Random Questions

When you were starting out as a band how often did you practice?
How hard did you push your band to the public? e.g asking for gigs
Is there a tab for Badger?
Do you have other careers aside from the band?

When the band started out in it's earliest form (prob around 10 years ago!) it was all pretty different - Stu and I were at uni along with the other guys in the band at the time. We had no real aspiration to 'make it big' (same today) just to enjoy playing music and have fun doing so. At the time of course, there was a lot less pressure and responsibilities outside of going to lectures and playing music so we were able to commit whatever free time we had to practising. I'd say we met up about twice a week which has actually been about the same as recent times too. The problem is when you get all the extra responsibilities of a job etc. your time is divided up a lot more and so in more recent times, I think we've been unable to play music and tour as much as we'd have liked to as well as having other things going on that have taken up a lot of time.

We've never been firm believers in promoting the hell out of our band and trying to force people to listen to us. Relying on word of mouth more than anything else has helped get people listening and we prefer to put our time into becoming better at our instruments. I think as helpful as hype can be for a band it's usually only for the short term. You might get to do some school stuff during that time but we tend to think it's more important to have longer lasting and more loyal fans who can become involved and invested in the band that way. It's all good and well to say all this as we've been around a while now and it's not as hard to get shows as it used to be. If you're a band just starting out I would still follow the same method and focus your energy into writing good music. There will always be a time when shows are hard to get in the beginning and I think it's just a phase all bands have to go through to start getting to know a few promoters and make a few friends and contacts. I know back in the day Stu worked quite a bit contacting various venues and promoters and I'm sure a lot of the gigs we played were either for free or next to nothing in terms of a fee but again, you just have to go through this phase as you're getting more and more people to hear your music. That's the real point of it all anyway; having fun writing music, challenging yourself and trying to share it with others.

I'm afraid there's no tab for badger as we never played it live and I forgot how to play it! I'm sure there's a wizard out there who can for it out though.

We're kind of hoping this band becomes a career to be honest. We've recently decided to quit our previous jobs per se which makes the financial side of things a hell of a lot more scary but are still doing various bits and pieces that we can pick up to keep a few pennies rolling in. I don't think that at this sort of level enough money can be made through the band on it's own so we all still have to work when we aren't touring. The tough thing is finding a flexible enough job to be able to do it and for this reason so many bands can't quite push things as hard as they'd like - tis a shame but a sad truth but if you can find a balance then it's all kinds of good.

Thanks and sorry if I didn't really answer your questions properly! ; )

No that is awesome thanks so much. I love Badger though aha can you remember the tuning?

I'll try to have a think - I'm pretty sure it had a capo on the 2nd fret and a banjo capo on 4th fret (top 4 strings like baboon) but not sure which tuning it was. It must have been one of the other tunings on the Animals album though - I'll try to find out.