Our intrepid Ms Mayonnaise always has her finger on the pulse (and occasionally elsewhere); but sadly our uploading monkeys are less with it, so since she conducted this interview with the upcoming electropop quartet, the band have grown wings and are poised for great things with a Prides-produced EP already very big with Radio Scotland. Anyway, hopefully not too late to the party, here’s Betty’s 10 with… Boohoohoo.
1. Hullo Boohoohoo, by way of introduction, introduce yourselves please. Who are you, and what do you do?
HELLO! We have Reggie on synth/guitars and vocals, Richardson on lead vocals and button pressing, Lizzie on synth/vocals and the occasional flute solo and Ewan on drums.
2. You are playing this Friday at King Tut’s (and sorry can’t come but Midgestock calls for BM), is that your first headline gig (in which case you have got a good one!) – what are the live plans for the rest of 2016?
Nooooooo, it wasn’t our headlining gig! It was a support slot with a band called Vegan Leather who are a great band from Paisley. The place was sold out and everyone seemed to be in to our songs so it was a good night for us.
For the rest of 2016, we have a few gigs confirmed – some in Glasgow and some in Edinburgh. Since you asked us this question all that time ago, we have since played at Teen Canteen’s album launch at Mono which was sold out. It was a good night all round!!! Carla from Teen Canteen has done us a lot of nice things – getting us gigs, putting us in touch with LNFG who are putting out an EP for us this year and just generally being cool! We are playing with them again at Sneaky Pete’s on the 30th September aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand the most important PLUG for us is our own EP launch on the 30th November at Nice n Sleazys!
3. BM understands that you were “invented” in the studio – what is the story and is it true you have a “no equipment post nineteen eighty-something” rule?
I don’t know if I’d say we were “invented” in the studio. It’s true that we wrote all of our songs as we recorded them – we hardly ever went in to the studio with any completed songs. Sometimes we’d start from scratch and sometimes we maybe had half a song. The first few songs we wrote were fully formed, but we got a real buzz off of having to think on your feet in the studio. Sometimes it was like, ‘right we have 15 minutes to think of a goddamn chorus or this song is getting chucked in the bin so let’s get it sorted!’
4. Musical influences – chuck me out a few names, from the obvious to the not-so-obvious.
OKAY; Prince, M83, Little Dragon, Talking Heads, LCD Soundsystem, Peter Gabriel, Go West, Chromeo, Michael Jackson…………….
5. Betty would also like to know the first gig that you attended, come on, and going with your mum to see Simply Red at the SECC still counts btw…
Reggie’s first gig – NU2 (a U2 cover band) at the Liquid Rooms in Edinburgh with my Dad 😀
Liz’s first gig – Less Than Jake at the Carling Academy in Manchester
Richardsons’ first gig – Papa Roach at the Barras
Ewan’s first gig – Weezer at the Carling Academy
6. What would your ideal support slot be? And before you say anything BM would suggest that you start by bombarding The Pet Shop Boys on social media, they are playing two Scottish dates in future, that would be BM’s pick for BHH!
Well, that would be a gig that none of us would say no to!!! I think if Prince were still here, it would be a unanimous answer, but as he very sadly passed away (GUTTED) we have a few different answers here from Beyonce, Rihanna to Chromeo (they guys are cool). It’s a difficult question to answer. Basically, any of the folk we listed in answer to number 4 haha!
7. So are you “signed”, working with any labels or just doing it yourselves? Any plans to do it differently if things take off?
We are not signed, but we are working with crowd funded label Last Night From Glasgow (LNFG) and released an EP with them on 30th November. They have been so helpful and supportive of us already and we haven’t even put anything out with them yet. Ian (one of the founders) even made us pizza from scratch! If things took off, I’m pretty sure we would still be going to Greggs for lunch, but maybe just ordering an extra steak bake. We would probably just continue to do what we do- playing gigs and writing songs. I think the best thing would just be if you could dedicate more time to it!
8. I would ask what your day jobs are but that can be a bit dull, what about the worst jobs you have ever done? (including present employment if relevant but I know that Mike Ashley is a regular ITM website visitor so don’t moan about Sports Direct or you’ll be fired!)
Richardson and I (Reggie) worked in the security industry together for a year or so – you know them assholes in high viz that don’t let you walk through doors in pubs for no apparent reason and stuff like that? One time though, we got placed backstage at a Boyzone concert and we saw the whole band in nothing but Y fronts. HAWT. Aw the boiz.
9. Have you considered adding a visual element to your tracks and who is or would be collaborating with you on this (BM did try Youtube and other slices of the web and there may be something visual out there already, but if so I couldn’t get it to work!)
We just finished shooting a video with Drew John Barnes who is a talented little chippy!
Also, we just finished shooting a live video of one of our songs with The Forest of Black
Both videos will be included in the USB version of the EP
10. And finally – I know the Old Hairdressers is a great venue but what would be your ideal venue to play in Glasgow, or beyond?
Touring outside the UK would be a dream for us! We’ve always talked about playing in Japan specifically Tokyo (Lizzie’s birthplace). However we are so lucky to live in a city which has some outstanding venues. I think everybody would say they’d like to play The Barrowlands at some point. I don’t know… sometimes the weirdest places turn out to be the best venues! We played a gig in a tattoo studio in Glasgow recently – it was totally makeshift – the PA was distorting because it was too small and we didn’t have a sound guy so we just set up like we do in rehearsal, but the vibes were so good and people were losing their shit!!
More at www.facebook.com/boohoohooband/ www.lastnightfromglasgow.com