November: The Great Northern Hotel, Newcastle NSW
\n4th November: Oxford Arts Factory, Sydney NSW
\n5th November: Transit Bar, Canberra ACT
\n10th November: Sol Bar, Maroochydore, QLD
\n11th November: Beach Hotel, Byron Bay NSW
\n12th November: Old Museum, Brisbane QLD<\/p>\n

Essential Information<\/strong><\/h2>\n

From:<\/strong> Melbourne, Australia<\/p>\n

Sounds like:<\/strong> Rock<\/p>\n

Band members:<\/strong> Luke Yeoward, Jonno Smith, Josh Matthews, Rob Ting, Mike Ting, Lanae Eruera<\/p>\n

Website:<\/strong> www.kingcannons.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Latest release:<\/strong> Stand Right Up (single) (2011 – EMI Music \/ Capitol) availble for free via www.kingcannons.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Check them out if you like:<\/strong> The Clash, Bruce Springsteen, Chuck Berry and more…<\/p>\n\n

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