Casitas Interview: Exeter

Who said pop was a dirty word?  It’s resplendent come back over the last couple of years has pummeled us with offerings from Amy Winehouse, The Ting Tings, Sam Sparro and countless reality-TV starlets around the world.

This resurgence of quality pop music in numerous guises has strengthened the genre’s position throughout the UK, propping up playlists and giving so many artists the opportunity to hit back against the prejudice, bringing popular music and culture BACK to the forefront of our minds.

In that case Devon based Casitas are in good company, citing themselves as a band whose aim is to simply make you dance and sing along to their ‘popular beats’.  Pushing the formula of melodic pop against catchy lyrics, they have already written, produced and released a 9-track EP and been picked up by Nick Grimshaw on his show Switch for Radio 1. 

With a name based on paying homage to the Hacienda club famous during the Madchester era in the 80’s and early 90’s, the 5-piece friends from school have a hearty fanbase in the south-west and BIG aspirations to, in the words of MGMT, make some music, make some money and er find some models for wives.

An impressive and highly energetic stage show sets the Casitas scene based around guys all with a love of varying musical influences and jamming together as mates, whilst pursuing the dream before real life takes over.

Casitas are Barney (vox/keys), Jamie (bass/vox), Jack (guitar/vox), Ed (drums) and Felix (guitar).

4or The Record – Tell us about the origins of Casitas.

Barney – We sort of got together at school after me and Jamie went to a party and saw a band playing kind of a jazz funk fusion, which we were pretty inspired by.  Jamie and I started jamming together, then Jack came over and we jammed some more and thought you know we could write some songs here.  Obviously then we needed drums and lead guitar, so the rest is history.

Jack – We literally got Edmund and Felix into the band really quite late, just before we had our first gig.

Barney – Yeah we knew 2 songs at that stage and they came in and learnt the 2 songs in about 2 days before our first gig.

Felix – Actually they didn’t need me they just wanted me for my equipment.

Jack – [laughing] Yeah Felix knew our songs anyway as he had this little recording box, which he was using to record us one night.

Felix – After they had all gone home I cheekily laid some guitar down.

Ed – So you basically wheedled your way into the band, at least I was invited.

Felix – Yeah that’s technically true; I have never been asked into the band!

4TR – What was the inspiration behind your moniker?

Felix - Well it’s a reference to The Hacienda club in Manchester, the big sort of rave/rock club in the 80s, because casita means small house and hacienda means big house of an estate so it’s kind of like a reference to that.

Jack – Plus it was the first name we could all agree on, we went through a stage of changing our name quite a lot.  Our first name was the Cosmonaut Kids wasn’t it, then there was Gone Walking, overall there were some awful suggestions.

4TR – How would you describe your sound?

Jack – I don’t know, maybe a bit funky a bit poppy?

Barney – I wouldn’t say we were a particular genre though, but it’s fair to say we are more of a pop band than an indie band.

Jack – Actually it’s ‘popular beat’, me and Felix had a huge discussion about this and we decided to remake our own genre.

Felix – Yeah well it was more like an epic argument when we got lost in Southampton once, but ‘popular beat’ I think sums it up nicely.  We’re not especially far away from popular genres but I would say we were a bit more original than other bands, ‘cos there are lots of band at the moment that almost kind of follow each other, they have the same influences.

Ed – Hello Scouting For Girls!

Felix – Well yeah Scouting For Girls are controversial aren’t they!

Ed – And totally rubbish.

4TR – So what would you say makes you more original from other bands?

Barney – The fact that we don’t want to be like another band, [pointing to Ed] like he is a punk drummer to start with, which makes him drum hard and that comes out in our music.

Ed – Well I’m like any drummer, I will drum to anything, but I actually wouldn’t say I’m a punk drummer.  My drumming has actually been shaped by our own music, yeah I have stolen bits from here and there but I think everyone does, so I wouldn’t say I’m a punk drummer as such, that would be like saying Felix is an old rock guitarist, who lives for Deep Purple.

Jack – But Felix is an old rock guitarist!

[All laughing]

Felix – It’s fair to say I’m a sixty-year old man stuck in an 18 year olds body.

Barney – Well ok what I’m trying to say is that we all drum, or sing or play our instruments in the way that we want to personally. We’re not coming together to play like Bloc Party do or The Kooks; we’re coming together to play our separate roles how we see fit within the band.  That gives an individual aspect to our music and influences.

Ed – Yeah I think what makes us unique is that we have our own sound.  I know it might sound stupid, but if you hear maybe The Killers on the radio for example, even if you’ve never heard the song before you will recognise it as The Killers and I reckon that is the same with us.  If people heard some of our songs, although they are not all obviously sounding the same, [cough] Scouting For Girls, you would still recognise it as us.

4TR – I’m getting the impression you are not fans of Scouting For Girls…

Ed – No, it really annoys me that they are famous, I’m not going to lie [laughing]

Felix – You’re just jealous Ed!

Ed – Yeah maybe, but I just don’t think they are very good.

4TR – Do you all contribute to the writing process?

Barney – Most of the time I will come up with an idea and then I will show it to the other guys, usually Jamie first because me and Jamie are the song writing sort of pair, [laughing] a Lennon and McCartney kind of partnership. Then he will put his ideas in and then we put the songs to everyone else and play it through.  Everyone will get involved in suggesting different stuff and changes which means it works out coming out as a much better song ‘cos we have all put our own sort of twist on it.

4TR – Is your writing influenced particularly by other bands or music?

Barney – We go through stages where different things influence us; for example a recent song we wrote was written after a prolonged period of listening to Coldplay’s new album.  I just felt it was really powerful stuff and wanted to write something that was us but which used that power in the harmonies and with the piano.

Jack – If we take references, like kind of obvious references from a popular band like Coldplay, who has quite an original sound with their style, it’s different to sort of sticking to the indie genre or whatever.  Because of that at the moment our most recent songs have been becoming even more epic.

4TR – Have you recorded much of your material to date?

Barney – Yeah, basically we have got a lot of songs but obviously money and time is against us.  We recorded a self-titled mini album of 9 songs a while back which was like a real breakthrough for us, ’cos getting them down on record really helped us establish what we were trying to do.

Jack – It was a great experience, like I loved it, the fact that we finally had the finished product and that we had done it ourselves.

Barney – We spent a day and a half recording nine songs and got them all done, but then the second time we recorded material we actually spent 2 days doing just 3 songs; it took us a lot longer second time round finishing the real detail of the songs and making sure it sounded exactly how we wanted it to.

Ed – Recording the second time round was definitely harder because previously the first lot of songs we recorded we knew back to front, as we had been playing them for about a year.  ‘Lykke Lii’ was one of the 3 new songs we did second time round, which we had never even played live.  That is a six-minute song where the rhythm section were all recording together, which was quite painful.  We would get like 4 minutes in and someone would make a mistake and you would have to start again, so it was really hard.  But the end result was impressive.

Jack – Yeah well the production was alot more than we had ever done on any of our old songs.

4TR – Would you say that ‘Lykke Lii’ your favourite track so far?

Ed – Yes!

Jack – It’s not personally my favourite but I think it’s very popular with our audiences, like at the last gig we did the feedback we got from that song was particularly good.

Jamie – It’s a six-minute song and most of our other stuff was like 2½ mins long, so it showed that we can write better songs, plus we put a lot of good production into it, and that shows when you hear it.

Ed - Plus when people hear it, they just seem to want to dance to it.  No matter what your age this is a song you’re going to enjoy listening to and will find yourself moving to the music, tapping your feet.  That’s what a good catchy song is about.

4TR – Will you work with a producer next time?

Barney – Ideally, especially so we can see what other people think about what we’re making.  We obviously know what we want but it would be great to have someone else’s involvement getting us to try different things.

Jack – Yeah it would be so much more interesting to work with someone with experience in the business, whose seen thousands of tracks go through, to change a track of ours and make it better.

Felix – [laughing] Maybe Brian Eno or Steven Street, it would be good if they got in contact

4TR – Are they on your hypothetical wish list?

Felix - Yeah of course.

4TR – What happened with the Radio 1 Switch show that Nick Grimshaw hosts?

Jack – Well Barney got us the gig really, he emailed in loads and this time they decided they actually wanted us on, and so we recorded a jingle for them to play on Switch.

4TR – Do they tell you what you have to put in the jingle?

Jamie – We had some key words we had to put in, and it had to be like 20 seconds long, so we basically just thrashed it out in like 2 hours.

Ed – And put as much in as possible, like we got the tambourine in and anything we could get our hands on.

4TR – As well as them playing the jingle, were you interviewed on the show?

Jamie – They got Barney on the phone.

Barney – Which was nice because I spoke to Kimberley from Girls Aloud who was co-hosting the show that night which was pretty amazing.  She was great on the phone, [laughing] we really hit it off.  They basically emailed us a list of questions that might come up and we made a rough sort of answer about what we might say.  But then the boys thought we would be really witty……

[All laughing]

4TR – Sounds ominous, what did you do?

Barney – One of the questions was ‘which presenter would you most like to see at the front of one of your gig’s’ and the boys were like you have got to say Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand.

Felix – It was right after the whole thing with them had kicked off.

Ed – And a bit of controversy always helps a cause.

Barney – Yeah so I said, well I know how it feels to be unemployed so Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand and Nick Grimshaw basically put the phone down.  That did not go down well!

Jamie – We kind of tried to create a media storm, but it didn’t take off, but then again any publicity is good.

4TR – Good banter, but I can see why they didn’t share the amusement!

Barney – It’s one of those things you gotta laugh about.

Jack – It was quite risky, like nobody else had said anything about it on air and apparently Phil Bailey had tried to say something and he got told not to so we just went straight in there and said it.  [Laughing] You could say we are like The Sex Pistols really, anarchy on the radio.

Barney – It was quite an experience though, because whoever was listening to that show would have heard us and that is a big deal, our MySpace hits and plays went up massively after that.

4TR – You also found your feet on the festival circuit last year, playing Devon’s Chagstock, how did it go?

Barney – Yeah brilliant, it was interesting ‘cos when we started playing it filled up like front to back and you could just see them moving and clapping and stuff.

Jamie – That’s what we try to do though; we try and get people to dance and sing along.

Jack – And the feedback we got was so good, people were really positive.

Jamie – [laughing] And asking for autographs and stuff.  But with Barney as front man he does work the crowd.

Jack – I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I personally feel that our band has music that most people like to listen to, it’s got great energy and you can get really into it!  And they loved it that day!

Barney – We have good music and I would say we are more exciting than most bands on stage, I do stupid stuff and usually get a bit carried away.  Like I chipped a tooth the other day and I bleed regularly, but we put in 100% and that’s why the crowd responds in the way that they do, they see us going crazy onstage and are like yeah I can dance as well.

Jamie – At least we are getting a reaction out of the audience, whether they are laughing at you or approving its always good to get a reaction.

Barney - I hate going to gigs where the audience isn’t getting involved and ultimately that’s the bands fault.  As a front man I look for people getting involved and if they aren’t then I do what it takes to get them having a good time.  It annoys me when you get people who don’t push the music scene forward, they’re just bystanders and that’s not what it’s about!

4TR – So what does Casitas have lined up for this year so far?

Barney – At the moment we are looking for management and contacting venues around the South West to try and get some support off bigger bands, and support slots for when they come down.  A lot of bands get local bands in as support so that’s what we want to start doing next.  We have also signed up for the Camden Crawl and several festivals in the summer.

Jack – Plus we’re applying for the Glastonbury Unsigned competition, which I think is worth the investment to enter.

Barney – Our music is quite vibey which suits festival atmospheres I think, it feels right playing in the sunshine on big stages because that’s where I can do my real stage show.  We all have places lined up at uni and stuff so it’s kind of about making the most of the time right now to see how far we can get. I don’t doubt our ability to make good tunes, but what I am apprehensive about is that we have all got futures that almost lie outside music, well I don’t, so we have to try and drive it as hard as we can now.

Jamie – I would rather be in a band and make music than do anything else to be honest.

Ed – [laughing] And Jack has a girlfriend, which is his future.

Barney – Yeah Jack and his girlfriend is a wall we have to get through.

Jack – But I’m in a band because I like making and playing music more than I want to get famous.  I mean if I get famous and really rich I will be quite happy, but I just like playing, that’s more important to me.

4TR – It’s hard to get really rich from music now though.

Barney – It’s true especially in the current situation.  But I don’t mind selling out at all; music is all I really know.  School was pointless to me because all I wanted to do was play music, and I think Casitas has a hell of a lot of potential.   

Jack – But in order for us to get to the places that we want to go we have got to get more publicity.  Lately we have been thinking about a few publicity stunts we might try……I’m not sure if we are allowed to do them but we will anyway……… watch this space!

Words: Francesca Strange

anon
Posts: 1

casitas
Reply #1 on : Thu May 21, 2009, 01:00:09

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you're rubbish

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