Marco is one part of European indie rock act Non Talkers. He kindly spent some of his time answering our Band of the Day questions…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
I’m from Portugal and Evita is from Belgium. The other band members are also from Portugal.
How did you meet?
In 2011 I was performing as the lead singer/guitar player of a 60’s band in the Island of Rhodes in Greece and Evita was an entertainer at one of the Hotels where I used to perform and there’s where we met.
How long have you been playing as a band?
We have been playing together for about 8 years.
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
We started with the name Brantner in 2014 but somehow, we felt that it didn’t represent what we were doing and a lot of people thought that it was a solo project as I’m Marco Brantner and that always brought a lot of confusion. With the release of our latest EP in 2019 we thought that it was the right moment to change the name and we came up with Non Talkers cause neither I or Evita are very social people, we really feel that we express ourselves better through music.
What are your influences?
They are too many to name them here, but I would say, mainly great artists within the genres of rock n’ roll, Motown, rock, pop, alternative rock, alt pop, folk and country.
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Describe your music. What makes you unique?
I think as long as an artist is genuine and true to himself with the song writing process he’s going to be unique, cause everybody has their own fingerprint when it comes to express through music, after it’s up to the listeners to like it or not. In our music I think it is interesting the fact that there are two completely different vocals, a female and a male one, and that for some reason they work out well together giving it a special flavour.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
Not really, we like to write about anything we feel like.
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
I think it’s quite intense as we do a mashup of strong ballads with some up-tempo songs and we also like to spice it up with some great covers. We haven’t really been counting how many shows we’ve played to give an exact number (laugh)! With the Non Talkers specifically, as we only started in the end of 2019 and then everything was put on hold due to COVID-19, there weren’t so many. Me and Evita particularly, already played a lot of shows together for the past 8 years (hundreds).
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
It never happened anything as wild as falling off stage and breaking a foot like Dave Grohl but once I fell from a bench (well, maybe more than once) and I kept singing on the floor while the others had to keep performing without bursting into tears of laughter!
What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
We like to make our set up as simple as possible. I only play with my acoustic guitar (Takamine Santa Fe) and then depending on the format of the show (if we play as a trio or a band) the others don’t make it very complicated either. We don’t use guitar or bass amps, they plug theirs instruments into their pedals and then straight into the mixing table, the drums is an acoustic set up usually with 3 toms and the keyboard is a roland Juno where we don’t use to many sounds either, mostly piano.
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What are your plans for the next 12 months?
Releasing a new album and hopefully having the chance to present it live.
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!
I think we should be third on that bill! We would love to support a lot of artists we like. I’ll drop the names of some of the newer artists that I have in common with Evita: The Lumineers, Jack Savoretti and Kodaline.
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