These young lads are ready to tour Ireland and England after things are safe again and are confident to get the crowd rocking. With two singles already to boast about, they are in a prime place to get noticed by many indie fans. We spoke to Eoin from the band about their influences and plans for after lockdown.
credit: @leannexgabriel
How did the band come together and what are your earliest memories of playing together?
I used to go to open mics in town and one day Konrad was there and I was the only one with a guitar surrounded by rap artists and we mutually bonded over our love of bands like Pixies, Nirvana, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Oasis. A few weeks after we meet again, Konrad was with our bassist Calvin and we all bonded over our musical influences such as The Stone Roses.
What are your biggest influences for your songwriting?
Our earliest memory would be Konrad and I jamming to a song I had written called “Calling it Off”, but due to distance we regularly video called jamming songs. Our first time playing together was our first gig in our local YMCA. We played a three song set the first being “I Wanna be Adored” by The Stone Roses.
Our influences vary between a plethora of genres. For lyrics and starting out songs I normally don’t have an inspiration for lyrics they just kind of suit what I play but in other circumstances it would stem from personal experiences or things that I find interesting.
Probably Konrad’s main influences for his guitar parts would be the likes of John Squire, Johnny Marr, John Fruiscante, Jimi Hendrix and Fontaines D.C. Same as my lyricism, Konrad just had no real structure to his leads and that is one the selling points of our live shows being impromptu jams and prolonged sections of songs.
For many of Calvins bass lines he stay’s strongly influenced by bands like Joy Division, The Cure and The Stone Roses giving the song a feeling that the bass drives the song.
As our drum tracks are mostly programmed we take a lot of inspiration from genres such as House, Boom Rap and Reggae such as artists like Wu Tang Clan , Slowthai , Junior Delgado and Giant Swan.
How have you found playing live? What do you think is important in getting your sound across in the best possible way?
As a band we feel playing live is the most comfortable part for us as we started playing live shows right out of the gate. We put a lot thought and effort into the dynamics of the show and the energy we emit on stage. We also put a lot of thought into giving the audience the best experience that we can give them.
As we are pretty much in the digital age of music we that there is sometimes a disconnect between the audience and the artist. The live show fills that void for us as we spent the first year promoting gigs pretty much just by the word of mouth, we’ve always felt very attached to our audience. The most important factors of the live show to us are audience engagement and the showing of raw emotion on stage.
Your new single ‘Anchor’ has such a catchy little riff! How did the song come about?
Well for years, I have been busking in Cork and would perform new songs to see the outsiders point of view wether they get a good reaction or not. One day I had just performed one of the opening riffs for “Anchor”and performed an impromptu version of the song and it gathered a quite solid reaction. Konrad and I then jammed the song and came up with the idea of a slow bridge that eventually builds up.
When it came to recording we all brought our ideas to the table with our friend Keelan from the band Post Party. Keelan plays a vital part in our recordings as he tracks all the songs.
What are your ambitions as a band after lockdown? Do you see yourselves putting an album together in the near future?
We wanna do an Irish tour that we were planning before Covid-19 struck and also we wanna play our first Dublin show with Goon Fest. We also hope to secure a few English dates in the coming year.
As for an album that’s a long time away for all of us we still need to figure where we are with our sound as we are still realtively young band.
We were due to start recording and promoting our EP but due to lockdown the whole tracklist for it has changed. The moment lockdown is finally lifted we want to head straight back to the studio.
Thanks for the opportunity!
The Drive. can be found at @thedrive_. on Instagram where you can see news and updates from the band. They have a new single ‘Anchor’ is out now on all streaming platforms.
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