INTERVIEW: The Family Rain


The Family Rain Interview.

The three brothers were slouched on one large couch in the Rock City dressing room. There were legs piled on top of each other, a buzz of laughter, a competition to be heard over one another and a bottle of Jameson's being passed around. It was how I imagined a Christmas Evening to look in their household. Who said mixing business and pleasure was a bad idea, these boys looked like they were having a great time on their tour supporting Miles Kane.
Their close knit family vibes were also conveyed on stage as they gathered around Tim's drums, making jokes and squirting water at each other between songs. The drawn out reverb helped the crowd to savour the clever guitar riffs 'Friction' has with a lethargic rock sound.  'Pushing it' the first song on their EP quickened the pace with hyperactive instrumentals from the insanely talented lead guitarist, Ollie.  This complimented the lingering, dirty voice of lead singer, Will conjuring sounds of  60's protopunk like T Rex and The Doors. Ollie's quickening fingers were greeted with a delighted dancing crowd, for a support these boys surely looked at home on stage.
The Family Rain have a bluesy rock sound in their 3 singles and EP 'Pushing It' all released in the past year. Catching up with them I found on top if this they have supported a few tours, played countless festivals and recorded their debut album. Don't be fooled by their relaxed, rock and roll attitude or how quickly the Jameson's is running out- these brothers work bloody hard.

How is touring?
Touring is generally three days playing and then a day off. It isn't glamorous, this is all I know of Nottingham (the inside of a stuffy dressing room.) We see more of the inside of Travel lodges than the city but we do love it. Getting up at midday sound check, drink, play a show and go to bed at 2. We love it.

You've toured with some pretty big names, The Courteeners, The Rolling Stones and Jake Bugg -how's that been?

Touring with the Courteeners was great, it was our first large tour and we played in big venues. It was quite overwhelming, we played The Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, which is huge. It was definetly our favourite venue  and we are  going back to support Jake Bugg there. It's crazy in the big venues, its where you aspire to headline so it's a great incentive supporting someone with such a large crowd.  
Liam Fray was the nicest guy, I've got him number in my phone. He tweeted our little show in Manchester and Dan Moores came down to see our show at Sound Control. They were really supportive.

I've noticed your venue sizes keep expanding, how is it seeing your fan base expand?
Yeah, we started in small venues, and have begun working our way up. We prefer working in an organic way with a steady pace. It's the old school approach, today people are just slammed on the front of magazines and told they'll be the next big thing. We'd rather people listened to us because they enjoyed seeing us play live not because they've been told we are 'the next big hype.'

That refreshing to hear, you're not chasing fame you really are in for the music.
It has to be about the music because it sure as hell isn't about the money.

You've played a lot of festivals this year, how was that?
iTunes festival was insane, we'd never been to The Round House  and it was so wicked. The place has so much history, you know you're playing somewhere special. We were a bit scared to play to the 30 seconds to Mars crowd, who we were supporting but we were really positively received.
When we're not practising or touring we will go round to our mates to watch the football. It was great getting a text saying that they had all gone round to a friends and watched us perform on TV.
Latitude was lovely, we were playing in the woods surrounded by fairy lights. It was crazy seeing the audience triple in size as we played, and they stayed there! We played so loudly, we thought  'if they're gonna' stick us in the fucking woods, we'll turn it right up.' It got people coming to find us, which was great.
Playing at Reading and Leeds was one of the major highlights. We thought Leeds was a bit tamer but that's where Will did his first stage dive. He drew blood and lost his necklace he hadn't taken off for six years. Very rock star. Then we drank 5 1/2 litres of whisky, so luckily we were on quite early.

When you weren't playing, who did you go and see?
We went to watch Jake Bugg, Childhood were good,  we've done a few shows with them before. BBC introducing stage was cool, it's nice to that they give people a leg up, who deserve it. We spent a lot of time with Deep Valley, they happened to play a lot of the same festivals as us and they're really nice girls.

Where would be the ideal festival?
It has to be Glastonbury. It is right round the corner from us but we've never been as its full of hippies and rich people. If we did play our mates might come, its only 2 miles from our house.
Benicassim  would be unreal and Corona Capital festival in Mexico would be amazing too. The plan is to play as many as possible.

What would you do if you didn't do the band stuff?
We didn't give ourselves another option, really. We dropped out of high school at 15 and worked at the music. We had to do odd jobs to fund the music.
Will: I was a stylist for GAP , they flew me to Turin and Italy to dress mannequins.
Tim: What Will didn't point out he worked for Baby Gap, he dressed children. A lot less glamorous. But this is all we wanted to do.

How was recording the new album Berlin?
It was freezing cold in February but what an amazing city. It was a cool thing to do, none of us have embarked on a mission like recording a whole album. it was great sleeping above where we were recording and living breathing the album. You capture the moment because you can't escape it, you're living there.
The city is crazy, it's still coming out of a depression so half the bar would be a DVD shop. They might have looked rubbish but it was so much fun. Jim Abbiss suggested going there and we're so glad we did it.

What's the theme in the new album?
The theme is more in the lyrics than the music. We didn't want a genre specific sound as we don't want to be bracketed as one type of band, we want to be versatile. I suppose it's about how much fun we had in Berlin. But we have been writing it for years.
Is the work put in for the album divided equally?

Lyrics is Will and musically everyone contributes. All the lyrics are first hand experiences,  you wait for something to happen then write a song about it. We've done all the sound ourselves. All the little parts like maracas our us. the album is just us in a room hitting instruments and shouting into a mic.
Why is your single called Reasons To Die?

The Notorious B.I.G has an album called 'Ready To Die' and we always have it on repeat. The album made us feel uneasy to listen to it. We'd love our sound to do that, where it pushes people out their comfort zones.
But there are a lot of inspirations as we listen to everything from Jay Z to Cliff Richard, maybe don't put the bit where we listen to Cliff Richard in the article.




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