Cannock-based blues rockers the Bad Flowers have been making one hell of a name for themselves, with exceptional debut album (reviewed here) ‘starting gun’ receiving rave reviews from across the board. One listen to the record is enough to tell you why, and it comes as some surprise when singer / guitarist Tom Leighton turns out to be the mild-mannered polar opposite to his fire-breathing stage persona. We had the opportunity to catch up with Tom shortly before the release of ‘starting gun’ to discuss the recording process, the growth of the band and the future aspirations for The Bad Flowers, your new favourite rock band!
I’m very interested in the compositional process and I know that you had an idea to do an album a couple of years ago, and it got put on hold, so I’m interested first of all why you put things back.
Well, I think we were running ahead of ourselves really. We had a bunch of songs, but I think we decided to stick with the EP idea and put the strongest ones out, so, yeah, we got on with that and that’s the only reason we put it back really. We stepped back and realised that we could take some time on it and get it right.
As you’ve played a lot of live gigs since then, so was it partially a process of honing the band as much as the songs?
Yeah, a little bit, I think. I mean, me and Dale, the bass player, we’ve been in bands forever together. I’ve played with him since we were sixteen, but with Carl, he’s fairly new to the band, although we gelled straight away. I think we wanted to put the EP out, put some songs out and get our name out there a little bit before we did an album. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money and we wanted to put it out with the right fan base, really, and build momentum. It was important that it happened at the right time.
You went into Vigo studios to do the album. What made you want to record there?
That particular studio was actually one of the first places we recorded when we were a lot younger, when we were eighteen – nineteen. So, we’ve been and recorded elsewhere, but Adam, who’s the producer, and Dave, who owns the studio, they’re really good friends of ours. Ad’s a great producer and he’s really helped us in terms of playing. He’s not afraid to say if something doesn’t work or to make suggestions, so it felt really comfortable. It felt right, that’s why we went there, really.
You mentioned that it’s a difficult, time-consuming and expensive process recording. In terms of doing the album, were you able to put aside the time to do it from start to finish, or was it a case of getting in there when you were free and able?
Yeah, free and able, really. We all work full-time jobs as well and then there’s touring and everything in between. We started tracking drums nearly a year ago and then, whenever we had the spare time (and the spare cash as well), we’d be in there. It’s like playing the live shows has paid for recording the album – we’ve done it that way. In hindsight, maybe we should have booked a whole two weeks or a month and do it all in one go.
I guess it’s kind of challenging to pick up where you left off with the same energy when you do it piecemeal.
Yeah, it is. I think we pulled it off though. It’s come out quite well… really well in fact and I’m really pleased with it. But it is difficult when you’re in that groove and you’ve got to go away for a couple of weeks and then get back into recording mode. But, like I say, because the place was so comfortable, and Ads made us feel so comfortable, it wasn’t much of a challenge to get that.
It definitely sounds live and lived in, so you definitely pulled it off, but you did say that you did the drums about a year ago, so did you then overdub layers rather than play off each other.
Well, yes and no. We played through plug ins, into the computer, the guitar and the bass, into the headphones of Carl on the drums, so we are all playing together – we don’t use a click track or anything. We are all playing together, and we did it that way, so we are getting that feel from each other, but it’s not… it is overdubbed. Because of the size of the studio, we couldn’t do it live without isolating everything.
In terms of song writing, is it a band effort form the start, or is it one person who brings ideas to the others to add their own colours to?
No, it’s all based around riffs and things like that. Whenever we come up with something, we work better as a trio, so when we get into the studio, we make all the arrangements together in the lock up. If we’ve got a riff, we’ll just jam it – we’ll just play until we get some parts to work. Once we’ve got that basis, I’ll take it away and work on lyrics, and structures and things like that. We do work better writing the music as the three of us.
I’ve spent the last few days listening through the album and it’s very diverse – as a band do you have a very diverse range of influences.
Yeah, I think, everything from country to metal and everything in between. We listen to all sorts. We have a playlist on our spotify that anyone can go and listen to which is pretty much what we listen to in the van on the way to gigs, so there’ s all sorts of stuff on there and I think that influences the way we write. We listen to a lot of different things. I listen to quite a bit of acoustic stuff as well, there’s an acoustic track on the album and yeah, I think we try and draw in elements from what we enjoy, whatever the genre.
In terms of lyrics, how do you work to develop the themes that you want? Is it a stream of consciousness, or do you have a process where you try to develop what you want over time.
In terms of writing the lyrics, I think a lot of it’ s subconscious. When we’re jamming in the lock up, I just get lines pop up and I can base whole songs on a line that just pops into my head. In terms of the structure of it, the melodies and everything, I spend a bit of time on that. We’ll go over and over the song until it feels right, really. But it’s always been quite a natural process. It’s never been forced and if something’s not working, we’ve never been afraid to shelve it and carry on with something else.
Do the others have input – are they interested in that side of things? Or do they just let you get on with it.
They pretty much let me get on with it, to be honest, but Dale – I’ll always take lyrics with me to Dale and he’ll jump in if something doesn’t sound right or doesn’t make sense or anything like that. We’ll re-arrange it and he does help quite a lot with that side of things. Being on the backing vocals, we do quite a lot of call and repeat stuff and Dale brings that to the table which is pretty good as well.
In terms of getting this record out there – is it self-released? Is it entirely in-house?
Yeah, it’s self-released so we’ve recorded it all off our own back, mastered it all off our own back, the artwork’s done through a friend…. So we’ve paid for everything and we’ve worked hard to get it all out and everything’s self-released, so we’re really proud of it.
Is a label something you’re looking for down the line, or would you rather remain self-released and keep ultimate control.
I think it depends on what it would bring to the table. If it was the right deal and it would help us out, then we’d definitely consider it, but I think that, at the minute, we’re really happy having control over it. It’s our debut, our impact, our sales, our little say on the music world, so we’re really happy to be doing it as we’re doing it at the minute.
You definitely seem to be making a lot of waves and you’ve got a very big tour with Stone Broken and Jared James Nichols – how much of a challenge has it been to try and get the name out there?
It’s been a huge challenge to be honest. We just… we’ve been quite tenacious. We just keep going, we keep playing and just keep trying to get into everyone’s faces. It’s the live show that’s done it for us. Were described as different people when we’re on stage because we’re just in that zone all the time. It’s the high energy with it and everything, so I think with that, it’s kind of helped us and a lot of people have gone “they’re great live” and whatnot. So, we’ve been really lucky with it, but we’ve worked hard to get that luck if you know what I mean.
One thing is that there’s an element of timing in music in general and it does seem that there has been an increase towards younger people playing blues or hard blues and I was wondering how aware you’ve been of a scene emerging and whether you think that might have played a small part as well?
Yeah, definitely there’s a scene emerging. There’s a lot of great bands out there and we’re always going out to see them when we’re not playing ourselves. The other week we went out to see Bad Touch and there’s a great band coming out of Cambridge called Hollow Star whom we played with the other week, so all that blues rock to hard rock, it’s really, definitely making a comeback. Well, I say a comeback, but it’s never really gone away, it’s just becoming more prominent again.
It’s definitely more visible.
Well, as all these bands are in the same sort of scene, from where I’m sitting a lot of bands are helping each other out and I think it’s really cool and really healthy.
You see, sometimes, that scenes can get very competitive, but it’s always seemed like the blues is a much more mutually supportive scene – and that’s very important in any form of music.
Yeah, sure, whenever we go and see bands, there’s never any rivalry or anything. If anything, it spurs you on to want to play better every time you go out there. There are so many good bands out there at the minute, it’s just great to be honest with you. It’s great. When I saw Bad Touch…. I saw them twice and it just got better every time, it’s brilliant stuff.
You mentioned earlier the artwork, and I’m a big physical music geek, so it’s great when a band pays attention to physical formats. How did you get your friend involved and how involved were you in steering how the cover and content would look?
We’re totally involved with it. With our EP, that was… that artwork was drawn by me. But this time round, because we were so busy, I got my friend Sean involved. We told him what we wanted and he came back with the colours and I thought it looked great, and then we just had a few little things we needed to change but he’s done a lot of artwork for us, he designed our logo and he’s seen the band, so he knows exactly what it’s like and the vibe that we’re going for, so it worked out really well.
And then you’ve got the vinyl as well, which is seriously cool….
Yeah, that was something we had to do really. I’m a big vinyl collector and I just… it’s like a bucket list thing – an album that we’ve recorded on vinyl. We’re doing 250 red copies and we’ll see how they go. They seem to be selling quite well in the pre-sale already, so we might not have that many left on the road when we go, so grab them quick if you can.
Cool. I think that’s pretty much it – thank you so much for your time, do you have any final words?
Yeah, we’re really looking forward to it. We love Stone Broken and Jared’s a good friend of ours, so it’s going to be a fun tour. Come and see us play and, I think, the live show is where it’s at. Coe and see us, come and say hello, grab an album and thank you to everyone for the support, it’s been amazing.
