Based around two brothers, Nick and Chris Harding (Vocals and guitar respectively), The Second Sons formed in 2015 and set about bringing their love of rock, blues and country to rich and vibrant life. Cutting a debut single with none other than the late, great Bobby Keys helped raise the band’s profile inordinately and, today, they’re considered one of the up-and-coming acts following tours with the likes of the hotly-tipped Greta Van Fleet and The Struts. Bonded together by a passion for the honest, earthy sounds that was a soundtrack to their youth, The Second Sons eschew the clinical sounds of the modern studio for a more natural representation of their music and they have won themselves a legion of adoring fans in the process. We were lucky enough to secure a phone interview with Nick in advance of the band’s first ever show in Leicester (see below). Read on and meet The Second Sons.
So, just to start off, could you give us a very brief overview of how you came together.
Well, my brother, who’s in the band with me, and I… we had made a record out in California and we came home to London in 2015, mid-2015, looking for the band that we wanted to have. We found our drummer, we ran into each other in a blues bar in Soho, here in London, and we started playing blues together and quickly drafted him into the group and that became the core of the band and then, over the years we had a few other people, change places in and out and we ended up with George, our bass player, Alessandro, our drummer and his brother Marco, who has been in the group with us as the other guitar player for about a year now.
So, in a nutshell, we met in a blues bar.
I’m always interested in how people set off on their musical journey – how did you develop your influences, was it family led or a journey of self-discovery?
I think that it’s a combination of both. My brother and I, growing up, we lived in the countryside and the biggest source of entertainment was our parents’ record collection, so that usually would be anything from Sinatra to Hank Williams; a lot of Ray Charles and that sort of stuff and that was the foundation on which everything was built. R&B and country music and then, as you get older, you sort of explore your own interests in things and then it all came full circle back to the records we grew up with – it was some of the best music ever made and I think that was the moment we realised where we were meant to be, musically.
I think, when you look at a lot of new bands that are emerging at the moment, who are influenced by a number of different elements, particularly from the 60s and 70s, there’s a very big difference between a tribute band who basically play exactly what went before and bands that pay homage to the past, but put their own stamp on it – it seems that distinction is lost – but when you started creating your own music, how did you approach it so that you would pay homage without re-treading old ground?
Do you know, I don’t think that was ever a conscious effort toward anything that we put out. I think we always just wrote what felt correct to us; what felt right. I don’t think that there’s been any deliberate attempt to separate this from that. I think we’re so… the group is so involved and steeped in the things that came out of Muscle Shoals and the Stax records of the 60s and through to the country records – drawing from all the influences and letting it distill itself into something new – it usually just sorts itself out into what it wants to sound like. I’ve never really considered the idea of being a tribute group or something that is setting itself apart. We’ve always just tried to write what sounds right to our ears and I’m happy to know that we fall into the latter category.
Obviously, you’re doing something right because your debut single, ‘best of me’, you ended up with Bobby Keys… how did that come about?
Yeah, that was such a wonderful set of circumstances for us. My brother and I, we had gone out to L.A. just on a whim with the notion that we would record something, but we had no idea what we wanted to record, we didn’t have anything prepared and we just sort of went to see what would happen. And while we were making that record, we worked with a wonderful producer out there called Drew… who was originally from Nashville and he had those country sensibilities, which really helped us narrow in on what we were doing – sort of corralling it all together.
But the Bobby thing came up because we were working on ‘best of me’ and there was a break that was clearly meant to be an instrumental break in the music but Chris, our guitar player, really felt strongly that it shouldn’t be a guitar solo. It wasn’t right for the particular track, so, on a whim, we felt it should be Saxophone and the only person who could do it was Bobby Keys. Then, that led to that discussion where we were like “well, yeah, that would be amazing but everyone else also wants Bobby…” so, the producer who we were working with, Drew, he tracked down Bobby’s manager and he tried him through the usual channels and what came back was “yes, Mr keys is interested for X amount of money” and it was way more than the budget of the record. It just wasn’t feasible.
So, that night we went home and we thought, well Bobby is an old school cat – he runs it like he’s run it his whole life and goes on feel, so I figured if we tried to talk to him directly, we could get through. So, I did everything I could and I ended up tracking down a contact for his son, Jessie, so I sent an email saying we were really big fans and, of course, we had known Bobby since he was in his teens working with Dion and the Bellmonts and putting sax on songs like ‘the wanderer’ – we’d been listening to Bobby’s records since we were very, very young, so I wrote this all out to this contact saying that we’d been listening since we were young and that we’d heard all his work; we had this record and could he take a listen. Anyway, I didn’t mention that we’d tried the agent or anything, I just left it at that, and the next morning, when I woke up, there was a missed call from Nashville. Well, I didn’t know anyone there at the time, so I checked my voice mail and got “Hello Nick, this is Bobby Keys calling, I love y’alls record!” it was the most dream-come-true moment – one of the best wake up calls I’ve had, and it went from there and we ended up having a really, really pleasant; very brief but pleasant; relationship with Bobby for the next few months until he fell ill and unfortunately passed away.
That’s a remarkable story and testament to both your music and the hard work that goes on behind the scenes…
I think for me, and I appreciate that, thank you… the biggest thing that I took out of that was that it’s so easy to get caught up in what’s the right channel to do things and I thought, what a wonderful way to contact someone and just say “hey! This is what we do” and I think the connection there was “I’m a musician, you’re a musician, what do you think” rather than try to go the conventional way.
It’s part of what comes with making music and it’s really cool that it worked out. You also worked with Chris Kimsey, another amazing name in the industry. How did that come about?
That was great to work with Chris, he’s become a very dear friend of ours and we still chat with him regularly, thinking about what the next project may be or what the right project may be. That was… the fact that bobby Keys heard our music and made a decision to get involved with us, it was like a seal of approval within the industry and when we came back with that record with his name, people like Chris… we didn’t know Chris, this was another of those whims where his name came up in something and we said “I wonder what he would think…”
So, we tracked down an email and just sent him a track saying this is what we’d like to do and asking him what he thought of our record, and he wrote back saying that it was one of the coolest Bobby Keys solos he’d ever heard and that he needed to meet us. So, we went out to Olympic Studios and met with him and that really forged the relationship.
If it weren’t for Bobby putting his seal of approval on it, I don’t know if we’d be talking right now, I think life would have been different but having Bobby’s name there. It got Chris to have a look at it and then, working with Chris was such a wonderful experience and he was the type of producer that we’d always been looking to work with – that spontaneity was preferred over over-preparation and we recorded it live off the floor, we didn’t need to separate everything and record individually on a grid. It was very much that how we sound is how our record was going to be which was exactly what were looking to do at the time. We did a single with him, called ‘can’t you see’, and the b side to that, which was called ‘ain’t it a shame’, which we released three weeks ago. Both ‘best of me’ with Bobby and ‘can’t you see’ were selected by Gary Crowley for BBC Introducing – they played both of those songs, which was a huge accomplishment for us late last year, it was wonderful.
It’s interesting to hear how you record because there seems to be a great movement of younger people playing raw blues music and also producing it the right way; not to produce it into he ground, but to get that live feeling and that’s really important, particularly in this style of music.
I absolutely agree with you. I believe it’s Keith Richards, and I may be misquoting, but to paraphrase around it is that a lot of people have learned how to rock, but not a lot of people can roll, and I think that’s the result of decades of people trying to refine the recording process to the point where it comes mechanical and not organic. I think there’s a lot of bands, like the Struts and Greta Van Fleet, who seem to be of a similar mindset where it’s not overthought or over-produced. They just want to make music.
Then, of course, something like this Troubadour residency comes up – that’s a really cool, old-school rock ‘n’ roll thing to do. When you decided to do this, how did you approach the set lists?
Well, as a group right now, we have just around two dozen original tracks. So, we’re doing… the intention right now and our first residency night is coming up a week today, on the 26th (July) so that’s going to be our first one and we’ve made every effort to turn this into a performance for people and not just a set or another gig night. We’re really aware of the fact that we’re putting on a show and trying to give that experience to people that they could go elsewhere, and you know, get in Las Vegas or Wembley – we’re really focusing on delivering a performance to people that keeps them wanting to come back, so yeah, our intention is to vary the set from night to night. Add new material and take out other bits and give people something fresh every time. So, that’s what you’ll get at a Son’s show.
Then you’ve got this one-off gig at the great Leicester venue – the Musician – how do you plan on approaching that night?
We’re very excited about the Leicester night. That gig is really something we’re looking forward to and this one is really standing out as a wonderful opportunity for us because we’ve not played Leicester before.
Carol, the promoter, who’s putting the night on, she originally saw us when we were opening for Greta Van Fleet and then, again, when we were opening for The Struts. She approached us about putting a night on to give people an opportunity to get out and see the group. Maybe they saw us on either of those two tours, or missed us on those tours and the one thing that we’re looking forward to the most is that, for anyone who has seen us opening on those last two tours, they’ve only seen a thirty-minute show for us, and we’re really excited to showcase a bit more of the broader sound of the group, because we get to play for an hour / 90 minutes something like that and I’m looking forward to sharing more of what our group does with people that night.
Could you tell me a little on how you develop your lyrics and how you work them from initial concept to song?
It’s always exciting to write songs because you don’t know what they are until you’ve finished them. The best songs that we have written are not the ones that you know what they’re about, they’re the ones where you try to find out what they’re about. But for the most part, I think… I’m a firm believer in writing from experience, to a certain degree, or to any degree – the foundation has to be in something that you can relate to, because I think that’s the best way to get your emotion across. I think as song writers, as you grow, you start to find out that it doesn’t have to be so directly linked. It can be founded in something and then you can expand upon that to make it more universal for people, but ultimately, trying to keep it… but making every effort to keep it something that has a thread of truth for you – if you can relate to it, then someone else can relate to it. But if you can’t relate to your work, how can you expect anyone else to?
I think it’s very challenging to put together lyrics, because you want to relate things that are relatable and maybe personal to you, but it can also be the case that you don’t want to put something out there that’s too obvious, or too personal. It’s a difficult line to tread I think.
Yeah, that’s the ballet of it all. That’s the beautiful balancing act that we have to do as artists and song-writers. It is to find the thing that makes us feel something and also translate it into a way that someone else can feel that it’s their song as much as it’s our own. One of the most wonderful concepts, to me, is that, if you have got ten people (or if you’ve got ten thousand) each one of those people are listening to your music in their own individual way. Everyone hears a different song and getting a different experience out of it and keeping that concept in mind, it’s a wonderful challenge to keep it true for you, and you know where you came from with that idea, but also having the comfort enough to let it go out to those people and let it be what they feel it’s about.
And that’s, I guess, what lies at the core of the blues – people’s ability to relate to the music and take something that’s personal to them away from it all…
Yeah. I’m totally with you on that. When you look at the foundation of what is current popular music – the cornerstone of all that being blues and jazz and country music, especially blues and, to an extent, the original country music. Those guys were telling a story, and everyone knows that feeling. There was no subtext to those songs. It was direct, and on the nose, but it connected people and I think that’s one thing you have to try to achieve in your own writing.
You’ve already mentioned parts of this, but how do you see the future going for the band?
You can only plan to the best of our ability, but I think it’s one of those things that, you know, you can make al, your best plans in the first week and, by week 2, everything’s changed because a new bit of information has come in or you have to take another look at it or whatever. For us, it’s just to continue writing the best music possible and to put on the best live show possible, and the rest of it just will fall into place. I do know that we’d like to get new music out in the near future – make a new record and get that out. We need to do our best to get our sound out on a larger scale – I think the time is right for that to happen. Up until, currently, we’re still completely self-managed. We book all our own gigs. We have had no involvement with anyone else and I think that possibly, in the near future, that is the right move for us and we need to find the right fit for us to go forward in that capacity. So, the future is great and grand and wide-open for us and certainly looking very exciting.
Thank you so much for your time!
The Second Sons play Leicester on Friday 27th July, 2018. Check the event page here.
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