Reef
Funk off! We had a chat with the reunited rockers.
South-west quartet Reef are back together and back on the road touring the country. To discuss their reunion, Rocklouder scribe Chris Leonard caught up with frontman Gary Stringer in Glasgow ahead of the start of their first UK tour in 8 years.
Rocklouder: First of all, welcome back! It’s awesome to have Reef back together!
Gary: Thank you!
Feel good?
Yeah it does! We had a warm up show on Wednesday and without sounding big headed, it felt really easy, really natural, it was great. We got a great response, so yeah really good.
Did you feel nervous at all?
Not really no, it does take time to acclimatise to that sweaty room again but not nervous, it was great.
What about the reaction you’d get?
Not at all, the nervous bit was wondering whether tickets would sell! But we managed to sell five or six thousand tickets right off the bat which was great. We’ve sold out most of (the gigs) which is amazing.
What made you guys take the break in the first place? Did you get to a natural point at which a break seemed right?
Yeah, I think we just needed one really, we’d had the best ten years you could imagine. We got signed when we were just 19, turning 20, and for those ten years we had a right laugh, toured the world several times, made five records, including a number one, festivals… we just had really good fun and we were a real gang, but that last year didn’t feel so much like fun. More like work. So we felt it a good time to take time out.
Sounds like you made a sensible decision rather than force things and create tensions, ruin friendships and so on…
Yeah, that’s it, it just felt right.
So what was the drive for getting back together for this tour?
Well everyone has been doing their own thing. Dom (Greensmith, drums) is in a band called The Black Swan Effect, Ken (House, guitar) plays with him in that, and also has a project called The Bliss. I’m in a band called Them Is Me with Jack (Bessant, bass) and we’ve also made an acoustic record under the name StringerBessant, which will come out in June. But our old manager Tank suggest we all sit down and have a curry, so we did, and it felt really good, natural and normal. And then we had an offer of some shows through Live Nation and we said "yeah, OK". It didn’t take too long to think about it really.
I know it’s early days, but are you treating this as ‘get this tour done and see what happens’ and see how the land lies, or are you already thinking you’d like to do more shows?
I’m pretty sure everyone in the band is pretty open minded at this point, we’ve the six shows and some festivals, Isle of Wight, Glastonbury, Cornbury at the moment and just see how it goes really. We don’t want to make any rash promises, but yeah, it feels good at the minute.
Clearly you’ll have been rehearsing and jamming together for this tour, has anything new come out of that?
No, there’s been a couple of little jams, we’ve only had three practice sessions, one block of two days and two blocks of three days, so we’ve been concentrating on remembering all the old stuff. It is amazing how its all come back, but given how much other stuff everyone has had going on since we last played together it made sense just to focus on the old songs we were intending to play.
Do all the old songs still feel fresh and relevant to you, none of them feel a bit outdated?
Well we made a list of about 30 songs that we wanted to learn, and we all agreed on those, all four members seemed comfortable with those. There are certain songs I wouldn’t play and I’m sure there are for the other boys that maybe feel dated, but the 30 we’ve chosen don’t feel dated at all.
Have you whittled that down to a definitive set you’ll play each night?
We’ve got six shows so we’ve got 24/25 that we’ll play for certain, and then another 5 or 6 we can add in or swap in on each night, but we’re not going to drastically change the set. But I doubt that after the warm up. So ‘Lucky Number’ is in there, ‘Set The Record Straight’, ‘I Got Something to Say’ as well as the other obvious ones.
Do you think anything will come out of this tour like a live recording or DVD?
We were offered a DVD for this tour, but we turned it down because we just felt that we wanted to do the shows. We didn’t want to suddenly jump on this reunion like that, we just want to let it grow naturally and we’ll see.
You’ve mentioned that you’ve all had side projects and so on during the break, but you all have families and kids now, is that right?
Yeah we’ve all got kids now…
Given that and the time away from Reef, have you noticed big changes in each other? You mentioned you felt like a gang before, has that feeling gone now you’re older?
You’re on dodgy territory there! Haha! But fundamentally it’s the same boys back together again, obviously there are changes though. But when we went for the curry I suddenly realised I hadn’t seen Dom for a year, or Ken for six months and there was a little trepidation, but that disappeared very quickly once we got chatting and had a beer. I think it’s like re-learning all the songs, I think they're hardwired in and once you get it back together it’s the same really.
So it’s like old times but with a new tint to it?
Yeah, at the end of the day they’re great boys, some of the best players in the country I think, and it’s a pleasure to sing with them. I love to sing with these guys, it's great.
In the time that Reef has been away obviously you’ve had side projects on a smaller scale, but the music industry has changed dramatically in how its recorded, released and so on. Do you have any particular opinions on how its evolved, has it been good or bad? If you were starting out again would you be doing things differently?
I don’t think evolution is either good or bad, you always end up looking at it from a historical point of view, and its just evolution it’s the way things are. I think a lot of the dead wood has been taken out of the industry and a lot of the kind of pointless middle men have been removed. Having said that, I’m really glad we were around during that hedonistic, revolting, economic best, we all made a shed lot of money during that time, and you just don’t get that now. One place you can is doing live gigs. But we recorded two of our records in Los Angeles and we lived there for three months, our ‘Them Is Me’ record we did for about twenty grand and the ‘StringerBessant’ thing was cheap too. I think the money has gotten smaller and smaller, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing so long as you keep hold of what matters to you, like we wanted to record ‘Them Is Me’ to tape, use good amps, good desks to get certain sounds. You don’t need five star hotels and oodles of cash to get that, and especially if you know the right recording engineers, producers and so on.
How are you releasing these side projects, is it through iTunes only, self released, small labels?
‘Them Is Me’ is through our website, its on iTunes. I’d recommend Tunecore’ to any young musicians, I think its $20 to get your album on there and then its 100% profit for what you sell. So for you young bands I’d definitely recommend that as it gets you on iTunes, Amazon and so on. We made that on our own label which was another eye opener which was really cool, but with StringerBessant we’ve been picked up by Xtra Mile and its great to be involved with them.
If you were starting Reef again it’d be totally different?
Absolutely, look at young bands now they have to keep real jobs on the side and it’s tough, even on a major. It’s totally different.
Now that you’re back together is there any particular gig or festival you always wanted to play but never got the chance to and maybe now you might?
I’m really glad we’re going back to Glastonbury this year which I’m stoked about as I genuinely believe it’s the best in the world, but I’d love to go to South America with my music with one of these bands. But I’ve been lucky I’ve been to Japan, Australia, all over Europe. Maybe American festivals would be nice too!
Well thank you for your time, and good luck for tonight and the rest of the tour!
Thanks, appreciate it!
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