Because of scheduling conflicts I couldn’t make it to Glasgow’s Broadcast early enough to talk to Eva Plays Dead before their superb show the other night. Thankfully, they’re very nice people and Matt took the time to reply to an email full of daft questions instead!
Thanks to Hannah at Hold Tight PR for acting as intermediary, too.
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
Equally split between Nottingham & Derby, England so we normally settle on ‘Midlands.’
How did you meet?
Myself and Tig met on an exchange trip in Japan and instantly disliked one another, although we became friends when we realised that we had a common distaste for a lot of the same people. I was piecing together a band when I learned that Tig was a singer, so she joined the lineup which changed a fair amount until we found Zach and Seb. I hunted Zach down on the internet when we were looking for a new bass player and Seb was bought in by Zach as they used to play in a band together as kids.
How long have you been playing together as a band?
Eva Plays Dead was launched at the very beginning of 2013, although we were writing and playing for a few years before that – we just didn’t consider starting the band properly until we ‘found ourselves.’
What are your influences – individually or as a band?
Individually, our influences span across a load of different genres and artists. Tiggy was bought up listening to a load of jazz artists and cites people such as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra as her influences but alongside those guys, she’s also inspired by a load of rock bands such as Joan Jett and The Black Hearts and Aerosmith. It’s a similar situation for all of us in terms of what music has shaped us personally but collectively we are into big riffs and attitude – hard rock bands such as Halestorm, Marmozets, LostAlone and Heaven’s Basement to name a few.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
This is always a tough question but the easiest way to answer it is by saying that we just do our own thing. If we like an idea, then we experiment and if it works then we make it happen. The only thing we keep in mind when writing is whether it will work well in a live environment because we gig a lot and don’t see the point in playing a song live if it works better on record.
How do you feel you’ve progressed between your first album and the new EP?
Although we’re happy that we released the Guilt Trips & Sins album, it was written across a long period of time and we think that you can hear the difference in the songs when listening to it in full. Since releasing the album in 2013, we’ve honed in on ‘our sound’ and wanted to portray this through the EP, so we agreed on 5 tracks which we thought defined Eva Plays Dead in a short, concise 5 track release – hard hitting, raw and raucous.
How many shows have you played?
We figured this out a few weeks ago actually – we must be on 80 shows now since the beginning of 2013.
Who’s idea was the drum thing at the end of the set, and did it work at all the shows?
It was a collective idea, although we have only done it at the 4 shows we have played to launch the Sounds Of The Written Word EP in London, Nottingham, Cardiff and Glasgow. We’ve always put 110% in to our live shows to the point that blood is left over our instruments on a regular basis but we’re always looking at how to make it better, so we figured that bringing the stage to the audience was the next thing we could do and make it even more personal.
What are you working on at the moment now that the EP’s out and the mini-tour has finished?
First things first, is fixing our van! It broke on the way back from Glasgow and is now in the garage – we’re expecting a terminal report… Working around it though, we still have a few gigs lined up. We’re at YNOT Festival on August 1st, Degeneration Festival with JettBlack August 29th, Redemption Festival with The Dirty Youth September 12th and are going to be booking in more tours ASAP as we only did 4 dates on the July run. We want to make the most out of this EP so we’re talking to video directors for the next release and we’ve written loads since recording Sounds Of The Written Word so I’m sure we’ll be back in the studio soon enough.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done on tour?
I’m not sure we do many wild things – mainly disgusting and stupid. However, we played at The Classic Grand in Glasgow a few years back and stayed at an Ibis Hotel with another band which we hadn’t met before. The drummer told us that their singer was very gullible (and tired – so he went to bed), so we conjured up a prank where Seb was an ‘undercover cop’ conducting a drug search on his room after hearing reports, so Seb was banging on his door at 5am, searching his room and looking under the kettle, the bed and where ever else in search of illegal contraband.
We thought it was funny. Their singer didn’t.
If you could be part of any 3-band line-up (as support or headlining) who else would you have on the bill?
There are so many we’d love to tour with. However if you could get us opening up for Marmozets and Halestorm then we’d be a very, very happy band. Feel free to hook us up.
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