International female conglomeration Hey Charlie recently released their first video – you can check it out below. But where did they come from and how did they form? All this and more…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
Sophie’s from Shropshire, Lauren from Belfast and Lizz from Luxembourg.
How did you meet?
Sophie (bass and lead vocals) and Lizz (guitar and lead vocals) met at university while both studying Business Management. We began jamming together and although it took a long while to just compile our songs, began writing together and figuring out the sound we wanted – we knew from the very beginning that it should be an all-girl band. It wasn’t until we found Lauren (drums and backing vocals), though, that it really felt like the real Hey Charlie. We asked her to come down for a jam and it just suddenly felt as if something clicked into place.
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
We just realised that everybody knows somebody named Charlie and it felt like we were constantly saying “Hey Charlie”.
What are your influences?
It’s interesting because we all have slightly different influences and bands that we would listen to, but thats what really helps craft our sound when we write together. We are all 90s kids though, so that era of pop punk and grunge definitely influenced our sound a lot.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
Our sound is a combination of grunge-y guitar riffs, poppy melodies and harmonies and driving rock drum grooves. Guitar music is really suffering in the mainstream and we hope that with our bridge between grunge tones and poppy melodies we can appeal to the mainstream listeners as well as the rock fans.
Also, there is such a lack of well known female rock artists, especially all female bands. I hope that we can show people that rock music isn’t about genders – girls can pick up instruments and become musicians just as much as guys can!
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
Themes tend to vary depending on the state of mind we’re in and whether there’s something particular we need to get off our chest. For ‘Hey’ particularly it was a relief of anger and it began as more of a rant than a previously thought out lyrical theme.
What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
Lizz plays a Fender Mustang 90 on stage, but also uses a 72 thinline Tele and a vintage Gibson L6 from 1974. Sophie plays an Eastwood hi-flyer bass and Lauren uses Ludwig drums, a mix of Sabian cymbals and Vic Firth sticks.
What are your plans for the rest of 2017?
We are hoping to put out an EP in near future, support some cool bands and get some touring experience under our belts and keep writing!
If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be supporting and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!
We’d love to support Slaves and play with Spring King (Tarek Musa produced our first single).
