The rise and rise of The Hoosiers
SINCE breaking through with hit single Worried about Ray The Hoosiers have won over legions of fans.
Observer reporter Hannah Marsh met drummer, Alphonso Sharland, in the run-up to the band's next UK tour.
What are The Hoosiers up to at the moment ?
Right now we're just literally finishing the festival season, we've been pretty busy with that but we've just got one more in Belgium so we're winding down for a couple of weeks in preparation for our UK tour in October.
Then we've got a small tour of France and I think an even smaller one in Japan. We're also trying to make a start on the new album.
Will we be hearing any of the new material on the tour?
Hopefully. As long as when we get it all down its not totally rubbish! We'd like to try it out and see what happens, it's nice to get an idea of what people think of it other than ourselves and our mothers – who can be a bit over-complimentary.
Can you give us any clues about what the new album might sound like?
We want to make sure we keep ourselves interesting and keep evolving as a band, but we're not going to isolate people by just going super dark or anything like that. We'd like to get more of a live sound onto the album though, more organic. We want to write good songs, that's always been the idea.
How have you found your new found celebrity?
Everything happened so quickly. Going from playing in front of three of four people in a local pub to playing V Festival last year was ridiculous, but it's really exciting. We've been working for 12 years though, it's what you aim for, so you do feel it's quite justified. People go 'oh you came out of nowhere, you must have really got lucky' but in fact no we didn't really just 'get lucky'. We do feel very fortunate though.
Do you get recognised in the street?
Occasionally, I suppose I'm quite odd looking, I have had one or two unsavoury moments when people have been horrible to me. But that's not why we do it, we just want to play music and hope people will turn up to the gigs. It's kind of a compliment and reflection of success but it's not really part of what we do.
How do The Hoosiers relax when you're out on the road? Any wild antics?
We're all quite active so we kind of like try and go for a run or play some sport. Sometimes we play badminton or football, we get quite competitive. When you're on tour you're just immersed in the songs all the time, you live with them and they can infect you a bit so you have to do things to take your mind off it. But we're not really very wild men.
What can we expect to see when you come to Brighton?
We're trying to dress up our stage a bit more. Its fancy dress as always with Hoosiers gigs, if you don't want to we won't bully you into it but you will look silly. And so will we. We're trying to make our whole stage exciting, like the Flaming Lips or the Super Furry Animals. So that it's not just about how bad we were! We're covering all bases really. We have fun though, we love playing live and I think that shows.
The Hoosiers are playing at the Brighton Centre on October 25.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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