Templeton Pek Interview

• 12th Mar 2009

We caught up with Birmingham rockers Templeton Pek

Hello Templeton Pek and thanks for taking a few mins out to speak to glasswerk.co.uk. So tell us a bit about the band. Where did you meet?

Myself (Neal) and Kev had been writing songs in a band for a few years before they met Simon whilst we were all working in the Academy venue in Birmingham. After many gigs, drunken nights we formed what now is Templeton Pek and vowed to play the main stage there…and we have, twice.

What was the catalyst that got you all together, was it a mutual agreement on a particular music style, influence or did you get into it to really push it and go far?

Alcohol at first I think haha. The previous incarnation of the band seemed to be treading water, and when Simon joined we seemed to get a new buzz and thirst to get out to wherever we could, and play as many shows as we could.

How would you describe your sound?
Fast Melodic Rock

What were you major influences for getting into music? Any particular artists?

I think wanting to be on stage and being able to tour places you wouldn’t otherwise see was the initial buzz…There’s no real artists that influenced us consciously I think though…we’re just big fans of good songs…but I guess you can probably hear hints of stuff in our music if you listen.

Templeton Pek – how did you come about the name is it a place, a person or something else?

Templeton Pek was the character of ‘Face Man’s name in The A-Team. There’s no real meaning behind it, it’s just a name…but you’ll be surprised how many people don’t get the name. Maybe that’s a good thing. Haha

Tell us about the favourite places you have played?

Hitting Mainland Europe for the first time was pretty mind blowing especially playing a sold out Munich show…the Stuttgart to over 1000 people. But I think we’ll always remember the Taste Of Chaos and Give It A Name shows we played just for sheer size, and being alongside so many bands we listen to.

The LKA in Stuttgart seems to be mentioned a bit on your myspace what did it mean to play there?

The place is legendary… They have posters of all the acts that of played there and it’s a ‘who’s who’ in rock, everyone has played there from Rage Against the Machine to Foo fighters…even Nirvana with Sonic Youth….they were scheduled to return but Kurt killed himself, they still have the printed tickets.

In terms of recordings what was your first release and what was the reaction like?

Our album ‘No Association’ was our first release and seems to have gone down pretty well both with critics and fans. We’re pretty proud of it as we funded it entirely on a shoestring budget, re-mixed and mastered it ourselves too.

Kill This Sound is your latest EP are you happy with how it is initially being received?

We seem to be getting a positive response so far…it’s supposed to be a taste of where we’re going and some exclusive stuff not on the album. We also self recorded and produced the two new songs on there.

Tell us about your up and coming tour, excited, any dates your particularly looking forward to?

We’re hitting as many towns and cities as we can because it seems an age since we toured the UK, so we’re very much looking forward to hitting the road on our home soil…all dates, because there’s some places we haven’t been for a long time or yet even!

Finally a few quick fire fun ones:

Favourite sandwich: Steak and Cheese
Act of all time: Act 7
Favourite animal: Sasquatch

Templeton Pek are on Tour in April for further info about the band vsisit

www.myspace.com/templetonpek