Wonderland Trip
Interview
Interview
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'Catchy melodic pop punk songs with clever guitar parts.'
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I dropped an email to Wonderland Trip, after I heard their work, & immediately got a positive answer from the band for interviewing them.
Manchester's three-piece Steve Rice (vocals/guitar), Adam Shaw (bass) & Ben Walsh (drums) gladly answered questions about the band & its future.
Ste: The band properly formed late 2010 with the line up of me on guitar and vocals, Adam on bass, my mate Dale Calderbank on 2nd guitar and vocals and Andrew J. Sant on drums. Dale and I started the band initially late 2009, playing around with song ideas we had. We'd been playing in bands with each other on and off since we were kids so it was easy to write new stuff. Then we decided we would need a drummer and a bassist. I put an ad in every guitar shop I knew of in Manchester and soon received a reply from Adam. I met Andy through a friend of a friend. The first rehearsal we just jammed through a few of the songs Dale and I had and we all seemed to click from there on.
Adam: After spending a couple of years playing gigs all over, we decided we wanted to take the band in a different direction and start spending some serious time in the studio. At this point we also changed drummers and got Ben in on drums. We also decided to become a three piece.
WHAT IS THE SOTRY BEHIND YOUR BAND NAME?
Ste: We wrote a song and called it Wonderland Trip. When Dale and I began writing the songs it was hard to tell what genre the band would best fit into. At the time I think we felt that maybe the songs we had were too diverse for the band to fit into just one genre so, we solved it by saying to ourselves the band is just gonna be a wonderland of diverse music and that would be our genre. The song Wonderland Trip is probably the best example of our genre of music So, we ended up naming the band after the song.
HOW DID YOU BECOME INVOLVED WITH MUSIC?
Ste: I learnt to play guitar when I was 6 but didn't start singing until I was 15. The bands that influenced my style are The Clash, House of Love, The Damned, The Chameleons.
Ben: I started playing guitar when I was 11, my dad taught me some basics and then I picked up the rest by myself, I started playing the drums in 2008 in church, then after having jammed with my uncles band a few times I joined the band and started taking it a little more seriously. My drum hero is Dirk Verbeuren of Soilwork.
Adam: I started playing guitar when I was about 11, basically because my dad did and they started giving free lessons at school. When I was about 14, I joined a band and we needed a bassist so I just taught myself bass. When I started out I looked up to bassists like Mark Hamilton (Ash) and Krist Novoselic (Nirvana). Nowadays I'm more impressed by bands that have a really good bassist and drummer that sync in together. Mani and Remi from Stone Roses are the best at this.
WHAT BANDS, MUSICIANS INFLUENCED YOUR MUSIC STYLE?
Adam: I think we all grew up listening to punk bands like Blink 182 so we're definitely influenced by pop punk. But there's a lot of 80's guitar bands sounds in there as well. Manchester bands like Chameleons and Joy Division are a big influence. I think our songs are pop punk with 80's guitar sounds.
YOU HAVE A LOT OF DEMO SONGS ON YOUR 'SOUNDCLOUD' PAGE. ARE YOU PLANING TO RELEASE AN ALBUM SOON?
Ste: Our first EP will be released mid January, there will also be a video release for our single. We plan to release a 2nd EP mid-late 2014.
Adam: We've spent most of 2013 recording with a really good producer (Neil Treppas) - it's taken a while to get it perfect but now we've got loads of stuff to start releasing in 2014. The first single will be called The Girl That Was You.
WAS IT HARD TO GET YOUR BANDS 'OUT THERE' - BOOKING GIGS, BUILDING UP THE FAN BASE?
Adam: The music industry is a bit of a mine field and I think we've learnt a lot since we started out. At first we didn't really know what we were doing and just played any gigs we were offered but now we only try to play decent places where we know there'll be a crowd that likes our music. To start with you rely on your friends turning up a lot because no one else has heard of you. We're now beginning to get a good following from using things like Twitter and Facebook. We know our music is good enough it's just getting it to the people that like that genre. We don't really have any gimmicks we just rely on the music speaking for itself.
Ste: When the EP and video is released we're hoping that this will increase our fan base.
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE AS A BAND? ANYTHING YOU LOOK FORWARD TO?
Ste: We have a gig to look forward to on 29th November at 'Dry Bar' in Manchester but we're mostly looking forward to next year's EP release, it would be nice to do a mini tour to promote it. Its also one of our aims to try to get a few support slots with bigger bands in 2014, that would be nice.
Adam: I'm really looking forward to people hearing our EP. We've had a lot of good feedback from our demos on sound cloud but the EP is miles better.
ANY INTERESTING STORIES FORM THE GIGS?
Ste: We've played in lots of random places including the roof of a pub, a power station, on the back of a lorry.
Adam: One gig that was funny was a festival we played in Stalybridge. It was at a pub and they had loads of bands playing over the weekend. Every band got about 30 mins set and it was running behind by about an hour. Then this Bon Jovi cover band turned up who had been booked to play the full night months in advance and no-one had cancelled them. They were proper stroppy and insisted on playing for about two hours. I think they thought they were Bon Jovi. We didn't get to play until about 2 in the morning- thankfully some people stayed around to watch us.
IN SHORT, DESCRIBE YOUR BAND FOR THOSE, WHO HAVEN'T HEARD YOU YET.
Ben: Our upbeat tunes and varied styles make us really easy to listen to, we're serious about our music and less serious about looking it.
Adam: Catchy melodic pop punk songs with clever guitar parts.
Ste: We write music we want to hear.
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