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Johnny Foreigner: Anti-Twee

Birmingham-based Johnny Foreigner are a band that are going places.

Posted 16th October 2009, 1:19pm in Interviews, by Matthew Britton & Miriam Baynes
Johnny Foreigner: Anti-Twee Halfway through their UK tour and gearing up to release their second longplayer, Birmingham-based Johnny Foreigner are a band that are going places. After a tremendous past few years that has seen them grow and grow in popularity, 2010 looks set to be a big year for them. Before their headline show at Manchester’s Deaf Institute, we catch up with them to chat about touring, the pressures of being in a band and Nathan Barley (whilst they eat their dinner).

Hello, how are you?
Junior Elvis Washington Laidley (Drums): Fantastic.
Kelly Southern (Bassist): Not hungry anymore!
Alexei Berrows (Lead Vocals/Guitar): Another popular music website was putting this show on, but they messed up a bit and the result is that we can order anything we want from the menu. (All three have chosen the burger and chips option.)

How are you finding the tour so far? Where’ve you enjoyed playing?
K: It’s been amazing.
J: Yeah, really loved it. The attendances have been a lot higher than we expected and the bands we’re touring with, we really get on with. It’s the eighth gig and we’ve got four shows left. London had a really good reception didn’t it?
K: We played to loads of people at [London’s] The Garage, but Birmingham was a real... moment. The crowd was so loving and receptive.
A: We never really have that much of a hometown crowd, it’s a lot more like our friends just come out, but most of the people in the front few rows were absolute strangers, it was a bit disconcerting. We really like playing abroad – in Japan, everyone makes you feel like you’re in the Beatles.
J: Germany’s amazing, too.
A: We don’t have a label in Europe, but people there seem to be a lot more obsessive about music. To us, they seem like hardcore fans, but to them, we’re probably just another English band.

To anyone who hasn’t heard you before, how would you describe your sound?
K: Chaotic? Anti-twee?
A: Anti-twee, that’s amazing.
K: An-twee!
A: I don’t know, we’re just an indie rock band.

A lot of your first album was based around Birmingham, how has that changed on ‘Grace & The Bigger Picture’?
A: This one’s a ‘band on tour’ album. All the songs on it were done on tour first the first album, before we went back into recording, so we can place each song to a particular country. Before, we used to have a Google-maps kind of thing of where all the songs were from – you could just zoom in on Birmingham and all the songs were there. Now, we’ve got the whole globe.

What’s changed on your second album? Is it a similar sound?
A: It’s noisier but... a bit quieter? If you like our band, you’ll like it, but if you don’t, there’s nothing on there that’s going to ensnare you in. It doesn’t reveal any hidden facet of our personality, it was all pretty heart on stage to start with... It’s a bit weird when you see reviews and it’s like ‘this band hasn’t really progressed’. It shouldn’t be a conscious thing, you should be a band, and this is what you do. You shouldn’t have to think ‘oh, we’re going to get twenty percent more electro, but put a donk on that song’. I know it happens, but it seems like a very cynical way of going about it, I don’t know why we’d have to adhere to that. But maybe this album will bomb and we’ll have to go electro, so I might have to eat my words.

Who are you listening to at the minute? We’ve heard that you’re touring with Internet Forever later in the year, we’re big fans.
A: All the bands that we listen to are bands that we’ve been friends with for three or four years. Now we’re all playing to bigger audiences.
K: We’ve grown up together
A: Yeah, us, Los Campesinos!, Dananananakyroyd, Sky Larkin and Tubelord...
J: Copy Haho
A: They’re all just like friends now.

With your second album coming out soon, what are your views on the illegal filesharing debate?
A: There’s nothing we can do about it, that’s what has happened to the music industry and we’re sick of hearing musicians whining about it on the internet.
(Later, it turns out that the band’s Twitter status at the time of interview is "I'm going to buy it anyway is the weakest copout ever. We have release dates for a reason, thanks for ruining our record labels hard work." 'Grace & The Bigger Picture' had begun to leak.)

You’ve just given away an EP of remixes on your website. How did that come about?
A: We couldn’t pay anyone who did anything, so it’s not like we could go and charge for it. Everyone seemed to really want to be involved, so we just did it. Everyone made a small loss, but we’re happy.

Do you feel under pressure to look or dress in a certain way to please your fans?
J: Personally, I don’t give two... Seriously, I don’t care. I look at my wardrobe and just grab a t-shirt.
A: Sometimes you find out about people have a stylist, but that’s not for us.
K: Being in a band is an excuse to dress up. I don’t feel under any pressure to do it – I’ve been on stage in jeans and a t-shirt enough times, but it’s a good reason to put on a dress, too.
A: In fairness, we just wear the same stuff all the time. Someone sent me an e-mail saying ‘I really want a t-shirt like yours, what’s it called?’.

Like the geek pie in Nathan Barley?
A: My hair is not like fucking Nathan Barley’s!

Oh no, not your hair! The person asking the question!
A: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know, I just cut it.
K: A front-mullet.

About your fan base: have you got any really weird super fans?
A: All our super fans that were really obsessive, now we regard them as friends. We put them on the guestlist and ask them about their girlfriends and stuff. I think there are – everytime I go onto our forum, there are a load of people who come to the shows but don’t want to come up and talk to us. There’s probably some old smelly men in some towns, but they just do it for every band. We’d just be a part of their rota.

Have you got any special pre-gig routines?
A: We just stand around saying ‘Are we going on yet? Are we going on yet?’
K: We sing the theme from Top Gun if that counts?
A: Yeah, really loud in the mistaken belief that it might help us perform better.

If you weren’t in a band, what do you think you’d be doing with your life?
J: Every time I studied something, I realised I didn’t want to do it. I studied music production and realised I didn’t want to produce other people’s music.Something to do with I.T.?
A: Can we pick anything? I’d be an astronaut. No! I’d be an alien – an alien overlord.
K: That’s not a career!
A: It’s a fucking hard career. We all dropped out of different music colleges.
J: I didn’t! I finished mine.
K: I’d go over to Japan and open a vegetarian café. When we went over, there was nothing I could eat. Maybe Japan just doesn’t like vegetarians, but I’d give it a go.
A: Well, just be in this band. It’s pathetic, it’s all we can do.

Johnny Foreigner’s second album, 'Grace & The Bigger Picture' is released 26th October on Best Before Records.

Photo: Miriam Baynes

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