Interviews

A Quick Chat With Hares

• 3rd Oct 2013

We caught up with Robb Skipper from saucy new London based duo Hares to talk about their new single, touring, musical influences and Game Of Thrones…

When we first started playing music…

Its hard to pin down when we started because Hares has been such a gradual evolution with changing lineups since 2010. Myself and (drummer/producer/multi-instrumentalist) Adam Sullivan, who i’ve been playing with for about 2 years, are the core of the band, whilst we perform live with a bass player, extra guitarist and a cello player. It’s a very exciting group to be part of – getting to play with such an array of great musicians / characters!

We chose our name because…

I had an interest in the symbolism of the Hare in mythology and folklore where it’s alchemical image represents longevity, fertility and, above all, rebirth, something which I felt relevant seeing as Hares was a kind of reinvention after my previous musical project.

We knew we were onto something when…

We were rehearsing the day before we went in the studio to record our first EP. I was experimenting with a riff on the Kora ( a west African harp-like instrument) and we instantaneously we came up with the song ‘Coastlines’ which ended up being the lead track of the ep. The moment when we felt like something was happening was when all our favourite radio DJ’s like Steve Lamacq (6 Music), John Kennedy (XFM) and Huw Stevens (Radio One) started spinning Coastlines last year. We all gathered round the radio and it was like that really cheesy 90’s film That Thing You Do we all jumped up and down like crazy in disbelief.

Our biggest influences are…

60’s pop : sugar-sweet Phil Spector pop like the Chrystals and The Ronettes then 70’s power-pop guitar bands like The Cars and The Knack: bands that don’t take themselves too seriously – then take 90’s rockers like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and The Brian Jonestown Massacre…. If that’s not a recipe for our sound its at least a clue to our influences.

We’re most proud of…

We’re proud that we stuck to our guns on this last release, putting out the least obvious track, Just A Picture, which does not conform to normal ‘verse chorus verse chorus’ structure as the A side and the more blatantly pop tracks as the B sides (Your Kind of Guy and Inkblots and Papercuts).

Our ideal support slot would be…

Well if we’re going hypothetical here we may as well go back in time as well – stick us on Dylan’s ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’ Tour please! I’d obviously get up and play my fiddle on ‘The Hurricane’ and ‘Isis’.

One item we can’t live without on tour…

Well I have a drum machine iPhone app which allows you to slam a fat T-808 dub-step beat all over Nick Drake’s ‘Pink Moon’ album, giving hours of sacrilegious fun whiling away the hours on the long drives.

We can’t stop listening to…

Well aside from the dubstep-Nick Drake we love Foxygen, Serge Gainsbourg, Tame Impala, Doctor Feelgood…. I always tune into John Kennedy’s Xposure show on weeknight XFM and he plays all these really obscure bands like CuT (and us!) and always reads out the dumb texts I send in!

We’re not ashamed to admit that…

We’re massive Game of Thrones fans. I actually got a tiny part in a film called Dom Hemmingway where I play fiddle in a band with Emelia Clarke (Khaleesi, The Mother of Dragons) as the lead singer. After a day of playing it cool I had to break the silence and talk about Game of Thrones. It was a relief to everyone in the group- she was happy to give all the gossip about the show – her partner Karl Drogo drinking whole bottles of tequila between scenes; The fact her blonde hair is a wig (I had bleach white hair at the time which I claimed I’d dyed to look like her so obviously this fact came as a massive disappointment!)

Catch us next…
KOKO Fri 4 Oct w/ Storms
18 Oct at the Tooting Tram & Social (Hosted by XFM’s John Kennedy – also we’ll be doing a live session on his radio show the previous night)
Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth 31 October
Quarterhouse, Folkestone, 1 November